Times Rips Kelly in Typically Misinformed Blast

Liz | 01/31 at 06:27 PM

Does it disturb anyone else to see the New York Times jumping on NYPD Commissioner Kelly…again? The Times grievance these days is that the police department showed a supposedly “anti-Muslim” training film that vilifies Islamic terrorists. In response, the creator of the movie, M. Zuhdi Jasser, writes in an op-ed published in the Post that the Times has written a “horrendous distortion” of the film. In evaluating the movie, the NYT apparently relied on information from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that, as Mr. Jasser points out, has been cited in federal testimony as linked to Hamas. Not, in other words, the most reliable source.

The issue raised by the NYT, wrongly, as it turns out, is that the film depicts most American Muslims as extremists. It does not. The film opens with the sentence “This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radicals.” Okay, well, three sentences, but you get the point. 

The New York Times has constantly hammered away on what it portrays as a biased and “hateful” effort by the NYPD to demean our Muslim community – with undercover agents infiltrating their communities, attending their mosques and reporting on suspicious activities. This film, the Times charges, further divides our community by creating suspicion. 

I beg to differ. The events that have created suspicions between Muslims in the United States and non-Muslims are the numerous attacks on Americans perpetrated by radical Islamists. The effort by the Obama administration to pretend otherwise is ludicrous. The Obama team calls the Fort Hood massacre “workplace violence” and the underwear bomber an “isolated extremist.” Words matter, and this clouding of the war being waged by Muslim extremists is inexcusable. No one is fooled.

Thankfully, Police Chief Ray Kelly understands his brief – to keep New York City safe. The Big Apple is the number one terrorist target in the world, we are told. The NYPD is constantly uncovering plots that would wreak havoc in this crowded landscape. For a decade, Kelly and the NYPD have fended off such attacks, and have consequently come to be regarded as the best police operation in the world. If they think exposing officers-in-training to the truth of the Islamist jihad is important, I say they’ve earned the right to make that decision. Without a doubt they know more about it than the pontifical and quick-to-judge NYT.

From the numerous errors and misstatements in the NYT editorial, it sounds as if perhaps the writers actually never saw the film. Maybe they should take a look, and while they’re at it, spend a little time with our Police Commissioner, who has cut crime to the bone while all the while working with budget constraints and a shrinking department. In other words, lose the bias and do your homework.

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