Why don't Americans care about CAIR?

Submitted by Gloria (United States), Jul 29, 2005 at 15:01

On the same day that the Pipes/Chadha story on CAIR was published in FrontPage, the AP reported that American "Muslim Scholars Condemn Terrorists."

In a fatwa, the 18-member Fiqh Council of North America said Muslims were barred from helping "any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence." Also, "There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism."

That sounds hopeful. However, the article goes on to cite other groups and individuals in the U.S. and Britain on the same point – CAIR among them.

First, they report that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is running a TV ad and petition-drive called "Not in the Name of Islam," which repudiates terrorism.

Then, in response to the Muslim leaders' complaints "that their repeated condemnations of terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks have been ignored by critics," the story quotes Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, as saying "We have been speaking repeatedly, clearly, unequivocally for years, even before 9/11. But apparently some people have just started to hear us." CAIR is presented in the story as "a civil rights organization based in Washington."

How is it that nearly four years since 9/11 most of the U.S. media is still blind to the true character and motives of CAIR? And why is it that most of the people I know have never even heard of CAIR? Part of the reason, I'm sorry to say, might be found on this very website.

Although we all know this website is a bastion of ...information, the link to Nihad Awad (see above article) will bring you to a biography of Awad from The Pluralism Project, a religion committee at Harvard, that doesn't give the slightest hint that CAIR is anything but a respectable "civil rights organization" and Awad an accomplished person who simply helps "CAIR carry out successful campaigns against major corporations- resulting in the recall of products offensive to Muslims."

If media researchers can't easily get the truth about CAIR on this website can you blame the U.S. press for continuing to characterize CAIR as a harmless, benign organization?

It is certainly time for ... groups like CAIR, four years after 9/11, to be household words in America. And yet, as I write, only 88 people care enough about Islamic radicals to be online at this website.

Why are Americans so disinterested in the war on terrorism and what can we do to spread the word more effectively?

Gloria

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".