The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) hosted a press conference Thursday in Jersey City, condemning GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson on “Islamophobia” a day after two Muslims suspects massacred 14 people and injured at least 21 others in San Bernardino, California.
During the press conference, CAIR also chastised Trump for making the “false claim” that Muslims celebrated the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland. Breitbart News has documented evidence proving Trump was correct about Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks.
The CAIR press conference came on the heels of a mass shooting that left 14 people dead and at least 21 others injured Wednesday morning (Pacific Time) at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for developmentally disabled adults, in San Bernardino, California. According to The New York Times (NYT), the FBI is treating the deadly incident as an act of terrorism. The two armed suspects — a husband-and-wife team named Syed Rezwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27 — were killed by police after a car chase. Both have been identified as Muslims.
“The F.B.I. is treating its inquiry into the massacre here as a counter-terrorism investigation, two law enforcement officials said Thursday, based on materials the suspects stockpiled — including explosives — their Middle East travels and evidence that one of them had been in touch with people with Islamist extremist views, both in the United States and abroad,” reports NYT.
CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who participated in Thursday’s news conference, singled out Trump in a statement issued the day of the mass shooting. “By repeating the false claim – despite a lack of evidence – that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 terror attacks, and by advocating the closure of American mosques and special IDs and databases for American Muslims, Donald Trump must be held partially responsible for the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes and discrimination we have witnessed since the Paris terror attacks,” Awad declared.
The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, and leaders of the area’s Muslim community wasted no time before holding a press conference Wednesday night condemning the San Bernardino attack and featuring a relative of one of the suspects — Farhan Khan — married to the sister (Saira Khan) of one of the shooters (Syed Farook).
“We have condemned all violence everywhere,” said Muzammil Siddiqi, head of the Islamic Society of Orange County mosque in Garden Grove, California, during Wednesday’s news conference. He urged people “not implicate Islam or Muslims” because “our faith is against that kind of behavior.”
However, Siddiqi, in a 1995 speech, said suicide bombers die for “justice,” the Kansas City Star reported. At a White House protest against Israel in 2000, Siddiqi, who defended jihad in a 2007 interview with The New Yorker magazine, also said, “America has to learn — if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come!”
CAIR held a press conference about the shooting before the FBI hosted one of its own, prompting high-profile U.S. defense attorney Daniel Horowitz to question on Twitter, “How is CAIR allowed to deliver a press conference before the FBI? How did they have access to the terrorist’s family so quickly?”
CAIR did not respond to Breitbart News’ requests for comment.
In a press release issued Wednesday, CAIR announced Thursday’s press conference, saying it was planing to “join leaders of New Jersey’s Muslim community, interfaith partners and public officials at a noon news conference in Jersey City, N.J., to condemn leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s false claim that Muslims in that state ‘celebrated’ the 9/11 terror attacks.”
“News conference participants will also speak out against rising Islamophobia in America, exacerbated by inaccurate and inflammatory statements by public figures like Trump, Ben Carson and others, which has led to an unprecedented spike in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide in the wake of the Paris terror attacks,” added the press release.
Wednesday’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the assault on an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut nearly three years ago.
CAIR has previously been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case and labeled a terrorist organization by the government of the United Arab Emirates.