The Council on American-Islamic Relations, founded by Hamas supporters and seeking to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States, has engaged in so many morally dubious activities that there's a bibliography of my writings on not trusting CAIR; also, America's self-styled "Largest Civil Rights and Advocacy Organization" has played so many dirty tricks on me that I finally had to document these in both an article and then a follow-up blog.
This pattern comes to mind because, for once, I managed to get a little justice vis-à-vis CAIR. Last September, it issued one of its ritualistic studies purporting to show the rising tide of anti-Islamic hatred in the United States (funny: if it's so awful here, why do Muslims keep coming into the country?). This one, Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States, regurgitated the usual specious research (i.e., "the inner core of America's Islamophobia network enjoyed access to at least $119,662,719 in total revenue between 2008 and 2011"). It also featured a picture of me on the cover and four times within, on pp. 6, 7, 14, and 32, a picture that happens to be owned and copyrighted by me, and one which I did not grant CAIR permission to use.
 CAIR's original cover. My copyrighted picture is in the fourth row from the top, on the right. |
When I wrote CAIR demanding (among other steps) the removal of this picture, it replied that its use of my picture is "not an infringement" of my rights. But when educated about American laws and confronted with the possibility of a lawsuit, it offered "in the interests of resolving this matter amicably, … to replace Mr. Pipes's picture with one from the public domain" as well as to destroy its existing stock of paper copies of this study. As it turns out, CAIR did more than this: it not only removed the offending picture of me from the new version, but it took out all pictures of me and of every other individual discussed in the study, perhaps because it sought to resist further such problems.
 CAIR's revised cover, with all the pictures gone. |
Comments: (1) It's satisfying to remind the spawn of a terrorist organization how things work in a law-abiding country. (2) This incident occurred at about the same time that CAIR lost a case it supported in Michigan, where an effort to intimidate a private citizen who opposed the opening of an Islamic school backfired, leading to the quashing of subpoenas and its side having to pay her court costs. (3) I hope these two small victories over CAIR inspire others to resist its predations. (July 5, 2014)
