CNN promotes Iranian agent, Hezbollah supporter on post about alleged victimization of American Muslims

After its hour-long piece on Islamic grievance-mongering Sunday night, CNN followed up Monday with a Belief blog post, “Your Take: Is American Muslim alienation valid?“. Featured at the top of that CNN blog post is a picture of Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn, Michigan.

Who is Imam Elahi? Funny you should ask.

In a lengthy video report a few years ago, my colleague Erick Stakelbeck, terrorism correspondent for CBN News, interviewed Elahi. Stakelbeck showed numerous pictures of Elahi with Iranian government leaders, which he has posted on the Islamic House of Wisdom’s website, including photos of Elahi with Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. A U.S. Institute for Peace research report cited by Stakelbeck states that:

In 1991, Mohammad Ali Elahi received a four-month visa which enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran’s network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran’s influence on Shi’ite communities (in Dearborn).

That’s correct: According to the U.S government-funded think tank, Imam Elahi is an agent of Iran and Hezbollah. This is who CNN chose to highlight in their blog post on the alleged victimization of American Muslim community.

However, Elahi’ efforts on behalf of Hezbollah are not in the distant past. In Stakelbeck’s video report he showed photos of a 2005 meeting of Elahi meeting with Hezbollah spiritual leader Ayatollah Fadlallah. When questioned about Hezbollah, Elahi defended the terrorist group, which coincidentally has killed more American than any other Islamic terrorist organization than Al-Qaeda. Elahi met with Fadlallah again in 2009, and when Fadlallah died in July 2010, Elahi’s House of Wisdom held a memorial for the Hezbollah cleric. CNN fired it’s Senior Editor for MidEast Affairs, Octavia Nasr, after Tweeting her praise for Fadlallah.

CNN’s promotion of Imam Elahi is yet another of example of the establishment media’s hypocrisy while they fuel the Wahhabi lobby’s Islamic grievance-mongering industry. While attacking critics of Islamic radicalism as Islamophobes, the establishment media continues to promote the most radical and extreme elements of the American Muslim community (e.g. the Council on American-Islamic Relations) as representative of American Islam. There seems to be a lot of that going around.