"A Muslim doesn’t record another Muslim," said Gamal Abdel-Hafiz (shown). This might not have been noteworthy except that Abdel-Hafiz was an FBI agent at the time and was refusing to do his duty, which at that moment involved taping a Muslim suspect.

That was 2002, and this is now. And now the Cairo-born Abdel-Hafiz has moved on to bigger and perhaps better things — he’s a homeland-security advisor to Barack Obama. And while recording a single Muslim is a problem for him, putting every single American firearm owner on a gun-registry he fancies a good idea. WFAA.com reports on his idea:

A former FBI counter-terrorism agent says lawmakers could make mass murders less likely. "What we need to do is keep the ownership of guns known to the government, so we know who has what,” said security consultant Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. “And I know a lot of people are against that.”

... "He shouldn't have been able to buy a gun legally. He shouldn't,” said Abdel-Hafiz about 29 year-old Omar Mateen [the Orlando jihadist]. He says 3 FBI interviews should have been enough to keep Mateen on the radar, but he also knows why he wasn't. "Once you investigate someone and clear them, you have to remove them from the watch list by law,” he explained Monday from his office in Dallas.

And even if Mateen had been on a terror watch list, or no-fly list, that would not have prohibited him from legally buying weapons…

“That means the list is useless then,” the former agent said.

Responding to this, PJ Media notes, “Remarkably, he [Abdel-Hafiz] admits that the various terror watch lists and no-fly lists are useless. Moments after suggesting another list. He doesn't explain how a national gun registry — yet another government list targeting millions of law-abiding Americans — would prevent another terror attack.”

For sure. All car owners are registered, but that doesn’t guarantee they’re all sane and doesn’t stop me, if I am unhinged, from plowing my vehicle into a group on a sidewalk. Likewise, let’s say all legal firearms in America were registered. Then what? Given that the lists Mateen already was on ultimately had no remedial effect in his case, how would the FBI having knowledge of his weapons purchases have stopped his Orlando malevolence?

We don’t have to wonder, though, because the FBI already knew about them. As Breitbart reported last week:

“Robbie Abell, owner of a Florida gun shop, says he alerted authorities that a suspicious man had come in asking about body armor.”

The Wall Street Journal quotes Abell as telling them that his store, Lotus Gunworks of South Florida, “shut him down on all sales” after he began asking bizarre questions about body armor and bulk ammunition. “The questions he was asking were not the normal questions a normal person would be asking.... He just seemed very odd,” Abell said. The armor Mateen asked about is not traditionally available to civilians.

In addition, Abell witnessed Mateen talking on a phone in what the gun dealer believed was Arabic. In other words, Mateen fit the terrorist profile like a glove, yet this wasn’t enough to inspire the FBI to take the gloves off. And now we’re supposed to believe that somehow, some way, information about innocent American gun owners will help an agency that lacked the wisdom to act on already available information about a dangerous, un-American gun owner?

So since a gun registry cannot have a positive effect, all that’s left is its negative effect: ensuring that, if gun confiscation ever were attempted, the government would know right where to go to collect Americans’ firearms. Of course, I have no reason to believe Abdel-Hafiz has any such agenda. But, at best, a gun registry is a feel-good proposal that makes heads-in-sand officials and activists believe they’re being proactive when they’re actually avoiding uncomfortable truths.

And diversionary tactics are just what we’ve seen in Orlando’s wake. It’s not just gun control, either, but also the notion that if it weren’t for “homophobia” — encouraged by the “Christian Right,” of course — the homosexual jihadist Mateen wouldn’t have attacked a leather-bar-like nightclub. It’s the “never let a crisis go to waste” strategy with the message, “You better stop opposing the homosexual/LGTBQ/Alphabet-soup agenda, you hater, or you’ll have more blood on your hands.” But an underlying cause of the Orlando, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and other jihadist incidents hasn’t been identified by the mainstream media — or by Abdel-Hafiz. Rather, it is indicated by his having the prominence he does.

Shockingly, Abdel-Hafiz was never fired by the FBI. This is despite allegations he perpetrated insurance fraud and then lied about it to the agency; despite his “I won’t ‘record another Muslim’” remark; and despite the fact that a colleague of his, FBI special agent Robert Wright, and Chicago federal prosecutor Mark Flessner both attest that the Muslim agent seriously damaged the investigation inspiring the remark. Instead, here’s what did transpire, as reported by ABC News in 2002:

Wright said he "was floored" by Abdel-Hafiz's refusal and immediately called the FBI headquarters. Their reaction surprised him even more: "The supervisor from headquarters says, 'Well, you have to understand where he's coming from, Bob.' I said no, no, no, no, no. I understand where I'm coming from," said Wright. "We both took the same damn oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and he just said no? No way in hell."

Far from being reprimanded, Abdel-Hafiz was promoted to one of the FBI's most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country.

Of course, there are no allegations that Abdel-Hafiz — who has dual American/Egyptian citizenship — has commissively aided terrorists. But given his infamous 2002 refusal to perform his duty, some questions must be asked. In what other ways did/does Abdel-Hafiz’s Muslim faith constrain or even warp his actions with respect to Muslim terrorists? How is it influencing his advice? And how many of his theological soul mates are today working in intelligence agencies? Note here that Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson is himself a Muslim.

And we should also ask, is this possible Fifth Column corruption responsible for something else Agent Wright complained of: FBI ineptitude? As he also told ABC News in 2002, "September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that.” And as he related to another source prior to 9/11:

Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I will not feel safe. The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States. Unfortunately, more terrorist attacks against American interests, coupled with the loss of American lives, will have to occur before those in power give this matter the urgent attention it deserves.

And the rest is in the past. Unfortunately, unless political correctness is purged, it will also be prologue.

Photo: Gamal Abdel-Hafiz