Maher Hathout is going to get his award from the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, despite everything. After all, as Commission President Adrian Dove put it the other day: “I challenge you to find another party in Los Angeles who is a practicing Muslim leader who would be less controversial.” Aye, there’s the rub. But why reward it?
“Controversial Muslim leader Mathout [sic] gets award despite opposition,” from the Jewish Journal, :
At a meeting that featured catcalls, standing ovations and the ejection of a disruptive audience member, Los Angeles’ County Human Relations Commission voted again Monday to give an award to Dr. Maher Hathout, a local Muslim leader whose harsh rhetoric on Israel generated accusations of anti-Semitism and extremism.
The four commissioners who voted in favor were outnumbered by five who abstained and four who were absent.
Hathout’s victory marks the first time a Muslim-American has received the commission’s award.
In what Commission President Adrian Dove called a “tough hearing,” the public body ended weeks of uncertainty by reaffirming its vote to confer the John Allen Buggs Award for excellence in human relations on Hathout, despite opposition from much of the organized Jewish community. Detractors had portrayed the chairman of the Islamic Center and senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as an apologist for terror and called his past criticism of Israel veiled anti-Semitism. Hathout and his supporters have countered that he supports a two-state solution, has long renounced terrorism on theological grounds and for years has worked closely with local Jewish groups to bridge the chasm between Muslims and Jews.
Five commissioners — Donna Bojarsky, Vito Cannella, Rebecca Isaacs, Eleanor Montano and Mario Ceballos, abstained. Bojarsky, public policy consultant and founder of L.A. Works, a volunteer-service organization, is the child of a Holocaust survivor; she suggested that the honor had been tainted by the process and the controversy and that the commission should recognize Hathout’s contributions by making him the keynote speaker at its Oct. 5 awards banquet.
She said she abstained because she believes to do so “was the best thing for human relations.”
In a reflection of the highly charged emotions, Allyson Rowen Taylor, associate director of the American Jewish Congress Western Region, said she believes commissioners lacked the courage to vote against Hathout.
“They’re afraid of the Muslim community burning cars, burning effigies and burning synagogues,” Taylor said after the meeting.
Read it all.