A month after the Hamas-linked Islamic supremacist hate group CAIR tried to intimidate the FBI into apologizing for inviting me to speak in Virginia some time ago, Politico noticed the story and asked the FBI about it. The FBI, which is on to CAIR, wouldn't throw the wolves any red meat.
"FBI defends invitation to Islam critic," by Ben Smith at Politico, August 31:
The FBI is defending its invitation to a prominent critic of Islam in America, who is also one of the leaders of the fight to stop a downtown Manhattan mosque and Islamic Center.The Council on American Islamic Relations complained late last month that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihad Watch site and is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, had spoken to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force, a combination of state, federal, and local law enforcement centered in Norfolk, Virginia.
Spencer, along with his confrontational stand toward the New York project, has long been at odds with Muslim leaders for alleging links between American Muslim leaders and extremism. He has also been a critic of the religion of Islam itself, suggesting that the historical Mohammed, for instance, did not exist, and that the portrayal of him in the Qaran [sic] is of a "con man."
Highly compressed and tendentious. A fictional con man? This is what happens when ideologically biased reporters in a hurry try to summarize positions they don't understand.
"Our nation's law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, who also noted that Spencer and blogger Pamela Geller recently published a book subtitled, "The Obama Administration's War on America."But the chief division for the Norfolk FBI field office, Phil Mann, defended the invitation to Spencer.
"We invite speakers who represent a variety of viewpoints and the special agent in charge of the Norfolk office has invited local Muslim leaders to speak to his staff. That doesn’t mean we enodrse [sic] our [sic] adopt the view of any particular speaker," Mann said. "Broad knowledge is essential for us to better understand and respond to the threats that we face. Knowledge also helps us defeat ignorance and strengthen relationships with the diverse communites that we serve." [...]
Spencer responded to a question about CAIR's attack with a link to his own press release on the matter, dismissing CAIR as a "hate group" and citing praise of his work from prominent conservatives.
Smith doesn't tell his readers, of course, that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Nor does he mention that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Or that several of its former officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Or that two of its other officials have made Islamic supremacist statements. Nor does he mention that CAIR also was involved in the Flying Imams' intimidation suit against the passengers who reported their suspicious behavior.
CAIR's attempt to intimidate the FBI and JTTF and dictate their choice of speakers contained numerous false charges, defamation, distortions, and outright lies about me, SIOA, and Pamela Geller.
CAIR has a long record of duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.
Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:
* Ghassan Elashi, founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, in 2009 received a 65-year prison sentence for funneling over $12 million from the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation to the jihad terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians
* Mousa Abu Marzook, a former CAIR official, was in 1995 designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a "terrorist and Hamas leader." He now is a Hamas leader in Syria.
* Randall Royer, CAIR's former civil rights coordinator, in 2004 began serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding al-Qaida and the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai jihad massacres.
* Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America, which was linked to al-Qaida. After pleading guilty to visa and bank fraud charges, Khafagi was deported.
* Rabih Haddad, a former CAIR fundraiser, was deported for his work with the Global Relief Foundation (which he co-founded), a terror-financing organization.
In 1998 Omar Ahmad, CAIR's co-founder and longtime Board Chairman, said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
After he received unwelcome publicity as a result of this statement, Ahmad denied saying it, several years after the fact. However, the original reporter, Lisa Gardiner of the Fremont Argus, stands by her story.
CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper once said: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
So I asked Smith why he didn't tell his readers any of this. He responded by saying that he already had told his readers about CAIR, just yesterday, in fact -- and directed me to this piece, which, as you'll see, says nothing about CAIR's Hamas ties or anything else, but instead actually touts CAIR, weirdly, as an "alternative" to Hamas. Smith explained in an email to me: "I understand that you're asking me why I didn't restate the entire case against CAIR, and their response, your response to them, and so on, in my blog item. This is a complaint of a form I get five or ten times a day. I write a blog, and mostly take little bites of stories. I was writing a small item about your appearance -- and your prominence around the mosque issue, and your stance toward obama [sic], make that of modest interest to me, and to readers in general I think, beyond the context of CAIR's complaint -- to speak to the FBI. There are a lot of things I don't write every day, and the history and controversies around CAIR were, indeed, among them."
Every day, or any day. Par for the course for the mainstream media.
