What follows is an editorial from Investor's Business Daily on CAIR's extreme agitation over the first Secular Islam Summit held here in the U.S. The editorial is so good, I reproduce it here in its entirity.
What Is CAIR Afraid Of?
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 3/6/2007
Politics And Islam: The first Secular Islam Summit was a success if for no other reason than it intimidated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the PR machine of militant Islam.
The Washington-based group that boycotts airlines and bullies radio personalities and politicians into toeing the Islamist line is clearly worried about the message from Muslim reformers.
It dispatched its henchmen to Florida to shout the reformers down at their confab earlier this week. CAIR also posted on its Web site no fewer than four stories bashing the event and its courageous speakers, many of whom are women calling for an end to inequality and mistreatment under radical Islam.
CAIR declared the summit illegitimate because few of the participants are "practicing Muslims," and those who are, it claims, are merely pawns playing into the hands of "Islamophobes."
"In order to have legitimate reform, you need to have the right messengers," asserted CAIR spokesman Ahmed Bedier.
And who might that be? The four CAIR executives who have been successfully prosecuted on terrorism-related charges? The CAIR co-founder who said the Quran should replace the U.S. Constitution as "the highest authority in America"?
True voices of moderation are the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit, who insisted in their declaration that mosque and state should always be separate. They also called for tolerance for non-Muslims, and an end to violent jihad. CAIR should take notes.
So what if many of them are ex-Muslims? They risked their lives to leave Islam and now dare to openly criticize an ideology that everyone else is afraid to criticize. What these brave souls have to say carries far more weight than anything said by CAIR, which couldn't even bring itself to condemn Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11.
Yes, Bedier argued, but the summit's "funding is coming from the neoconservatives." An article posted by CAIR suggests "Israeli intelligence" is behind the movement.
In CAIR's kooky world, the Zionists are behind everything, even 9/11.
But if anyone was behind 9/11, it was the Saudis. And guess who bankrolls CAIR? Right: the Saudis.
Fittingly, CAIR's Bedier balked when summit delegate Tawfik Hamid, a former terrorist, challenged him to denounce Saudi sharia law for "killing apostates, beating women and stoning women."
"This is not about Saudi Arabia," he huffed. "We condemn any nation that misuses Islam, but we're not going to condemn an entire nation. That's like condemning London (sic)."
Another CAIR sugar daddy is the ruler of Dubai, which acted as the staging ground for the hijackers and the transit point for 9/11 cash.
Sheikh Mohammed, who before 9/11 requisitioned cargo jets to supply bin Laden's Afghan camps, owns CAIR's D.C. headquarters through his foundation, which also holds telethons for Palestinian "martyrs."
The same foundation recently pledged $50 million to CAIR to boost its operations, which includes a legal shop set up to intimidate critics with vexatious lawsuits.
Radical groups like CAIR have been on the offensive, primarily because counterattacks by moderates have been few and far between.
But the Secular Islam Summit offers a ray of hope. Just a handful of reformers gathered in Florida made CAIR squirm. Imagine if hundreds of moderate Muslim voices rose up and challenged the Saudi-backed Wahhabi lobby.
Hattip: Little Green Footballs.
Update: Dr. Sanity has an extensive post that speaks to and beyond the Secular Islam Summit.
Update: And it appears that CAIR is squealing like a pig.
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