Kelly a ‘Ray-cist’? What a Smear

Co-authored by Tom Ridge

Recently, interest groups such as the Council of American Islamic Relations have demanded that NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly resign and that an outside inspector general be appointed over the NYPD.

Both demands should be rejected.

The demands follow the revelation that the NYPD has been using the film “The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America” — in which both of us also appeared — as part of its counterterrorism training program.

The documentary takes an in-depth look at the process of radicalization that takes place within certain elements of Muslim society in America. Those elements were previously highlighted in a landmark 2007 NYPD intelligence division report titled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.”

In the preface to the 2007 report, Kelly wrote, New York City continues to be “one of the top targets of terrorists worldwide. Consequently, the NYPD places a priority on understanding what drives and defines the radicalization process.”

Kelly and the NYPD know something about this subject. The department he leads has foiled numerous terror plots and developed into one of the most sophisticated counterterrorism forces in the world.

Yet essentially under the banner of political correctness, the advocacy groups calling for his resignation are working to brand those fighting crime as criminals, and those fighting violent bigotry as bigots.

At a CAIR press conference on Jan. 26 on the steps of City Hall, those who called for Kelly’s resignation actually invoked the name of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while holding signs calling the police commissioner a “Ray-cist.”

But it is the process of radical indoctrination that teaches a particularly violent form of bigotry. Those Muslims who are successfully indoctrinated and are willing to carry out acts of terror on American soil or abroad do so under the notion that those they are taught to kill are second-class citizens.

The fact that CAIR is leading the push to smear Kelly’s reputation is ironic.

During the Holy Land Foundation trial of 2008 — the largest terror funding trial in U.S. history — CAIR was officially designated by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator and/or joint venturer.

As a result, the FBI severed formal ties with the group.

The NYPD and the mayor’s office should cease relations with CAIR as well.