The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a statement praising the U.S. Department of Defense for dropping a training course described as “Islamophobic.” According to the statement:
WASHINGTON, April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today commended the Department of Defense (DoD) for dropping an Islamophobic training course attended by senior officers and for instituting a complete review of training relating to Islam and Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also called on the DoD to retrain those officers who took the course that, according to an exclusive investigative report by Wired magazine, was suspended after it was found to contain inaccurate and derogatory material about Islam. According to Wired: ‘The course instructed captains, commanders, lieutenant colonels and colonels from across all four armed services that ‘Islam had already declared war on the West.” ‘We commend the Department of Defense for taking appropriate action when the biased and inaccurate information contained in this course came to light,’ wrote CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. ‘It is essential that senior officers who received inaccurate training be retrained using credible and balanced information about Islam and Muslims.’ He noted that CAIR last year welcomed a White House-ordered comprehensive review of government counterterrorism training materials to weed out Islamophobic content. Saylor said CAIR chapters nationwide have filed 87 separate public records requests about possible Islamophobic training of local, state and national law enforcement personnel.The Washington-based Muslim civil liberties organization has in the past called on the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and Congress to provide oversight for apparently widespread anti-Muslim bias in the training of law enforcement, security and military personnel nationwide. “
Documents released in the Holy Land Trial have revealed that the founders and current leaders of CAIR were part of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as identifying the organization itself as being part of the US. Brotherhood. A recent post discussed an interview with the Deputy leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in which he confirms a relationship between his organization and CAIR. Investigative research posted on GMBDW had determined that CAIR had it origins in the U.S. Hamas infrastructure and CAIR and its leaders have a long history of defending almost all individuals accused of terrorism by the US. government, frequently calling such prosecutions a “war on Islam.” In 2009, a US federal judge ruled “The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.”