This morning, while driving into the city, a one hour ride extended to two hours courtesy of the New York City Transit Worker's Strike, I heard an interesting news item on NPR. Apparently, CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, has made a public plea (helpfully amplified by government supported NPR) for any Muslims who have been subjected to discrimination and/or burdensome and intrusive searches by the TSA, to come forward in order to support a law suit the organization is planning to bring over such presumed discrimination.
In the past CAIR has been in the forefront of efforts to accuse Americans of anti-Muslim bias despite minimal evidence that such bias has swept the Nation, including in the time frame immediately after 9/11. Many in the blogosphere have raised questions about CAIR's behavior and the ties between CAIR leaders and terrorist groups. Little Green Footballs has an extensive archive of articles about CAIR its members, and their activities. On the other hand, the MSM has served mainly as amplifiers of CAIR's claims of discrimination.
It is worth doing some thought experiments to get a better sense of where CAIR's interests lie; are they apologists for Islamic fascists or simply overly sensitive defenders of their religious cohort, in the image of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League or the Italian American interest groups which protest against the portrayal of Italian mafioso on the Sopranos?
During WWII, the "just war" that in retrospect was supported by almost every American (though fiercely opposed prior to Pearl Harbor by the German-American Bund and the isolationists, mostly on the right), Japanese-Americans, suspected of dual allegiance were rounded up and put into internment camps in order to protect the country from potential saboteurs. During the 1950's, between the Rosenberg espionage and the Middle East War, the charge of divided allegiance was frequently bandied about in reference to Jewish-Americans, the group perhaps most familiar with the charge since WWII. Most Jews, and Jewish organizations, went out of their way to stress their primary allegiance to the United States, even when the US policy was harmful or in opposition to the policies of the state of Israel. (Notice how diffident major Jewish organizations have been in regard to the case of Jonathan Pollard, whose spying for Israel did not threaten Americans or our National Security in a particulalry meaningful way.) Like most hyphenated Americans, they had some loyalty to the land of their people, but they were thoroughly assimilated Americans who considered themselevs Americans first. Likewise, even the most sensitive Italian-American fraternal organizations would not hesitate to criticize a politician or criminal simply because he is also an Italian-American. We might see some tendency to excuse evil in someone identified as a member of one's group in the current aggrandizement of Stanley Williams, but this has as much to do with (left/liberal, grievance/entitlement) politics, as ethnicity. Perhaps the closest we can come to overt apologists for terror have been the Irish-American organizations which supported the IRA in their fight against Great Britain. As in the present case, the Media were extraordinarily slow to recognize that the IRA, whatever its initial inspiration, was a terrorist thugocratic group, rather than a democratic movement for freedom and independence.
CAIR is in an ambiguous position, somewhat similar to the Irish-American groups that were IRA sympathizers, but with one crucial difference. The IRA was using terror in foreign lands and was not a direct threat to Americans; the various Islamist groups around the world, some of which are running states of their own, directly threaten every American and thus, present a threat of a different order of magnitude. People like Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer have been consistent in arguing that Islam itself authorizes dissembling and obfuscation if it will further the aims of Jihad. They also point out that the traditional meaning of Jihad is of an armed struggle to further the domination of Islam over all others. There is very little in the historical record, at least since the 1920's (and Gates of Vienna would argue since the 1400's; the link is to a recent post on the threat of Islamic expansionism/colonialism), that would give one any comfort in suggesting the basic doctrines of Islam have moved far from that position. Of great concern, as I have written before , the Muslim Moderate continues to be most conspicuous by his absence.
Rather than express their chagrin over Islamic involvement in 9/11, groups like CAIR have almost immediately raised the specter of anti-Muslim bias, usually without even a perfunctory apology for their coreligionists. This occurs predictably after almost every outrage that has a connection to Islam. The latest example is the resounding silence from most of the Islamic world at the genocidal ravings of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. CAIR has joined in the silence.
Now CAIR, having studied their hosts, are becoming more and more adept at using various parts our social system to silence their critics and minimize scrutiny of questionable activities and groups. This seems to me to be, at the very least, poor behavior in a guest; at worst, their behavior are disguised acts of war.
The next time CAIR leads a protest against discrimination or threatens lawsuits for libel when someone criticizes a Muslim, consider this:
Methinks, to paraphrase Shakespeare, that wisest of commentators on the human condition, that CAIR "doth protest too much".
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