Are all 'moderate Muslims' actually moderate?

The Washington Examiner reports an interesting story by Brigitte Gabriel and Guy Rodgers :

'In an October 19, 2001, article by The New York Times, supposed moderate Muslim Anwar al-Awlaki was praised, “…as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." He is now the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Sami Al-Arian, a former tenured professor at the University of South Florida, was thought to be a moderate Muslim bridge-builder and won the friendship of prominent leaders of both political parties.

It is now known that Al-Arian was the head of Islamic Jihad in America, who pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a specially designated terrorist organization.'

A one-off? No a regular occurence, The Washington Examiner lists some other examples:

'Muzzamil Hassan, during a report on December 9, 2004 NBC News with Brian Williams was described as “…a banker, who [is] disturbed that negative images of Muslims seem to dominate TV, especially since 9/11."

The news story documented Hassan’s venture to create “Bridges TV,” ostensibly to improve relations between the Islamic world and the West by countering negative stereotypes of Islam.

Turns out this “moderate” beheaded his wife and, after calling the police, proudly explained why: She insulted his Muslim honor by filing for divorce.

Another is Abdurahman Alamoudi. The Washington Post touted him as “a pillar of the local Muslim community.” His organization, the American Muslim Council (AMC), was described in 2002 by a spokesman for FBI director Robert Mueller as "the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States."

Today Alamoudi is serving a 23 year federal prison sentence for terrorism-financing.'

Why are the West fooled so often by Islamists? Why do they not understand that

'Embedded within doctrinal Islam is a political ideology that motivates what we call the “Islamist,” and anyone who subscribes to this ideology, whether violent or not, is by definition “radical.”

Our government, the media, and academia need to cease defining an Islamic “radical” as only those who engage in violence. No longer can they so quickly believe any Muslim who says the right things and hasn’t killed people is a moderate. They need to stop dismissing evidence of Islamist ideology when it surfaces simply because it doesn’t fit their moderate sensibilities.

Terrorism is but one tool Islamists use to impose Islamic sharia law, ultimately on all peoples. When Muslims make statements about their ultimate intentions, they should be taken seriously. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is held up by many as moderate and “mainstream.”

Yet here is what its founder, Omar Ahmad, had to say in 1998: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Qur’an should be the highest authority in America.”

Does Ahmad’s desire for a theo-political state sound moderate or radical?

It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. How many more Alamoudi’s must we suffer before the insanity ends?'

Why is it that there are so many of us in the blogosphere that understand the role that “taqiyya” plays in the advance of radical Islam.

'“Taqiyya” is sharia-sanctioned deception, patterned after Mohammed’s use of it to advance Islam against his enemies. Today radicals, under that same sanction, lie to advance their real agenda.

As a result, many in government, academia and the media fail to do their due diligence to ascertain what these supposedly “moderate” Muslims really believe and what their true intentions are.'

Do the 'experts' really not understand or is there a deeper game being played?