Cinnamon Stillwell On Michael Savage And Cair

I've written before about the massive attack that CAIR and similar groups are launching on anti-jihad commentators with Saudi money. People like Michael Savage and Mark Steyn are under attack and fighting a battle for freedom of speech.

Cinnamon Stillwell is a writer in the Bay Area and by her own admission is a `convert from liberalism'. Here, she takes on the Saudi funded Islamist group CAIR in the newspaper of my old home town in a piece that deserves to be widely read:

"Conservative talk radio show host Michael Savage is no stranger to courting controversy. Savage is known for his blunt commentary which at times goes beyond the realm of the politically incorrect into the confrontational. It is a style Savage describes as "psychological nudity" and the opening to his show warns overly-sensitive listeners as much. But, in the process, Savage touches on some fundamental truths that hit home with his fans, while simultaneously motivating his opponents. Whether they love him or hate him, 8 million listeners tune into "The Savage Nation" each week. The fact that the show originates in left-leaning San Francisco only adds to its entertainment appeal. {...}



Economic punishment is another weapon in the hands of those opposed to Savage's provocative methodology and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is the latest to jump on the boycott bandwagon. CAIR is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that touts itself as "America's largest Islamic civil liberties group." As such, CAIR expressed concern over a number of statements made by Savage on his Oct. 29 program that the group felt were anti-Muslim in nature. In response, CAIR, along with the newly formed Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition, has attempted to mount a boycott aimed at advertisers on Savage's show. According to a Dec. 3 CAIR press release, a growing list of companies, including AutoZone, Citrix, TrustedID, JC Penney, OfficeMax, Wal-Mart, and AT&T, have joined the boycott. (remember to boycott these companies and write to let them know why - ff)



But rather than taking CAIR's boycott lying down, Savage is fighting back, in court. Represented by his lawyer, Daniel A. Horowitz, Savage is suing CAIR primarily for copyright infringement. According to the text of the lawsuit, which is posted at Savage's Web site, CAIR "misappropriated" his work by posting the four-minute segment in question at its Web site and including it in outreach and fundraising efforts. Taking it a step further, the lawsuit accuses CAIR of misrepresenting itself as a "civil rights organization" and of "advocating a specific political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society." While the copyright infringement charges against CAIR may or may not pan out, the broader implications could end up holding the most weight.



Savage is certainly not the first to call CAIR's political motivations into question. CAIR is the leading Islamic lobby group in the nation and the organization is accorded a great deal of legitimacy by the mainstream media, the Bush administration and other politicians, academia, civil rights activists, and even military and federal agencies that have employed the group's assistance for "sensitivity" and "cultural training." Nonetheless, questions surrounding CAIR's philosophical underpinnings, foreign funding, and political goals continue to haunt the group's footsteps.



Federal prosecutors named CAIR, along with the Islamic Society of North America and the North America Islamic Trust, an unindicted co-conspirator in the recent case involving the now-defunct Muslim charity the Holy Land Foundation and its alleged financial ties to the Palestinian terrorist group turned terrorist government Hamas. Also coming to light via the Dallas trial was a 1991 memo put out by the Egyptian Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood citing a strategy to subvert the West using mainstream Islamic front groups such as CAIR. As Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher put it:



The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood — whose Palestinian division is Hamas — operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations — including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society — are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means



Indeed, in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, let slip that: "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 ... But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."

Read the whole thing here...