Given Suhail Khan’s family background, it is hardly surprising that he, too, has spent a considerable amount of time associating with the sorts of organizations favored by his parents. According to a December 2003 press release issued by the Islamic Society of North America, he served on one its committees.[1][14] He has repeatedly been a featured speaker at MSA, ISNA and CAIR events, as well as those of other problematic groups, including the California-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Institute (II, also known as the Islamic Free Market Institute or IFMI). For example, Khan spoke most recently at an II meeting in December 2006.

The Islamic Institute was established by Grover Norquist in 1998 with $20,000 in seed money from Abdurahman Alamoudi (who is currently serving a 23-year federal sentence for terrorism-related activities). II is the principal vehicle for the Islamists’ influence operation aimed at the Bush Administration and Republican and conservative circles. Norquist was its founding president; Alamoudi’s long-time deputy, Khalid Saffuri, was its first executive director; and II’s offices continue to be housed in the downtown Washington office suite rented by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.

In fact, Grover Norquist is the Islamic Institute’s chief enabler. As Arab-American pollster, John Zogby, put it to the New Republic in November 2001, “[Grover]’s played the role of interlocutor. With all respect, many of the leaders [of the Muslim-American community] are immigrants and don’t have years and years of experience. Grover has filled that void.” He went on to say that “absolutely, [Grover is] central to the White House outreach.”

As detailed at length in “A Troubling Influence,”[1][15] Norquist has for years used his weekly Washington “Wednesday Group” meetings of what he calls the “Center-Right Coalition” to promote Saffuri, Khan and others associated with the Islamic Institute team as movement conservatives, or at least as reliable allies. Saffuri and Khan are routinely accorded privileged seating at these events. On occasion, in Norquist’s absence, Khan has actually chaired the meeting – a private-sector role of political activism during business hours that seems unlikely to be consistent with the guidelines for conduct of his day-job with the federal government.

If Suhail Khan is useful to Norquist today, he was incalculably valuable in his previous capacity. Prior to becoming a political appointee in the Transportation Department’s Federal Highway Administration (where he reportedly has access to highly sensitive information about the movement of military convoys and nuclear and other hazardous materials and contingency plans),[16] Khan was responsible not just for “outreach” in the White House Public Liaison Office (as his sanitized ACU resume puts it); he oversaw Muslim outreach. Presumably, that had something to do with why when a White House access list of Muslims to be invited to meetings in the presidential complex was prepared, it actually had Norquist at its top.

Interestingly, most of the others on that list were drawn from the various Saudi-funded, pro-Islamist and generally anti-American groups that purport to comprise the so-called “Muslim-American leadership.” People now serving hard time like Abdurahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian were at various points among those Khan, Norquist and Saffuri considered appropriate for courting by the Bush team. Others were individuals, like Jamal Barzinji, a board member of several Islamist-sympathizing organizations that were raided and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of fundraising for terrorists.

A Case Study: Siddiqi

Another on that list was the Khans’ old family friend, Muzammil Siddiqi, even though he had a documented record of pro-jihadist remarks (including some made during a March 2000 rally outside the White House)[1][17] and ominous associations. Siddiqi was nonetheless allowed after September 11, 2001, to have a private meeting with the President, at which he presented the latter with a Koran.

Worse yet, this imam was selected for the high honor of representing his faith three days after 9/11 at an ecumenical prayer service held at the National Cathedral. Not surprisingly, his remarks to the distinguished audience were a grave disappointment. As Charles Krauthammer caustically observed afterwards, Siddiqi could not even bring himself to condemn the terrorists.[1][18]

It almost turned out very differently. Siddiqi was running late in getting to the National Cathedral and for a few moments, another Muslim cleric – Sheikh Hisham Khabbani – was mistaken for the imam from Southern California and ushered into the holding area for speakers, only to be sent packing when Siddiqi arrived.

If only the head of the peaceable, pro-American and law-abiding Sufi sect in North America had been given a chance to speak, instead of the radical imam based in Orange County, several things would surely have happened. For one, it is certain that the terrorists would have been searingly condemned for their actions.

Sheikh Kabbani would also have unambiguously denounced the ideology, organizations and nations that animate and support Islamofascist terrorism. We know this because both points were features of the forceful presentation made when he appeared at the Secretary of State’s Open Forum in 1999, a chillingly prescient forecast of the mayhem our common, Islamist foes seek to inflict.[1][19]

In fact, the very course of the war may have been different had Sheikh Khabbani been given the sort of access to President Bush and the American people which Suhail Khan and his friends generally denied the Sufi leader – but were only too happy to provide to the likes of Muzammil Siddiqi.

Sheikh Kabbani’s religious authority would have helped the United States rebut the charge that it was attacking all of Islam when it sought to counter and defeat the Islamists. The President would have had the latitude to be clear and direct about the threat, not encouraged to use euphemisms – such as “the war on terror” – out of a misplaced fear of giving offense to truly peaceable Muslims. We now know that such euphemisms have merely served to confuse the American people and made it far more difficult to develop, and sustain popular support for, the counter-ideological warfare our actual Islamofascist enemies require.

The Bottom Line

It is hard fully to calculate the magnitude of the damage done by the pro-Islamist influence operation run by Grover Norquist and his friends. Law enforcement agencies have been forced to receive “sensitivity training” from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Norquist has lent conservative political cover to those who would weaken our counter-terrorism authorities and techniques. He has helped place into positions of trust and official responsibility people whose often-undisclosed past associations at least raise questions about their reliability.

In short, thanks in part to the Norquist operation, America’s enemies have been emboldened. And the United States is at considerably greater risk.

It is time, once and for all, for conservatives to take a hard look at what Norquist and his associates have been doing in the guise of Muslim “outreach.” A good place to start would be for the membership of the American Conservative Union to reject the "Khan job" being perpetrated by Norquist’s influence operation.