An extraordinary article in today’s Sunday Independent discusses the intimidatory actions by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The report says that the climate of fear among the military, law-enforcers, policy-makers, the media, opinion-formers and many ordinary citizens has been caused by actions of CAIR, which is dedicated to Muslim empowerment, receives substantial funding from Arab governments and has been accused by federal prosecutors of funnelling money to Hamas.
So effective and ruthless is CAIR that anyone in authority worries before doing anything that can be misrepresented as anti-Muslim and lead to lawsuits citing religious or racial discrimination.
And here is a clear example of how this intimidation borne of victimhood works:
A good example of how CAIR has put the fear of Allah into American society is the case of the flying imams. Three years ago, at Minneapolis airport, some passengers and crew on US Airways Flight 300 were alarmed by six imams whose suspicious behaviour included praying loudly, changing seats and two of them demanding seatbelt extensions which they did not use; an Arabic-speaker on the flight heard two of them mention Osama bin Laden and condemn America for “killing Saddam”. They were removed from the flight by airport police, detained, questioned and released.
CAIR backed the imams’ claim that they had suffered from religious discrimination and underwrote their lawsuits against the airline, the law-enforcers and unnamed passengers who had reported them to the crew. Congress banned the suing of airline passengers who report on suspicious activity, but after a bizarre judicial ruling that no competent law enforcer could have thought their treatment reasonable, the airline and the law-enforcers settled out of court last month. The consequences for airline security are terrifying.
Rather surprisingly, a few days ago the American government had the guts to seize mosques and property owned by a group it claims are a front for the Iranian government. This, said CAIR ominously, “may send a negative message to Muslims worldwide.”
The hope is that it may send the positive message that enough is enough.
Absolutely right.
5 Comments
Haha if youre looking for the spoils of victimhood suggest you go to the ever expanding state of Israel
Do you carry a banner on al-Quds demos, Jonathan, with “We are All Useful Idiots” written on it?
We are all Hezbollah’s cum-rags now!
anjem,
I refer you to Ayatollah al-Sistani’s fatawa on the question of self-abuse, here:
http://www.sistani.org/local.php?modules=nav&nid=5&cid=524
Most relevantly, no mujahid of Hizballah would dream of such DIY. However, apparently, you are allowed to get someone else to help. Perhaps Jonathan might want to lend a hand (in solidarity, of course)?
Hello Faisal, why is this an “extraordinary” article? It raises a generic theme: that the US is a lobbocracy and its government highly susceptible to the influence of organized and well-financed interest groups. By far most influential are big pharma, agribusiness, the auto industry, the Zionist lobby, and so on. Do you mean the influence of these groups in the policy decision-making of government is “extraordinary”? Last Saturday the NYT reported how lobbyists working on behalf of big pharma were able to provide text that went into the official record of both Democratic and Republican statements on the health care debate (sometimes the same text for both parties). Since they are trying to protect the 16 per cent of GDP that is swallowed up by the health industry, you can see what motivates them. What you have posted here is part of a much deeper malaise in which factional interests distort democratic governance. None of this is to the public good, secularly speaking. h