Hamas-associated CAIR applauded by White House

The ADL joined MTV’s group after being reassured that it would play a more central role than CAIR, said Todd Gutnick, ADL’s director of media relations. “We considered this [MTV project] very carefully and decided that despite CAIR, it is central our mission of countering bully and cyber-bullying, and far outweighed any differences we do have” with CAIR, he said. There’s a great deal of anti-Semitism on the Internet, often in comments about American Jews in the news, he said. MTV officials assured the ADL that they would play a greater role in the project than CAIR, he said, adding that “I don’t know what their involvement is with MTV.”

CAIR is part of the MTV project because “American Muslims have the same concerns as other Americans, and cyber-bullying is one of them,” said Hooper.

Like many other activists in the White House’s campaign, Hooper conflated physical bullying and intimidation with routine spoken and online criticism of ideas and behavior, and suggested that CAIR’s critics were violent. “There’s a cottage industry of ‘Muslim-bashers’ who seek on a daily basis to marginalize American Muslims and to demonize Islam,” said Hooper.

The ‘-basher’ phrase was first used by gay-advocates to tar their critics as violent, and is now routinely used by Hooper and other Islamist advocates to portray their critics as violent. ‘Muslim-basher,’ Hooper said, is “colloquial American-English for someone who rhetorically bashes Muslims.”

When asked about CAIR’s view of Hamas, Hooper sent a statement saying “we unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group.” However, CAIR’s statement is ambiguous because Islamists describe Israeli military operations as “terrorism” and their attacks on Israeli civilians as justified “resistance” or “jihad.”

On Friday, a former CAIR official is to be jailed for his work as spy for Saddam Hussein. The sentencing follows the jailing or expulsion of several other former CAIR employees and contractors for terrorism-related offenses.

“We’re on this coalition [with CAIR, but] we’re not working with” CAIR, Gutnick said.