CAIR Gets Its Man

Reader Bruce Kesler sends word that pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has resulted in suspension without pay by Washington, DC, radio station WMAL of talk show host Michael Graham. Graham, who is also a columnist at the Jewish World Review (JWR editor Binyamin Jolkosvsky has written an article on this matter), wrote a column for JWR that included these charged words:

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:

Islam is a terror organization.

For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.

Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."

But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."

Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."

Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.

And these:

And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.

Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.

Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.

His conclusion is more conciliatory, but still blunt:

As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.

Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.

Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."

But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.

He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.

Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.

All this sent CAIR into full attack mode, and they posted a call for Graham to be reprimanded by WMAL on their web site, which provides contact information for Graham's bosses and, at the bottom of the page, a donation form or CAIR.

CAIR has long used legal and commercial means to silence its critics, and over the years few have come in for more vitriolic attacks than Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. Just yesterday, Dan posted this piece on CAIR's origins. You'll want to read the whole thing. Dan maintains a running this eye-opening compendium on CAIR which shows, among other things, how the organization that demanded Michael Graham's head distributed to the Los Angeles public school system a translation of the Quran that includes overtly anti-Semitic footnotes, including this one:

"The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts.... Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

This edition has been handed out to LA libraries, free of charge, since 2002.

Update: Reader D. Finley called my attention to an error I made in the first link to Dan Pipes's work. I have corrected the link.