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Council On American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Implicated As Participants In Criminal Conspiracy To Support Hamas
No surprise here, as federal prosecutors name CAIR and two other radical Islamic front groups as participants in a criminal conspiracy to support Hamas:
Prosecutors applied the label of "unindicted co-conspirator" to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust in connection with a trial planned in Texas next month for five officials of a defunct charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.Indeed, CAIR, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and other such "Islamist" front groups, are often portrayed by the the media and the government as a group that represents moderate Muslim, however nothing could be further from the truth. The liberal press and collectively the MSM have given groups like CAIR and ISNA a politically correct cakewalk in the interest of both being secular and believing the press releases of so called "peaceful Muslim organizations." In fact, they are neither secular nor moderate "peaceful" Muslim organizations. The media and naive politicians have effectively allowed Islamist groups like CAIR and ISNA to completely to stifle any and all debate which would have allowed Muslims to question those in positions of authority within the Islamic community. And CAIR and ISNA have been at the forefront of shutting down truly moderate Muslims that have tried to speak out against the groups' open support of Islamism and quiet supposrt of terrorist groups like Hamas.While the foundation was charged in the case, which was filed in 2004, none of the other groups was. However, the co-conspirator designation could be a blow to the credibility of the national Islamic organizations, which often work hand-in-hand with government officials engaged in outreach to the Muslim community.
Much has been said by M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D. about such supposed "moderate" Muslim groups like ISNA and CAIR. (Zuhdi Jasser is a FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor, founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix Arizona, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, and a physician in private practice, and a community activist):
... I have previously discussed the harm of our government's enabling of Islamists (like CAIR, MPAC, MAS, MSA, or ISNA) in the United States and how the governmental endorsement of Islamists publicly empowers them and allows them to dodge their responsibility of countering Islamism as an ideology. This order of magnitude is greater in impact when it concerns the media's inability to wage the debate of the "struggle for the soul of Islam". Stories about Islam and Muslims have been more and more ubiquitous since 9-11 and now are actually commonplace. Yet, the actual debate within the Muslim community has barely begun. Where's the disconnect? Look no further than the Islamist enablers in the media.When so many ask across the nation, "where are the moderate voices of Islam?", one cannot help lately but exclaim that they are being suffocated by misguided political correctness and by Islamist influence within mainstream media and government. The PBS censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, highlights one of the best examples to date of the symbiosis of both government complicity and media complicity with the Islamist ideology.
The recent RAND corporation research project highlighting the dire need to Build Moderate Muslim Networks in this new global "long war" against militant Islamism and its ideological siblings will never come to fruition with the current blinded pro-Islamist mainstream media approach. The mainstream media (MSM) is apparently blind to the real ideology of Islamism and they allow Islamists to hide their theocracy behind minority politics. The MSM not only avoids the free flow of ideas within the Muslim community, it effectively allows the Islamists completely to stifle any and all debate which would have allowed Muslims to question those in positions of authority within the Islamic community.
It is time for the MSM to stop protecting Muslims from one another and to stop stifling the debate many anti-Islamist Muslims would like to wage against leading Islamists. If Muslims are going to form a public expression of Islam which is reconciled with western democracies which separate religion and government, this debate against Islamism needs yet to begin, let alone blossom into cultural change for Muslims.
On the scale of American religious pluralism even the most moderate Islamist theocrat has a mindset which is anti-American in its ideology. We need to figure out how to both engage the Muslim community as our greatest asset but also hold them accountable to their responsibility to lead the public effort to counter political Islam and its radical offshoots.The big question is, when will politicians and the media wake up to the real agenda of CAIR, ISNA and other Islamist groups!!!John Welter, Chief of the anaheim Police Department recently said this to Washington Post reporter, Karen De Young:
"Most people are very ignorant of what the Muslim faith is about, including me," Welter said. "I've got a book on Muslims for dummies; I can't be an expert on all the religions and cults and cultures in the world. But what I can do is be an expert in behavior that terrorists engage in prior to an attack."This type of naiveté illustrates the basic problem in our current approach to engagement of the Muslim community. Our current national security problem with terrorism is not about finding behavior. That is only the most basic part of law enforcement. At the core of our national counterterrorism strategy should be a solid understanding of the ideologies and state of mind which precedes the radicalization and the motivation of terrorist behaviors.Our security agencies understood the ideology of communism as we protected our nation during the Cold War. We should do so with even more sophistication and clarity now when it comes to the relationship of political Islam (Islamism) to militant Islamism and how they both differ from the spiritual path of Islam. The longer we avoid the centrality of political Islam in this equation, the longer it is going to take to win the war of ideas and preserve our security.
It is time for a national education and discussion on the conflict between Islamism and Islam. It is time to learn where national Muslim organizations and more importantly where the greater American Muslim population finds itself in that conflict.
Posted by Richard at June 4, 2007 12:26 PM
