CAIR, Iraq

CAIR plans to interfere in Iraq

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CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad apparently will imitate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s undermining of America’s foreign policy. Friday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contains an interview of Awad entitled U.S. Islamic group seeks peace in Iraq where he is quoted as saying:

“Leaders in our community, led by CAIR, are working on a peace initiative that we hope to bring to the scene soon… We have some specific proposals and specific ideas that we believe, if implemented, will help both the United States and Iraq to get out of the crisis. I cannot disclose a lot about it, but we’re calling it (the) American Muslim Peace Initiative [all emphasis added mine].

“We want people not to lose hope in the future relationship between America and the Muslim world because of what they see in terms of deteriorating situations, whether in Iraq or other places, or even because of the rise of Islamophobia and the increased number of (incidents) of discrimination and hate crimes. We want people to look forward to a future that can be shaped now. And this task cannot be done alone. We need and we look for partners in this society to work with us.

“We should be willing, all of us, to think out of the box and also to have the courage to reassess and evaluate what went wrong with the pre-Iraq war, and the hype and the propaganda, and the allegations, beyond some historical stereotypes and misunderstandings… The second thing is, the American Muslim community has to be engaged and has to be seen as a partner in this process… Out of the 7 million American Muslims, the majority are well-educated and resourceful. And American Muslims have great credibility and legitimacy in the Muslim world. We can explain Islam and the Muslim world to Americans, and also we can explain America and its issues to the Muslim world.”

CAIR now intends to meddle with the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq. Mr. Awad is confused for our Constitution vests the conduct of foreign policy in the Executive branch of our government, not the Executive Director of CAIR. He implies our invasion of Iraq could have been avoided had Islamophobia not caused the administration to “hype” the threat Saddam Hussein’s regime posed and the WMD intelligence. Mr. Awad blends his usual phony portrayal of all Muslims as victims with the Democrat Party’s current anti-war rhetoric.

CAIR wants to “explain Islam and the Muslim world to Americans,” presumably to avoid such misunderstandings and invasions in the future. It can also fix America’s image by explaining “America and its issues to the Muslim world.” Thanks but no thanks.

On the home front, while their membership is but a small fraction of America’s Muslim community, CAIR has long claimed to speak for all of them. We have only Mr. Awad’s word for it that organized attacks and wholesale discrimination are taking place. It is true that the reported hate crimes against Muslims here have risen over the last decade. All hate crimes are wrong, criminal, and should be condemned yet the number of crimes committed against Muslims remains relatively small and all have been conducted by individuals acting maliciously on their own.

CAIR continues to express anti-Israel and anti-Zionism rhetoric that sounds a lot like anti-Jew. They often attempt to justify this by allying with Jews willing to also condemn Israel. Yet CAIR has never directly denounced the terrorist attacks conducted by Hamas and Hezbollah, choosing instead to issue one lame condemnation of terrorism in general after another.

CAIR has no moral or legal authority to speak on behalf of the American government. Mr. Awad needs to put his own organization’s house in order; it speaks only for itself, for few in America’s Muslim community, and has a hatred problem of it’s own to fix.

Islamofascists, Political wind

PBS emulates Islamists; silences dissent

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PBS embraced some of the tactics used by “conservative” Islamists in their effort to silence the creators of Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. That production documents Islamists attempting to silence their fellow Muslims — by either intimidation or any means necessary — who dared to advocate both free speech and the separation of church and state. PBS merely killed a project while silencing those whose political beliefs differ from their own. Fortunately, the producers are still around to speak.

Long an advocate of leftist slanted programming, PBS attempted to yet failed to deceive Congressman Jim Walsh as to why they pulled Islam vs. Islamists from their America at a Crossroads series. Frank Gaffney describes the crosstalk:

In seeking an explanation, Rep. Walsh remarked that Islam vs. Islamists “highlights the plight of moderate Muslims at the hands of their Islamist brethren.” He continued: “[It] answers a very important… and very timely question. After the attack on the World Trade Center, the bombings in Madrid in the commuter trains, the bombings in London on their commuter trains, in Turkey and other places… I heard the question asked over and over and over: ‘Where are the moderate Muslim voices? Where are the people of that same religion? Where’s their voice of outrage and condemnation over these attacks?’”

“The answer,” Rep. Walsh explained to PBS President Paula Kerger and her CPB counterpart, Pat Harrison, “is that there’s a concerted and substantial effort on the part of radical Wahhabist Islam to silence these voices with physical intimidation [and] verbal intimidation. And [the filmmakers] document it in the United States, in Canada and around the world: Denmark, France.”

Then Walsh threw down the gauntlet: “Based on what I’ve heard, there has been a longstanding and concerted effort to ensure that the American people, who paid for the production of this documentary, do not see it.”

The responses to these remarks were, at best, inaccurate and misleading. Two exchanges are illustrative. At one point, PBS’s Kerger told Rep. Walsh that Islam vs. Islamists had “not been rejected for air. The film is still in development and production. The film that you have is not a finished film.” Mr. Walsh replied, correctly, “I spoke with the producer. That film is finished.”

Then CPB’s Harrison interjected: “The problem is…they have two hours of material. They must get it down to one.” The congressman held up the finished, 52-minute show, saying, “I believe this… DVD is an hour long.”

Mr. Gaffney goes on to show how PBS’ claim the producers violated their policies concerning advocacy is ludicrous in light of PBS’ history.