Solsticewitch13's BOS: Hamas-linked CAIR shows its true colors, calls genuine anti-terror Muslims "anti-Muslim"

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Hamas-linked CAIR shows its true colors, calls genuine anti-terror Muslims "anti-Muslim"

Another from the Mighty Atlas

Hamas-linked CAIR shows its true colors, calls genuine anti-terror Muslims "anti-Muslim"

The Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front group CAIR pretends to be moderate. But here, the mask slips.

CAIR Slams Muslim Foes of al-Shabaab IPT News, November 15

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) campaign of discrediting critics reached a new low last week, when it called two Minneapolis activists "anti-Muslim" for their participation in a seminar which included a discussion about an Islamic terrorist group in Somalia.

Both Omar Jamal and Abdirizak Bihi are Muslims. But CAIR's Minnesota chapter attacked them over their involvement with a seminar on Somali culture and their communities in America held Thursday in St. Paul. It was sponsored by the Center for Somalia History Studies, an organization founded earlier this year by former Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

The seminar, which cost $150 per person to attend, covered a wide array of topics including "Clans and Sub Clans"; "The Ethiopia Issue"; "Black Hawk Down"; "Youth Gangs"; "Transition to America" and "Somali Culture."

One subject in particular incurred CAIR's wrath. It was entitled, "Al Shabaab: An Islamic Extremist Terrorism Organization." Al-Shabaab is an al-Qaida affiliate.

CAIR and nearly 30 other groups, ranging from the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society to local mosques and Somali community organizations, complained that the description of al-Shabaab "fails to distinguish between Islam and terrorism."

CAIR-MN President A. Lori Saroya warned that conference attendees "will receive inaccurate and biased information about Muslims and Somalis." She expressed concern that the seminar would result in "a lot of bias and misinformation. "

Fletcher said before the conference that he had invited CAIR to attend to give its perspective. Saroya denied the group had received an invitation, but added that Somali groups wouldn't attend because that would give "legitimacy" to Bihi and another Shabaab critic: Jamal, a former activist in the Twin Cities who currently serves as a member of Somalia's United Nations delegation.

"These individuals, who have no credibility in the Somali community, are going to be educating law enforcement," the CAIR-MN letter read.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Jon Tevlin, who attended part of the conference, wrote that it "seemed like a pretty straight-forward history lesson." An hour of the daylong presentation was dedicated to al-Shabaab, "but considering that 20 young Somali men have been lured from the Twin Cities to fight with the organization, it only seemed logical. Very little was about religion, and I saw no criticism of the Muslim religion, only of terrorist acts," he added.

CAIR's Minnesota chapter previously came under fire for refusing to criticize al-Shabaab.

CAIR's comments about Bihi and Jamal amount to "character assassination," said Tom Lyden, a reporter for Fox 9 News in Minneapolis. The two are targets because they "were the first to blow the whistle on the effort to recruit Minnesotan Somalis for terrorism in Somalia," he said.

Three of the men who disappeared from the Twin Cities in recent years "would later become suicide bombers in Kenya and Somalia for the terror group al-Shabaab," Lyden wrote on his blog. "That stance earned them a seat on CAIR's bad side."