Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.
--Yousuf Karsh
by Jerome du Bois
Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article about the latest CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) hate crime report (hat tip: lgf). Little Green Footballs points to a post by Michael Wade at A Second Hand Conjecture which questions the veracity of some of CAIR's claims. That post led me to Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha and their investigation of last year's CAIR report. Based on what I already knew about CAIR, I wasn't surprised to find that their reports are riddled with distortions, exaggerations, and outright lies.
But all this reading reminded me of something that supposedly happened right here in the Valley of the Sun, reported by Bushra Khan, Office Manager of CAIR Arizona.
You can read about it here, as dutifully and uncritically posted on the Arizona Republic's pluggedin "blog."
When I first read this, I believed it, and regretted that the "middle-aged couple" gave these local Muslims more discrimination ammunition. CAIR picks nits to make the most obsessive-compulsive whiner you ever met green with envy, and this incident was a lot worse than picking nits. Perhaps I believed it because Catherine and I have been victims of assault; we know how vicious some people in this town can be.
But now, after my recent reading and my knowledge of CAIR, I doubt that it happened at all. And I'm not the first; in fact, I'm late to this party: both Daniel Pipes and the website Anti-CAIR posted their doubts as well. And Douglas J. Hagmann, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, followed up by calling both the police and mall security, including the officer on duty in the mall that day. It's worth reading what he discovered.
After examining CAIR Arizona's website in detail (I won't link it; just google "cair arizona" to find it), I have some speculations about what went on here, which readers are of course free to take with as many grains of tabbouleh as they wish.
(Aside: CAIR Arizona must know that many non-Muslims doubt their veracity, and that by now many more than four percent of Americans have done research on Islam and its practices, including taqiyya, which is lying for the greater good of their faith. If they want people to think they're on the up-and-up, they should have a disclaimer at the top of their website declaring that they repudiate this practice. Of course, that could be an example of taqiyya itself, couldn't it? O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. I guess they have to live with it.)
1. Bushra Khan and her crew wanted to draw negative attention to the movie United 93, but not by directly attacking the movie, which shows homegrown American heroism in action.
2. They had to have known, over the past several years, of the deceitful practices of their own nationwide organization, in which false reports were believed; and, even when exposed later as false, were already embedded in the public mind as true. They had ample precedent, and implicit endorsement, for prevarication.
3. On CAIR Arizona's website, you find only three incidents of anti-Muslim activity, including this "mall assault." I think they felt this just wasn't enough; they weren't holding up their end as professional victims; what would the other 31 CAIR locations think of them?
4. So they made this whole thing up. It never happened.
And, by the way, what happened to this woman at the hands of CAIR's national vice-chairman, Dr. Ahmad Al-Akhras, was a lot worse than Bushra Khan's fiction. You think anyone at CAIR, from any of their offices, would ever apologize for what this sonofabitch did? Dream on.
These CAIRacters have no character. And it shows.
Posted by Jerome at September 20, 2006 07:54 PM | TrackBack