A Beheading in Philadelphia
Are Islamic honor killings really just "domestic violen
Well over a decade ago when I was working part-time in a Philadelphia calling center, one of the employees, an artist, asked a fellow employee if he would pose for him for a series of sketches he was doing for an art class. Although the situation seemed innocent enough, the 20-year-old employee who was asked to pose told his family about the artist’s “proposition,” and that’s when nasty stuff hit the fan.
The artist was hauled in before company supervisors and interrogated about his proposed sketches and was eventually fired, but not before the mother of the 20-year-old came to the calling center to personally interrogate the artist, demanding to know why he selected her son out of 100 employees to pose for him. Suddenly the artist found himself in a position of defending himself against charges of immorality. The proposed sketches in the mother’s mind had turned into something pornographic, which they were not. The artist explained to the mother that the sketches were to be fully clothed facial and upper body images, and nothing more. The mother seemed happy with this explanation but when the conversation was over she went to the company head and demanded that the artist be fired.
As it turned out, the mother and her family were first generation Muslim immigrants.
In Islam there can be sticky points when it comes to drawing or sketching any part of the body, be it an earlobe, chin, eyeball sockets or a facial profile. Sketching any part of the body is forbidden. In fact, there are many strongly worded hadith narrations warning against making images of living things, which before the 10th Century meant drawing and sculpture.
“Those who do this will be in the fire and they will be condemned for making imitation of nature and will be challenged to bring their artistic creations to life.”
Fortunately for the artist, who didn’t even know that the man he wanted to draw was Muslim, he sued the company and won.
In 1936, the Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc wrote,
”In Koranic law, contracts are to be conscientiously drawn up in the presence of witnesses. Murder, manslaughter, and suicide are explicitly forbidden, although blood revenge is allowed. In case of personal injury, the law of retaliation is approved.”
That law of retaliation can take many forms. In the artist’s case, it came in the form of a hypocritical, two-faced mother who led the artist to believe that all was okay, but who then turned around and went out of her way to see that his employment was terminated.
The calling center incident is a 21st Century cautionary tale — although it is a mild example compared to what usually takes place when it comes to Islamic retaliation.
In the Lawndale section of Philadelphia recently, a 41-year-old woman, Leila al Raheel, was decapitated by her 34-year-old husband in the kitchen of their home. Ahmad Shareef was apprehended six blocks from the scene of the murder, hiding behind a clump of bushes. The mainstream news media reported the crime as yet another example of “generic” domestic violence. The police even called it a “domestic homicide,” without elaborating or speculating on a motive, as well as hiding the fact that the alleged killer was Muslim.
Joanne Otero-Cruz, who runs Women Against Abuse, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, was quoted in reference to the above murder as saying, “A lot of people actually experience this. There is help out there.”
Let’s step back a moment.
Most female domestic abuse victims do not experience decapitation. Decapitation with a knife by a “loved one” has a decidedly Muslim flavor — but of course it was impossible for Otero-Cruz to reference this subtext, or to bring up the possibility of an honor killing. Had she done so this would have led to charges of stereotyping and “Islamophobia,” as every mainstream news reporter by now realizes. Multiple reports of the Lawndale murder kept to the “generic” domestic abuse scenario, as if something had gone terribly wrong in (yet another) Brady Bunch household.
Freedom Center website Jihad Watch, the notable exception when it came to reporting about the murder, published the following headline:
“Philadelphia: Muslim accused of beheading woman who was treated like a slave.”
Finally, some honesty…
Most of the big news media outlets mentioned nothing about the victim being treated like a slave, although NBC10 did manage to quote a neighbor of the victim, who said, “The woman…they treat her like a slave. She runs in and out of the house barefoot. She really never goes anywhere else. She carries all of their bags in. They scream at her…”
The neighbor, Nyiha Richardson, also told reporters that she had witnessed “several problems at the home in the past, including Shareef running outside half naked and threatening neighbors to the point in which one family moved away.”
NBC10 also reported that neighbors stated there were mental health issues in the home, and that the home has been a problem for a long time. Charges of “Islamophobia” kept reporter after reporter from connecting the dots and writing about this unusual method of execution (beheading) and its connection to an Islamic household. Was this fact not newsworthy?
Why did readers have to go to Jihad Watch to discover that Ahmad Shareef was Muslim?
“One in four women experience domestic violence, one in 10 men, so the reality is that people are experiencing domestic violence every day,” Otero-Cruz elaborated, as if decapitations were as common as black eyes and a broken jaw.
On the other hand, Jihad Watch stated,
“There is, of course, domestic violence in all cultures. So to post this is just ‘Islamophobic,’ right? Wrong: there is domestic violence in all cultures. But only in one does it have divine sanction. Islam doesn’t teach that man may kill his wife, but once you’ve allowed him to beat her, accidents will happen,”
The U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 (a time when the DOJ had more credibility) identified four types of honor violence: forced marriage, honor-based domestic violence, honor killing and female genital mutilation. The DOJ report estimated that 23 to 27 honor killings occur per year in the U.S. and that over 90 percent of the victims in North America are killed for being “too westernized.” Many of the cases involve fathers and daughters 18 years of age or under. Muslims account for 91 percent of honor killings worldwide.
Facts are facts.
But not all Muslims, mind you. Certainly not the nice, secular Muslim family in my immediate neighborhood whose domestic life seems indistinguishable from any other household in the area, except perhaps the time the family in question celebrated the gutting of a deer on the floor of their garage for the whole neighborhood to see. Yet again, these are non-practicing secular Muslims who probably don’t even own a Koran, although if one were to walk in certain sections of West Philadelphia near 45th Street, one would see vast Muslim enclaves and a large mosque with a Byzantine-style dome that used to be a Catholic Church.
Here the mostly black Muslim population dresses in traditional Islamist garb while they make their way from one halal restaurant to the next. While it’s all not quite Dearborn, Michigan—long criticized by conservatives for its Sharia law tendencies (which would include honor killings)—one senses that it is a building community, so who knows what the future holds?
The national reluctance to be straightforward about Islam can be traced to George W. Bush’s bizarre “acceptance” of Islam after the attacks of 9/11, when he went out of his way to visit mosques and to call Islam a “Religion of Peace.” Orwellian double-speak like this carried over into the Obama administration when Obama refused to use phrases like “Islamist terrorism” to describe the brutality of ISIS. It was also Obama who made the peculiar comment at a National Prayer Breakfast that Christians attacked Muslims 800 years ago at the height of the Crusades.
Shortly after 9/11, the mainstream media’s primary concern focused on unprovoked attacks on Muslims as retribution for the murder of so many Americans on that fateful day. Media personalities and politicians suddenly had to watch what they said about certain passages in the Qur’an in discussions about terrorism, such as the 47:4 verse that explicitly states, “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…”
Both Obama and Bush believed—feared is a better word—that any emphasis on Islam as the world’s foremost harbinger of terror would generate wide-scale attacks and assaults on Muslim Americans, which never did occur. In fact, as Michael Barone of the Chicago Sun Editorial Board pointed out, “government statistics count far fewer ‘hate crimes’ against Muslims than against Jews.”
Barone also stated that most terrorists these days are Muslims; and most Muslims are not terrorists: “We keep similar things in mind every day. We notice that most dangerously aggressive drivers are men, but most men are not dangerously aggressive drivers. “
In 2016, Fox News, quoting experts, pointed out that hidden among thousands of nondescript murders labeled as domestic violence are mounting numbers of killings motivated by a radical interpretation of Islam. “Honor killings and violence, which typically see men victimize wives and daughters because of behavior that has somehow insulted their faith, are among the most secretive crimes in society.”
And there you have it.
AHA Foundation founder and female genital mutilation survivor Ayaan Hirsi All, wrote, “In sharp contrast with domestic violence, families and communities often condone honor violence, which makes it more difficult to identify and stop.”
Thom Nickels
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism.
‘They Cut Their Throats’
The severe persecution Christians experienced in just one month under Islam.
The following are among the murders and abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of October 2022:
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): On Oct. 1, machete-wielding militants of the so-called “Allied Democratic Forces” (ADF), which in fact is a wing of the Islamic State, slaughtered 14 men and women in a surprise attack on a village in the Christian nation (96% Christian, 1% Muslim). According to a separate report, the bodies of those hacked to death “were found bearing signs of torture.” Before leaving, they torched the village, destroying the survivors’ livelihoods, and abducted two children.
Again, on Oct. 5, the jihadists slaughtered between 10 and 20 Christians, including a pastor, during a raid on another village, which they also torched before leaving. An additional 20 villagers were also reported as missing. According to a survivor, “I heard them. They were shouting in Arabic and Swahili, saying that the kafirs [nonbelievers] should be killed, all of them, and make Congo an Islamic state. Shoot all of them. Kill all of them, and burn their houses, these notorious Christians.”
On Oct. 19, during another raid on another village, the jihadists burned two people alive, one of whom was a nun, Sister Marie-Sylvie Kavuke Vakatsuraki, of the Little Sisters of the Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple, from Butembo. Discussing the “terror” of that midnight assault, Father Marcelo Oliveira, the Portuguese-born head of the Comboni Missionaries in the DR Congo, said,
The ADF rebels attacked the village, and more precisely the hospital. They looted everything they could find, taking medicines, and at the end they set fire to the building. A nun, who is also a doctor and was on night duty, was burned alive, along with a patient….. [Once the hospital was destroyed] the rebels continued on their way and set fire to another hospital nearby.
The report adds that,
As soon as she realized that they were under attack, Sister Marie-Sylvie called the local parish so that the priests and religious could flee. Otherwise, the situation could have been even more tragic. Besides the two victims, there are many people still unaccounted for and who were likely taken by the jihadists to carry the looted goods.
Father Marcelo concluded: “The terror continues. The people are afraid, everybody tries to escape. This is a hidden war, silent—or silenced—so that nobody does anything, and the population continues to suffer.”
Discussing the ongoing terrorization of the DRC, one human rights group said:
These predominantly Christian communities are attacked by an Islamic extremist group with a clear Islamic expansionist agenda…. It is a reminder of what is happening in other parts of the central Sahel region – groups like Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, for example. The ideology, the agenda of establishing a ‘caliphate’ in the region, and the way they operate is the same, and we can see how they afflict terrible suffering on innocent people.
An Oct. 5 report offers more details on the current situation:
The ADF—which the Islamic State group claims as its Central African offshoot—is among the most violent of more than 120 armed groups active in eastern volatile DRC. It has been accused of slaughtering thousands of Congolese civilians and carrying out bomb attacks in neighbouring Uganda. The DRC and Uganda launched a joint offensive against the ADF in November 2021, but the militia continues to wreak havoc across swathes of territory.
Nigeria: Some of the genocidal assaults on the West African nation’s Christian population throughout the month of October, 2022, follow, in no particular order:
On Oct 18, Fulani raided three Christian villages, where they slaughtered more than 70 Christians in central Nigeria.
On Sunday, Oct. 16: two gunmen stormed and opened fire on Celestial Church during worship service. A Christian woman and her young daughter were killed and several others hospitalized. According to a survivor, “when they entered, they started shooting at every one outside the church. I now went and hid inside a cassava farm. What I saw yesterday was like an action film in a movie. Kogi is no longer safe.” Jerry Omodara, a security official, said that “It looked like it was organized against that particular church, because their altar was burned with petrol they went with.”
On October 4, Muslims connected to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) raided a village where they killed three Christians and wounded dozens of others. According to a resident, “The ISWAP terrorists also set fire to six houses and looted five shops belonging to Christians in the village, and afterward burned down the shops.”
During an Oct. 21 late night raid on a Christian village, Muslim Fulana herdsmen slaughtered two Christians. According to a resident, “A Christian woman … was injured when the herdsmen cut off one of her breasts. The herdsmen during the invasion of our village shot randomly at our people who were sleeping in their houses.”
After an Oct. 8 night raid on his village, Peter Ahemba said, “Ten corpses of Christians killed during the attack on Gidan Sule community were recovered on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 9, by survivors in the community. The attackers, who we strongly believe are herdsmen and terrorists, shot sporadically on Christians who were sleeping in their houses.” Most of the Christians killed were women, children and the elderly, who were unable to escape.
Mozambique: More details were revealed concerning a fatal terror attack on a Catholic mission where one of the nuns, Maria De Coppi, 83, was shot in the head and killed as she ran towards a burning dormitory to assist the few remaining students hiding there. According to Bishop Alberto Vera Aréjula of Nacala,
This was told to us by one of the brothers of one of the victims. He said the terrorists were dressed in military uniform, they gathered the population, and they said it was because they were here to save them. When they were all gathered, they started asking who is Muslim and who is Christian. Those who identified as Christian, they started tying their hands behind their back and they cut their throats. One Christian managed to flee and he is the one who told the story. This is what happened on the night of Sept. 6 and the following day—11 people were murdered in total and they left a trail of destruction and a lot of fear.
Of the 83-year-old nun, Sister Maria, Bishop Alberto said,
I knew her, and she was the image of a mother, she was really helping everyone with simple love and humility…. Sister Maria de Coppi was a nurse who would help malnourished children in a little room where there was milk and flour, and they destroyed that room as well. The Sister they murdered worked with malnourished babies and children, [and] they are telling us very clearly that they don’t want us there. For now, we won’t return there, but we will work with the mission in another way.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches
West Bank: On Friday night, Oct. 28—Friday being the one day of the week Muslims meet in mosques, where they often get riled up against infidels—dozens of Muslim men surrounded and hurled stones at a church in Beit Sahur, near Bethlehem, which is affiliated with the patriarchate of Jerusalem. Several people were injured. The attack came after a “quarrel between some young men,” a statement from church leadership said, adding, “We condemn this attack and demand that the Palestinian Authority bring the attackers to trial as soon as possible.”
Indonesia: On Friday, Oct. 7, an unknown person in the world’s most populous Muslim nation attacked the Jesus Shepherd Congregation, a Pentecostal church. Described as a “terror act,” the perpetrator arrived at the church by motorbike, barged through the gate and into the courtyard “while shouting” something (perhaps “Allahu Akbar?”). According to police, “After that, the perpetrator broke the glass and the headlight of the pastor’s car. The perpetrator also kicked the trash can and broke the window glass of the pastor’s residence before fleeing.” Bongga Lasarus, the head of Kendari city, where the incident occurred, urged Christians to be calm: “Because whether it is violence, attack, radicalism, or other acts of intolerance that interfere with the life of our nation, we must fight and persevere together.”
Pakistan: A group of Muslims forcibly appropriated a Christian community center and savagely beat Christians who dared to protest. According to the Oct. 31 report,
A Christian Community Hall was locked by the son of [a] Muslim man who later claimed ownership without authority. Christians were kept out of their own building for 24 hours after police refused to take action.
A few days after they received assistance to get police to respond and return their property, the Muslim father, Shehzad Goga, came and defaced the Christian property by splattering graffiti on the pillars of the main gate, including the phrases “Oh Allah, Oh Muhammad,” and other words claiming the property for Islam. According to eyewitness, George Choudhary,
He was hurling abuses at the Christian community while spraying this message in broad daylight. He threatened Christians of dire consequences, if someone tried to remove it. It felt as if Muslims were planning to ensnare us under false blasphemy charges, or would burn our houses like they have done to other Christians before. The community was terrified [and] many fled their homes again fearing an attack.
According to the report, soon thereafter,
[A] gang of Muslim youth … attacked the church building. They pulled down the fence and main gate of the community hall and stamped over the cross emblem on the gate in an act of defiance and hate. When Ashraf Masih a local Christian asked them not damage the property, the men attacked Ashraf Masih who ran into his home for safety. The gang broke into and entered his house where they beat him with clubs and kicks and also slapped and intimidated his wife Shaheen Bibi (45 yrs) and his sister-in-law married to his brother who was present in the shared home. They tore their clothes during the violence which the whole street witnessed. The frightened Christian community neither retaliated nor helped the beleaguered family that was attacked before them. They were all fearful that they would become the next targets and froze on the spot.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Blasphemers and Evangelists
Pakistan: Since Oct. 5, when he was falsely accused of blasphemy, the life of James Masih, a 42-year-old Christian husband and father, has been in constant jeopardy. On that day, a Muslim woman named Nazia arrived at the hospital James worked at for a medical checkup. She inexplicably began yelling at and accusing James of committing blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad. James, knowing the danger of this, rushed to his supervisor, who intervened, and, after talking with Nazia on the side, determined that James had not, in fact, blasphemed. Despite Nazia’s confession to the supervisor, someone attending her had secretly recorded her berating James for his supposed blasphemy. Before long, the video went viral on social media, and was even broadcast as “breaking news” by TV9, which referred to James as a “sanitary worker”—code in Pakistan for both Christians and the lowest of the low. Thereafter, and in James’ own words:
I knew the sensitivity of this news; it was a death warrant against me. That same night, we decided to move somewhere safe for myself and my family. Since then, I have been hiding at an unknown place. I am very concerned about my safety and that of my family, and don’t know how we can continue living here. [Blasphemy] is a very sensitive matter, and in such cases, people become very emotional. They could kill me on the spot, as normally happens in such cases. There are a number of examples where innocent people have been killed based on one person’s accusations.
According to James’ wife, Shumaila, who is acquainted with Nazia, this is simply the Muslim woman’s way of avenging herself on the Christian family A few days after a monetary dispute that had nothing to do with religion:
Nazia accused my husband of committing blasphemy. The matter was brought to the attention of the hospital’s medical superintendent who involved the police superintendent and assistant superintendent. James was found not guilty, and the matter was resolved. But this didn’t satisfy Nazia, and she wanted to teach us a lesson. This time, she has involved the media. Her false accusations have endangered our whole family’s lives, and if this matter is not resolved we have no future. My children have already stopped going to school, and we have no permanent place to live but are moving from one place to another to stay safe.
Discussing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws in the context of this case, Nasir Saeed, Director of CLAAS-UK (Centre for Legal Aid & Assistance) said,
[It is] an easy way to settle personal scores against someone. People don’t even think twice before using this law against someone, as victims of this law have to spend 8-11 years in prison to prove themselves innocent…. It is a hanging sword over the head of Christians and other religious minorities, because when someone is accused of committing blasphemy it is not against a single person, but the whole community comes under threat. Nearly 100 people, including women, have been extra-judicially killed, and hundreds more languish in jail for years for their fate to be decided. False accusers are never brought to justice, and this continues to encourage people to take the law into their own hands and make false accusations against other persons to settle their personal scores.
Uganda: On Oct. 7, Muslims attached, beat, and slashed with knives two Christian evangelists. According to Wilberforce Mutenga, 38, a father of two, he and Robert Okia, a 43-year-old father of six children, “were beaten because of taking the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to the purely Muslim community of Ikule village. We didn’t know that Muslims in this place had heard about our successful mission in Busakira village.” Before long, a Muslim mob had surrounded them:
One shouted the Islamic slogan of ‘Allah Akbar [God is greater]’ three times, and everyone began to get hold of sticks and started beating us badly….After beating us, they carried and threw us near the swamp that separates Busakira and Kigandaalo, where a herdsman saw both of us bleeding and screaming for help. The man rushed and called local authorities, who took us to a nearby clinic for treatment.
Wilberforce suffered a knife wound to his head, a dislocated knee, and other injuries to his legs. Robert suffered knife stabs to the knee and ribs, as well as hand injuries, swelling to his mouth and face and body pain throughout, all of which required he be transferred to a separate hospital for more specialized treatment.
In a separate but similar incident that was reported on Oct. 7, two other evangelists, Andrew Dikusooka, 35, and Ronald Musasizi, 26 “sustained deep knife wounds after leading several Muslims to Christ at debates on Islam and Christianity.” During one particularly fiery debate, more than usual numbers of Muslims embraced Christ. “The conversion of these people angered Muslims who began shouting to disrupt the occasion,” Andrew said from a hospital bed. Afterwards, on their way home, a group of Muslims blocked them near a railroad crossing. “They are the ones—beat them, beat them,” the Christians heard. “They then started beating us with blunt objects,” continued Andrew. One of the Muslims “hit me with a sharp knife right on my head,” while another knife-wielding Muslim “struck my friend in the belly and hands.” Both Muslim assailants were among the Muslims the Christians had just debated. During the assault, “Both of us fell down as a bright light flashed from a coming vehicle that appeared from the opposite direction. From that time onwards, we did not know what happened. We only found ourselves in the hospital in Iganga town with deep wounds.”
General Hostility for and Discrimination against Christians
Iran: In the Islamic Republic, “Simply being a Christian is enough to get you arrested,” was one of the findings of a UK governmental report detailing the horrific persecution Iran’s Christian minorities experience. Among other things, it states that:
In general, a person who is found to have converted to Christianity and who seeks to openly practice their faith in Iran, are likely to be subject to treatment or discrimination by the state that is sufficiently serious, by its nature or repetition, to amount to persecution.…. We do not however find it safe to assume that ‘ordinary’ Christians [as opposed to Muslim converts], that is to say individuals with no role beyond attending collective worship at house churches, escape the attention of the authorities. On a general level the language used by the sources indicates that to the contrary, simply being a Christian is enough to get you arrested: ‘authorities continued to arrest members of unrecognized churches’, ‘many arrests reportedly took place during police raids on religious gatherings’, ‘Christians, particularly evangelicals and converts from Islam, continued to experience disproportionate levels of arrests and detention.’
Egypt: The president of Cairo University, Muhammad Uthman al-Khosht, assigned 31 new directors, deputy directors, managers, and researchers to head a number of departments, including those of agriculture, medicine, engineering, nursing, dentistry, statistical research, and African Studies. Although the Copts—Egypt’s most indigenous, Christian, people—make up anywhere from 10-20% of its population, notable among these new Cairo University hires is that not a single one of them is Christian. All are Muslim.
This is just the latest instance of overt discrimination. Earlier this year, 98 female judges took the legal oath in preparation for assuming judicial roles in Egypt’s State Council. This was considered a major and unprecedented development; since its inception 75 years earlier, not a single woman had sat on the podium of the State Council court—and now 98 are. Yet, not one of them is a Christian—again, despite the fact that the Copts account for between 10-20% of the nation’s population, suggesting that at the very least 10 of the 98 should have, for proper representation, been Christian. (More examples of Egyptian discrimination are available here.)
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
CAIR Enraged Over Mobile Billboard Featuring Images of Mumbai Jihad Attacks
Whenever Islam is linked to terror, CAIR exploits a willing media.
A mobile digital billboard drove through the parking lot of the Islamic Center of Middlesex, New Jersey. The rented truck with Pennsylvania plates was displaying images from the 2008 Mumbai jihad attack that killed 166 people. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a press conference in response, at which Selaedin Maksut, CAIR’s New Jersey executive director, said:
This is an attempt to intimidate the Muslim community. This is a coordinated effort to cause disruptance [sic], and maybe cast shame or blame on the Muslim community for an incident that happened long ago, in another country and has nothing to do with the people who are residing in this state. We are calling on elected officials in these cities and towns, and in the county, to condemn this incident.
While it is understandable that the Islamic center would not like images of the absolutely horrific Mumbai attacks brought to their front door, whoever decided to have CAIR speak in response was ill-advised.
That is because CAIR is essentially the American branch of Hamas.
CAIR’s Hamas connections come from sources including the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and a federal judge who wrote in his 2009 decision that the government had produced ample evidence of CAIR’s association with Hamas. (Source: legal decision of Jorge Solis, see top of pg. 15, Politico.)
Although this has been largely forgotten, forgiven, or covered up lately, one can go back eleven years and see that CAIR’s Hamas connections were reported in the mainstream media.
The CBS affiliate in Oklahoma ran a segment with the then-head of the FBI testifying before Congress on camera, saying that the FBI was distancing itself from CAIR due to concerns about the Islamic group’s national leadership. That would be CAIR’s Hamas connections.
The Dallas Morning News ran a piece with the headline “FBI: CAIR is a front group,” which was based on the open court testimony of FBI Special Agent Lara Burns, who was in charge of analyzing the transcript of a summit meeting of Hamas leaders held in this country. Agent Burns testified that the idea of CAIR was conceived at this meeting. The current executive director of CAIR, Nihad Awad, spoke at that meeting, saying that one of the group’s goals should be justifying the actions of Hamas.
For those who might shrug at this, considering the fact that CAIR operates legally in the United States, there is also CAIR’s public conduct.
Every time “Palestine” is in the news, CAIR will get on TV and accuse Israel of genocide. CAIR also organizes pro-Palestinian rallies that accuse Israel of a holocaust.
During a recent CAIR Zoom conference call, Nihad Awad refers to Israel as the occupation, and CAIR’s deputy executive director Edward Ahmed Mitchell refers to Hamas not as a terrorist group, as it is regarded at the State Department, but simply as a foreign organization.
And here is CAIR giving open-throated support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another deadly terrorist organization.
Then again, how can CAIR be as bad as all that if local newscasters let it on TV?
CAIR representatives are frequently on TV. CAIR’s appearances on TV generally do nothing more than promote the organization, bring harm to other people, and to bring some unknown advantage to the TV stations that include them in a broadcast.
The two TV stations that carried CAIR’s New Jersey press conference were WABC and News12. Both stations have a record regarding CAIR.
WABC is losing its way when it comes to CAIR.
- WABC ran a completely unnecessary story about a whiny Muslim who claimed he was having trouble sleeping when he touched some bacon.
- The same reporter who filed this story also ran with the La Guardia High School protest. CeFaan Kim interviewed a La Guardia High student who claimed an instructor called her “a terrorist.” And, then, as so often happens with CAIR, one of its spokespeople suddenly appears, already talking in full stride. Where did he come from? Was he just walking by? Did CAIR call CeeFan Kim to come to the protest? Does the school know that CAIR is interacting with its students this way? Do the parents know? One thing we do know is that CeeFan Kim knows that stories featuring CAIR are desirable, maybe even profitable.
- WABC ran the Wheatley School hoax. When a very imaginative young woman used her graduation speech to talk about “the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” she went on to claim she was booed and heckled. WABC accepted this as established fact and put CAIR on TV even though there was no evidence to support her claims. People who attended the ceremony say that absolutely nothing happened to her that day. Why didn’t WABC interview anyone in the audience that day? Because that was not in CAIR’s script.
- WABC also ran the Tamar Herman story. As has been discussed here before, CAIR uses other people’s misfortunes to promote itself on TV. In this case, an elementary school teacher sought police protection after becoming the target of a rumor on social media. Rather than cooperate with either the school or police investigations, CAIR got on TV four times to call for the teacher’s termination. Tamar Herman is now suing CAIR for defamation. Don’t expect WABC to cover that story, because doing so would require them to reflect on their role in it.
Good on WABC for including Dr. Atif Nazir on the news.
But without balanced coverage at some point, the public is not going to know who he is. He is not just some wild-eyed fellow. He is a team leader for the Islamic Circle of North America. Like CAIR, this is another front group: ICNA is the American branch of the deadly terrorist group Jamaat-e-Islami.
ICNA has openly identified itself as a JI organization on a number of occasions. Since ICNA’s founding in 1968, its leaders have included Ashrafuzzaman Khan, who during the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh served as commander-in-chief of a JI militia group. In 2013, Bangladesh’s International War Crimes Tribunal found Khan guilty of abducting and murdering 18 Bangladeshi intellectuals. Khan was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in the genocide. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/01/pakistani-terror-groups-charitable-guises-us-funds/
The other station that covered CAIR’s reaction to the mobile digital billboard story was News12.
Unfortunately, News12 also ran the bulldozer story. Although CAIR has no business telling anyone how to run an Indian Independence parade, CAIR made a big deal out of a bulldozer, claiming that its appearance was threatening to Muslims.
But if the station had just done a little research, it would have found that the bulldozer has become a symbol of righteous resistance against violent Muslims who have rioted and murdered people over perceived insults to Islam. Some Indian authorities have bulldozed the homes of jihad terrorists.
Whether summary justice is a good thing or not is beside the point. The TV station took CAIR’s narrative and ran with it, never thinking of telling the other side of the story.
TV stations around the country refuse not just to learn about Islam, but also about the various Muslims groups that operate in this country.
“NJ Muslim community outraged over apparent harassment incident,” WABC, November 30, 2022:
PISCATAWAY, New Jersey (WABC) — Members of a Muslim community in New Jersey are speaking out after an incident they say was intended to harass and intimidate them.
It happened Saturday at the Muslim Center of Middlesex County in Piscataway….
The truck, equipped with a digital billboard showing images from the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, circled around the lot twice, stopping several times before finally leaving….
Members of the community say the incident was clearly intended to harass them.
“By targeting a Muslim center and deliberately circling its premises repeatedly, the perpetrators expect New Jersey’s Muslim community to answer to, or even feel shame for, an event that occurred entirely independent of them,” said Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the NJ chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in a statement.
“Anti-Muslim intimidation tactics like these are unacceptable,” Maksut continued. “They mirror the tactics used against American Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and could lead to an uptick in anti-Muslim incidents as we’ve seen over the past two decades.”
The Mumbai attacks, which took place in Mumbai, India over the course of four days in 2008 and killed 175 people, were carried out by an Islamist terrorist organization based in Pakistan….
CAIR and the Islamic Circle of North America’s Council for Social Justice are calling on local law enforcement and the FBI to investigate and local leaders to publicly condemn the incident.
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