Robert Spencer has an excellent article up about the indictment of Former U.S. Congressman Mark Deli Siljander (R-MI). In this, are there lessons to be learned? I think so.

Former U.S. Congressman Mark Deli Siljander (R-MI) was indicted Wednesday for money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, in connection with charges that a Muslim charity, the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), was involved in efforts to finance the Afghan jihad terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The IARA was named a specially designated global terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2004.

More:

How did an American congressman get mixed up with a group co-founded and financed by Osama bin Laden? The indictment charges that the IARA hired Siljander in 2004 to lobby for its removal from a Senate Finance Committee list of organizations suspected of supporting terrorism, and reinstatement as an “approved government contractor.” The IARA, according to the indictment, paid in $50,000 that had been stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – and Siljander is also charged with helping to launder other money stolen from USAID. The IARA, then known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, had received the funds for relief work in Mali. Questioned by the FBI in December 2005 and April 2007, Siljander lied, says the indictment, about his connections with the IARA – he told agents that he had not been hired by IARA and had simply received “donations” from them to help him write a book about Islam and Christianity.

Spencer claims that Siljander’s intentions started out good, but went sour:

And that may provide a clue as to what may have led Siljander down this path, or how he justified it to himself. In a revealing November 2007 address, Siljander described how his thought evolved, and spoke of his forthcoming book, A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, which was set to be published this summer. Siljander said that during his tenure in Congress (1981-1987), he was angry when the Qur’an was read during the National Prayer Breakfast. He wrote to the Breakfast’s emcee: “How can you read the book of the devil at a prayer breakfast?”

Afterward, however, he began to read the Qur’an himself, and was impressed: “I found out that Jesus was mentioned in the Quran 110 times, either directly or indirectly, and there was not a single word about Jesus that was horrible, disgraceful or, in my opinion, inconsistent with what the Bible says about him.” He explained that he had discovered “paradigm crashing” ways to harmonize Christian and Islamic beliefs on issues on which the two religions disagree, and hoped they would “create a movement, a dynamic” to bring Christians and Muslims together.

Likely excuse. I don’t buy it. I suspect the money, as always, had much more to do with this than anything else. Money is the root of all evil. Even when it comes to Islam.

There is much more at Front Page Magazine on this. Building bridges with extreme Islam isn’t possible. I question whether it’s possible to co-exist with Islam, extreme and not, at all. When we have Muslims who follow the words and fatwas of freedom hating bitter men, we have to be very careful. The Quran itself allows Muslims to kill for many reasons- it justifies jihad.