Adam Gadahn

A 48-minute video posted on the Internet by the Maryland-based SITE group showing a video message from alleged American spokesman Adam Gadahn on Sunday, October 23 garnered both local and nationwide media attention over the past week.

Gadahn, who was born in California as Adam Pearlman and is of Jewish descent, called on Muslims living in the “miserable suburbs” of Detroit, Paris, and London to wage attacks against their American neighbors including the country’s leaders.

But the actions and speeches of the extremist followers of the Al Queda group, which proclaims itself to be of Muslim origin, have been strongly condemned each time by local Muslim organizations.

In response to the Gadahn video, the imams of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan (CIOM) held a conference call to stress their condemnations of the message.

“Muslims are urged to ignore statements from individuals calling for violence against innocent people in the name of their faith. The Muslim American community, as always, condemns all acts of terrorism as crimes against humanity,” the group said in a press release.

The release also mentioned various verses from the Qur’an including the following: “Help one another in piety and righteousness; do not help one another towards sin and enmity. Be mindful of God, for His punishment is severe [ 5:2].

“We ask our American neighbors not to allow statements from foreign terrorist groups, like the one behind this reported video, to be a cause of division and create suspicion of fellow Americans of the Islamic faith,” the statement also said, while stressing the contributions of American Muslims to the peaceful civil society in general and the mainstream values of Michigan.

Dawud Walid, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Southfield, went on numerous local TV and radio shows to discuss the issue since the video was released on Sunday.

“(The Muslim community) has condemned Al Queda consistently and it kind of gets old having to keep giving condemnations but we do continue to give them when asked,” Walid said. “The bigger issue is that Al Queda is a threat to Muslims and the image of Islam more than any other group of people, especially considering that the vast majority of Al-Queda’s victims, up to 85 percent, are Muslims.”

As far as Gadahn himself, Walid said his labeling of the Detroit suburbs as being “miserable” showed a  lack of understanding of the area, adding support for the belief that Gadahn has no connections or supporters in the area and lacks credibility in general.

“It’s in places like Paris where minority groups are impoverished and live in the suburbs while it’s the opposite in the states so it seems to me that he’s forgotten the societal dynamics of America, that’s how detached from reality he is,” Walid said, noting that most people he’s talked to in the area had never heard of Gadahn before.

“The message is convoluted and irrational and it doesn’t seem to add up. The media shouldn’t give whack-jobs like Mr. Gadahn any attention at all, no one knows who this man is to begin with if the media doesn’t cover his message.”

Sally Howell, an assistant professor of history in the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a co-author of the book “Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit After 9/11,” said that Gadahn’s call did not seem consistent with the values of the community.

“Contrary to what Adam G. was asserting, Muslim immigrants in the Detroit area often argue that they have more freedom and opportunity to practice their faith here than they did in their homelands.” she said.

“One of the founders of Masjid Mu’ath Bin Jabal, a large mostly Yemeni mosque in Detroit, told me that he finds a greater sense of spiritual clarity and well-being in his mosque here than he has ever felt in Yemen. The number of Muslims in Michigan and the incredible growth we have seen in the number and size of mosques in the past decade (12 new mosques, 14 mosques doubling their square footage) suggests that Detroit’s Muslim populations as a whole (immigrants and converts and their children) (of Arab, Asian, African and European descent) agree with the leader of Mu’ath Bin Jabal rather than with the violent (and to most) anti-Islamic appeals of Al Queda.”

Howell said she’s studied the Muslim community in Detroit for years and has never talked to anyone who has sympathy for Al Queda.

Ron Stockton, the main author of “Citizenship and Crisis” and a professor at UM-D, also thought the message didn’t quite add up.

“Clearly he doesn’t have the contextual understanding of what he’s talking about,” Stockton said. “The idea of vigilante Muslims operating against their own is not the way such (potential attacks) are conducted,” he said. “He has called for people to uprise before and they never have, we can treat this as almost entertainment, it has no real impact.”

Stockton also said the video also appears to have been made by Gadahn in response to an Islamic conference in Mardin, Turkey that spoke out against terrorism and the goals of Al Queda members.

“I think media needs to inform us more about the complexity of these issues, just writing a headline is not enough,” he said, specifically referencing the larger organizations because of their large research staffs.