NPR Portrays Muslim Professor as Victim; Omits Sexual Harassment Record
NPR's Dina Temple-Raston did her best to cast a Muslim fired by the State of Ohio in a sympathetic light on Monday's Morning Edition, describing him as a “college professor” dressed in a “tweed jacket, button-down shirt, [and] thick round glasses,” but failed to mention his other firing from a Ohio college for violating their sexual harassment policy. Temple-Reston also featured an expert who attributed Ohio's actions against the professor to ” elevated levels of Islamophobia .” The correspondent, who donned a headscarf and posed as a Muslim woman as part of a sting operation against U.S. border control agents earlier in 2011, and co-wrote a book with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero back in 2007, first introduced the professor, Omar al-Omari, with her “tweed jacket” description and added that he is a ” big coffee drinker .” She then played two sound bites from the professor, who described how he had been singled out by trainers at a seminar for law enforcement officers who, according to the journalist, had “offered specific examples of what they said was Islamic radicalism in Ohio.” After citing one of the instructors in the seminar, who is a former FBI agent, Temple-Raston painted a positive image of al-Omari: “Omari ran a key Muslim outreach program for the State of Ohio. What he was doing was considered so effective, counter-terrorism officials in Washington sent him overseas to talk about it. Omari is from Jordan. He's been living in the U.S. for 30 years. He's an American citizen.” She then added that despite this, “for many people in the class, it seemed entirely possible that he could be a terrorist.” The NPR correspondent then played four consecutive clips from the deputy police chief of Columbus, Ohio, who vouched for al-Omari: DEPUTY POLICE CHIEF JEFFREY BLACKWELL, COLUMBUS, OHIO POLICE DEPARTMENT: I was shocked. I was shocked that a person, at his level in the State of Ohio in the Department of Public Safety, would have his picture displayed by an anti-terrorism group. TEMPLE-RASTON: Chief Blackwell is now in charge of the police department's homeland security unit. BLACKWELL: His reputation was impugned incredibly by the speakers. TEMPLE-RASTON: And nobody sort of said, hey, wait a minute? BLACKWELL: Yeah, there was a wait-a-minute moment. There clearly was a wait-a-minute moment. TEMPLE-RASTON: Blackwell and some of the other leaders in the department suspended the class. BLACKWELL: We had a meeting and we discussed what in fact we were witnessing right before our very eyes- what was transpiring in the lecture hall. TEMPLE-RASTON: Remember, nearly everyone in the room knew Omari. Most of the visiting officers and Columbus cops had actually worked with him on outreach in the Muslim community. But for some reason- maybe because former government officials said that Omari couldn't be trusted- people in the room were ready to believe the worst. Chief Blackwell hadn't expected that. BLACKWELL: There were a large amount of people there that felt the class was, in fact, appropriate, that the finger-pointing and the name calling and nexuses that were developed and discussed, were appropriate to discuss. And then, you had a huge percentage that were equally and diametrically opposed to that way of teaching and the substance of the anti-terrorism class. TEMPLE-RASTON: So what was the lesson you took from that? BLACKWELL: That, as Americans, we are all over the board on our feelings about the terrorism issue. And as a law enforcement professional, even law enforcement is divided in how they view people. Later, Temple-Raston turned to Bill Braniff of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, who raised the specter of “Islamophobia:” BILL BRANIFF: I think this is something that happens across the nation fairly consistently. TEMPLE-RASTON: That's Bill Braniff. He's in charge of the training program at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He sees what happened in Ohio as part of a larger problem. BRANIFF: The Muslim-American community is being preyed upon from two different directions: one, the jihadist recruitment and radicalization that is actively preying on their sons and daughters; and two, the elevated levels of Islamophobia- and Islamophobia at worst and just distrust or alienation at best . Towards the end of her report, the journalist summarized the circumstances of al-Omari's firing: ” Omari lied on his employment application.
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on July 20, 2011. Filed under