Zuhdi Jasser’s assistant attended Garland jihad shooters’ mosque in Phoenix

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Yesterday I called Zuhdi Jasser “the Grand Mufti of the Stealth Jihad.” This is more evidence of the correctness of the title. Courtney Lonergan is a “moderate” — she works for Jasser’s AIFD. But she was close friends with Garland jihadi Ibrahim Simpson. She knew all about him. The distinction between “moderates” and “extremists” is not as large as many non-Muslims imagine it to be — witness Jasser’s endorsement of Alija Izetbegovic, about which I also wrote yesterday.

“Zuhdi Jasser’s assistant attended Garland jihad shooters’ mosque in Phoenix,” by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, March 15, 2017:

Yesterday I cited professional moderate Muslim Zuhdi Jasser’s endorsement of pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist Alija Izetbegovic as an example of the problematic aspects of the entire moderate Muslim enterprise. Here is more. At Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) website, the “Our Team” page contains biographies of two people: Jasser himself and Courtney Lonergan, AIFD’s “Community Outreach Coordinator.” (Demonstrating yet again Jasser’s capacity for sonorous gobbledegook that he displayed in such abundance on his Blaze show denouncing me and others as “alt-jihadists,” we’re told that “Courtney is an enthusiastic and compelling participatory facilitator who engages the diverse perspectives of her stakeholders in meaningful dialogue to elicit inspired action and thoughtful working groups.” Good participatory facilitators are hard to come by these days, much less enthusiastic and compelling ones.)

AIFD’s Community Outreach Coordinator is or was a member of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, the mosque attended by the jihad terrorists who attacked our American Freedom Defense Initiative free speech event in Garland, Texas on May 3, 2015. And according to Lonergan herself, they were acting upon teachings they heard in the mosque. Pamela Geller wrote at Breitbart in July 2015: “And the jihadis who tried to commit mass murder last May at our free speech event in Garland, Texas, Ibrahim (formerly Elton) Simpson and Nadir Soofi, were members of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. Simpson’s friend Courtney Lonergan remembers, according to the Arizona Republic, that “Simpson would never waver from the teachings he picked up in the mosque and elsewhere.” Lonergan said: “He was one of those guys who would sleep at the mosque. The fact that he felt personally insulted by somebody drawing a picture had to come from the ideological rhetoric coming out of the mosque.”

That Arizona Republic article also notes that Lonergan “met Simpson at that mosque about 10 years ago.” Her bio at the AIFD site doesn’t say when she started working for Jasser. Nonetheless, I’ve been harshly criticized (and dubbed a “hate-group leader” by the hard-Left Southern Poverty Law Center) for saying that there was no distinction in Muslim communities between “moderates” and “extremists,” which has been represented as my saying that all Muslims were terrorists, when obviously I meant that “moderates” in mosques were not reporting or expelling the “extremists.” This is proof of that fact: Lonergan, who is a “moderate Muslim” herself and works for the “moderate” Jasser, was well acquainted with the “extremist” Simpson and the teachings of mosque. She didn’t say anything to the Arizona Republic about trying to get Simpson expelled from the mosque for his “extremism.” Wouldn’t it be a strong sign that Jasser’s “Islamic reform” had a real chance of succeeding if mosques were acting strongly against would-be jihad murderers such as Ibrahim Simpson, and if Islamic Community Center of Phoenix mosquegoers were rejecting the mosque teachings that led to the Garland jihad attack?