The "How-to, where-to, when-to" for Terrorists

One Muslim Advocacy Group's Not-So-Secret Terrorist Ties:

Unfit Print.

By Steven Emerson

The New Republic Online, March 28, 2007

This year has been a rocky one for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the self-professed "prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy" group. First, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer rescinded an award her office had issued a CAIR official, stating that she was uncomfortable with many of the organization's positions. Then, two weeks ago, the GOP House Conference objected to the use of a Capitol facility--provided by Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell to host a CAIR forum, labeling the group "terror apologists" (based on CAIR's long track record of extremism and anti-Semitism).

Yet, just as people began to realize this and to ostracize CAIR accordingly, The New York Times arrived with a life raft. Earlier this month, Neil MacFarquhar wrote an incredibly generous profile called "Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S." MacFarquhar's piece is so fraught with errors--of commission and omission--that it is a coup of CAIR propaganda.MacFarquhar gets off on the right foot, noting, "Several federal officials said CAIR's Washington office frequently issued controversial statements that made it hard for senior government figures to be associated with the group." But he cites none of these "controversial statements." Nor does he mention the CAIR-sponsored fund-raisers and conferences featuring former neo-Nazi leader William Baker and jihadist cleric Wagdy Ghoneim. (At a 1998 CAIR event, Ghoneim sang, "No to the Jews, descendants of the apes." And, after he was deported in 2004 for overstaying his visa, Hussam Ayloush, CAIR's Southern California director, called Ghoneim's removal from the U.S. "a dent in our civil rights struggle.")

Readers of the Times wouldn't know, for example, that Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin alleged CAIR's links to terrorists; nor that Steven Pomerantz, former counterterrorism chief of the FBI, has written, "Any objective assessment of the material ... leads to the conclusion that CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups."In airing critics' complaints about the group, MacFarquhar cites its refusal to "endorse the American government's blanket condemnations of Hezbollah and Hamas." Actually, that's only half the story. At a 2001 rally in front of the State Department, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad actually defended Hamas's murderous tactics: "The Palestinians are using legitimate means of resistance. We should not be shy about it, and we should not be apologetic about it.

"The devil, however, is in the details, and MacFarquhar doesn't even bother with them. CAIR has received significant funding from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, an outfit notorious for publishing anti-Semitic, jihadist literature. (Sample passage: "Teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and [Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make jihad for the sake of Allah.") CAIR officials also make frequent pilgrimages to the Persian Gulf to solicit funds (for a $50 million p.r. campaign and a new $24 million office building)...

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