The priorities of Muslim-Americans

American Muslims need to get their priorities straight.

Synagogues and consulates are being attacked in Turkey. U.S. troops are fighting an Iraqifada. And Palestinian Arabs continue to blow themselves up in suicide-homicide attacks on Israeli citizens.

It’s clear there is a worldwide terror jihad being waged by a small minority of the planet’s 1.1 billion Muslims against the West, Jews, Christians and anyone who cooperates with them.

And where are American Muslims – or, at least the groups and leaders who claim to represent them – focusing their attention?

• The Council on American-Islamic Relations is whining about radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s suggestion that it is inappropriate for a mother to send her daughter to a mosque with her Catholic school class.

• CAIR is whimpering about an innocent newspaper comic strip that subliminally attacks Islam because it includes an outhouse with a crescent moon on it.

• CAIR continues to target remarks by the U.S. general charged with capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in which he suggested his God was bigger than the god of a terrorist leader in Somalia.

If all of this weren’t so tragic and sad, it would be humorous.

To Dr. Laura’s credit, the radio counselor says she will not apologize or back down from her comments, despite accusations by CAIR of making an “anti-Muslim tirade.”

“It’s absurd that anyone would even imagine that I was expressing disdain for everyone who is a Muslim or who is an Arab,” she said on her show Thursday. “That’s even stupid. If anybody has listened to me for any period of time, that’s absurd.”

Johnny Hart, the illustrious syndicated cartoonist, expressed exasperation when confronted with CAIR’s accusations about his comic strip.

“My goodness. That’s incredible,” he said. “That’s unbelievable!”

The cartoonist explained it as a silly bathroom joke.

Then there is the matter Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, portrayed as an “intolerant extremist … who believes that Islam is an idolatrous, sacrilegious religion against which we are waging a holy war.” This slander is extrapolated from comments Boykin made about Somali warlord Mohammad Farah Aidid, an ally of bin Laden and a man who ambushed murdered U.S. peacekeeping troops in cold blood, about whom Boykin said: “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

I guess it’s time for a reminder of exactly what CAIR really is and what it represents. CAIR is not what it seems – not what it pretends to be.

It is not a group fighting for equal rights for Muslim-Americans. It is not a group trying to protect the interests of Muslims in America. It is not a group promoting human rights for anyone.

It is a group whose real mission is changing the very character of America – remaking it in the image of the Islamo-fascists who fund them from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

You will never hear a nice word about America from CAIR. It’s a hate group. It spends all or most of its time and resources denigrating America, condemning it as a pariah state that exploits and oppresses Muslims.

According to CAIR, America is a terrible place for Muslims. At the same time, CAIR boasts Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America. It makes you wonder: If conditions for Muslims are so bad in America, why is Islam so popular? Why are Muslims flocking from all parts of the world to the United States – this hideous concentration camp for Muslims?

I’ll tell you why. Many Muslims have come here and continue to come here to escape the Islamo-fascism of places like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – places about which CAIR never has a bad word to say.

CAIR was late to the party in condemning al-Qaida for the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It finally got around to it three months after the fact. Don’t expect to hear any CAIR officials condemn suicide bombings by the terrorists in Hamas. The founder of this organization is on record in support of the goals and tactics of Hamas.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, a Muslim convert, indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants the United States to become a Muslim country.

“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,” Hooper told the Star Tribune. “But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”

Founded in 1994, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association of Palestine, identified as a “front group” for the terrorist group Hamas, according to Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section.

Another ex-FBI counterterrorism chief, Oliver “Buck” Revell, has called the Islamic Association For Palestine – Hooper’s former employer – “a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants.”

CAIR advisory-board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White on Feb. 2, 1995, as one of the “unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments,” including the World Trade Center in 1993.

How seriously can we take the charges of a group that called the conviction of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers “a travesty of justice”? How seriously can we take a group that called the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, who conspired to blow up New York City landmarks, a “hate crime”? How seriously should we take a group about which Steven Pomerantz, former FBI chief of counter-terrorism, says: “CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups”?

Very seriously.

But just don’t assume the group has any credibility.

The real goal of this group was made clear by its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad, who told a rally of California Muslims in 1998: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

This is the real CAIR. Amazingly, some American people and institutions have fallen for CAIR’s ad hominem attacks on patriotic Americans.

It’s time for American Muslims to decide if CAIR really represents their best interests as Americans or Muslims. It’s time for American Muslims to distance themselves from extremist organizations like CAIR. It’s time for American Muslims to get their priorities straight because America is at war.