CAIR Splits Hair

A reader brought this letter in today’s Washington Post to our attention. It is an attack on Daniel Pipes by Jason Erb, Director of Governmental Affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Erb criticizes the nomination of Mr. Pipes to the U.S. Institute of Peace board of directors on the ground that Pipes originated the “bogus accusation” that CAIR termed the successful prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers a “hate crime.” Erb heatedly denies that CAIR called the World Trade Center prosecution a “hate crime” and repeats the mantra that “CAIR is a mainstream organization and has condemned terrorism in all its forms on many occasions.” He concludes that Pipes “is an inappropriate choice to direct an organization dedicated to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.”
Our reader indicates that this is a distressingly typical example of duplicity on the part of CAIR. Here, according to our reader, is what happened:
“In 1996 CAIR published a book called ‘The Price of Ignorance’ which
dealt with the ‘status of Muslim civil rights in the United States.’
That book listed ‘incidents of anti-Muslim bias and violence,’ on which
CAIR included the trial of Sheik Abdul-Rahman, which ended with his conviction for conspiring to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and other New York City
landmarks. CAIR included the trial on that list of ‘incidents of bias and
violence’ because Abdul-Rahman’s lawyers claimed that his trial had been
‘far from free and fair.'”
So CAIR called the trial of the ringleader of the World Trade Center bombing an “incident of anti-Muslim bias and violence” rather than a “hate crime”; ergo Daniel Pipes should be vilified and banned from any activities relating to “peace.”
CAIR’s web site, devoted mainly to cataloging alleged hate crimes against Muslims and opposing the Iraq war (and all other American activities in the region) includes a link to CAIR’s campaign to defeat Pipes’s nomination to the board of the United States Institute of Peace. On that page, found here, CAIR argues that Pipes’s nomination should be rescinded because of his “long history of advocating the political disenfranchisement and marginalization of America’s Islamic community.” It also says that: “Unfortunately, no credible Muslim leader in the United States or around the world could cooperate with an organization in which Pipes has a decision-making role.”
CAIR’s status as a leading representative of Islamic Americans is one of the reasons why many conservatives share Daniel Pipes’s concerns about whether Muslims can be assimilated into American culture any more successfully than they have been assimilated in Europe.

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