CAIR Cares About Korans, Not Car Bombs

Dennis Prager is talking tonight at the Chabad Center, up the road in Yorba Linda, and CAIR is all hot and bothered. Here's the LATimes:

The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling him an "Islamophobic speaker," while the director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California has said he "seeks the marginalization of American Muslims."

Those groups, along with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, has called for the Chabad Center to invite a "Muslim representative" to balance Prager's views.

They made the call to the media through a news release, not to Rabbi David Eliezrie at Chabad. They're theoretically angry at Prager for his November column saying Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison should not be allowed to take his oath of office on a Koran. Prager has since revised his position, saying no religious test should apply, but Ellison should have used a Koran and a Bible, in deference to the Bible's role in the formation of the American nation and psyche. Always publicity hungry, CAIR does not care.

The group's publicity seeking isn't turning out too well, even in the lib LAT:

"If they were interested in dialogue with the Jewish community, they would have sent me a gentle letter" or placed a phone call, Eliezrie said. He added the group was trying to bully into silence those who disagreed with its positions.

"I have great skepticism of CAIR," Eliezrie said. "I haven't seen them condemn specific groups who are involved in terror in the Middle East, and that to me is very scary."

The council describes itself as a mainstream civil-rights organization. In an interview with The Times, the group's Southern California spokeswoman Munira Syeda generically condemned "terrorist actions" but declined to condemn Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. "I don't understand what the relevance is," Syeda said.

Congrats to staff writer Christopher Goffard for pushing the point.

The relevance, Syeda, is that Hamas and Hezbollah are pledged to the destruction of Israel and they start wars and kill innocents as a result. CAIR has chosen to attack in Prager a man who's understanding of Israel and support for it is strong, clear and unwavering, so its refusal to condemn Hezbollah and Hamas, and its eagerness to condemn Prager, is indeed relevant.

Also relevant is that CAIR doesn't see the relevance. If they area civil rights organization, then they should be concerned about the civil rights of Israelis on buses and in bistros. Civil rights isn't racial or religious; it's universal, and CAIR is no more a civil rights organization than Hezbollah is a peace group.

CAIR's focus on Prager, who is but one of many people in the media and Congress who raised questions about Ellison's choice of swearing in material, is easy to predict and simple to understand: CAIR is an anti-Semitic organization. They could have protested talks at churches by any number of Christians who share Prager's position, but they chose to attack a Jew who was speaking at a Synagogue.

They might as well have put their disgusting little grunt-grunt sounds into their news release.

Hat-tip: Jim, Also blogging: LGF
Related Tags: CAIR, Prager, Islam, Anti-Semitism