…as CAIR keeps pounding away at an increasingly contrite-sounding Dennis Prager. “Controversy follows Dennis Prager to Yorba Linda,” by Christopher Goffard in the Los Angeles Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:
When talk-show host Dennis Prager wrote a column in November decrying a congressman-elect’s decision to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the Bible, he argued that it would “embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones.”
In a column for Townhall.com, Prager wrote that Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, “should not be allowed” to swear on the Koran because “the act undermines American civilization.”
Soon, the Los Angeles radio host was at the center of the biggest controversy he has faced during decades in public life. Op-ed pages around the country rushed to pillory him. The Anti-Defamation League condemned his remarks. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch characterized him as a bigot and called for his ouster as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
Now, the tumult is extending to Prager’s scheduled appearance at the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, where he will speak tonight on “Islam, Iran, the West and Israel.”
The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling him an “Islamophobic speaker,” while the director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California has said he “seeks the marginalization of American Muslims.”…
Rabbi David Eliezrie, who heads the Yorba Linda congregation, said the criticism of Prager in a press release issued Monday by the Islamic relations group was “outrageous” and “akin to a blood libel.”
“I think CAIR in this case has smeared a wonderful Jewish leader, somebody respected by Jews all over the country, in a despicable fashion,” Eliezrie said….
“If they were interested in dialogue with the Jewish community, they would have sent me a gentle letter” or placed a phone call, Eliezrie said. He added the group was trying to bully into silence those who disagreed with its positions.
“I have great skepticism of CAIR,” Eliezrie said. “I haven’t seen them condemn specific groups who are involved in terror in the Middle East, and that to me is very scary.”
The council describes itself as a mainstream civil-rights organization. In an interview with The Times, the group’s Southern California spokeswoman Munira Syeda generically condemned “terrorist actions” but declined to condemn Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. “I don’t understand what the relevance is,” Syeda said.