Under their skin
In an excellent Arizona Republic op-ed column, Zuhdi Jasser notes that Audrey Hudson seems to have gotten under CAIR's skin with her Washington Times story on CAIR's call for Hajj travel complaints. Jasser observes that CAIR has found the perfect outlet for its grievance against Hudson:
In today’s English language Saudi government daily newspaper, the Arab News, CAIR’s, Nihad Awad, has chosen to use this foreign venue to respond to legitimate criticism for an American Muslim organization.This long column is full of links and worth reading in its entirety.Arab News reporter, Barbara Ferguson, reporting for the Saudi government daily out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, provides this so-called news “report” available on-line.
In this report, the following accusations are leveled in Saudi media in response to Audrey Hudson’s most recent reporting for the Washington Times.
But not all American Muslims believe in CAIR’s diligence. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, AIFD, said the announcement by CAIR “continues the tired stoking of the flames of victimization.Awad said CAIR is “simply teaching people about their civil rights — which they’re trying to make into a controversial issue in America.”“They are unfortunately exploiting, for purely political reasons, what should be a sacred and purely spiritual story of our faith’s annual holy pilgrimage to Makkah,” Dr. Jasser told The Washington Times.
But Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, said the alert is nothing new. “We’ve have been alerting Muslims to contact CAIR if they feel they are being mistreated, including those going on Haj, for years. This is nothing new, and we’ve even had this 1-800 complaint number for several years.
“What’s different this year,” said Awad, “is that the Washington Times has shown its militancy in reporting by falling below journalistic standards and decency by quoting someone who’s not an expert, and not familiar with CAIR, just to attack CAIR and our credibility.
“The Washington Times reporter wrote an opinion piece in a news story format,” said Awad. “After that story awas (sic) published the extremist right-wing media jumped on this none-story by the Times, which resulted in generating a lot of hate mail and hate calls to CAIR.”
This Saudi government report and CAIR response with its venue speaks for itself.
CAIR chooses to malignantly label a leading American newspaper in their own backyard of Washington, D.C. as ‘militant’ in a foreign, Saudi government owned newspaper out of Jeddah. The choice of this foreign venue to levy complaints about valid criticism of them in the U.S. certainly calls to question whether their motivation is purely civil rights or driving wedges between the Muslim and non-Muslim American community during this upcoming sacred and holy period of Hajj travel.
Mr. Awad’s responses to the recent criticism I leveled against CAIR’s strategy on the heels of the national attention to the flying imam fiasco, remains rather vacuous. He conveniently misses the entire point concerning the climate in America which that fiasco created and amplified due to their misguided priorities for American Muslims.
Hopefully, the Washington Times and other media outlets carrying this story and to which Awad is referring will respond in the appropriate venues to CAIR’s indictment in the Saudi government newspaper against them of being ‘militant’ and an ‘extremist right-wing media.”
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