MOHAMED ELIBIARY

Mohamed Elibiary is a Texas-based Islamic cleric who founded Lone Star Intelligence LLC, a security crisis consulting firm, and the Freedom and Justice Foundation (F&J), a Muslim nonprofit group established in November 2002 to “promote a centrist public-policy environment in Texas by coordinating the state-level government and interfaith community relations for the organized Texas Muslim community.” F&J played a key role in successfully lobbying for the passage of Texas's Halal Food Law (the state's first Muslim consumer-protection statute), and for the institution of Islamic prayers (recited by Imams) in both chambers of the State Legislature.

Elibiary was a guest speaker at a December 2004 conference in Dallas, titled “A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary,” which was held in honor of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. When a reporter subsequently asked Elibiary to explain why he had chosen to appear at an event honoring the iconic jihadist, Elibiary claimed not to have known in advance about the conference's agenda. When journalist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News voiced skepticism about Elibiary's explanation, the latter threatened Dreher, telling him: “Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe.”

In 2006 Elibiary co-founded the North Texas Islamic Council, to coordinate the activities of the many mosques, Islamic schools, and community groups serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area's 150,000+ Muslim residents.

Having cultivated a reputation as a moderate Muslim -- "the country's leading Muslim deradicalization expert," according to one media report -- Elibiary has advised numerous federal, state and local law-enforcement organizations on homeland security-related matters. In 2008–2009 he was a Fellow at the University of Southern California's American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute. And in December 2009, he helped establish the Texas Fusion Center Policy Council to help state and local law-enforcement personnel improve their information-sharing, analytical capabilities, and community relations.

In October 2010, President Barack Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed Elibiary, who had recently begun working with the Texas Department of Public Safety's (DPS) advisory board, to DHS's Homeland Security Advisory Council.

In October 2011 it was reported that Elibiary had recently been given access to a highly sensitive DPS database (the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest, or HS SLIC) containing hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports intended solely to aid law-enforcement agencies. In fact, Elibiary was the only Homeland Security Advisory Council member (out of 26) who was permitted to view the HS SLIC.

Elibiary abused this privilege, however, when he gathered together a number of classified documents that, in his view, promoted “Islamophobia,” and presented them to a left-leaning media outlet, in hopes that the latter would write a story about DPS's bias against Muslims. But the media outlet declined to do the story, saying: “We looked at the reports, and they weren’t as he [Elibiary] had billed them to us. They seem to be pretty straightforward, nothing remotely resembling Islamophobia that we saw. I think he was hoping we would bite and not give it too much of a look in light of the other media outfits jumping on the Islamophobia bandwagon.”

When journalist Patrick Poole asked a spokesman for the aforementioned media outlet if there was any indication as to what may have motivated Elibiary's actions, the reply was unambiguous: “Oh, self-promotion definitely. It was clear up front that he wanted to be a quoted source in the story. We’ve used him as an unnamed source in previous stories. There’s nothing unusual or unseemly about that because officials do it all the time, but this was the first time he approached us with documents. Honestly, if they had been what he represented them as we would have probably run with the story. But we looked at them and saw this was a partisan hatchet job that could blow back on us so we passed on it.”

In early November 2011, Elibiary’s access to the HS SLIC database was revoked.

Today Elibiary serves as a spokesman for the Islamic Association of North Texas, a.k.a. the Dallas Central Mosque, which boasts the largest Muslim congregation in the state. He is also a member of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a lifetime member of the International Association of Business Communicators, and vice president of the FBI-Dallas Citizens’ Academy Alumni Association.