{"id":4756,"date":"2010-09-22T13:19:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T17:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/?p=4756"},"modified":"2010-09-22T13:19:20","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T17:19:20","slug":"daily-caller-cair-tries-to-squash-criticism-of-agenda-through-intimidation-and-lawfare-critics-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/?p=4756","title":{"rendered":"Daily Caller: “CAIR tries to squash criticism of agenda through intimidation and lawfare, critics say”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Caller<\/a>, September 22, 2010<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cIslam isn\u2019t in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth,\u201d San Ramon Valley Herald reporter Lisa Gardiner<\/a> wrote when summarizing the message of Council of American Islamic <\/span>Relations (CAIR) founder Omar Ahmad to a Muslim audience in 1998.<\/p>\n

But if yours is an Islamist<\/a> organization, operating as a mainstream advocacy group in a country that has not accepted Allah as supreme, how do you remain relevant and keep Islam on a pedestal? Answer: sue, coerce, and intimidate those who say or write things damaging to the image of the faith and its followers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since their founding in 1994, CAIR has sued and\/or attacked with consequence such media outlets as: The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, The National Post, National Review, Anti-CAIR, various talk radio hosts, and college newspapers. Recently, even The Daily Caller has found itself caught in CAIR\u2019s crosshairs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really impossible to know how many people have been intimidated with these lawsuits because if you read the original letter they sent to me, you know, \u2018don\u2019t discuss this with anybody else.\u2019 How many people have succumbed to that and said, \u2018hey, we don\u2019t want to get involved in this,\u2019 and they\u2019ve quietly gone away,\u201d Andrew Whitehead, a blogger CAIR sued in 2004 for defamation, told The Daily Caller.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, it was difficult to find individuals to go on the record for this article about CAIR\u2019s alleged intimidation tactics for just that reason, as well as safety concerns of sources.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whitehead\u2019s case eventually was dismissed in 2006 after CAIR refused to disclose pertinent information (including the origin of its funding and their alleged connections with Hamas and other radical organizations) requested by the defense during the \u201cdiscovery\u201d phase of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

CAIR, billed by some as the country\u2019s largest \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslim rights group, is alleged by others to be in reality a radical front group with ties to terrorists and a record of unsavory dealings \u2014 which caused<\/a> the FBI<\/span><\/a> to end all of its dealings with the group in 2009.<\/p>\n

According to Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, the CAIR\u2019s primary directive is safeguarding radicalism. \u201cTheir actual mission, on the record \u2014 which is demonstrated by their public record from the beginning \u2014 is to advocate for and protect the influence of Hamas, the Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, Pakistani radicals. I mean they are interested in legally protecting radical Islam,\u201d Schwartz told TheDC.<\/p>\n

Despite such concerns, the group continues to wield a great deal of power as the purported mouthpiece for \u201cmoderate\u201d Islam both in government and in the media.<\/p>\n

According to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, CAIR frequently meets with members of Congress and the administration on an unofficial basis. \u201cThey are not doing terribly well, in the sense that they are officially somewhat banned, but they are unofficially doing quite well and should that ban be reversed they will have great strength,\u201d Pipes told TheDC.<\/p>\n

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With the threat of Islamaphobia in their back pocket, CAIR agilely has been able to steer the media\u2019s narrative. And what they cannot accomplish with press releases and influence peddling, they achieve through threats and lawfare.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2005, Rabiah Ahmed, a CAIR spokeswoman,\u00a0told<\/a> The New York Sun that lawsuits had become an \u201cinstrument\u201d for the community. \u201cThe Muslim community realizes that it has to respond to these allegations and to these attacks, otherwise, the people who are promoting these defamatory remarks will win in the court of public opinion.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But even before that admission, CAIR was leveling suits against publications that crossed them. In 2003, CAIR sued National Review for an apparent error which appeared in an article by a guest reporter. National Review acknowledged the mistake, but the group pushed forward with their suit, bringing National Review to court. National Review won in the end, but, in the process, spent more than $65,000 in defense costs. \u201cWe viewed this as an attempt to intimidate and punish NR. We probably could have settled early and cheaply, but we took the more principled route \u2014 we fought back,\u201d National Review wrote<\/a> in a letter appealing for donations.<\/p>\n

CAIR also has been able to terminate careers. In 2005, despite widespread listener support and lip service to the importance of free speech, ABC radio fired Michael Graham from D.C.\u2019s 630 WMAL in the wake of threats and pressure by CAIR for his criticisms<\/a> of Islam as a terrorist organization. \u201cWhat was told to me by people who would have knowledge of this inside ABC Disney was, CAIR sent out an appeal to people with large stock holdings in Disney and people from the Middle East responded to the appeal and pressured ABC Disney to dump me,\u201d Graham said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, has been observing CAIR\u2019s tactics for years. \u201cThey are completely removed from all responsibility of reform and the ideological problem and to them it is all about intimidation and somehow putting the fear of God into people so that they think it is going to prevent it from happening again,\u201d Jasser said. \u201cAnd then they get up and start telling America about Islamaphobia, when they\u2019re creating phobias\u2026.It almost seems like their role is to inflame Muslims against their own society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwartz added that CAIR is not just focused on going after the \u2018big fish\u2019 as they want to show their might in any way they can. To them, no target is too small. \u201cThey concentrate on small issues, and small conflicts or complaints because they want to build themselves up in the Muslim community, local Muslim communities. So they try to spread their stuff out as much as possible,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily Caller, September 22, 2010 \u201cIslam isn\u2019t in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth,\u201d San Ramon Valley Herald reporter Lisa Gardiner wrote when summarizing the message of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,109,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-115","category-articles","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cairunmasked.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}