There are few people who even try anymore to claim that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is a legitimate Muslim “civil rights” organization. In fact, a recent poll showed that only 11% of American Muslims believe that CAIR represents their interests.
The facts about the extremism, and terrorist affiliations, of the U.S. group are simply beyond dispute, and include the following:
- U.S. Federal law enforcement believes that the CAIR is the product of a Hamas-support network in the United States.
- CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials.
- CAIR operates a Web site that makes anti-Semitic material, which includes Holocaust Denial, available for visitors interested in learning about Islam.
- In 2007, U.S. federal prosecutors described CAIR as “having conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.”
- In 2003, CAIR’s Florida chapter invited William Baker to its annual banquet. Baker, a known right-wing extremist, warned in his book, Theft of a Nation, that Jews throughout the world “can easily become agents for specific world powers in order to create unrest and disharmony.”
Yet, Alison Flood’s “9/11 children’s colouring book angers U.S. Muslims“, Aug. 31, (in the Guardian’s Children and Teen Books section) extensively quotes CAIR officials who condemned a book written to teach children the lessons of 9/11, as “disgusting”. And, even more audaciously, given CAIR’s proven ties to Islamist terrorists, Flood quotes a CAIR official as complaining that the book “characterizes all Muslims as linked to extremism, terrorism and radicalism.”
Further, Guardian moderators also deleted comments beneath the line critical of CAIR – including those which merely pointed to reputable reports on the group’s extremist agenda.
Here, for instance, was my comment from last night:
“Just so we’re all clear, CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) has been designated as an unindicted co-conspirator by the U.S. Justice Dep’t in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials, and are well-understood to be affiliated with Hamas. Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1854/doj-cairs-unindicted-co-conspirator-status-legit“
And, then:
There were also, for instance, seven consecutive deleted comments between 9:40 and 10:02.
But, beyond their biased moderation process, the larger question is why the Guardian would legitimize, and frame as progressive, a group so unquestionably compromised by proven links to terrorist movements?
There is a word generally used which aptly describes those who sanction and approve of groups who are intolerant, misogynistic, antisemitic, and support violence: At least in political terms it’s known as being Reactionary.
