American Muslims. What moderation?

One swallow doesn't make a summer, as the proverb goes. This story about a moderate Muslim gentleman in suburban Chicago, and his fight against radical Wahhabists, also gives no hope to those who hope that the existence of one moderate is evidence of the presence of many.

The Wahhabists in this Palestinian community have a distinct enthusiasm for funneling money to Muslim charities with links to terrorists. And they are in the majority.

Mr. Najib is disturbed not only by the external ties of the mosque to these terrorist groups but also by the culture inside Bridgeview. "I have never heard one word of criticism -- and I have been going there 25 years -- of Wahhabism, the Taliban or suicide bombings." What he does hear is praise for the current Palestinian intifada and its suicide bombings.

Mr. Najib has waged five campaigns in recent years to regain the board seat he lost in 1984. Each has been unsuccessful, at least partly because the board rigs the elections by handpicking the small fraction of members allowed to vote. Notwithstanding Mr. Najib's protests, the current leadership seems quite popular. An estimated 2,000 people attend Friday prayers, a 20-fold increase from 1983. The ever-expanding contingent of mosque-goers appears to consist largely of fundamentalists in sync with the leadership's worldview, which seeks a return to "pure Islam" and preaches withdrawal from secular society. By Mr. Najib's count, the overwhelming majority of men at the mosque have religious beards and almost every woman is covered from head-to-toe. Stepping foot through the door, he says, "is like walking inside the Taliban."

While most Americans believe -- or, at least, hope -- that all but a handful of their Muslim countrymen find radical Islam noxious, Mr. Najib's tale is not encouraging. Not only has no one at the mosque publicly backed his reform efforts but "you can count on less than two hands the number of people who have supported me privately," Mr. Najib laments. "It's been a lonely fight."

This is admittedly only one mosque but we know that the Wahhabi support to mosques all across America occurs as a result of calculated effort on the part of the Saudis and their Wahhabi allies.

Reign of the Radicals." By Joel Mowbray, Wall Street Journal Online, 1/27/06 (requires subscription).