Soccer Dad

CAIR No Longer "America's Largest Civil Rights Group"

Militant Islam Monitor.org quotes an interview by Ahmed Bedier, CAIR communications director, on Hannity and Colmes where Bedier claims three times:

To be fair, the first time, Bedier modestly limited CAIR to merely being "America's largest Muslim civil rights organization."

But now that the PEW survey has come out and we know that CAIR, which still touts itself on its website as "America's largest Islamic civil liberties group"--has been wildly exaggerating how many Muslims there are in the US (7-8 million million instead of 2.35).

This is consistent with another area where CAIR has not hesitated to carelessly exaggerate numbers out of proportion: anti-Muslim hate crimes--

An investigation by Daniel Pipes of the anti-Islamic bias attacks reported by CAIR in 2004 showed "sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion." Two of the claims were actually cases of arson by Moslem store owners themselves, using the story of anti-Islamic bias to cover what they had done. The American Thinker describes a third such case. Other reported attacks lacked evidence or were actually reported by CAIR twice. Further incidences of falsified accounts of Muslim hate crimes going back to 2003 can be found on Michelle Malkin's blog: Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic and More Muslim hate crime myths. A report on NPR investigating the reporting of bias crimes in general noted that

any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report.

Investor's Business Daily, in an editorial reacting to the survey notes the amateurish CAIR poll that first created the myth of CAIR influence--and then points out how impotent CAIR truly is:

It's telling that CAIR did not link to the Pew study or any press coverage of it on its Web site. CAIR derives its power from the size of its potential membership. The bigger it is, the more clout it has in Washington and the corporate boardroom.

Until now, the perception was that CAIR spoke for several million Muslims and could rally them to boycott a company or to vote as a bloc to swing an election if it didn't get its way. Officials feared the group because they thought it could marshal an Islamic juggernaut. The threat alone has caused many to back down from criticism or policies CAIR didn't like.

But it was the Wahhabi lobby's big lie. CAIR couldn't deliver even 2 million voters if it tried. According to Pew, just 1.5 million Muslims are of voting age.

There is no big Muslim lobby, just CAIR's big, hollow PR machine.

Easy come, easy go.

By Daled Amos

Technorati Tags: CAIR and PEW Sruvey.

Posted by daledamos at May 25, 2007 1:45 PM