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Is America's Legal System Islam's Best
Friend
CAIR's duplicitous ways
By Joel Mowbray
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been busy
attacking syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently for supposedly
"Islamophobic" comments, the media-hungry group did not condemn the
foiled terrorist plots in London or the successful one in Glasgow,
Scotland.
Though CAIR's Web site has a video clip of the Chicago chapter director
lamenting the events in Britain and the group helped coordinate a St.
Louis press conference of Muslim doctors who spoke out against the
terrorists, CAIR itself did not condemn the actions of the Islamic
terrorists in Britain.
Given that CAIR played a role in promoting its Chicago director and the
Muslim doctors, some might wish to give the benefit of the doubt. The
organization's history, however, shows that this artful dodge is simply
part of its modus operandi.
CAIR has mastered the art of appearing to oppose terrorism, while at the
same time leading the charge against those who seek to thwart it.
A case in point is its curiously neglecting to condemn Britain's Islamic
terrorists, while during the same week blasting as "Islamophobic" Mr.
Thomas' remarks on local radio station WTOP expressing concern about
fundamentalists from the "Middle East and South Asia" who are
integrating into the broader Muslim society.
In a story for WTOPnews.com, WTOP quoted CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper
claiming, "We condemn extremism. We've condemned terrorism... We've
issued dozens of condemnations on dozens of terrorism attacks."
CAIR has, in fact, condemned what it considers to be extremism and
terrorism — when targeted at Muslims. If a Muslim is the victim of a
possible hate crime or has been subjected to a religious slur, CAIR is
there. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. And the group is
well within its rights when it routinely rails against the United States
and Israel.
What CAIR does not do, though, is denounce Islamic fundamentalists who
promote a paranoid worldview in which America and Israel are the enemies
of Islam, achieved by manufacturing mythical massacres that whip their
followers into a lather.
During Israel's war last summer with Hezbollah terrorists, CAIR was
firmly on the side of the fundamentalist Islamic propagandists. The
organization issued at least eight condemnations of America and the
Jewish state — but not one against Hezbollah.
Never in its history has CAIR specifically condemned Hamas or Hezbollah
by name.
To its credit, the group did denounce the Netanya Passover Massacre in
2002, though it avoided criticizing Hamas, which perpetrated the attack.
Bizarrely, CAIR couldn't bring itself to acknowledge that the innocent
victims were murdered in Israel — perhaps because CAIR hews to the Hamas
party line refusing to recognize the Jewish state — noting instead that
the bombing happened in "the Middle East."
In December, CAIR Executive Director and co-founder Nihad Awad refused
in an interview with Newsweek to condemn Hamas, claiming that the
question was "the game of the pro-Israel lobby." Of course, Mr. Awad
knows that whether or not one backs Hamas is not a "game," as he
willingly declared at a speech in 1994: "I'm in support of the Hamas
movement." (Transcript provided by the Investigative Project.)
Rather than seize opportunities for unambiguous denunciations of Islamic
terrorism, CAIR shrewdly offers up what it labels condemnations, but in
fact are not.
Emblematic of CAIR's elaborate deception is the much-hyped fatwa against
terrorism and extremism. Both terms are left intentionally undefined.
Fundamentalist Muslims who wish harm upon the United States and Israel
do not consider themselves "extreme." Nor do Hezbollah and Hamas believe
that they are terrorists.
For that matter, neither apparently does CAIR. Chairman Parvez Ahmed
this spring authored a lengthy policy paper-posted on CAIR's Web site —
in which he implicitly argued that Hamas and Hezbollah were not
"terrorist" entities: "Unlike al-Qaeda they do not embrace such violence
as a matter of policy. These groups have not targeted people who are
outside the land they view as occupied territories."
Since both terrorist groups have repeatedly murdered innocent civilians
inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel, the only possible justification
Mr. Ahmed could have for not taking issue with Hamas' and Hezbollah's
propaganda is that he, too, considers all of the Jewish state to be
"occupied territory."
Refusing to recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist is in
keeping with the group's roots. Founded in 1994, CAIR was spun off from
the Islamic Association of Palestine. Whereas IAP was widely seen as a
Hamas front, CAIR was designed to be a kinder and gentler "civil rights"
organization. It was a smart move. A federal civil-court judge in 2005
found CAIR's founding organization liable for providing material support
to Hamas on the basis of "strong evidence that IAP was supporting
Hamas."
Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper did not return a call seeking comment, but CAIR
undoubtedly would point to the video clip on its Web site in which its
Chicago director, a Mr. Rehab, in a local TV interview, said, "Islam
wholeheartedly condemns this type of behavior."
While admirable, it is not the same as the group actually condemning
Britain's Islamic terrorists. Considering that CAIR put out roughly 20
press releases in the week following the terror incidents, including
several "condemnations" of non-terrorists, it is hard to give the group
of the benefit of the doubt.
CAIR's history makes it simply impossible.
Joel Mowbray occasionally writes for The Washington Times.
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