Serge Trifkovic writes about CAIR’s jihad against his book and the NR book appeasement flap in Chronicles (thanks to all who sent this in):
By 2003 CAIR felt emboldened to complain about the FBI surveillance of mosques, but remained mute when it was revealed soon thereafter that the Al-Farooq mosque in New York was complicit in collecting funds for al-Qaeda. Undeterred, it has continued to demand amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act to protect the Muslims from eavesdropping. It did not comment on last year’s spate of bombings, from Casablanca to Istanbul; the search of its archived press releases for “Madrid” give zero results; but it never misses an opportunity to attack the slightest sign of “disrespect” for Islam in America.
CAIR’s longer-term agenda became apparent in May 2004, when it issued a report claiming that anti-Muslim incidents in the United States had increased by almost 70 percent in 2003. The study “outlined” (euphemism for superficial or fraudulent research) over a thousand “incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment” last year, “the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever recorded.” (The word experience is another coded term: It denotes an entirely subjective view of a situation or event that could not be pumped up into an “incident.”) According to CAIR’s reckoning, hate crimes alone jumped by an unprecedented 121 percent. On the basis of this report CAIR demanded a public inquiry to post-9/11 policies impacting the Muslim community, legislative actions to curb the use of profiling by law enforcement agencies, strengthening of hate crime prosecutions, and “modifications” to the PATRIOT Act to end “abuses” of the Muslim community.
With that “report” and the associated demands, reflected in the campaign to censor books uncomfortable to jihad, the real agenda of CAIR is finally clear. CAIR is a hate group that is not interested in promoting anyone’s “rights,” let alone increasing any “understanding” on anything. It does not want to change the nature of discourse on Islam in America, it wants to transform America into a barren wasteland of mind-numbing uniformity of thought and feeling on par with Saudi Arabia and Mauritania. Messrs. Awad and Hooper are not Islamic community activists seeking to better the lot of their co-religionists, they are political visionaries.
If CAIR sees itself as the acceptable face of Islam presented to the public and the media, one is led to wonder what “extremist” Islam must be like. It is probably correct that CAIR does not represent the majority of Muslims in America, who are said to be mostly moderates who wish a quiet life. This may be so, but it is irrelevant–not because such moderates are rare, but because they are unimportant. Religions, like political ideologies, are pushed along by money, power, and tiny vocal minorities. Those minorities must not be appeased. If and when you get a call from “Dougie” Hooper warning you that “Islamophobia” may lead to violence, tell him what he can do with his threats and call the law.
Read it all.