Sacked: Another Muslim homeland security official with shady connections

On Monday, National Public Radio featured a story about a Muslim homeland security official who was fired after being featured as a terrorism suspect in an anti-terrorism seminar.

Omar Alomari, a 60-year-old Jordanian-American, served as a multicultural relations officer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety until the state fired him following a seminar for local law enforcement officers on political Islam and terrorism. Alomari was singled out as a suspect, and shortly after the presentation, he was fired.

The NPR article implies that Alomari lost his job due to the seminar, but it turns out that he actually was dismissed for not fully disclosing his employment history when filing his background check and then lying to investigators. Alomari left out his tenure as a college professor where he was fired due to an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student and also failed to disclose that he had previously worked for the Jordanian Minister of Labor.

The website The Jawa Report conducted an investigation into Alomari, which can be found here.

Apart from appearing as a witness for a 2010 Congress subcomittee hearing, Alomari is most notable work is two pamphlets on Islam he wrote as a member of Ohio Homeland Security.

In his guide to Islamic and Arabic culture, Alomari defined jihad as “The utmost effort one should exert to achieve excellence” and states that “Jihad does not mean holy war, as many people are led to believe.”

Zuhdi Jasser, fellow Muslim and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, calls Alomari’s pamphlets “classic Islamist propaganda” and says they are “full of factual inaccuracies.”

The other pamphlet, “Agents of Radicalization,” was actually destroyed before it could be distributed. Under “organizations we are working with,” Alomari listed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America, Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Alliance of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim Student Association.

All of these groups are connected to Islamic terrorism.

There are far too many inaccuracies in Alomari’s pamphlets to properly address within this article. But having seen his soft-soaped definition of jihad, it is worth correcting.

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, the author of The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, defines jihad using the Koran rather than perpetuating a false narrative.

“Jahada, the root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran.” said Bostom in an interview with Liberty and Security Journal. “With four exceptions, all the other 36 usages in the Koran as understood by both the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam […] and ordinary Muslims – meant and mean, ‘he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like.’”

John Brennan, the top counterterrorism official in the nation, shares Omari’s ahistorical interpretation, saying jihad is “to purify oneself or one’s community.” This would be funny if Brennan wasn’t responsible our national security.

Many Americans saw firsthand what al Qaeda’s interpretation of jihad is, though, and theirs apparently stems from one of the 36 violent mentions in the Koran. In fact, with over 17,000 terrorist attacks committed by Islamic terrorists since 9/11, it appears that Alomari and Brennan’s interpretation isn’t widely accepted.

“It is common knowledge in our office that Omar is definitely not on our team,” a former co-worker of Alomari told The Jawa Report. “He hangs out with these same terror-linked groups and even brings them into meetings he arranges to give them legitimacy.”

“It is no secret to anyone who knows him that Omar Alomari IS a radical, but he is great at playing the “moderate” when he needs to be.”

Is Alomari a terrorist? It is impossible to tell without seeing the seminar organizers’ intelligence. But Americans must understand that terrorist groups like al Qaeda and political Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood actually share the same goals, such as subjugating the U.S. under sharia law. Whether this is accomplished via suicide bombers or by political advocacy makes little difference.

But neither al Qaeda nor the Muslim Brotherhood would be successful without apologists like Alomari paving the way for Islamic supremacism.