Lisa! Say It Ain't So!

Despite protests from constituents and  Jewish organizations, Talking Tachlis has learned,  state lawmaker Lisa Brown representing heavily Jewish West Bloomfield, refused to back down from her public endorsement of CAIR, an Islamist group identified by the government as being linked to the terror organization Hamas and to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

In a previous post, Talking Tachlis wrote about an event two weeks ago organized and promoted by CAIR at our state capitol that Rep. Brown sponsored.  CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, heavily publicized the second annual Michigan Muslim Day at the Capital with Rep. Brown’s sponsorship prominently noted in press releases and posts.

Given that the FBI has severed relations with CAIR due to its ties to the terrorist group Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews worldwide and which is responsible for the murder or maiming of hundreds of Americans, it is staggering that any American official would give their imprimatur to CAIR.  What is beyond belief, however, is that Rep. Brown is Jewish.

What would ever possess a Jewish lawmaker representing perhaps the densest population of Jews in Michigan to legitimize an organization implicated in bankrolling Hamas in the nation’s largest ever terror financing trial?  What reason does she have to discount, to defy, mountains of evidence against CAIR?  The ADL report on CAIR makes it clear: http://www.adl.org/Israel/cair/default.asp.   "evidence was produced by the Federal prosecutors demonstrating that CAIR and its founders were part of a group set up by the Muslim Brotherhood to support Hamas."

Moreover, the ADL notes:

“CAIR has participated in and endorsed many rallies where support for terrorist organizations was expressed…”

Additionally, the ADL named CAIR as one of the “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America”

http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/top_ten_anti_israel_groups.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_2 , noting that CAIR “has a long record of anti-Israel rhetoric, which has, at times, crossed the line into anti-Semitism.”

The constituents in Rep. Brown’s district are owed an answer.  So is the Jewish community.  Rep. Brown, a candidate for Oakland County Clerk, needs to repudiate and apologize for her gross indiscretion in countenancing CAIR. 

And why, once her office was made aware of CAIR’s terror-tied rap sheet, did the representative insist on continuing to sponsor the CAIR event?  She could have easily taken a cue from a much more senior  Democratic lawmaker, US Senator Barbara Boxer,  who rescinded an award to a California CAIR official.

Condemnation of CAIR has been come from both sides of the political aisle.  Just this month, in another move to shun CAIR as a pariah terror-tied organization, the US Congress passed a bill incorporating a recommendation that the US Justice Department  follow the FBI’s lead in cutting ties with CAIR (http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/14/house-report-urges-justice-dept-to-cut-ties-with-cair/).  The IRS  stripped CAIR of its tax-exempt status after it  failed to file required annual reports detailing revenues and expenses. A more complete compendium of CAIR’s history appears at the end of this post, courtesy of Middle East Forum. http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2012/04/action-alert-best-buy-tvs-computers-hamas#continued

One can only wonder why a Jewish lawmaker representing the heart of metro Detroit’s Jewish community, would want to be in league with CAIR.  One can only wonder why a Jewish candidate for Oakland County Clerk would want to be in CAIR’s back pocket as CAIR seeks to extend its sphere of influence.

CAIR, as has been reported widely in the Jewish News and local media outlets, represented the Islamic Cultural Association (ICA) at the heated meeting of the Farmington Public Schools when the school board voted to sell Eagle Elementary to the ICA. Eagle is located at 14 Mile and Middlebelt in Brown’s West Bloomfield district. The municipality has yet to schedule zoning hearings on the property, but two area residents have filed a lawsuit against Farmington Public Schools, now pending in the Appeals process, alleging improprieties in the sale of Eagle to ICA. Among the supporters listed on Rep. Brown’s website is the Michigan Association of School Administrators.

The ICA also operates the Huda Islamic Academy in the Village of Franklin, which, the Jewish News disclosed, invited in the virulently anti-Israel speaker Norman Finkelstein.

It is unlikely that Ms. Brown would have been so insensitive to host Klu Klux Clan Day at the Capitol or to bring in any other organization linked to a racist and genocidal terror organization.

It is certainly Rep. Brown’s prerogative to stand in CAIR’s corner.  Likewise, it is the prerogative of Jews and all good citizens of conscience who abhor terrorism and organizations dedicated to hate incitement and genocide of Jews to recoil at her choices and to make sure she neither gets their votes or money in the upcoming election for Oakland County clerk.

Below are some highlights of CAIR’s Dishonor Roll, as provided by Middle East Forum:

·         CAIR was named an "unindicted co-conspirator" to fund the terrorist group Hamas in America's most significant terror financing trial that resulted in 108 guilty verdicts. Also, see here.

• The United States Government named CAIR as "individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations."
• In the course of the terror financing trial, a document emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood listing CAIR's immediate predecessor, the Islamic Association for Palestine, as one of the Brotherhood's like-minded "organizations of our friends" sharing the common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the U.S. into a Muslim nation through stealth jihad.
• The FBI has "suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and the FBI," and the FBI does "not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."
• President Barack Obama signed a law that cuts ties between the FBI and unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism cases, which includes CAIR.
• CAIR co-founder and long-time board member Omar Ahmad once told an enthusiastic crowd: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
• Current CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper was quoted as saying: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. ... But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
• Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York) described CAIR in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing as an organization "which we know has ties to terrorism." FDCH Political Transcripts, Sept. 10, 2003.
• Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California) took the rare step of rescinding an official award to a constituent upon learning that the individual was an official with a local branch of CAIR.
• CAIR's Minnesota branch hampered a federal investigation into the disappearances of dozens of Twin Cities Somali men, by discouraging local Somalis from cooperating with the FBI. CAIR-MN is thought to be closely aligned with mosques that may have recruited the local Somalis to take up arms overseas in jihads.
• CAIR's Minnesota branch branded two Minneapolis moderate Muslim activists as "anti-Muslim" for their participation in a seminar criticizing an Islamic terrorist group in Somalia. The terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, is an al-Qaida affiliate. Also, see here.
• The IRS stripped CAIR of its tax-exempt status after the group failed to file required annual reports detailing their revenues and expenses.
• CAIR has increasingly turned to foreign donors for operating revenue, including soliciting then Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi to help underwrite a program to distribute 1 million copies of the Koran to government officials and the general public in America.