Excerpt:
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) reposted an article Wednesday suggesting that convicted terrorist Tarek Mehanna was just exercising his freedom of speech, and that Muslims have a right to kill American forces in Iraq. The article, linked from MPAC's Facebook page and Twitter feed, echoes dozens of previous statements by the group, which has a history of rejecting terrorism convictions, justifying terrorist acts, and accusing America of fighting a politically-motivated campaign against Islam.
MPAC posted a link Wednesday to Marine veteran Ross Caputi's article, "Tarek Mehanna: Punished for Speaking Truth to Power," originally published Monday in Britain's Guardian newspaper.
Caputi argues that Mehanna's conviction is anti-Islamic, as are other terrorist trials involving Muslim Americans. "Mehanna is being punished for his ideas, and the case against him stinks of a lynch-mob mentality," he writes. "The Islamophobia that still grips the US has often resulted in a hysterical witch-hunt for 'radical' Muslims, of which Tarek Mehanna is the most recent victim."