The Weekly Standard has posted an account of how Nihad Awad, the leader of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), introjected himself yesterday into a vigil for the murdered victims in the recent attack on the French Charlie Hebdo magazine. The report begins:
Nihad Awad
January 8, 2015 On a frigid, windy night in Washington, a couple hundred people trekked to the Newseum for a vigil for the murdered French journalists from the Parisian weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police that died trying to protect them, and those that were wounded.
The gathering started off small, with maybe 15 or so trying to stay warm. But as the group grew, the organizers moved the participants inside the Newseum, where those without ‘Je Suis Charlie’ signs were provided with one. The huge Jumbotron inside the Newseum bore the same message. After a few minutes, a hundred or so participants lined up behind the organizers holding their signs — and two of the organizers spoke to the media.
Olivier Roumy and Alex Cournol, the two main organizers and French expatriates both, spoke to the camera-wielding press about the importance of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and thanked the participants for joining them in solidarity. That lasted about three minutes, until Roumy introduced Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
‘He called me,’ said Roumy, ‘and asked to join us tonight, and I think that’s…’ Roumy couldn’t finish his sentence, as Awad popped in front of the cameras to take center stage.
The GMBDW reported earlier this week that CAIR had attempted to use the killings to position itself as a defender of free speech despite the fact that one of its leaders had called for worldwide “blasphemy laws” at the time of the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis. In August 2014, we reported on Mr. Awad’s attempt to reinvent himself as a spiritual leader by publicizing his attendance at the funeral of Michael Brown, the teenager who was shot to death by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The GMBDW reported last week on another CAIR statement that exaggerated its relationship with the US government.
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 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.
