Odd Place to Find a "Bridge-Builder"--At a Hizb ut-Tahrir Convention

Madeline Brooks poses a saucy query:

In an earlier piece for Pajamas Media, I wrote about how the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque never said “no” to Malaysian jihadists who advocated suicide bombing in Israel and America.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf seems to have an irresistible attraction to extremists and terrorists, in spite of frequent declarations that he is a peacemaker and a “bridge builder.” He has stated that the Islamic community center and grand mosque he wants to build would be “about promoting integration, tolerance of difference, and community cohesion through arts and culture.”

So what was he doing at a 2007 conference in Indonesia of an international terrorist group seeking a global caliphate?...

Good question, Madeline. You want to field that one, Barry? Bloomy? (Might we call theirs a "folie a deux"?) To give you some food for thought, here's a poem I composed on the subject some time ago:

In assessing Hizb ut-Tahrir
One thing should be perfectly clear.
It's "old-time religion"
Has made us the pigeon
And who's going to get plucked? We're.