CAIR demonstrates hypocrisy in denouncing 9/11 Museum film

by John Rossomando
Red Alert Politics
May 16, 2014

https://www.legal-project.org/4271/cair-demonstrates-hypocrisy-in-denouncing-9-11

A coalition of leftist and Muslim religious leaders held a press conference this week pressing their case as to why the National September 11 Museum should censor references to Islam, jihadism or Islamism (aka political Islam) from a short film to be shown at the museum.

They claim the film lacks nuance and makes all Muslims collectively responsible for 9/11, which they say will lead to hate crimes.

"It's the one thing in there that suggests who to blame," the Rev. Chloe Breyer, who heads the Interfaith Center of New York and happens to be U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's daughter. "And to do that, it requires the kind of depth and nuance and sophistication that the rest of the museum has. It's a very delicate and difficult complex question, and they don't go anywhere near addressing it."

Breyer co-signed a letter last month that similarly accused the museum of "equating al Qaeda with Islam generally" without providing any direct evidence how criticism of the terrorist group equals an attack on all Muslims, any more than criticizing the Ku Klux Klan or the Christian Identity movement equals an attack on all Christians.

The fight has since been joined by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which co-sponsored the presser – an organization about which there is "at least a prima facie (face value) case as to CAIR's involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas," U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis wrote in 2009.

Its court-established ties to Hamas, the terrorist group, has not stopped it from successfully getting Ayaan Hirsi Ali's honorary doctorate revoked; screenings of a documentary about honor killings called The Honor Diaries cancelled; and compelled ABC Family to cancel production of "Alice of Arabia," a show about a girl forced to live in Saudi Arabia against her will.

Talking about 9/11 as if it were solely a secular act of barbarity is like saying the Crusades weresolely about trade.

Anyone who has read the statements made by the 9/11 hijackers prior to the attacks know they were motivated by their understanding of Islam. Documents recovered following the attacks show that each of the hijackers, including the lead hijacker Mohammed Atta, invoked Islamic texts to justify their deeds.

Nor can you ignore that Bin Laden justified his 1996 declaration of war on the U.S. and the 9/11 attacks on the basis of his belief that the West was waging war on Islam.

"It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge," Bin Laden wrote in 2002, justifying 9/11. "Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge … Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs."

When asked about the hijackers' motivations, Zead Ramadan, a board member of CAIR's New York chapter, refused to admit that religion, even if it was a heterodox version of Islam, had anything to do with the attacks.

"Charlie Manson also told people to do things and they just believed them," Ramadan said. "It's unfortunate that there are people who are suicidal and not very guided, and they can be manipulated.

"The term suicidal terrorist, violent extremism – that is more of an accurate description."

But a closer look exposes CAIR's hypocrisy. On one hand it says 9/11 had nothing to do with religion, but on the other hand it embraces people such as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who defends Palestinian suicide bombings and decreed that even Israeli civilians could be targeted in such attacks.

Qaradawi's rationale for sanctioning suicide bombings was very similar to Bin Laden's. The only difference here was that Bin Laden said that Americans could be indiscriminately targeted regardless of their religion and Qaradawi allows for Israelis to be indiscriminately targeted.

Consequently, such a hypocritical embrace of Qaradawi makes it impossible to take its effort to whitewash the connection between extreme interpretations of Islam and 9/11 seriously.

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