Fox News’ “The Five” roundly castigated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its campaign against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim woman now critical of Islam, calling it the “Muslim mafia” and agreeing that the organization is anti-woman.
The panel was reacting to a decision made earlier this week by Brandeis University to rescind an honorary degree it had planned to present Ali, after CAIR contacted the university and complained she was “one of the worst of the worst Islam haters in America.”
Ali was born and raised in a radical Islamic portion of Somalia and suffered genital mutilation at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists.
Co-host Eric Bolling was furious. “They act like the Muslim mafia,” he said of CAIR activists, claiming that when he had criticized the organization earlier this week he was immediately emailed by a CAIR spokesperson asking why he continued to lie.
“Why do I continue to lie?” he fumed. “I literally pulled up the facts from Brandeis in 2007 where they said they were concerned about a comment she made in 2007. That’s all I did.”
“I think it has little to do with what she said, and a lot to do with CAIR’s heavy-handed tactics — mob-like tactics — on the university,” he continued.
The panel’s token liberal Bob Beckel was perhaps the most outraged over CAIR’s tactics. “Why would these punks be threatening?” he said. “I mean, they don’t represent any major group of any kind, unless they’re threatening with jihad or something.”
Beckel noted that in Ali’s prepared remarks at Brandeis — which will remain undelivered — she brought up last year’s Boston bombing, which happened just miles from the campus.
“Did CAIR ever open their mouths and say anything about it?” he snarled. “Of course they didn’t, because they’re cowardly punks who probably agreed with it! Now, if you want to keep coming at us, keep coming at us all you want. Because Dana made a point: we know more about this woman now than ever would’ve been known before.”
Co-host Dana Perino took a different tack. “Where are the women’s groups?” she asked. “What have we done in the last several years in the United States? Just this week, we’ve complained about the dry-cleaning bills of women compared to men in the United States.”
“I actually feel, as an educated woman in America, that I have a responsibility to help women around the world to achieve at least the basic rights, so that they too can one day debate the gender gap of paying for your dry-cleaning bill,” Perino continued.
The panel directly compared the plight of Sandra Fluke, who famously received a call from President Obama after Rush Limbaugh mocked her for demanding federally-subsidized birth control, with Ali’s struggles with fundamentalist Islam.
“President Obama should’ve called her, not Sandra Fluke,” Perino said.
“Well — he certainly should’ve called her,” Beckel agreed. “But he certainly had an opportunity. Maybe he’s going to do it.”
“But if I were in this administration right now,” Beckel continued, “I would stand up and say this — because first of all there’s always this question of how much they favor Muslims and Islamists and all that. This is the way to get it dealt with very quickly. Slam these guys! Slam CAIR!”
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