Islam Is Most Misunderstood Religion in US (Al-Barf Alert)

WASHINGTON, 19 February 2005 — The Council for American Islamic Relations, CAIR, is known as the outspoken advocate for Islamic and Muslim rights in the United States since its inception in Washington ten years ago. A leading watchdog and Muslim advocacy group, CAIR has 31 chapters nationwide plus those in Canada.

Its mission, it says, is “to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.”

Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, recently discussed with Arab News how Muslim Americans are coming to grips with life in the US after the 9/11 tragedy, and CAIR’s role in helping Muslims in the US who have been targeted, and sometimes attacked, in the aftermath of 9/11.

The US media are not helping, but rather cultivating a misunderstanding of Islam, he says. “There is a developing trend in the US to portray Muslims as bad guys on entertainment shows,” said Awad. He cited the example of a weekly series, called “Fox 24,” which is broadcast throughout the US and the world, had an Islamic terrorist sleeper cell woven into its plot.

The unfortunate twist Fox used portrayed the terrorists as typical neighbors. Awad said CAIR was concerned that the portrayal of the family as a terrorist “sleeper cell” would cast a shadow of suspicion over ordinary American Muslims and could increase Islamophobic stereotyping and bias.

CAIR met with representatives of the Fox network and expressed its concern that the TV program could enflame anti-Muslim sentiment. The officials were cognizant of CAIR’s concerns and, to Fox’s credit, agreed to broadcast a CAIR public service announcement to network affiliates to be aired during “24.”

Fox also gave CAIR representatives assurances that the program would be balanced in its portrayal of Muslims. Network representatives said that they had already reviewed existing episodes and removed some aspects that could potentially be viewed as stereotypical.

CAIR then contacted its members nationwide with the news. “We thank Fox for the opportunity to address the Muslim community’s concerns and for the willingness of network officials to take those concerns seriously in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation.”

It was all in a day’s work at CAIR. Nihad says TV shows and movies can create a negative impact against the Muslim community. “The saddest thing for Islam, with its 1.2 billion people, and one of the three Abrahamic faiths, is that it is so unknown and so misunderstood by the most sophisticated society on the Earth, the United States. It’s mind boggling.”

Awad blames the media for the stereotypes and misconceptions, which remains most Americans source of information about Islam, he said, and which he calls “ignorant and biased.” Asked if he thought networks were deliberately biased, Awad said: “In some cases, yes, if these networks carry out ideological trends and represent a certain constituency, you can see they’re try to send a certain message about Islam.”

But, Awad said the rest of the media are ignorant; and the problem is: “They don’t know they’re ignorant. When they bring credible individuals to speak about Islam, it benefits both the stations and the viewers. This happened a lot more before 9/11. Unfortunately, now I don’t see a realistic and positive coverage of Muslims in the media and therefore the attitudes are becoming ‘dangerously negative’.”

The result is easy to gage. According to a Cornell University poll, 25 percent of Americans believe in anti-Muslim stereotypes, and 44 percent approve reducing the Civil Rights of American Muslims. “This despite the fact that not one single American Muslim has been linked to 9/11, and that the hundreds of arrests after 9/11 have not led to any convictions,” said CAIR’s director.

This misunderstanding of one-fifth of the world’s population influences, in the worst way possible, how US public opinion and decisions are made vis-à-vis the Muslim world, said Awad.

“As Americans, we are already suffering from bad decisions and bad policies by the US toward the Muslim world.”

The administration, he said, should welcome input from qualified individuals who could offer expert advice on how to format policies that affect America and the Muslim world.

“To date, this administration has been perceived as relying on the rhetoric of the extremist Christian right regarding Islam and the Arab world. We have seen this in numerous statements by those close to the White House,” said Awad.

“Take, for example, Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, who said Islam is a wicked religion; and evangelist Jerry Falwell who accused Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) of being a terrorist; and Gen. Boykin who claimed that Muslims worship an idol. This is very hard for any Muslim to swallow.”

It’s “no secret” that the image of the US is worse than ever in minds of both Muslims and non-Muslims, said Awad, who was born in Palestine and raised in a refugee camp in Jordan.

“We have reached the lowest point ever in US-Muslim relations due to our misguided policies. The US supports injustice against Muslims, supports regimes that do not promote democracy and sides with the ‘wrong guys’,” said Awad. To bridge the growing gap between the US and the Muslim world, Awad said, the US government “should utilize a very important component of American society - it should use the American Muslim community.”

Courageous lawmakers must rectify these policies to ensure the US does not repeat the mistakes of the past, said Awad, citing the “wrong, misguided policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is viewed by Muslims worldwide as a great injustice. There is also the war in Iraq. People believe the prison abuse issue runs through the political chain regarding torture.”

To ameliorate the situation, CAIR has met with officials at State Department and proposed they create an annual worldwide report on Islamophobia, which would enable them to monitor incidents and immediately address them. “This would be similar to the State Department’s annual report on anti-Semitism worldwide, because no one can deny there are growing anti-Muslim sentiments and misunderstandings in the US and in the West.”

It seems that being formally exposed as a terrorist support group by U.S. senators hasn’t fazed the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In the first weeks of 2005, the same organization excoriated by Senator Charles Schumer for having “intimate links with Hamas” was once again rallying support in the press for American Muslims whose civil rights allegedly were violated by U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The victims: a group of 40 Muslims – some of them American citizens – crossing the Canadian border on their way back from a weekend in Toronto, where they attended a conference titled “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” (RIS). Their grievance: being held at the border for six hours and singled out for questioning and fingerprinting by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents solely (they allege) on the basis of their religion. Homeland Security officials claim they acted on specific information regarding terrorist involvement at conferences like RIS, but CAIR shrugged off the explanation as a cover story for racial and religious profiling, and called for a “formal investigation.”

This story is a familiar one. Over the past 10 years CAIR has carved a niche for itself in the American political landscape by serving as the representative for Muslim citizens who believe they have been subjected to violence, discrimination or discomfort because of their religion. Each year, CAIR publicizes and collects accounts of these “hate crimes” – most of them unquestionably heinous – and publishes a report that blames them entirely on the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies. (For my full analysis of CAIR’s 2003 report, click here.)

But the case of Muslims at the Canadian border and the ongoing political backlash demand special attention. First, the concerns of anti-terrorism officials are certainly warranted by the radical reputation of the RIS conference. Second, whether or not the grievances of the victims are justified, the involvement of CAIR and another Islamist group, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), points to a much larger problem: radical Islamists seeking to exercise influence over federal policies designed to stop terrorism. And insofar as the security of America’s borders are concerned, such influence cannot be tolerated.

The ‘Reviving the Islamic Spirit’ Conference

Weeks before the December 24-26 RIS conference, the Toronto Sun hailed the event’s “international line-up of top Islamic scholars and speakers.” A closer look at the roster, however, reveals personalities well known for preaching radical intolerance and violent anti-Americanism.

Headline speaker Imam Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, for example, once told a gathering of the Islamic Circle of North America, an organization reported to be connected with terrorist organizations in Pakistan, that “jihad is the only way.” As Stephen Schwartz reported in the Daily Standard, following Yusuf’s own complaints of problems at the border, the longtime radical has seen his popularity and political influence grow since recasting himself as a moderate after 9/11.

Also present was Imam Bilal Philips of Qatar – formerly a Communist Party activist in the U.S. and Canada – who has admitted to playing an active role in converting U.S. soldiers to Islam during the first Gulf War at the behest of the Saudi government. In an interview with the Saudi-owned London weekly al-Majallah, Philips revealed that he was employed by the Saudi military and put in charge of setting up a “Saudi Camp for Cultural Information” at the U.S. army barracks in Al-Khubar, Saudi Arabia, and at least two other U.S. camps. Philips claims that in the five months after Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, his operatives converted 3,000 American soldiers to Islam. Philips told al-Majallah, “Western culture, led by the United States, is the enemy of Islam.”

Giving a presentation to RIS attendees titled “In the Spirit of Forgiveness” was Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj. It was a fitting subject for the Imam. Wahhaj testified on behalf of convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, and is widely believed to have been an un-indicted co-conspirator in the attack. The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Barrett reported in 2003 that Wahhaj believes the FBI and CIA are the “real terrorists.”

Perhaps most interestingly, the searches at the Canadian border were not the first time that the RIS conference has drawn the attention of American counterterror officials. In 2003, Soliman Biheiri, a board member for the now-defunct American Muslim Council, was arrested and charged with providing material support to terrorists as “the financial toehold of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” Court documents filed by Special Agent David Kane identified Biheiri’s business partner, Tareq Suwaidan, as a speaker at the 2003 RIS conference, where he told the crowd:

“It [the West] will continue to grow until an outside force hits it and you will be surprised at how quickly it falls. . . . It is the duty of local Muslims to help cure America’s inner decay.”

Suwaidan, also known to be a leading figure in the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood, was invited back to address the RIS in 2004. Obviously, the Department of Homeland Security is justified in being concerned.

The Islamist Playbook

As federal officials firmly stood their ground following the incident, articles in the press decrying the controversy and publicizing CAIR’s demands for an investigation continued throughout January. In early February, DOJ officials promised to meet, within the next two months, with members of the Western New York Chapter of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) to hear their concerns over the incident.

This sequence of events gives an all-too-familiar insight into the political strategy of radical Islamist groups. First, CAIR or another of its Islamist kin complains loudly to the media regarding an alleged violation of civil rights. Sympathetic media outlets then report the claims, with little scrutiny of who is making them and why. Federal agencies, anxious to avoid embarrassment over the contentious issue of civil liberties, then agree to meet with the leaders of these groups, who air concerns and offer policy advice that would supposedly make the War on Terror more amenable to the American Muslims they claim to represent.

It is a pattern that has been used repeatedly by Islamists to gain access to policymakers at all levels of government. In 1997, CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, was appointed by Bill Clinton to the civil rights advisory panel to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. Since 9/11, the Council has met with the FBI director, the secretary of transportation, and officials from the White House, State Department and Department of Justice.

Unfortunately, CAIR and other Islamist groups seeking to affect changes in U.S. anti-terrorism policy are inextricably linked to the very terrorist network that U.S. officials are trying to disrupt.

Since September 11, 2001, for example, no fewer than three CAIR officials – Randall Todd Royer, Ghassan Elashi and Bassem Khafagi – have been found guilty on charges related to major counterterrorism investigations. Royer, a former communications specialist with CAIR, was charged with providing material support to al-Qaeda. Nihad Awad has stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.” Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper has defended Saudi financial aid given to families of suicide bombers. At a congressional hearing marking the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Senator Richard Durbin stated that CAIR is “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.”

MPAC, whose officials will soon be meeting with DHS agents in New York, has defended Hezbollah and lobbied against the designation of the group, along with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as terrorists. MPAC, which also collects reports of hate crimes via its Web site, actively discourages Muslims from cooperating with anti-terrorism investigations. It is also interesting to note that MPAC’s Western New York Chapter was until 2004 a regional affiliate of the American Muslim Council, whose leader, Abdurahman Alamoudi, is now serving a 23-year prison sentence for conducting financial dealings with Libya aimed at assassinating the Saudi crown prince.

When groups that voice support for Hamas and Hezbollah and have employed alleged associates of al-Qaeda are meeting with Homeland Security officials in charge of protecting our borders, it can no longer be considered community outreach; it is subversion.

What Must Be Done

The solution is simple. Federal agencies must cease to meet with officials from Islamist organizations known to be affiliated financially, materially or ideologically with identified terrorist groups. The fact checking will not be difficult; all of the evidence featured in this article is a matter of public record and easily accessible to anyone who can navigate the Internet. Nor should it be difficult to realize that those who are so eager to give their counsel to policymakers almost certainly have a political agenda of their own.

Community outreach by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies is certainly a noble endeavor, but without the necessary precautions it is ripe for exploitation by the targets of their mission. What’s more, by agreeing to meet with groups like CAIR and MPAC, counterterror officials lend credence to these groups’ claims of being legitimate representatives of America’s Muslims. If our officials continue to take this legitimacy for granted, peaceful American Muslims who do not subscribe to the Islamist ideology will find it ever more difficult to defend their own traditions and freedoms against politically empowered groups like CAIR. Finally, the Islamist strategy of cozying up to counterterror officials while simultaneously sowing distrust of their work in the community serves to intimidate Muslims who might otherwise cooperate with investigations and could thwart future attacks.

Nowhere do these lessons in political strategy require more immediate consideration than in the case of our borders, the points at which our most dangerous enemies will surely challenge us. And just as we must ensure that our borders remain impervious to terrorists, we must also ensure that our political institutions and the agencies charged with protecting those borders remain impenetrable to the influence of radical Islamism.

I have a few questions about your comments:

1) Where do you get the idea that the "muslim messiah" was a pedophile? I assume that you are referring to Mohammed.
### Yes, Muhammad is a pedophile. He married a six year old girl and sexually abused her when she was 9 years old. her name is Aisha aka Ayesha.

2) Capital punishment is the only circumstance I know where beheading is permitted. Many American Christians also agree with capital punishment. The only difference is that Americans prefer the electric chair, the gas chamber or lethal injection. Who are you to criticize them if you do almost the same thing?
### Hey duck head, no body is criticizing capital punishment here. Are you drunk with the wine of pedophilia or what? He is talking about beheadings and bombings. yup, since they are done in the name of Jihad and in islam, Jihad is a struggle for Allah, yup they are approved by the violent book of Jihad aka Quran.

Suicide bombings are not approved anywhere in muslim religious writings. Martyrdom however is accepted. ### Hmmm, must be fools to believe in martyrdom giving a free pass to 72 wide eyed virgins.

Christians have done the same thing: think Crusades. (Maybe since Islam is 500 years younger than Christianity, they are at different stages of development.)
### Yea, what did Christians do? They took back the holy land that was illegally and violently taken by the Islamists. And note that Crusaders are not Christians. They are Catholics. there is a fundamental difference between protestant Christian ideology and Catholicism.

3) Women in Islam actually had much positions in society at one time than Christian women did. Islam calls for women to dress modestly. It does not call for them to necessarily wear veils or burqas. ### Yea yea, what kind of positions, social status does women in islam have? Quran, says women are inferior to men. And also prescribes beating women. get rid of the thought of 72 virgins and read your Quran with a little extra concentration. if not the Jinn will get you :))

Some ethnic groups have different interpretations of modesty. This is why Persian women wear veils and Bosnian women do not. This is the same reason why Italian girls at the turn of the 20th century could not go anywhere without a chaperone, whereas modern American girls can go pretty much anwhere. ### Ahuh. Yea, American girls are hot and free unlike the rats in Middle East.

4) Jews and Christians have similar attitudes to other who do not share their religion. Jews are encouraged not to mingel with Gentiles. I would say Judaism is actually a fairly exlusive or possibly even racist religion as it implies that Jews are somehow superior since they are "The Chosen People". ### For your information, Jews have contributed tremendously to Science and technology. probably, everyday in your life, you must be using alteast one item created/invented by a Jew. So suck it up and live and let live. Christians, what? What did they do to you? Did they behead anyone in Saudi or middle east or in USA? Did they blow up WTC with planes?

Christians are encouraged to mingle with non-Christians, however the attempt is to convert them to the "better way".
### You are blatantly wrong. "Love they neighbor". Does it ring bells in your brain? Oh, by the way, that love is unconditional...irrespective of who you are.

Obviously most Christians, Jews and Muslims do not practice their religion in a fundamentalist manner, however there are some of every faith that the rest look bad.
### Fundamentalism as in islamic fundamentalism does not exist in Christianity. That is the promise of New Testament.
While, the fundamentalist islam, on the other hand, encourages killing of non-Muslims via Jihad.

Fundamentalist Christians impose their morality on others through "Moral Majority" and other political voting blocs. Iranian Fundamentalists currently run a theocracy in Iran.

Fundamentalist Muslims who blow themselves up to be martyrs are doing the same thing that Christian Crusaders did for their belief hundreds of years ago. ### Again, get your facts right. Crusaders did not blow Muslims up. They had to wage their crusade to re-capture the Holy land occupied by rats.

How can you blame them if your own faith tells you to do the same thing? The only thing to do is try to understand each other and work out a compromise. ### there is no way to compromise with the people that follow the violent book of Jihad. It simply is not possible unless they abandon their idealogy.

Everyone has a right to his own religious beliefs and morality. You cannot save people by force. If a person's actions are guided by duress, then that person's character hasn't changed.

Botton line is that I agree that Islam IS misunderstood and that if you really study the Koran and the Bible you will notice there are many similarities. In fact, the Koran says some pretty nice things about Moses and Jesus.
### I studied Koran. Koran does not even come close to what Christ preached. While Christ preached "love", the violent book of Jihad preaches "Women are inferior to men", killing non-Muslims in the name of Jihad, beheading by smiting the non-Muslims,Infidels at their neck and cutting from opposite ends. Christ has NEVER preached such non-sense.

Oh, by the way, I am not a Muslim nor a Christian.
But of course, I am certainly an infidel.

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