DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: FAKE MOSLEM VICTIMIZATION

Victimization claims sow alienation
Faking Muslim victimization is the bold constant at some Islamic-American "civil rights" groups.
By Darren Bernard

Correction
This article incorrectly identified the news reporters expelled from a Council on American-Islamic Relations press conference. The reporters work for the Washington Times.

The U.S. Islamic community stands to lose face yet again in upcoming months as two frivolous cases of "discrimination" that have taken headlines finally gain some closure. For all the bad press and embarrassment, Muslims can thank the charges of two of the largest Muslim-American "rights" groups in the country - the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

CAIR and MAS are not the neighborhood NAACP chapter or ACLU crowd, as they are known for their links to Saudi money and the violent Muslim Brotherhood, respectively. And, notwithstanding their size, neither organization is much abashed in its support for terrorist sympathizers and financiers. Both have postings on their Web sites asking readers to protest the detention of Sami al-Arian - the former Florida professor who pled guilty last year to conspiring to provide support to a terrorist organization.

Now, MAS and CAIR are preparing for legal fights in Minnesota over much-publicized airline safety and cab service disputes that they are as sure to fight as they are to lose. Of course, the only thing that will come of the lawsuits is more perceived victimization of the mainstream Muslim-American community - conveniently, to the profit and increased relevance of MAS and CAIR.

That either group purposefully plays on ethnic and religious tensions for gain is hardly disputable. Exhibit A is the case of the "flying imams." Three days before Thanksgiving last year, six bearded Muslims were removed from a US Airways flight departing from Minneapolis for Phoenix for what national news outlets simply called "praying."

Within hours of the incident MAS issued a knee-jerk press release calling for protests and an immediate apology from the airline (no need to get all the facts first). This month, CAIR and the imams filed a lawsuit for compensatory damages as a result of the "discrimination" (and then, almost comically, kicked out Washington Post reporters and a Christian Broadcasting Network news crew from its press conference).

Even today, MAS and CAIR stand by the fiction that the imams were somehow quietly praying before being, suddenly, inexplicably, handcuffed and thrown off the airplane.

In fact, flight attendants and passengers have come to explain that, after shouting "Allah Akbar" in prayer, the imams configured on the plane in the same seating arrangement as the Sept. 11 hijackers. Three of the imams asked for seatbelt extensions - used for obese people, which the imams were not, and which could alternatively be used as weapons. Passengers fluent in Arabic also told flight attendants that some of the imams were angrily denouncing U.S. foreign policy, Iraq and a host of other not-so-discrete topics.

Short of waving box cutters at the flight crew, the imams did just about everything they could to get noticed, and, rightfully, US Airways still sticks by its pilots and flight attendants for removing the now-plaintiffs. Yet despite its meager odds of winning the lawsuit, CAIR is leading a legal fight that will both seek to weaken airport security and get plenty of sound-bite misrepresentations bound to flare emotions and ignite who-knows-what kind of religious accusations. That, evidently, is the goal.

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Hat Tip:

The Religion of Peace

Pertinent Links:

1) Victimization claims sow alienation