CAIR Losing Support From North to South

by IPT News  •  Jun 12, 2009 at 12:24 pm

http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/2009/06/cair-losing-support-from-north-to-south

Separate events in Florida and Minnesota could indicate that more people are catching on to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its duplicitous dealings.

In Tampa, Mayor Pam Iorio announced that she was breaking a pattern of designating "CAIR Day" in the city, as she had done since 2005. The decision followed protests from activist Joe Kaufman at Americans Against Hate, but Iorio insisted the decision resulted from her own research.

More significantly, dozens of people in Minneapolis protested outside a CAIR ice cream social for discouraging local Somalis from cooperating with the FBI. The protesters were friends and family of a local teenager believed to have been killed by terrorists in Somalia.

The CAIR-Minnesota chapter, like other CAIR chapters nationally, has been on a campaign against the FBI, accusing it of improper investigative behavior and advising people not to speak with agents without a lawyer present. FBI officials in Minneapolis have been investigating the disappearance of at least 20 Somalis from the Minneapolis area, including one who blew himself up in a terrorist attack last fall.

Then last week, Burhan Hassan reportedly was killed in a terrorist attack in Mogadishu. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune quoted the teen's uncle, Abdirizak Bihi, explaining the frustration with CAIR:

"We don't want anyone to come into our community and tell us to shut up," Bihi said. "Law enforcement will not be able to do anything without information from the community."

About 50 people attended the rally, waving signs and hollering, "CAIR out! Doublespeak out!"

This is significant because members of the local Muslim community are taking on CAIR. It robs the organization of its standard response, which is to blame the messenger. In Tampa, CAIR's representative lamented that the mayor agreed with Kaufman, who was attacked as "an anti-Muslim extremist."

Iorio, however, told a reporter she was ignorant about Kaufman and his organization:

"We issued the proclamations in the past based on best available information. And now we're not going to issue proclamations based on best available information," Iorio said.

As we've reported, the FBI already severed its communications with CAIR based on evidence brought forth in the terror-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development which places CAIR and its founders in a secret Hamas-support network.

"[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner," an FBI assistant director wrote in April, explaining the FBI's decision.

Now the city of Tampa has agreed. And Minneapolis' Somali Muslim community is experiencing first-hand why. As the Star-Tribune story concluded:

"Osman Ahmed, another relative of Hassan, said some in the family believe CAIR has aligned itself too closely with mosques where some believe the missing boys may have been influenced to leave.

'They are supporting the groups we suspect of recruiting our kids,' Ahmed said. 'We refuse to be silent.'"

Related Topics: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)  |  IPT News