Courtesy of The Counterterrorism Blog:

The decision by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to suspend, but not fire, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil for his outrageous comments (“We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House, without a doubt…the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us”) are provoking heavy criticism, including from Steven Emerson. It was Steve’s group, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, which obtained an audio tape of his comments (also see this post on CAIR’s support for Imam Jalil). Steve was on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” last night – here is the transcript with his criticism of Mayor Bloomberg:

Alan Colmes: Joining us now from the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Steve Emerson. Steve, as I understand it, he was suspended for two weeks because he didn’t make it clear that those were private, not public, comments, not for the content of his speech. I like what Bloomberg said, which is, we can’t get involved in what people say. In a democracy, basically, people have different points of view. Punishing people for that is not what we do in America.

Steve Emerson: The question, Alan, is whether, in fact, his role as head of all chaplains for the correctional facilities in New York and as someone that is doing outreach to lots of Muslim inmates should be making statements that refer to the kufar, or infidel, that refer to the Zionists running the media, the fact that the President is a terrorist or the fact that a convicted cop killer, Jamil al-Amin, was set up. These are incendiary comments designed to inflame and the only question is why didn’t the mayor ask for him to repudiate his own comments?

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