In July 2005, I wrote this about MPAC’s “National Anti-Terrorism Campaign”: “the concern here seems to be less on rooting out jihadists from within American Muslim communities than on protecting Muslims from uncomfortable attention from law enforcement.” And note their refusal to denounce Hizballah, etc., noted below.
Pamela Geller has the details over at Atlas Shrugs:
The communists over at the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of
the gravest threats to freedom in the United States, as named in the AFDI Threats to Freedom Index,
try to suppress the truth about the SPLC’s subversive and dangerous
ties. But this conference is revealing — and comes as no surprise to
longtime Atlas readers. The SPLC’s Mark Potok and his paid stooges never met a jihadi they didn’t like.
The SPLC doesn’t even have a category for Islamic jihadi groups or
Muslim Brotherhood groups, whose stated goal (according to an internal,
captured document) is to
eliminate and destroy Western Civilization from within. The greatest
threat facing our nation, our people, our world, and they are
shilling for them and smearing those of us who are fighting for the
preservation of our freedom.An Atlas reader sent me an exchange he had with the SPLC’s Mark Potok. Reader Bob wrote, “I started out by looking on their website for a definition of
the term “˜hate group’ fully expecting that Islam would fit any
reasonable definition. When I couldn’t find such a definition (still
can’t today) I inquired.” In the course of the exchange, Potok wrote back: “With regard to monitoring radical jihadists, we have made a pragmatic decision to leave that mainly to the major Jewish NGOs, which do a good job
and have some real expertise that would likely take us years to
develop.” In other words, the real hate just doesn’t matter to the
SPLC. “Still,” Potok continued, “we do cover black Muslim extremists
and have written about such matters as the connections between
radical Muslims and neo-Nazis.”In reality, they carry water for Islamic supremacists by smearing my
organization as a “hate group.” See the revealing video about the SPLC’s
defamation of me here.And regarding MPAC, Discover the Networks has this:
Holding Israel entirely responsible for the “pattern of violence” in the Middle East, MPAC asserts that Hezbollah
“could be called a liberation movement.” The Council likens
Hezbollah members to American “freedom fighters hundreds of years ago
whom the British regarded as terrorists.” In a November 1997 speech at
the University of Pennsylvania, MPAC Co-Founder and Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati steadfastly refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization; he justified the existence of Hamas as a political entity and a provider of social programs and “educational operations”; and he equated jihad
with the sentiments of the American statesman Patrick Henry,
whose “Give me liberty or give me death” declaration was, in
Al-Marayati’s view, “a way of looking at the term jihad from an American perspective.” In a 1999 position paper, MPAC justified
Hezbollah’s deadly 1983 bombing of the American Marine barracks in
Lebanon as a “military operation” rather than a terrorist attack. As
Maher Hathout puts it: “Hezbollah is fighting for freedom, an organized
army, limiting its operations against military people, this is a
legitimate target against occupation. “¦ this is legitimate, this is an
American value — freedom and liberty.”And:
In November 2011, MPAC held a Washington, DC event in honor of Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that had recently emerged victorious in the political elections in Tunisia. Ghannouchi is a longtime Islamist
who, during the 1990s, was invited to the United States by Palestinian
Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian but was banned from the country. Yet
by MPAC’s reckoning, Ghannouchi is “one of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.”Just a few months prior to the November 2011 event, in an interview with an Arab-language website, Ghannouchi had stated
that the Arab Spring “will achieve positive results on the path to the
Palestinian cause and threaten the extinction of Israel.” Added Ghannouchi:
“I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the
bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that
Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too
far away, and Israel may disappear before this.”Here is a press release explaining the event today and calling upon the SPLC to withdraw:
National Religious Leaders Call on Southern Poverty Law Center
to Withdraw from August 15 Conference with Extremist Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)WASHINGTON, DC (August 14, 2012) — National religious and civil
rights leaders today issued a letter calling on the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC) to withdraw from a widely publicized teleconference sponsored by the extremist Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). MPAC
leaders have made aggressively anti-semitic statements, supported
Hamas and Hezbollah, repudiated moderate Muslims, and hosted a speaker
with Neo-Nazi connections to speak at their events.The MPAC teleconference is scheduled for Wednesday, August 15th
at 5:30 p.m. PST (8:30 p.m. EST). Concerned citizens are encouraged to
contact the Southern Poverty Law Center at (334) 956-8200 or email
and politely ask the SPLC, a self-described “civil rights organization
dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry,” not to participate in the teleconference with MPAC. The text of the letter follows:—–Richard Cohen, PresidentMorris Dees, FounderHeidi Beirich, Intelligence Project DirectorSouthern Poverty Law Center400 Washington Ave.Montgomery, AL 36104August 14, 2012Dear Mr. Cohen, Mr. Dees and Ms. Beirich:We note with great concern the Southern Poverty Law Center’s participation in the widely publicized teleconference
sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council on Wednesday, August 15
at 5:30 p.m. PST/ 8:30 p.m. EST, with Wajahat Ali, Ms. Beirich, and
Salam Al-Marayati, President of the sponsoring Muslim Public Affairs
Council.We urge you in the strongest possible terms not to partner with Mr.
al-Marayati or with the Muslim Public Affairs Council. To treat MPAC
as a legitimate organization, much less a valued partner of the
Southern Poverty Law Center, is an extraordinary rejection of Jewish
Americans and of moderate Muslim Americans. We present at this link (
http://www.scribd.com/doc/102897106 ) excerpts from extensively documented findings
about the statements and actions of Mr. al-Marayati and the Muslim
Public Affairs Council that surely require you, if you have any decency,
to cancel your participation in the August 15 MPAC teleconference.