The hopelessly compromised pro-jihad pseudo-journalist Manya Brachear of the Chicago Tribune here once again gives a platform to Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR, without ever bothering to tell her hapless readers that CAIR is a Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood group, several officials of which have been convicted of jihad terror offenses. Brachear doesn’t tell you that the Justice Department named Hamas-linked CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Nor does she mention that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. She says nothing about how several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Nor does she mention that CAIR”s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements, or that its California chapter distributed posters telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI.
Think about that: several officials of the organization for which Rehab works clearly didn’t buy his jihad-is-rainbows-and-moonbeams shtick, and clearly endorsed the view of jihad he claims is “extremist.” Yet this arouses no curiosity in Brachear, if she even knows about those convictions. It never occurs to her to ask Rehab what Hamas-linked CAIR is doing to teach Muslims, including CAIR employees, not to take up this “extremist” understanding of jihad.
“‘MyJihad’ campaign hits Chicago buses, along with opposition: After Council on American-Islamic Relations launches ads, American Freedom Defense Initiative asks CTA to OK different message,” by Manya A. Brachear for the Chicago Tribune, December 18 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Chicago buses have become a battleground for two groups promoting different definitions of jihad.
We are not “promoting” a definition of jihad. We are pointing out that the definition of jihad that is being advanced by Hamas-linked CAIR is severely misleading and whitewashed, and doesn’t correspond to the understanding of jihad that all too many Muslims have, and that is the only one that non-Muslims need be concerned about.
This past weekend, the Council on American-Islamic Relations launched “MyJihad,” a national ad campaign featuring individuals’ testimonies about what the pillar of Islam means to them.
Jihad, as pivotal as it obviously is in the Qur’an and Sunnah, is not one of the five pillars of Islam.
But on Monday, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, or AFDI, asked the CTA to accept another batch of ads, featuring mock testimonies from high-profile Muslim extremists, including Osama bin Laden.
They’re not “mock testimonies.” They’re the exact words of the jihadis and the case of Major Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass murderer, of an eyewitness to his murders.
The campaign is the second one launched by the initiative, which rolled out a controversial series of bus posters last month urging passengers to “Defeat jihad.”
“The MyJihad campaign is about reclaiming jihad from the Muslim and anti-Muslim extremists who ironically, but not surprisingly, see eye to eye on jihad,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also known as CAIR. Rehab also created the slogan.
Note that Rehab follows common and tired Islamic supremacist talking points in tarring as “extremists” both Islamic jihadis and those who resist them. He is trying to imply, with Manya Brachear’s willing help, that those who resist jihad are just as lethal, just as dangerous, as those who commit it. The goal, of course, is to intimidate people into thinking there’s something wrong with resisting jihad.
He is also trying to hoodwink non-Muslims into thinking that the view of jihad espoused by Hamas, bin Laden, Hasan, the Times Square bomber and Erdogan — the Muslims featured on our ads — is “extremist,” as if the mainstream understanding of jihad is the bicycling-through-the-meadows type he is pushing. And we, of course, are greasy Islamophobes who are, in our hate, endorsing the view of the “extremists.” He doesn’t tell the ever-credulous and starry-eyed Brachear, although he surely knows, that warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers is the mainstream Muslim understanding of jihad, as I detailed here.
The people behind the AFDI initiative have become the “premiere promoters of extremism and violence,” he said.
Note the sleight of hand: to expose and resist “extremism and violence” is to promote it. And Brachear lets this steaming pile of Orwellian doublespeak slide right by.
Pamela Geller, executive director of AFDI, said the fact that some Muslims consider jihad a peaceful concept does not cancel out the fact that there are others who interpret it violently.
“This usage of jihad is much more influential and widespread among Muslims worldwide than the benign and whitewashed understanding of it” presented in the ad campaign, Geller said.
Brian Steele, a spokesman for the CTA, said the second AFDI campaign is under review. The first CAIR and AFDI campaigns cost $5,000 each, he said. Geller said the second campaign will cost less than $10,000. She expects it to start in January.
Rehab said Geller’s attempt to hijack the “MyJihad” slogan amounts to fraud. He said CAIR’s campaign includes ads on buses and trains, as well as a social media component on Twitter, where users are asked to tweet their testimony with the #MyJihad hashtag.
Fraud? As the premier purveyor of a massive con job, a huge attempt to deceive the American people, Rehab has a lot of chutzpah to talk about fraud. I also notice that he didn’t say a word about “fraud” when MPAC parodied one of our earlier ads.
He added that the campaign has evolved into an interfaith effort, including Muslim mothers who are concerned that their children will be bullied, as well as Jews and Christians.
“We have been overwhelmed with the participation of people of other faiths tweeting their struggles,” campaign volunteer and Naperville mom Angie Emara said in a statement. “People of different backgrounds are finding a common language. They’re learning to see themselves in one another as they share similar expressions of their daily jihad.”
What about mothers who are concerned that their children will be killed in a jihad, a la Beslan? Unworthy of consideration. Greasy Islamophobes.