Ive been getting tons

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I’ve been getting tons of emails over the transom this evening about the arrest of Abdurahman M. Alamoudi on various charges of illegal financial transactions tied to terrorist organizations and his ties to Grover Norquist.

Norquist, of course, is the capo di tutti capi of Republican insiders, and a close friend and advisor to the president and Karl Rove.

I don’t have any unique insight into this particular relationship.

But if you want to know more, a good place to start is the excellent piece Frank Foer wrote on the subject back in November 2001: “Grover Norquist’s Strange Alliance with Radical Islam.”

Unfortunately, I think the piece is on the TNR site for subscribers only. But it may be worth paying a few bucks to read.

Now, I do know a bit about the “Free Markets and Democracy” conference that Norquist put on in Doha, Qatar back in the spring of 2001.

Norquist brought a dozen congressmen over and at least one of them had a sit down with the then-Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Taliban grandee Ahmad Muttawakil. When I talked to him in August of last year, Norquist told me that he himself didn’t meet with Muttawakil. The congressman who did meet with him was Dana Rohrabacher.

My sense has always been that Norquist got into the Islam business back in the late 1990s when it looked like a growth industry for the Republican coalition.

He had a lot of ideas about Muslims being natural cultural conservatives and free marketeers, and so forth. This three-cheers for Muslim capitalism! conference in Doha is a prime example.

His ‘Islamic Institute’ is run out the offices of his main operation, ‘Americans for Tax Reform.’ (I just checked the website and apparently it’s now ‘The Islamic Free Market Institute.’ So, you know, Mohamed von Hayek.)

In any case, after 9/11 came along he probably realized that he might have gotten tied up with at least a few questionable characters. But he was too proud to admit he’d been naive and then just dug himself deeper.

That’s always been my sense. But when people start getting arrested, maybe it’s time to give the whole thing a closer look.

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