CAIR asks the foxes to protect the chickens

September 9, 2010

You can’t resolve a problem if you misdiagnose it in the first place. A trusim that seems appropriate for the “solutions” CAIR adopts. An email sent today by CAIR states:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said its “Learn, Don’t Burn” initiative will seek to distribute 200,000 copies of the Qurans to replace the 200 books that the Florida church plans to burn.

While it’s been reported that Pastor Terry Jones isn’t that knowledgeable about Islam, the primary reasons copies of the Qur’an may be burned this Saturday are racism, bigotry and arrogance but not necessarily ignorance.  You don’t have to be ignorant about the Qur’an and Islam to be a racist against Muslims. Think of Daniel Pipes and other orientalists who have doctorate degrees in this field, who have lived in close proximity with Muslims and may even be more informed about the faith than many Muslims are.

So if you mischaracterize the syndrome as ignorance, the response will naturally be a irrelevant if not harmful. The next solution CAIR has resorted to is not only misguided, but appalling:

Yesterday, CAIR sent a letter today to CENTCOM Commander General James N. Mattis asking that he personally visit the Florida church to request that the September 11 burnings be cancelled.

We’re not kidding.

Nihad Awad has asked a CENTCOM Commander to intervene to protect the Qur’an. Yes, that’s the same CENTCOM that has been carrying out wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and maintains an imperialist grip on more than a dozen other majority-Muslim countries. Awad even listed concern for the occupying troops in Afghanistan as a reason for CENTCOM to care about Qur’an burning!

To make his case, Awad also lists the Zionist, warmongering Hillary Clinton’s disapproval of Qur’an burning. CAIR’s task would have been so much more challenging if it didn’t have on its side high profile Zionist, imperialist politicians who state the obvious.

While he’s at it, why doesn’t Nihad Awad ask Mayor Bloomberg, who has proven genuine friendship to Muslims by supporting Park51 for which CAIR has expressed immense gratitude, to condemn Terry Jones? Perhaps because Bloomberg supports Qur’an burning? Will CAIR now realize that Bloomberg’s support for Park51 had nothing to do with his respect and tolerance for Islam, but rather stems from his New York City, Democratic, liberal base and his understanding of the US constitution? Does Bloomberg feel the people behind the mosque are as despicable as Terry Jones, but deserve his support anyway just as this kook does? Will the thank-you-Bloomberg chorus now quiet down a bit? Perhaps this “strategy” of turning a blind eye to support for war crimes against Gaza isn’t such a smart one after all?

Next on CAIR’s list:

Ask AIPAC to support Park51

Ask the IDF to implement the Right of Return

Ask Saudi Arabia to avenge feminism and religious tolerance

Ask the Klan to celebrate Black History Month

Ask John Yoo and Lynndie England for a joint statement condemning torture

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This entry was posted on September 9, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under Ikhras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • http://nosite.com Simone Mcwhirt

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  • http://www.drmaxtor.blogspot.com DrM

    Yeah, I noticed that these condemnations are more about protecting Uncle Sam’s imperial stormtroopers in Muslim countries rather then a genuine revulsion to the “Pastor’s” proposed hate crime.
    I’ve put up a post on the whole “Ground Zero mosque” nonsense but with one important difference, my post deals with the Hindu far-right in the US working with Judeofascists.

    http://drmaxtor.blogspot.com/2010/09/ground-zero-mosque-judeofascist.html

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  • http://gatheringforces.org jubayr

    yo, thanks for posting this.

    “While it’s been reported that Pastor Terry Jones isn’t that knowledgeable about Islam, the primary reasons copies of the Qur’an may be burned this Saturday are racism, bigotry and arrogance but not necessarily ignorance. You don’t have to be ignorant about the Qur’an and Islam to be a racist against Muslims. Think of Daniel Pipes and other orientalists who have doctorate degrees in this field, who have lived in close proximity with Muslims and may even be more informed about the faith than many Muslims are.”

    that’s a great point. attributing racism to ignorance is an underlying and all too common anti-poor and working class propaganda tool. it rationalizes how white supremacy operates through the channels of official society — the police, military, the bosses, and the state bureaucracy — by the middle and ruling class, and masks the racist ideology that permeates these institutions.

    it also personalizes the source of white supremacy by saying that “those” people just need to be educated, instead of locating white supremacy in the legacy of empire, slavery and herrenvolk democracy.

    in Europe, fascist theories of racial superiority gained momentum as a middle class phenomenon who were looking for ways to escape the downward, grinding pressures of capitalism. many of these middle class layers were facing proletarianization, and so Jews and other national minorities were scapegoated to construct a new vision for capitalism under state control.

    the same thing could be argued is happening with The Tea Party, although to a different degree. i would hesitate to call The Tea Party fascist as a whole, but many fascist groups have reoriented their propaganda and recruitment approaches and have been infiltrating the Tea Party.

    even in the last elections Hillary Clinton, in her bid for the presidency, argued that the white working class would never vote for a Black presidential candidate, but come election day many white workers did just that. the bourgeois press was astounded. racism does manifest itself in individualized forms, but the ruling class trumpets these ideas on a day-to-day basis.

    all you have to do is look at the FBI entrapment cases in our masjids, visit any immigrant community AZ, or count how many Black and Brown people are killed by the cops in California (from Rodney King to Oscar Grant and now Manuel Jamines).

    many have argued that the process of how Muslims are racialized in the US has begun to radically change over the past 18 months or so. this is bound up with the economic crisis, the ascendance of the Tea Party and the Right, the failures on the Left to take up race in any meaningful way, and the relative lack of concrete organizing projects in Muslim communities.

    after 9/11 it seemed that the rounding up of Muslims in the US was a short lived phenomenon, as the bulk of US Empire’s attack on Muslims took place in the international arena. but the skirmishes around masjids all across the US points to something qualitatively different.