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Home > Window on Washington > Archives > 2008 > July > 28 > Entry
Did McCaul rescue or exploit?
Since his return from a congressional trip to Pakistan three weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and his aides have spoken frequently about his efforts to help free two American boys from what they describe as a radical Islamic school.
But a more moderate portrait of the school, supplied by a statement from the U.S. State Department, has emerged over the last couple of days. As a result, his political antagonists say McCaul, R-Austin, should have stayed out of the whole matter.
At issue is the case of Noor and Mahboob Khan, two teens from the Atlanta area who spent four years in the Jamia Binoria SITE madrassah in the Pakistani city of Karachi. The two boys are central figures in “Karachi Kids,” a documentary about the school made by Pakistani-American filmmaker Imran Raza.
The film’s trailer shows two boys who long to return home, with one heard describing the madrassah as “disgusting.” One of the Khan boys tells the cameras, “Not one Jewish person died in the 9/11 attacks” (presumably implying that the people behind the attacks were Jewish), and an unidentified student says “American people are terrorists.”
Meanwhile, the trailer’s subtitles interpret the head of the school as saying, “we work on altering the mindset of the students so that when they return to their home countries they will work on altering the minds of others.”
Raza, the filmmaker, has been pushing for the release of the two boys, who were sent to the madrassah by their father back in the United States. He found an ally in McCaul.
During a July Fourth weekend trip to Pakistan with two other members of Congress, McCaul met with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and pressed for the release of the two boys and other Americans in madrassas, noting that it’s against Pakistani law for foreigners to enroll in them. They also discussed terrorist activity in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
After his return, McCaul went on a media blitz talking about the Atlanta boys and other Americans in madrassas.
“They are brainwashing a generation over there of potential terrorists,” McCaul said on Fox News after his return. He has also repeated the assertion, made in Raza’s film, that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden spoke at the school before the 2001 attacks on the United States.
Less than a week after McCaul and the other lawmakers returned from their trip, the Khan boys returned to their family in Atlanta. McCaul’s team was quick to take credit. “He’s very much responsible for those boys being home today,” McCaul spokesman Mike Rosen said last week.
However, a CNN report about the madrassah that aired Sunday raised questions about just how extreme it is.
In the report, filmmaker Raza acknowledges that it was at another madrassah, not the one with the Atlanta boys, where bin Laden spoke. The CNN report also quotes the State Department as saying the Jamia Binoria Institute “is known to U.S. officials as a moderate institution favored by Pakistani-Americans for its moderate and tolerant Islamic instruction.”
The CNN report also shows the two boys denying that there is anti-American sentiment at the school.
Raza said he would change his film to take out the reference to bin Laden at the madrassah, but stood by his larger characterization Monday. He also said McCaul’s intervention allowed the boys to return home swiftly.
McCaul was with his family on Monday and could not discuss the situation, said Rosen, his spokesman.
“The biggest issue for him is not these two boys,” Rosen said. “It’s the larger issue of Americans being enrolled in these madrassas and the potential that they have to come back into this country.”
Armed with the CNN report, liberal blogs pounced on McCaul on Monday. The campaign of Larry Joe Doherty, McCaul’s Democratic opponent this fall, accused McCaul of “exploiting the public’s fear of terrorism for political gain.”
Here’s a link to the Karachi Kids trailer. The full movie will be available for a limited time starting Friday at karachikids.com.
Here’s a link to the CNN report.
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