Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > 'Islam is a terror organisation' - CAIR's blighted rep 'Islam is a terror organisation' - CAIR's blighted repJuly 28, 2005
MIM: Michael Graham's article makes an important point - namely that moderate Islam is an oxymoron. MIM research has continually shown that even so called moderate Muslims are linked to radical Islam. The search for moderation in Islam is irrelevant in the context of the threat of global Jihad we are facing. Graham is mistaken to laud Pakistani president Musharraf for rooting out terrorism. Musharaff himself was on the board of The Rabita Trust, an Al Qaeda funding group directly linked to Bin Laden and his second in command Wael Julaidan. It was the US who insisted that Musharref cut his ties with Rabita. In reality Musharref's position is akin to that of the Saudi ruling family, he and his security forces are working with Al Qaeda, while at the same time aware that they could become the group's target. Proof of this is the fact that the Pakistani region of Waziristan is the new terrorism headquarters for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and has the status of an Indian reservation. Musharref is not fighting terrorism because it is a worldwide threat, he is concerned that he will lose his hold on power and knows that a semblence of cooperation with the US will yield him money and protection. THE TRAGEDY OF ISLAM By Michael Graham
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/graham072805.php3 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:
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.
On Point: CAIR's blighted rep July 28, 2005 This time U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo got it right. Meet with representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations? Not on your life, replied truculent Tom. They're compromised, he maintained. Oh, how they're compromised. To begin with, several officials or former officials of CAIR have faced criminal charges associating them with terrorism, and a founding board member of the Texas chapter was convicted on such charges just this year. Moreover, as Salon.com's Jake Tapper reminded Americans in an article shortly after 9/11, CAIR once deplored the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In fact, the group repeated "Abdul-Rahman's lawyers' criticisms of the trial as 'far from free and fair' on a 1996 list of 'incidents of anti-Muslim bias and violence,' " Tapper recounts. In preparing his profile of the group - remember, this is September 2001 - Tapper repeatedly tried to persuade CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, to condemn Osama bin Laden by name, without success. "What about prior acts of terror linked to bin Laden?" Tapper wondered. "Or that bin Laden has urged Muslims to kill Americans? Again, Hooper demurred, saying only that he condemns acts of terror." (CAIR did come around to denouncing bin Laden. What choice did it have with bin Laden himself cheerfully acknowledging his guilt?) These days, CAIR spends most of its time portraying the United States as a nation slipping into the throes of bigotry, intolerance and anti-Muslim repression. But alas for its credibility even on this score, the group's claims of a surge in hate crimes are tainted by sloppy - if not atrocious - research, according to scholars Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha. They describe CAIR as part of the "Wahhabi lobby." Can anyone blame Tancredo for refusing to endure a lecture on civility by the likes of this outfit? Smart growth vs. families "Our cities need kids," proclaimed the lead headline in The Sunday Denver Post Perspective section - an insight, you might suppose, akin to noting that forests need trees. But it turns out that cities might not need kids, as urban centers such as San Francisco, Seattle and Boston are well on their way to proving. The author of Sunday's article, Hank Baker of Forest City Stapleton, understandably worries about cities' future if they fail to attract more families with children. Naturally, he also considers the Stapleton redevelopment as a model for how to lure them. Baker might even be right, except that urban renewal on the scale of Stapleton is hardly the norm. Far more common are highly focused developments that push up population densities in neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes. Those densities translate into higher housing prices and traffic volume - both of which are red flags for middle-class families with youngsters. My neighborhood, for example, is not far from a light-rail station that will open next year. Inevitably, some company is putting up several hundred apartments within walking distance of the train stop, along with shops and restaurants. The apostles of "smart growth" believe this sort of development is a Good Thing, because it helps contain the bogeyman of urban sprawl and reduces our dependence on cars - in theory, at least. In the real world, unfortunately, most of those apartment dwellers will still hop into a car almost every day, even if they commute by train. How this will enhance my neighborhood is a mystery best explained by the smart-growth lobby. While they're at it, maybe they can give us the lowdown on why Portland, the Shangri-la of smart growth, ranks a shocking seventh among U.S. cities with the lowest percentage of kids under 18.
Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point Tuesday through Friday. Reach him at [email protected]. |