Cinnamon, Savage & CAIR

Saudi Arabia and individuals of that country have, since 1972, collectively spent an estimated $87 billion exporting and supporting Wahhabi / Salafi Islam - the heart of radical Sunni terrorism in the world. This has been a long term effort to make Wahhabi / Salafi Islam ascendent within the world community of Muslims, to prosteletyze, and to control the flow of information about Islam in the West through delegitimitizing any critical analysis of Salafi Islam and distorting both Salafi Islam's history and dogma. Those funds have not only gone to Salafi mosques, the training of Salafi clerics, and the building of madrassas, but they have also gone to fund the Islamic programs in our academic institutions, and to the creation of supporting organizations, such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Nominally a civil rights organization that claims to represent virtually all American Muslims, CAIR in reality is a Salafi creation with a small membership that has been declining in America ever since 9-11. CAIR receives virtually all of its $300 million operating funds from twelve anonymous donors. CAIR exists to forward the Salafist agenda in America and to silence any criticism of Islam.

CAIR invariably labels any criticism of Islam as hate speech and "Islamaphobia." And CAIR commonly uses strong arm tactics, which in the past have included libel litigation and threats of boycots against businesses that advertise on shows CAIR has targeted to silence.

Enter radio talk show host Michael Savage, a man of many politically incorrect diatribes - one of which was apparently directed at Islam and/or CAIR. CAIR contacted several advertisers on the Savage show and was successful in getting them to withdraw their advertising. Further, CAIR copied Savage's diatribe onto their website and used it as part of a fund-raising effort. Michael Savage has filed suit. Cinnamon Stillwell, writing in the SF Chronicle, looks at both CAIR and the lawsutit:

. . . CAIR is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that touts itself as "America's largest Islamic civil liberties group." As such, CAIR expressed concern over a number of statements made by Savage on his Oct. 29 program that the group felt were anti-Muslim in nature. In response, CAIR, along with the newly formed Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition, has attempted to mount a boycott aimed at advertisers on Savage's show. According to a Dec. 3 CAIR press release, a growing list of companies, including AutoZone, Citrix, TrustedID, JC Penney, OfficeMax, Wal-Mart, and AT&T, have joined the boycott.

But rather than taking CAIR's boycott lying down, Savage is fighting back, in court. Represented by his lawyer, Daniel A. Horowitz, Savage is suing CAIR primarily for copyright infringement. According to the text of the lawsuit, which is posted at Savage's Web site, CAIR "misappropriated" his work by posting the four-minute segment in question at its Web site and including it in outreach and fundraising efforts. Taking it a step further, the lawsuit accuses CAIR of misrepresenting itself as a "civil rights organization" and of "advocating a specific political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society." While the copyright infringement charges against CAIR may or may not pan out, the broader implications could end up holding the most weight.

Savage is certainly not the first to call CAIR's political motivations into question. CAIR is the leading Islamic lobby group in the nation and the organization is accorded a great deal of legitimacy by the mainstream media, the Bush administration and other politicians, academia, civil rights activists, and even military and federal agencies that have employed the group's assistance for "sensitivity" and "cultural training." Nonetheless, questions surrounding CAIR's philosophical underpinnings, foreign funding, and political goals continue to haunt the group's footsteps. . .

Read the entire article.

(H/T Bookworm Room)