US media is reporting that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is stepping up its campaign aimed at persuading the National September 11 Memorial Museum to remove references to terms such as ‘Islamist extremism’ and ‘jihadism” from a video presentation on Al Qaeda. According to a CNS News report:
May 13, 2014 Days before the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens in New York, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is stepping up its campaign to urge organizers to edit a video presentation on al-Qaeda, to remove terms such as ‘Islamist extremism’ and ‘jihadism.’
An earlier CAIR initiative – a letter last month co-signed by several other Muslim and Arab-American organizations, complaining to museum directors about what they called ‘academically controversial terminology’ – met with no success.
On Monday CAIR’s New York chapter began asking ‘all Americans’ to lobby national and New York leaders on the issue.
A ‘click and send’ letter made available by the chapter calls for the short video entitled ‘The Rise of Al-Qaeda’ to be edited to remove ‘anti-Islamic terminology,’ before the museum opens to the public next Wednesday.”
The appeal is addressed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, New York Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who represents lower Manhattan.
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The GMBDW reported last month that (CAIR) had issued a statement welcoming the decision of the New York Police Department (NYPD) to disband a controversial unit tasked with cataloging information on local Muslim communities. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes itself as “a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group and as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” CAIR was founded in 1994 by three officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine, part of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure at that time. Documents discovered in the course of the terrorism trial of the Holy Land Foundation confirmed that the founders and current leaders of CAIR were part of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood and that CAIR itself is part of the US. Muslim Brotherhood. In 2008, the then Deputy leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged a relationship between the Egyptian Brotherhood and CAIR. 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.” CAIR and its leaders have had a long history of defending individuals accused of terrorism by the US. government, often labeling such prosecutions a “war on Islam”, and have also been associated with Islamic fundamentalism and antisemitism. The organization is led by Nihad Awad, its longstanding Executive Director and one of the three original founders. CAIR’s latest effort to sanitize the language in the Museum video should be seen as part of the longstanding effort by the Muslim Brotherhood to control the discourse on terrorism