Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has a post justly taking issue with an assertion I made about the relationship between the arrest of five Virginia youths in Pakistan and CAIR’s role in encouraging their families to go to the FBI with their concerns. I wrote that the arrests “wouldn’t have happened” absent CAIR’s intervention, which was my read on a Post report. But Daveed reads closer, and with some original reporting added, fairly points out that the Pakistanis most likely arrested the five without much in the way of U.S. assistance. I appreciate the correction, and should have seen that I was taking something of an assertive leap from the Post item. And I certainly did not intend to slight the Pakistani contribution to what appears to be an important counterterrorism effort, but you can fairly read my item and come away with the improper conclusion that Pakistan merely followed an American lead. So thanks to Daveed for that.

But the broader point is really unaffected. I wrote that CAIR’s intervention shows that “the durability of American Muslim resistance to radicalization” endures, even despite the arrests. You can read yesterday’s Times and Post pieces for more on that, and tomorrow morning the Washington Independent will publish a reported piece from me on that subject and its implications for al-Qaeda. (Which I wrote out, in part, out of a desire to update my 2005 TNR piece, a piece I’m proud of that needs updating.) I hold no particular brief for CAIR, but it’s ridiculous that the organization gets treated as nothing more than a terrorist front group when it actively encourages parents terrified that their children might be about to commit anti-American violence to help the FBI. (Daveed doesn’t dispute that CAIR did the right thing here, so I’m not including him in this category.) I would hope that CAIR’s critics take the opportunity to complicate their views of the organization; and to think what an American Muslim would take away from a white Christian and Jewish media chorus that a major group advocating for their interests is in league with the terrorists.