The truth-challenged unindicted co-conspirators of the Council on American Islamic Relations have been targeting radio host Michael Savage, as they have targeted so many others before him. They've been pressuring advertisers to stop advertising on his show, and they've been succeeding. Background here.
But Savage, unlike Fox, unlike National Review, unlike so many others, is unwilling to play the dhimmi and kowtow to these lying Islamic supremacist thugs in their continued assaults on the freedom of speech. It's about time that somebody with the resources to do so has fought back.
The text of Savage's suit can be found here. A few highlights:
The conduct of CAIR (in addition to raising money) in violating the copyright interests of Michael Savage was to gain media attention and control so that CAIR would be seen as the “moderate” voice in the media. In fact CAIR is a radical voice that deliberately attempts to be seen as centrist so that media time goes to CAIR and once on the air, CAIR directs its rhetoric to the benefit of its extremist clients. This is a deliberate tactic and the theft of the copyright material was part of a pattern and practice advancing this tactic.30.
As set forth herein, CAIR is not a civil rights organization but is instead a political organization designed to advance a political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society that includes respect and dignity for all people and all religions.
The copyright infringement herein is part of this plan. CAIR’s fundamental purpose is to be a lobbyist for foreign interests.
[...]
34.
CAIR while claiming in its paperwork to be a civil rights organization was in fact co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook.
35.
The director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-terrorism unit has stated that IAP is “a Hamas front…(that is) controlled by Hamas, it brings Hamas leaders to the US, it does propaganda for Hamas.”
36.
CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity founded by Hamas operative, Mousa Abu Marzook.
37.
At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad stated that:
"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."
38.
Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Hamas is banned in the Muslim nation of Jordan, Australia and the United Kingdom.
39.
Plaintiff contends that CAIR is still associated with foreign groups as set forth more fully herein and that the wrongful intent in violating the copyright as set forth herein was based in part upon a desire to silence a vocal critic of Hamas.
40.
The involvement of CAIR’s founders in illegal conduct was addressed on February 2, 1995, when U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York Imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.
41.
On May 7, 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American."
42.
Prior to 9/11, CAIR continued in its claim that it was a civil rights organization. They made this claim when in October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy," asserting that this depiction "offensive to Muslims."
43.
Also in 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR’s leader Ibrahim Hooper, claimed the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."
44.
In a July 1998 news article CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad is quoted speaking to a group of California Muslims expressing his hope of seeing an America under the domination of Islam. In that article, Ahmad is quoted as saying,
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.
45.
On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR’s New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims.
46.
CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website.
47.
The HLF is the Holy Land Foundation. On December 4, 2001, the Attorney General of the United States stated that “the Holy Land Foundation, received much of its early money from Mousa Abu Marzuq, a top Hamas official who, the U.S. courts have determined, was directly involved in terrorism."
48.The use CAIR’s website to misappropriate the spirit of 9/11 charity to raise money for a terror organization is a pattern of conduct of CAIR that has been repeated with the appropriation of Michael Savage’s material for CAIR’s own purpose. While the outrage of diverting 9/11 charity is unmatched in its callousness, the success of that enterprise may well have emboldened CAIR in its present conduct.
49.
When the President of the United States closed the Holy Land Foundation in December 2001 for collecting money "to support the Hamas terror organization," CAIR decried his action as "unjust" and "disturbing."
50.
On April 20, 2002, CAIR’s director spoke at a rally in Washington D.C. He spoke from a podium next to a Hezbollah flag.
51.
On December 29, 2004 Wagdy Ghoneim, an extremist Egyptian cleric known for his advocacy in support of violence and hatred for Jews, decided to voluntarily leave the country after being accused of immigration violation, CAIR’s director in California, Hussam Ayloush, told The Los Angeles Times that the case demonstrated “the selective application of laws on Muslims.” CAIR has never publicly criticized the radical statements made by Ghoneim.
52.
In a July 7, 2004 interview with BBC, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesman, defended Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Muslim cleric known for his support for terrorism, as “respectable,” adding: “I don't think there's any incitement of violence on his part.” Qaradawi was an open supporter of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, as well as groups targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. Qaradawi is barred from entering the U.S. because of his advocacy of violence.
53.
On April 13, 2005: Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, and two of his brothers, were found guilty of supporting terrorism by funneling money to the leader of Hamas. They were convicted in a federal court in Texas of handling and trying to conceal an investment by senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzuq. In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi was convicted on separate charges of illegally exporting goods to Syria and of money laundering. At that time, a representative of CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, Khalil Meek, argued that the only thing the Elashis were guilty of was the “crime of being Muslims in America.
54.
On February 21, 2006, CAIR National Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar appeared on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country debating the Dubai side of the U.S. ports story. Michael Savage was the leader of the public opposition to the purchase of major U.S. ports by Dubai and Savage herein alleges that the misappropriation and misuse of his content as set forth herein was done in part in retaliation for Savage’s opposition to overseas ownership of such a strategic asset.
55.
Such political conduct in favor of foreign organizations supporting violence has continued to the present up to and including the time of the copyright infringement and during all times known to plaintiff up to the date of the filing of this lawsuit.
56.
At 8:00 pm on June 6, 2006, the Ohio affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OH) honored one of the unindicted conspirators in that 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj had also served as a defense witness at the trial of one of the men convicted for that terrorist attack, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman (a conviction that CAIR has labeled “a travesty of justice”). More than 400 CAIR-OH supporters gathered at this fund-raising banquet.
57.
On August 7, 2006: Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR-Florida, published an opinion piece in the Sun-Sentinel, in which he compared Israel and the U.S. government to Al Qaeda.
58.
On August 12, 2006: CAIR participated in and endorsed several rallies in support of Hezbollah and the “resistance” fighting American forces in Iraq.
59.
In October, 2006 a CAIR affiliated publication, InFocus, printed an article supporting Hezbollah. The commentary claimed that the war was part of an American-British conspiracy, a “phase of the larger plans of the colonialist superpowers.” It also praised the “epic heroism of the resistance fighters”.
60.
In May 2007 CAIR was identified by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving a charity that was allegedly affiliated with Hamas. Federal prosecutors in the case of the Holy Land Foundation listed CAIR under the category: “Individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The government also listed Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s founder and chairman emeritus, under the same category.
61.In August 2-7, 2007 during the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas, FBI agent Lara Burns testified about evidence connecting CAIR and two of its founders to the Holy Land Foundation as well as to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that established Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. The agent identified CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as one of the scheduled participants at a meeting of Hamas officials in a hotel in Philadelphia in 1993. At the time, Awad was a representative of IAP. Burns also identified CAIR co-founders Awad and Omar Ahmed as members of the Palestine Committee set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
62.
Attacks on other public figures have included an attack on Presidential candidate, Rudy Guiliani for using the phrase “Islamic Terrorism” and for accepting the endorsement of Pat Robertson whose endorsement of Guiliani included a reference to the “bloodlust of Islamic terrorists”.
63.
CAIR also attacked Guiliani’s choice of Daniel Pipes as foreign policy advisor. Pipes is the person who first published (in 1998) the quotation from CAIR’s cofounder that:
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.
64.
CAIR has a pattern and practice of attacking critics. On or about January 6, 2004, an attorney and agent for CAIR wrote a “cease and desist letter” to Andrew Whitehead who runs a website www.anti-cair-net.org. In this letter, CAIR attacked Mr. Whitehead’s exposure of CAIR’s foreign ties deeming those facts as being “sociopathic and xenophobic,”. When Whitehead would not yield to CAIR’s demands they filed a
$ 1.3 million dollar libel lawsuit against him.
65.
Whitehead countersued and in his allegations made assertions similar to those of Daniel Pipes where he asserted that “Douglas Hooper, a/k/a “Ibrahim” Hooper (“Hooper”), CAIR's Director of Communications, also worked for the IAP before joining CAIR. He has stated: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future…” Hooper has defended payments of bounties to the families of suicide bombers who kill Jews.”
66.
CAIR later dismissed that lawsuit at a time when Whitehead’s attorneys started demanding information relating to CAIR’s sources of funding.
67.
The theft of Michael Savage’s copyrighted material and the destruction of the proper context of that material is yet another tactic to silence critics of CAIR. CAIR was specifically and by name attacked by Michael Savage in his October 29, 2007 statement but CAIR did not contest the truth of Savage’s attack on CAIR but instead sought to steal and sully his copyrighted work. Clearly CAIR did not wish to defend themselves and lose in the same manner that they failed in the lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, therefore this new tactic was employed.
68.
Based upon these facts and further facts to be produced at trial, plaintiff alleges that CAIR is not a civil rights organization but instead is a political vehicle of international terrorism and that the copyright infringement itself and the manner in which the material was used, was part of a deliberate practice and pattern to do material harm to those voices who speak against the violent agenda of CAIR’s clients. The attack on Rudy Guiliani, Daniel Pipes, Andrew Whitehead and Michael Savage are part of a pattern and practice to silence critics of CAIR and critics of CAIR’s foreign agenda under the false guise of civil rights.
69.
In the summer of 2007, CAIR supported international terror when, in response to renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza , CAIR did not condemn the terror organizations that provoked the fighting but instead launched an anti-Israel media campaign. This has nothing to do with the civil rights of Muslim Americans. When CAIR is criticized for these tactics, it unleashes campaigns against these critics under the guise of “civil rights” as set forth above and as will be further proven at trial.
70.
Therefore CAIR seeks to silence its critics including those who use strong language but do not advocate violence while CAIR itself supports people who use even stronger language and advocate and urge actual violence against innocent civilians; all this under the guise of being a “civil rights organization”
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I heard a rumor that Savage intended to sue CAIR.Since it's Savage suing CAIR. CAIR will not be able to hide once the discovery process starts. The discovery process will go forward and CAIRs already established ties to terrorists will be reveal. Good job Savage.