Replay to Orange- There is CAIR and then there is Caring...

Submitted by Chris G. (United States), Jul 25, 2007 at 21:07

Actually Orange, the articles do interest me. I stated earlier that their leadership is essentially FUBAR. My only experience with them is with one local chapter and its head who is a very secular-minded Pakistani lady.

I've also seen some leaflets distributed in mosques by them about modernizing the mosques which got a lot of Muslims pissed off. So from my vantage point it seems like CAIR is a mixed basket with both good and bad individuals. Sadly there is not any organization to really take its place. ACLU maybe? But not any other Muslim organization set up nationally.

Actually there are a few others but they don't get much recognition. There is the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee but most people never heard of them and my local chapter broke up because the older guys didn't like the fact that a woman was running it. That group nationally is made up of not only Muslims, but also Christian Arabs as well.

As for the hate crimes, I witnessed, the majority were not serious and included seeing a woman in a hijab being spat on and then a friend being shoved after verbal insults. Being unsure of his student visa status between college semesters he chose not to try calling the police and we didn't escalate the situation but rather just walked off. The most serious incident I will not get into but it was reported by another witness and the culprit was caught but was found to have mental illness.

The reason why I won't go into it, is that I prefer to keep my location anonymous as I don't need any more added interference with my research. You are right, I shouldn't have even mentioned any of the CAIR stuff. I'm not defending them, and you're probably right that they are some HAMAS front. I was just giving you my experience with one lady who worked for CAIR. In my experience it was very positive and I find it sad that they are linked with Hamas. That is just idiotic on their part. But I seriously doubt this lady is associated with Hamas. She's barely even a practicing Muslim and is not liked by the local Imams because she tries to speak for the whole Muslim community and they resent that. If I see her again, I'll ask her about what she thinks of the info you posted. I'm sure she's seen it. For all I know she may have left CAIR but I do know she's still active in civil rights stuff.

At any rate, as far as sympathy for American Muslims is concerned, I was serious about challenging you to dress up in some kind of Muslim clothing and Muslim head gear. Then go and ride public transportation. That will give you a taste of the crap Muslims in America have to put up with, especially women who are more visible with their hijabs.

Talk to ANY Muslim woman who wears a hijab and guarantee you that she has tons of stories about harassment and assaults. If you don't believe them or that all harassment of Muslims is a myth, try my experiment. You can buy the Middle-Eastern clothes cheaply at most Middle Eastern specialty stores.

If anyone talks to you pretend you speak broken English.

Chris G.

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