My latest in PJ Media:
It was a spectacular case of bad timing: the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that former New York City mayor and new presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg apologize for a counterterror program that operated on his watch – just as a Muslim was arrested for plotting a jihad massacre on the city’s subway system.
Farhana Khera, the leader of Muslim Advocates, demanded that Bloomberg “disavow this program.” CAIR’s Ahmed Mohamed sounded a religious note, saying that Bloomberg must “see the error of his ways and apologize.”
What did this terrible program do? The New York Post explains: “Basically, cops (mainly Muslims themselves) merely went to Muslim areas to become more familiar with them and gain background info for future investigations or leads on possible attacks.” As if that weren’t innocuous enough, the Post adds that “despite three lawsuits, no court ever found fault with the program, and the NYPD never admitted to any wrongdoing, even in settlements pushed by Mayor Bill de Blasio after he won on a cop-bashing platform.”
The judge in one of those lawsuits said that the plaintiffs had not proven that “they were targeted solely because of their religion.” He said that the “more likely explanation for the surveillance was to locate budding terrorist conspiracies.”
Who could object to that? CAIR, of course. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.
The group’s outrage at the NYPD program isn’t singular, either: CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented. Just the sort of group that ought to be directing our counterterror efforts, no?
There is much more. Read the rest here.