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Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR
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| By Margaret Weiss December 25, 2006 |
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On December 4, 2006 representatives of the United States Department of State and Department of Homeland Security, along with several other agencies, met with American Muslim organizations at a conference to discuss "Islamophobia" and US-Muslim relations.
The meeting was arranged in part to answer concerns of American Muslim leaders who claim that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is quickly increasing in the US.
The government said that while the number of anti-Muslim incidents in the US have increased moderately, use of the term "Islamophobia" to describe the trend only furthers the divide between the Muslims and many Americans.
Many claim that what Muslims are quick to label "Islamophobia" is, in fact, a fear of a repeat of September 11.
Noted blogger and Islam expert Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch.com, reacted in dismay to the US government's involvement in such a conference. Spencer claimed that it should be obvious why Islamophobia exists, if at all, and questioned why the government would associate with the likes of Nihad Awad, among others. A brief look at the figures involved in the conference explains why.
Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) who spoke about hate crimes against Muslims in the United States frequently has declared his support for both the PLO and Hamas.
In addition, when CAIR was invited to attend a meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, Awad responded negatively, saying, "The American Muslim community has not been adequately represented at congressional hearings in the past." Some insist that Awad's outright refusal to participate on account of Muslim under-representation will only further that problem."
His letter continued, "Looking at the witness list and theme for this hearing, I can say with great confidence that this hearing will be used to vilify and defame the American Muslim Community." In other words, Awad is claiming that the purpose of a subcommittee of the US Congress is to slander Muslims.
In addition to Awad, other notable CAIR members include CAIR's Director of Community Relations in 2003, Bassem Khafagi, who was arrested for his connections to a terror- financing front group he helped found. The group allegedly had ties to Iraq and al Qaeda.
Siraj Wahhaj, a CAIR Advisory Board Member in 2003, is considered an unindicted person who may have been a co-conspirator in the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
At the conference, Nihad Awad presented data compiled by CAIR which indicates that crimes against Muslims have risen 29% in the last year and in the ten years since 1995 (when they began collecting data). What is one to make of this data?
According to Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, the authors of "CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense," not much. They examined the hate crimes CAIR mentioned, only to find that, "Of twenty 'anti-Muslim hate crimes' in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid -- and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances." For example, CAIR lists as a hate crime the burning of a market owned by a Muslim in Texas. However, within a month the owner was arrested for setting the fire to his market. This latter detail is of course left out of CAIR's analysis.
CAIR cites an even more unbelievable incident -- the 1996 shooting of a man named Ahmed Hamida in Jerusalem after he drove into a crowd of Israeli civilians, killing one and injuring twenty-three. It is difficult to accept that CAIR got away with classifying the death of a terrorist in Israel as an example of an American hate crime. Needless to say, CAIR has not corrected these mistakes.
According to the chair of the conference, Muqtedar Khan, "the government's case was very clear; yes there are disturbingly large numbers of incidences that suggest that prejudice is at work, however the overall picture indicates that things are not as bad as some Muslim leaders were claiming them to be."
The government played down the severity of the problem. Despite the criticism coming from representatives of the American-Muslim constituent of government inaction, the representatives did not put forward a strategy to address the problem themselves. Rather, a paper distributed to participants entitled "Blaming Islam" concludes that the US government must "demonstrate that its concerns about human rights and democracy are genuine," and follows with a list of recommendations. They begin, "The US government should..." There were no recommendations for the Muslim community in the US. |
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