Maher Hathout is the chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California and a senior advisor for those well known Islamic `moderates, the Muslim Public Affairs Council. The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission voted Monday to reaffirm its selection of Hathout for the county's John Allen Buggs Award. After a tulmultous hearing, only four of the 14 commission members voted to support Hathout, with five members abstaining and four absent..but since there's no quorum requirement, the award stood.
Hathout is on record as saying that Israel is an `apartheid state' run by butchers' and has praised Hamas and Hezbollah as `freedom fighters'. He was also caught ontape by Steve Emerson saying "the United States is under Israeli occupation," that Arab governments which have had contacts with Israel would be "flushed down in the cesspools of history of treason," and that American bombing of Afghanistan and the Sudan after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were "acts of terrorism...illegal, immoral, inhuman, unacceptable, stupid and un-American."
Hathout was selected without the mandatory public notification, and everything was preceding in real kumbaya dhimmi fashion until The New Republic Online ran a story Aug. 31 that included the 2000 speech Hathout gave in a park across from the White House which included some of the above remarks, and a few other tidbits voiced by this man who is now an official honoree for `interfaith relations'.
Since this information on this supposedly `moderate' Muslim came to light, the commissioners tried to find a way out of the impasse.
Commissioner Donna Bojarsky, for instance, proposed that the commission honor Hathout not by granting the award, which she said had become tainted with controversy, but by featuring him as a keynote speaker at the commission's award event scheduled for next month.
"This is clearly not the environment we want for the Human Relations Commission and county," she said, adding that the last 12 days had been "one of the most difficult" in her life. She ended up abstaining.
Commissioner Vito Cannella, a 24-year veteran of the human relations body, asked Hathout if he would withdraw in the interest of harmony.
He told them to gopound sand, and threatened that if the award were withdrawn it would `probalamatical' for him...which could mean anything from a lawsuit to a few church burnings.
The commission then chose to do a quickie,emergency revote to satisfy the public notification problem and confirmed Hathout's award.
If Hathout is what passes for a `moderate Muslim' here in America, Islam is in a lot more trouble than even I thought.
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