This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2683

CAIR spins Boxer rescinding of award due to terror ties as "misunderstanding"

January 26, 2007

January 24, 2007

CAIR Continues To Spin Senator Boxer's Rescinding Of Award

January 24, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Desperate to repair the harm done to CAIR's undeserved reputation as a moderate Muslim organization caused by the revocation of an award made to the group by California Senator Barbara Boxer, today the Saudi funded Wahhabist pressure group engaged in spin-laden damage control.

"Since this misunderstanding occurred, we have been in constant contact with Senator Boxer and her staff to offer an accurate overview of CAIR and its 13-year history of positive social and political activism… We have addressed the issues related to this unfortunate and unnecessary incident." CAIR statement January 24, 2007

The "issues" relating to this event are CAIR's ties to terrorism, among which are that four of its members have been convicted on terror charges [see the December 5 article Ghassan Elashi's Sentencing Proves CAIR's Terror Ties, the latest of which is Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR's Texas branch who was recently sentenced to six years in prison and who will again stand trial this summer on far more serious charges contained in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas prosecution.

Other "issues" are that CAIR still refuses to issue blanket condemnation against either Hamas or Hezbollah and has never offered a reasonable explanation about CAIR's relationship to the Islamic Association for Palestine IAP, widely believed to have been the United States' political wing of Hamas.

"the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which says it was 'established to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America,' was co-founded by Omar Ahmed, the same person who co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine – the Hamas front organization which first published the Hamas charter in English – together with Hamas leader and Specially Designated Terrorist Mousa Abu Marzouk. CAIR's pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah positions should not surprise, given that it regularly rises to the defense of terrorism suspects and openly supports designated terrorist groups." [Senate testimony by Matthew Levitt, senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. as quoted by World Net Daily, Masquerading as 'mainstream', http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36457]

At the time of the rescission of the award to Sacramento CAIR, Boxer's press secretary stated that Mrs. Boxer:

"expressed concern" about some past statements and actions by the group, as well as assertions by some law enforcement officials that it "gives aid to international terrorist groups," [source Newswee Magazine, CAIR Play?, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16384987/site/newsweek/]

Not only did Senator Boxer instruct her staffers to rescind the award, she also told CAIR to remove a statement of hers endorsing the group from its website.

To our knowledge Mrs. Boxer's endorsement is still absent from CAIR's website and the award to Sacramento CAIR has not been reinstated so absolutely nothing has changed, including CAIR's shameless effrontery in face of the truth and transparent attempts to deceive.

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=cair12407%2Ehtm

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2683