CAIR’s Minnesota chapter led a personal attack on the credibility of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi in connection with their planned presence at a conference whose literature described al-Shabaab as an “Islamic extremist terrorism organization,” to which CAIR took exception.
There are at least two noteworthy aspects to this story: First, the threats are a reprise of the old chestnut “Say Islam is a Religion of Peace, or we’ll kill you.” The second is that CAIR is caught in its own game, for as hard as it has worked to cast all criticism as incitement to a violent “backlash,” at least where Islamic teachings and advocacy groups are concerned. How about their intense criticism of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi? If CAIR Minnesota is to hold itself to the standards it imposes on others, it would have to apologize, shut up, pay up, and disband.
Then again, claiming victim status tends to require a certain ideological pedigree, and the right connections. “FBI Investigating Facebook Death Threats on Somali Advocate,” by Tom Lyden for Fox 9 News, December 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
MINNEAPOLIS – The FBI and local police are investigating death threats against Omar Jamal, a well-known leader in the Minneapolis Somali community.
Jamal says he began receiving the threats a few weeks ago on his Facebook page. Those threats are allegedly coming from Mogadishu and the terror group al-Shabaab.
Jamal tells FOX 9 he began receiving those threats after the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) criticized him and another Somali leader for being anti-Muslim .
The FBI is searching Facebook records to see if it can identify the individual sending the threats.
Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi were the first to blow the whistle on the effort to recruit Minnesotan Somalis for terrorism in Somalia . Three of the young men who disappeared from Minneapolis would later become suicide bombers in Kenya and Somalia for the terror group al-Shabaab.
That stance earned them a seat on CAIR’s bad side, and the group recently sent a letter attacking both men’s education and experience while asking local police departments to boycott a Thursday conference where the two will be keynote speakers.
“These individuals, who have no credibility in the Somali community, are going to be educating law enforcement,” the letter read in part.
Yet, both men have been consulted by government leaders in the past. Jamal is now a United Nations representative of the Somali government. Jamal has also spoken before the National Press Club and has been sought after as a spokesman for the Somali community.
They decided to talk about something no one wants to talk about. That’s where they seem to have gotten into trouble.