Posted on 04/08/2003 9:01:42 PM PDT by Happy2BMe
April 7, 2003:
Today’s Washington Post reports the complaints of the Council on American-Islamic Relations against the appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Pipes is of course well-known to NRO readers as a critic of extremist Islam--and as a defender and champion of the moderate Muslims who are extremists’ first victims. Pipes’ carefully researched work offends CAIR, and no wonder: While CAIR presents itself to the press and the U.S. government as a civil-liberties organization, Pipes keeps track [http://www.danielpipes.org/article/321] of the group’s true purposes, avowThe Pipes Appointmented in places where it assumed nobody was looking. Thus it was Pipes who brought to public attention this 1998 statement by CAIR’s chairman, Omar M. Ahmad: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
CAIR has also militantly opposed (Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes) the war on terrorism. It has denounced both the Iraq war and also--as early as October 2001--the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Despite their antiwar record, representatives of CAIR believe themselves to possess great influence with the U.S. government, and they are now organizing to block Pipes’ appointment. It will be an important symbolic victory for them if they can succeed--not just because they will have scored a point against Pipes, whom they detest, but also because they will have demonstrated their ability to bend the U.S. government to their will. As Pipes has written [http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2001-10/25/article2.shtml] in another context, groups like CAIR “are demanding ... that the United States take a giant step toward applying within its borders the strictures of Islamic law (the shari'a) itself. A basic premise of that body of law is that no one, and especially no non-Muslim, may openly discuss certain subjects--some of the very subjects, as it happens, that CAIR wishes to render taboo."
WHO DO YOU BELIEVE? APR. 8, 2003:
Yesterday I posted a story on the opposition of the Council on American Islamic Relations to the appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. I cited Pipes’s own work about CAIR and its beliefs--and specifically this 1998 statement by CAIR’s chairman, Omar M. Ahmad: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." Mr. Ahmad e-mailed me later in the day with this statement: “Mr. Frum,
“My name is Omar Ahmad and I am the Board Chairman of CAIR. I wanted to let you know that the statement that Pipe attributed to me are false and pure fabrication. I never said these things and I challenged Pipe before to produce his evidence and he did not.
“Omar Ahmad” So I asked Daniel Pipes to authenticate the quote. He sent me the following, an article from the San Ramon Valley Herald, dated July 4, 1998.
American Muslim Leader Urges Faithful to Spread Word Lisa Gardiner San Ramon Valley Herald July 4, 1998 FREMONT--The chairman of a national Islamic watchdog group urged Muslims Thursday not to separate or assimilate to American society, but instead to deliver Islam's message.
Omar M. Ahmad, chairman of the board of the Council on American-Islamic relations, spoke before a packed crowd at the Flamingo Palace banquet hall on Peralta Boulevard, urging Muslims not to shirk their duty of sharing the Islamic faith with those who are "on the wrong side."
Muslim institutions, schools and economic power should be strengthened in America, he said. Those who stay in America should be "open to society without melting (into it)," keeping mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam, he said.
"If you choose to live here (in America) . . . you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam," he said. "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant, " he said. "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth," he said.
Ahmad was one of three who spoke as part of an Islamic Study School session entitled, "How Should We As Muslims Live in America?" Also speaking were Sidi Hatem Bazian, the director of Al-Qalam, an Islamic institute affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, and Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, director of the Zaytuna Institute, which is affiliated with the Islamic Studies School.
Ahmad spoke against people trying to impose values -- such as environmentalism or vegetarianism -- onto Islam, and only taking ideas from the faith that conform to personal opinions.
"One of the challenges is understanding the totality of Islam. Don't come up with an opinion and find out the things that support it in Islam," he said. "Everything we need to know is in the Koran. We don't need to look somewhere else."
Recently, the Council on American-Islamic relations challenged running shoe maker Nike when it printed the name of Allah in Arabic on a running shoe. Nike withdrew the shoes from stores, and agreed to build some basketball courts for the Muslim community, said Feraidoon Mojadidi, director of the Islamic Studies School.
There are about 150,000 Muslims in the Bay Area, Mojadidi said. The Islamic Study School in Hayward is a non-profit, non-political school that has courses on Islam. Thursday's conference, which also included prayers, dinner and Koran readings, was organized by the school to help reconnect American Muslims with their heritage. "We live in America, and a lot of us go to school here," Mojadidi said. "What we're trying to do is remind people in America, let's not forget our way of life."
The Iraqi They Hate:
It’s customary to preface antiwar comments with a perfunctory condemnation of Saddam: “Nobody opposes the Saddam Hussein regime more than I do, but ...” The people who can’t seem to work up much of a head of steam against Saddam do, however, get lathered up at the mention of the name of Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. The New York Times this morning condemns him in an editorial--while a nearby op-ed by a professor at Georgetown urges the United States to accept as the legitimate government of Iraq whichever colonel ends the war in control of Iraq’s surviving armed forces: “Mr. Chalabi, who has not lived in Iraq for any length of time since 1958, cannot credibly surrender. Unless Saddam Hussein surrenders--and that is highly unlikely--an Iraqi who has been in the country for much of his regime needs to be willing to sue for peace with the United States. ... Who runs postwar Iraq will depend in large part on who surrenders to the United States. The most likely leaders of postwar Iraq are in Iraq today.”
The intensity of the animosity to Mr. Chalabi defies rational understanding. He’s detested by the CIA for being too independent--and by Western enthusiasts for militant Arab nationalism because he is not independent enough. He’s accused of authoritarianism in his management of the INC, and then mistrusted by the State Department because of his undue interest in Iraqi democracy. The Saudis hate him because he’s a Shi’ite by background; the Middle Eastern studies types in this country despise him because he is a tolerant secularist. He’s variously called a tool of the Iranians--of the oil companies--and of course of the Zionist lobby. What Chalabi is in fact is an Iraqi patriot who wants to do his utmost to establish the rule of law, representative institutions, freedom of religion, and a market economy in his country.
Americans of all points of view--from the Defense Department to the faculty lounges of Georgetown University--all agree that the West should not impose a president on Iraq. But surely the West ought also not to ban any democratic person from becoming president? Yet to listen to his critics in the academy and the bureaucracy, a Chalabi government would be much more unacceptable than a neo-Baathist strongman.
Sheesh! This Omar Dude needs to be renamed.... to Baghdad Bob! Must be their shared "values" eh?
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