Muslim Friend of Omar Mateen: I Reported Him to FBI, Did My Part
"Muslims like me can’t see into the hearts of other worshipers. (o you know the hidden depths of everyone in your community?"
6.21.2016
28
Mohammed A. Malik says Donald Trump is wrong that Muslims won't turn in other Muslims who are acting suspicious. His proof? Malik alerted the FBI to his friend, Orlando jihadist Omar Mateen, after he discovered he was watching jihadi propaganda videos online.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Malik describes knowing Mateen and his family since 2006 when they met at an iftar meal at a family member's home. They all attended the same mosque in Florida and became quite close, often calling and texting, even playing jokes on each other.
At first, Malik, a Pakistani immigrant, said, "There was nothing to indicate that [Mateen] had a dark side, even when he and his first wife divorced" and recalled his friend complaining about discrimination against Muslims and saying he often heard "bigoted remarks about Islam" while working security at the St. Lucie County Courthouse.
Though Malik tried to paint Islam as a charitable and overtly peaceful religion throughout his piece, he wasn't able to avoid the inevitable connection to his mosque where the first American-born suicide bomber emerged: Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, the 22-year-old Floridian who drove a truck full of explosives into a government office in Syria. Nor could he avoid the fact that Mateen also attended the same mosque where he assured the "imam never taught hate or radicalism."
Malik had called the FBI after Abu-Salha's attack to tell them what he could.
"It wasn’t much," he writes, "we hadn’t been close – but I’m an American Muslim, and I wanted to do my part. I didn’t want another act like that to happen. I didn’t want more innocent people to die."
It wasn't long before he talked to Mateen about the Syria bombing and found out he was watching the same online videos as Abu-Salha of al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who radicalized the Fort Hood shooter and was eventually killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Mateen called Awlaki's videos "powerful," Malik writes:
After speaking with Omar, I contacted the FBI again to let them know that Omar had been watching Awlaki’s tapes. He hadn’t committed any acts of violence and wasn’t planning any, as far as I knew. And I thought he probably wouldn’t, because he didn’t fit the profile: He already had a second wife and a son. But it was something agents should keep their eyes on. I never heard from them about Omar again, but apparently they did their job: They looked into him and, finding nothing to go on, they closed the file.
Malik had last seen Mateen at his father's house in January, where he learned that Mateen was planning to vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election. Their last phone conversation happened a month before the shooting, in which Mateen praised a mosque he and his father visited while in Orlando.
But despite alerting the FBI to Mateen, forty-nine people are dead from an admitted Islamic terror attack.
Malik maintains, "I did my part:"
I had told the FBI about Omar because my community, and Muslims generally, have nothing to hide. I love this country, like most Muslims that I know. I don’t agree with every government policy (I think there’s too much money in politics, for instance), but I’m proud to be an American. I vote. I volunteer. I teach my children to treat all people kindly. Our families came here because it is full of opportunity – a place where getting a job is about what you know, not who you know. It’s a better country to raise children than someplace where the electricity is out for 18 hours a day, where politicians are totally corrupt, or where the leader is a dictator.I am not the first American Muslim to report on someone; people who do that simply don’t like to announce themselves to the media. For my part, I’m not looking for personal accolades. I’m just tired of negative rhetoric and ignorant comments about my faith. Trump’s assertions about our community – that we have the ability to help our country but have simply declined to do so – are tragic, ugly and wrong.
Malik added that what Trump has said about Muslims is "a lie" and believes by contacting the FBI about Mateen proves it. He said there is too much Islamophobia in the United States and denounces the idea that Muslims are "a hotbed of violent ideology:"
We are taught to be kind to all of God’s creation. Islam is very strict about killing: Even in war – to say nothing of peace – you cannot harm women, children, the elderly, the sick, clergymen, or even plants. You can’t mutilate dead bodies. You can’t destroy buildings, especially churches or temples. You can’t force anyone to accept Islam. “If anyone slew one person, it would be as if he killed the whole of humanity,” says the Koran.
"Muslims like me can’t see into the hearts of other worshippers," Malik states. "Do you know the hidden depths of everyone in your community?"
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