Jackie Danicki

Antoine did have some very good ideas for signs to carry:

Stop Muslim genocide now!

Out of Iraq, into Sudan!

Afghanistan? Check. Iraq? Check. Liberate Sudan now!

That said, we’re pretty sickened by how ignorant everyone seems to be about who’s making this event happen.

One of the sponsors/partners of tonight’s Darfur rally is CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations). Read the following and ask yourself if this is the sort of organization you want to be associated with - or which our city government should be partnering with in anything.

US Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer:

[W]e know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism…[and] intimate links with Hamas.

US Democratic Senator Richard Durbin:

[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.

Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s co-founder, “was captured on FBI surveillance tapes at Hamas meetings in the United States during 1993 explaining that the IAP could not, for political reasons, admit its support for Hamas, and then discussing how the Hamas agenda could be cloaked and advanced.”

Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam … Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.

Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide…They kill themselves for Islam.

From CAIR’s Wikipedia entry:

Critics have accused CAIR of having ties to terrorist organizations, and of “pursuing an extreme Islamist political agenda”.[2][10][11][12][13][14][15] As of 2006, at least four former CAIR officials have been charged with terrorism-related offenses. Critics claim CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, which is alleged to be a “front group” for Hamas.[16]

Critics have also taken aim at CAIR’s fundraising and sources of funds. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, CAIR’s website solicited donations for what it called the “NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund.”[17] However, clicking on the donation link led to the web site for Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).[17][18] Later that year, HLF was later designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and U.S. because of alleged connections to Hamas, and shut down by executive order.

CAIR has also been accused of doctoring photographs and reporting fraudulent statistics about the Muslim population of the United States in support of its own private agenda. Finally, another source of criticism is that CAIR attempts to suppress criticism of Islamic terrorism and intolerance through accusations of racism and anti-Muslim bias.

Investor’s Business Daily publicly condemned CAIR as being “the PR machine of militant Islam” after CAIR “dispatched its henchmen” to try to shut down the first Secular Islam Summit. [14]

Who funds CAIR?

In 1999, the Islamic Development Bank gave a 250,000 US dollar grant to CAIR to purchase land for a national headquarters.[7]

In 2002, the World Association for Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi government-funded organization, financed a 2002 weekly advertising campaign in American publications estimated to be worth $1.04 million dollars[8]

In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to place books in US libraries.

In 2006, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, financed the building of a property in the US to serve as an endowment for the organization.[9] This gift is thought to generate income of approximately 3 million US dollars a year.

These are not people with whom we wish to link arms and find common cause. Your mileage may vary.

Filed under: Life