From Mansoor Ijaz's op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor today:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Ijaz takes this as hypocritical, being that Romney wants his Mormonism taken off the table. Not that any president shouldn't include Muslims on his/her cabinet, but I think Ijaz, a Muslim, is being willfully ignorant of the current state of affairs. In any case, Romney had a poor answer. What he should say is that his cabinet officials would be judged on their merits, not their religion, and that if a Muslim is the best candidate for the job, then he would appoint him. After all, aren't the diversity hawks swarming academia all about percentages, whereas a true conservative argues that admission should be based on merit?

But to the larger issue of Ijaz being willfully ignorant, he's playing the same game CAIR always plays, which is to act as if there isn't anything about Muslims which should frighten America or the West. Theoretically, they are right; realistically, it's laughable, since there is only one group of religious fanatics blowing themselves up and declaring war on the infidels, and it ain't Mormons.

UPDATE:

From First Read:

ST. PETERSBURG, FL -- At an availability with reporters here, Romney answered questions about today's report suggesting that he would not appoint Muslims to his Cabinet. "No, that's not what I said. His question was, Did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet in order to confront radical jihad, or would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet?' And I said no, I don't think you need a Muslim in the Cabinet to take on radical jihad any more than we needed a Japanese American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature."

Romney continued, "It's something I rejected, number one. And number two, point out that haven't given a lot of thought to the people I would have in my Cabinet. I don't have boxes I check off in terms of ethnicity, and it's not that I need a certain number of people representing ethnic groups. Instead, I would choose people based on their merits... I'm open to having people of any faith, ethnic group. But they would be selected based on their capacity and capabilities and what they could bring to the Administration, but I don't choose people based on checking off a box."

And, as First Read notes:

A search of FEC records, finds that a Mansoor Ijaz has given $23,000 to Democratic candidates and committees from 1997 to 2000, including $2,000 to Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate run and $15,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.