Posted on 12/12/2003 8:12:04 PM PST by BobbyK
Questions For The Council
On American-Islamic Relations
The Council on American-Islamic Relations struck another pose of “righteous” indignation. CAIR launched a campaign to protest the statement made on December 4 by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey that Islam is "a religion that encourages killing." When Harvey made that inflammatory statement, he was discussing cockfighting in Iraq.
CAIR´s campaign of faxes and e-mails apparently motivated Harvey to retract his statement, saying through a stand-in that Harvey had been reminded that Islam is a "religion of peace."
There is nothing Paul Harvey needed to retract or for which he needed to apologize. However, CAIR needs to answer a great many questions and has yet to do so.
Many Muslims honor people of other faiths and do not kill. Many have even made their own peace with the West and our traditions of tolerance. The work of those who have not can be seen in terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and the millions of Muslims that support, often quite vocally, their bloody work.
Muhammad stated quite clearly: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform As-Salat (prayers) and give Zakat (obligatory charity), so if they perform all that, then they save their lives and properties from me except for Islamic laws, and their reckoning (accounts) will be with (done by) Allah."
Muhammad answered quite clearly in response to a question about what the "best deed" is after belief in Allah that it is "To participate in Jihad (Holy fighting) in Allah's Cause."
These are only two quotations of many in the religious documents of Islam that indicate at its core its beliefs are different from the way that Judaism and Christianity have evolved. For one, the Qur'an is considered by Muslims to consist entirely of words spoken by Allah himself. When the Qur'an urges violence, as it does in the notorious "Verse of the Sword" ("Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them," Sura 9:5) and many other passages, all too many Muslims believe that they have been given a command from Almighty God that must be obeyed.
CAIR ignores this, and demands that others ignore it, too, despite mounting evidence that radical Muslims are using such passages to recruit terrorists even here in the United States. Now CAIR is crowing that it has also bullied Paul Harvey into pretending that these Qur'anic exhortations to violence do not exist.
CAIR's hands aren´t clean: CAIR officials have never explained how people who had important affiliations with CAIR, including their community affairs director, had been arrested on terrorism-related charges. Nor have they ever made a full disclosure about the backing CAIR has received from organizations affiliated with Saudi Arabia's extremist Wahhabi sect.
CAIR has brazenly offered to arrange a summit meeting between its select list of American Muslim leaders and Harvey. If Harvey decides to go, he should not be buffaloed, but be armed with the facts and ask tough questions.
Robert Spencer, Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, posed eight questions to CAIR in a March 10, 2003 article "Speak to Me, Ibrahim!" that appeared in FrontPageMagazine.com.
Question: The Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud gave CAIR $500,000 for its program to put books and tapes about Islam in American libraries. The American Muslim leader W.D. Muhammad has said that when Saudis give money to American Muslims, they say, "We're gonna give you our money, then we want you to…prefer our school of thought." Were these books and tapes approved by Islamic authorities belonging to the Saudi Wahhabi sect?
Question: CAIR's stated intention in the library campaign is to help Americans learn about Islam "as a religion of peace and justice." How is this goal consistent with financing from Wahhabis, a sect so fanatical and extremist that it sanctions violence against non-Muslims and even against Muslims it considers heretical?"
Question: Why, when terrorist groups around the world use the words "Islam and Jihad" in their names, are people who ask questions about this fact tarred by CAIR as having an "anti-Muslim agenda?" What is CAIR really doing to sever the worldwide connection between Islam and terrorism?
CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives.
It's not Paul Harvey who should be called to account, it's CAIR. When will the mainstream news media realize this?
How could anyone confuse the religion love jump to such a quantum leap.
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