CAIR’s ‘Islamophobia’ List Is a ‘Hit List,’ Say Critics

Americans are being marked for murder whenever their names appear on the annual list of so-called “Islamophobes” posted by the jihad-linked Council on American Islamic Relations, say two Americans on CAIR’s 2016 enemies list. 

“This is a hit list,” said Nonie Darwish, a former Egyptian Muslim, now living in America. CAIR “should be held legally responsible for inciting violence against us,” she said, after citing several Muslims and non-Muslims who have been personally targeted by Muslims sharing CAIR’s Islamic ideology.

“They want to shut us up by putting us in a position of fear,” said Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which is pushing for modernization of Islam in the United States. “Not only does their list put our lives at risk, but it is full of false information [and] they’ve never called us.”

At least two of the people cited in the report have been targeted for murder by jihadis. Pam Geller, who is described by the new report as “Islamophobe Pamela Geller,” has survived two plots attempts because the Muslim attackers were successfully killed by police. Similarly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim and a former legislator in Holland, has a security detail to protect her from attacks. 

CAIR’s report “is certainly intended to be [incitement],” said David Yerushalmi, a lawyer at the American Freedom Law Center. “But it is not [punishable] incitement under First Amendment principles,” partly because judges requires an “imminent” threat to justify a charge of incitement, he said.

CAIR’s new report is titled “Confronting Fear“, and it was slated for publication June 14. But on June 12, the release was delayed six days because a Muslim murdered 49 Americans in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

The report lists a series of domestic enemies of Islam, its portrays them as mentally ill phobics, and also conflates occasional attacks and vandalism against Muslim people and buildings with various forms of democratic criticism of Islam. For example, comedian Bill Maher is on the list.

The group defines “Islamophobia” as “a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure.”

The problem, say Jasser and Darwish, is that CAIR’s message will reach people who believe that opponents of Islam deserve death. In fact, Pam Geller, a favorite hate-figure at the CAIR, has been the subject of at least two jihad plots. Two gunmen were killed by the first attack in May 2015. A second man, who carrying a knife, was killed by FBI officers in Boston in June 2015.

Other critics, such as Robert Spencer, who runs JihadWatch.com, has received myriad death threats from believers in Islam.

Islam’s politicized ‘sharia law’ endorses the murder of Islam’s critics and of ex-Muslims — repeatedly, endlessly, forcefully — and its recommendations are deemed divine commandments by numerous killers and would-be killers.

For example, the Koran — which observant Muslims say is a list of verbatim commands from their deity, Allah — tells Muslims to “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah [penalty tax] willingly while they are humbled.”

Islamic scriptures say that Islam’s reputed founder, Muhammad, personally ordered or supported the death of many enemies, including at 10 critics and poets, who were the pre-modern equivalent of modern journalist and writers — such as the machine-gunned cartoonists at the Paris-based Charlie Hebdo magazine. Traditionalist or orthodox Muslims says Muhammad is a perfect model of behavior and should be emulated by Muslims.

Because of this theological hostility to criticism, “I cannot go to any Islamic majority country — I would be killed on the street, and the killer would be called a hero,” said Darwish.

CAIR is extending those threats into the United States, she said. “The culture of Al Capone is the culture of Islam — when you put up a list of Islamic foes, this is a hit list,” she said.

In Western democracies, where law and religion both condemn violence, people can criticize and be criticized without the intimidating fear of violence, she said. With CAIR’s enemies list, “the difference is that you have a whole Islamic theology behind, the sharia law that [CAIR] support[s], that condemns people to death if they dissent,” she said.

If a journalist [criticizes] Republicans or Democrats, he does not have a whole legal system to condemn him to death. What makes CAIR different is that they support a legal system, they support HAMAS, they support the Muslim Brotherhood, and just by their affiliation and support of sharia law, the show they agree to the death penalty for apostates and blasphemers, and … by making a list for their sharia lovers and supporters, they are making it easy for their followers to find the blasphemers and apostates.

U.S. court documents and news reports show that at least five of CAIR’s people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses.

Breitbart has also published evidence highlighted by critics showing that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, that CAIR was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans top-level meetings with CAIR officials. “The FBI policy restricting a formal relationship with CAIR remains … [but] does not preclude communication regarding investigative activity or allegations of civil rights violations,” said an Oct. 2015 email from FBI spokesman Christopher Allen.

The United Arab Emirates has included CAIR on its list of Muslim Brotherhood groups. CAIR has posted its defense here.

For Jasser, CAIR’s hate list is also a threat to the many members of his pro-modernity Islamic coalition who don’t want to be linked to anti-Islamic activists. “We are a modern [classic] liberal islam that believes in universal declaration of human rights [and] we reject theocratic islam,” he told Breitbart. “Our brand is about loving Islam and loving America,” he said.

“Our board members are devout Muslims, our families go to the mosque, we are celebrating Ramadan now, and for us to described under ‘Islamophobia’ … is the greatest smear I can think off… and that’s the intention,” Jasser said.

“There’s no doubt that CAIR is all about monopolizing the voice of Islam [in the United States], and the way they prevent any debates is the term ‘Islamophobia’ … they want to prevent any criticism of Islam,” he said. It “is their way of making a blasphemer’s list — they use it as a way to shame anyone who would question the need for reform,” he said.

But CAIR is safe from a lawsuit or criminal charges unless there’s testimony from a whistleblower or an email showing CAIR officials linking their claims with hopes that someone else launches a violent attack, said Yerushalmi.

Racketeering lawsuits likely won’t work either, he said, because the court has restricted their use to criminal gangs and drug-sellers, he said. “I don’t think you get a RICO case unless an individual or a group of individuals who were physically [harmed] or their business were harmed ….[and] where you can show CAIR’s fingerprints,” he said.

CAIR’s press aide, Ibrahim Hooper declined to comment. 

CAIR’s list of “Islamophobic” actions include many normal examples of civic criticism of Islam’s doctrines. For example, the report slams comedian Bill Maher, saying ;

Maher acts as the liberal counterpart to Fox News when it comes to broadbrush attacks on Islam. While discussing Boko Haram’s kidnapping of a large number of female students in 2014, Maher asserted, “There’s no mention here of connecting this to the religion, which is always what I am seeking to do because I think that’s the elephant in the room. And that in the religion at large, women are seen as property, second-class at best, often property.”