I won’t comment on CAIR beyond the commentary I like to below, but I will on the Flying Imams.

They are linked to this CAIR fest because CAIR wholeheartedly supports them in their endeavors and is planning the suit for them.

The Flying Imams, ah I remember the story well.   First of all, they started, if we recall (and I blogged) with an attempt for an out of court extortion settlement which the airline rejected. I noted this at the time:

 Cha-Ching!!  I have said all along I thought the whole situation stunk, and I feel more justified every day.  I am more and more convinced this was planned and now it is moving to it’s lucrative completion.

Indeed.  Here comes the lawsuit (via Hot Air):

CAIR says flying imams set to sue U.S. Airways for discrimination

I wrote about this three months ago, not believing CAIR could be so foolish as to try to politicize airline security where the facts appear to cut against them. If, as has been suggested, their goal is getting that anti-profiling bill passed, why wake the public up with a high-profile stunt that’ll probably backfire?

Six Islamic leaders who were removed from a U.S. Airways flight in November said they will sue the airline for discrimination.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations announced the planned lawsuit on Monday and said it would provide details on Tuesday. It declined to say which court the group would sue in, or provide the name of the attorney handling the case…

Here is the Money Quote:  The men said they had done nothing that should have been suspicious.

They are apparently the only ones that think so.

Probes dismiss imams’ racism claim

Three parallel investigations into the removal of six imams from a US Airways flight last month have so far concluded that the airline acted properly, that the imams’ claims they were merely praying and their eviction was racially inspired are without foundation. 

An internal investigation by the airline found that air and ground crews “acted correctly” when they requested that the Muslim men be removed from a Minneapolis-to-Phoenix flight on Nov. 20.

The Minneapolis airport police department’s report on the incident said the imams’ behavior warranted their removal.

The Air Carrier Security Committee of the Air Line Pilots Association investigated the incident and said, “The crew’s actions were strictly in compliance with procedures and demonstrated overall good judgment in the care and concern for their passengers, fellow crew members, and the company.”

Should be interesting court theater as this will become all about profiling and not about behavior.  I encourage the Airline to stand fast.   See the Update below for more links.

CAIR also made news when they booted a CBN News reporter for asking relevant questions (also at Hot Air):

More crushing of dissent in Bush’s America. Except, of course, Bush had nothing to do with it.

You could call it an annual rite of passage for CBN News–sort of our version of March Madness. The Council on American-Relations (CAIR) holds a press conference in Washington, D.C. CBN News, in good faith, sends a reporter and camera crew to record the event and ask CAIR’s representatives the relevant questions. After all, CAIR bills itself as America’s leading Muslim civil rights organization and a shining beacon of interfaith goodwill. So who better to ask about Islamic affairs here and abroad? And yet, like a vampire to garlic, time and again, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper has ushered CBN News off the premises, recoiling at the mere mention of our name.

It happened again today, as CBN atempted to cover a CAIR press conference announcing that the six “peace-loving” Muslim imams removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last November have filed a lawsuit against the airline and Minnesota’s Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Head over to the link above to see video of Hooper getting sideways with the CBN crew. CAIR also booted the Washington Times’ Audrey Hudson out of the press conference for asking an inconvenient question. If President Bush behaved the way he’s accused of and how CAIR actually does, David Gregory, Helen Thomas, heck half the White House press corps, would be cooling their heels outside morning pressers rather than lobbing firebombs at Tony Snow.

If only…

CAIR has their defenders though, none other then the NY Times.

Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S.

With violence across the Middle East fixing Islam smack at the center of the American political debate, an organization partly financed by donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments has emerged as the most vocal advocate for American Muslims — and an object of wide suspicion.

The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, defines its mission as spreading the understanding of Islam and protecting civil liberties. Its officers appear frequently on television and are often quoted in newspapers, and its director has met with President Bush. Some 500,000 people receive the group’s daily e-mail newsletter.

Yet a debate rages behind the scenes in Washington about the group, commonly known as CAIR, its financing and its motives. A small band of critics have made a determined but unsuccessful effort to link it to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department, and have gone so far as calling the group an American front for the two.

Harsh accusations indeed.  And the author is right, except for the part where he is wrong and they have actually proven ties to Hamas, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. See below.

In the latest confrontation yesterday, CAIR held a panel discussion on Islam and the West in a Capitol meeting room despite demands by House Republicans that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, not allow the event. The Republicans called its members “terrorist apologists.”

Caley Gray, a spokesman for Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who helped book the room, rejected that label in a phone interview and said CAIR held similar meetings when Congress was controlled by Republicans. Still, Mr. Gray called back to specify that Mr. Pascrell did not endorse all of the group’s positions.

Last fall, Senator Barbara Boxer of California issued a routine Certificate of Appreciation to the organization representative in Sacramento, but she quickly revoked it when critics assailed her on the Web under headlines like “Senators for Terror

CAIR and its supporters say its accusers are a small band of people who hate Muslims and deal in half-truths. Ms. Boxer’s decision to revoke the Sacramento commendation provoked an outcry from organizations that vouch for the group’s advocacy, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Council of Churches.

Psst:  The ACLU is not one of the best references in the world….

“They have been a leading organization that has advocated for civil rights and civil liberties in the face of fear and intolerance, in the face of religious and ethnic profiling,” said Maya Harris, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California

So what of the accusations:

The group’s officials say the accusations are rooted in its refusal to endorse the American government’s blanket condemnations of Hezbollah and Hamas, although it has criticized Hamas for civilian deaths.

Well, Captain Ed did his homework and posted this rebuttal:  Read it and you decide.

Gray Lady Uses Skirts To Hide CAIR

The New York Times runs a remarkable article today on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), painting the group as a victim of bigotry and anti-Islamist fear. Neil MacFarquhar uses the latest controversy over Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell’s arrangement for the use of a House conference room by CAIR to cast criticism of the group as wholly unfounded:

Yet a debate rages behind the scenes in Washington about the group, commonly known as CAIR, its financing and its motives. A small band of critics have made a determined but unsuccessful effort to link it to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department, and have gone so far as calling the group an American front for the two. …

Government officials in Washington said they were not aware of any criminal investigation of the group. More than one described the standards used by critics to link CAIR to terrorism as akin to McCarthyism, essentially guilt by association.

“Of all the groups, there is probably more suspicion about CAIR, but when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares,” said Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. official who directed counterterrorism in the Washington field office from 2002 to 2005.

Really? All they get are blank stares? Guilt by association? For an article that purports to inform its readers of the controversy surrounding CAIR, it does its best to avoid looking for any details of the criticism it has received — which has been specific and part of the public record. Even while MacFarquhar notes Joe Kaufman, the Investigative Project, and the Middle East Forum, the only coverage he gives of their opposition to CAIR is a quote from Kaufman about CAIR being a front group.

Let’s get specific and move past any blank stares, shall we? For instance, on Kaufman’s site, they have screen captures from 9/17/01 of CAIR attempting to direct visitors to their web site to make donations for 9/11 relief to what they first identified as “NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund”. The hyperlink took people to the Holy Land Foundation’s website. The HLF funneled money to Hamas by the millions until the federal government shut it down in December 2001. Eight days later, they changed the hyperlink to identify the site as HLF and added one for the Global Relief Foundation — which also got shut down in December 2001, this time for channeling money to al-Qaeda and Hamas.

CAIR exploited 9/11 to help fund the very group that perpetrated the attack. Is that specific enough for MacFarquhar? Why didn’t he bother to note this very specific charge in his article, filled as it was with protestations of lack of specificity?

That’s not all that makes critics suspicious of CAIR. Several of its officers have involvement in terror, including the founder of CAIR’s parent group and the man who ran the Holy Land Foundation, Mousa Abu Mazook. The US deported Mazook in 1997 for his work with Hamas. Ghassan Elashi helped found the Texas chapter and served on its board until 2002 — when the US deported him for selling forbidden computer technology to Libya and Syria. Rabih Haddad worked as a CAIR fundraiser until his deportation in 2003, as well as launching the Global Relief Fund that fed al-Qaeda and Hamas. Joe Kaufman included these specifics in a Front Page article three years ago — again, something MacFarquhar apparently missed in his journalistic investigation.

In short, the Times has published an ass-kissing paean to the poor, misunderstood folks at CAIR and smeared its critics. It’s practically a textbook example of hackery; spend all of an article rebroadcasting the complaints of one side and none of it covering the specifics of the other. MacFarquhar apparently couldn’t disprove these specifics, and so pretended they didn’t exist. The result should be an embarrassment for the New York Times, if they weren’t already so incapable of shame.

UPDATE: Kaufman, not Katzman, as Noam Sayin pointed out to me. Sorry for the error. Also, I bumped this to the top. And Dafydd ab Hugh has even more thoughts and more specifics that elude MacFarquhar.

Not much I can add, follow the money.

I will add that the NY Times, CAIR and the Flying Imams, well methinks they protest too much.

UPDATE:

Some additional links regarding the Flying Imams Extortion Lawsuit:

Sister Toldjah, QandO, Katherine Kersten

Trackback URI | Comments RSS