Why is the U.S. government only interested in partnering with the most radical Islamic groups?

According to pollster Frank Luntz’s audience meter, one of Hillary Clinton’s best moments in the first presidential debate was when she asserted that we need to cooperate with the Muslim community and not alienate them.

That makes sense, but only if you’re cooperating with the right people in the Muslim community. The trouble is, we’ve been cooperating with all the wrong people—namely, Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). These are not moderate Muslim groups. They are stealth jihad organizations whose ties to the Muslim Brotherhood were established in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial.

The Muslim Brotherhood, in turn, has been designated as a terrorist group by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. And the UAE has also named CAIR—whose representatives are frequent visitors to the White House—as a terrorist group.

Our government has been doing community outreach to groups that ought to be highly suspect. In their book Muslim Mafia, authors Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz contend that CAIR operates like…well, like the Mafia. Instead of urging the Muslim community to cooperate with the authorities, CAIR has been instructing them not to cooperate. According to Jihad Watch, on two occasions CAIR chapters actually printed posters urging Muslims not to talk to the FBI. Like the Mafia, CAIR and similar Islamic organizations have worked to impose the omerta code on their fellow Muslims.

It sounds enlightened to say that we should be cooperating with the Muslim community, but what’s so enlightened about organizations that want to transport the Muslim community back to the Dark Ages via sharia law? There are enlightened, moderate Muslim groups in the U.S., but our government studiously ignores them. Where’s the outreach to Zudhi Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy? Where’s the outreach to the moderate Muslim groups and individuals listed on the Clarion Project’s website?

It seems that our government is more interested in cooperating and consulting with Muslims of a more radical stripe. For example, Jeh Johnson, the director of Homeland Security, recently addressed the annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America. He told them that theirs was “the quintessential American story,” and he apologized profusely for the “discrimination,” “vilification,” and “suspicion” they had been subjected to. That’s all very nice, but isn’t it the main job of Homeland Security to be suspicious—especially of groups like ISNA which are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Johnson’s boss, President Obama, has shown remarkable sympathy not only for Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups, but also for the Brotherhood itself. His administration did everything it could to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, and everything it could to keep them in power. By contrast, the Obama administration has been reluctant to cooperate with Egypt’s new government under President El-Sisi—a genuine moderate.

Hillary Clinton herself was involved in the machinations to keep Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi in power. And, although it wasn’t widely reported, many members of the Muslim community were not happy with her. When she visited Egypt in 2012, her motorcade was pelted with shoes and tomatoes.

Another, not-so-widely-known feature of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was her collaboration with the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in their efforts to find ways to silence criticism of Islam and even to criminalize such criticism. For many years the OIC’s chief ambition has been to impose omerta on the whole non-Muslim world.

Indeed, on one occasion, Clinton was instrumental in enforcing Islam’s blasphemy penalty on an American citizen. Like others in the administration, Clinton claimed that the spark for Benghazi and the Arab Spring riots was a fifteen-minute trailer spoofing Muhammad that was made by an obscure California filmmaker. She promised that he would be punished for this outrage, and, sure enough, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was sentenced to a year in prison shortly thereafter.

Even more troubling is Secretary Clinton’s close relationship with her longtime assistant and advisor, Huma Abedin. Abedin’s late father had close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and her mother, sister, and brother still do. A member of the Muslim Sisterhood, her mother has been a strong advocate for sharia law—even to the point of opposing a proposed ban on female genital mutilation.

Huma Abedin herself was for twelve years the assistant editor of a Muslim Brotherhood publication—The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Interestingly, one of JMMA’s top priorities is to encourage Muslim minority communities not to assimilate with their host cultures. Its policy, as Andrew McCarthy observes, is “to grow an unassimilated aggressive population of Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the character of the West.”

Huma Abedin stopped working for the cause of Muslim separatism just before she started working at the State Department. Or did she? We may never know. In 2012, Congress blocked a request by five House members for an investigation of Muslim Brotherhood penetration into the government. The request specifically named Abedin.

Huma Abedin may be completely innocent of any subversive activities, but her family associations and her own background would seem to disqualify her for the sensitive positions she has held. In other, more commonsensical times, it’s unlikely that Abedin would have been hired as a receptionist at the State Department, let alone as deputy chief of staff. And, should Clinton be elected, Abedin might well serve as White House chief of staff, or—as some have suggested—as our next Secretary of State.

It’s important to understand that when Hillary Clinton talks about the need for close cooperation with the Muslim community, she doesn’t have Zuhdi Jasser in mind, or any other genuinely moderate Muslim. She’s thinking instead of groups like CAIR, the OIC, and the Muslim Brotherhood—and of individuals like Huma Abedin.

_William Kilpatrick is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad (Regnery Publishing). For more on his work and writings, visit his website, turningpointproject.com. _