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Islamofascism: PBS just aired a "documentary" intended to chronicle "the diversity of Muslim life in America." So why does it give so much face time to anti-American Islamists?

Secular Muslims who want to reform Islam are nowhere to be found in producer Robert MacNeil's film, "The Muslim Americans," part of a PBS series called "America at a Crossroads." Instead, extremists masquerading as moderates are lionized.

Take Sheik Hamza Yusuf, who has a starring role. According to MacNeil, the California imam preaches "tolerance" and "peace," and even hiply incorporates the "Super Bowl" into his sermons. This, we are told, is the progressive face of Islam in America.

To prove Yusuf's bona fides as a moderate and a patriot, MacNeil notes that he was one of the Muslim clerics invited to the White House after 9/11. But he leaves out the fact that just two days before the attacks, the same imam suggested in a speech to Muslims that America deserved severe punishment.

"This country is facing a terrible fate," Yusuf said in California on Sept. 9, 2001. "The reason for that is that this country stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget that Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands, Europe's countries were devastated, they were completely destroyed. Their young people killed."

FBI officials investigating 9/11 were so alarmed by Yusuf's rhetoric that they paid him a visit at his Santa Clara, Calif., home to question him about it, according to the Washington Post. When they knocked on his door, the Post reported, his wife answered and told them he wasn't home. "He's with the president" in Washington, she said. The agents thought she was joking, but she wasn't.

The film also left out the fact that Yusuf's partner, imam Zaid Shakir, has lauded the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Shakir also recently confided to the New York Times that he'd like to see the U.S. become a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.

Clearly, MacNeil was conned by the subjects of his film. That's why it was important to have anti-jihad watchdogs involved in such a project. But PBS rejected them — Frank Gaffney, in particular. Gaffney's own documentary exposing such extremists, "Islam vs. Islamists," was replaced by MacNeil's sop.

According to Gaffney, MacNeil refused to air "Islam vs. Islamists," because it is "alarmist" and "extremely one-sided." Gaffney, in turn, blasted MacNeil's film as "an appalling, politically correct but disinforming paean to organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Student Association and others who are part of the Islamist problem in this country."

CAIR and MSA also are lionized in the PBS film that aired in place of Gaffney's. Several executives of CAIR, a spinoff of a Hamas front, have been convicted of terror-related crimes. MSA was funded by the Saudis, and founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ignoring such relevant facts, PBS dismisses criticism of CAIR as coming from "pro-Israeli groups." And it likewise pooh-poohs MSA's critics as "right-wing bloggers."

The film quotes a CAIR official boasting, "We have the law on our side," in reference to its exploitation of freedom of religion statutes to spread Islam in America. Later in the film, it praises MSAs for acting as good "ambassadors of Islam" on college campuses after 9/11, saying nothing of the militant anti-Israel rallies it's sponsored.

PBS' documentary whitewashes the Islamist threat inside the country. It could have just as easily been scripted by CAIR propagandists.

Your tax dollars at work.