The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, is suggesting that the FBI murdered Ibragim Todashev, an associate of the Boston bombers that attacked an FBI agent. Todashev and the Boston bombers are believed to have killed three people on September 11, 2011.
According to the FBI, Todashev was shot and killed on May 22 in Florida when he was providing the FBI with a written confession at his home. CAIR is harping on the fact that the FBI’s original story was that Todashev assaulted an agent with a knife and now it says the weapon was a metal stick.
The initial details of deadly incidents often change (with the Boston bombings being a classic example), but CAIR’s Florida chapter is using it to demonize the FBI. This is just a continuation of CAIR’s pattern of claiming the U.S. government is engaged in a war on Islam.
A Shooting Incident Review Group consisting of Justice Department and FBI personnel are investigating the incident, but that isn’t enough for CAIR. Seven days after the shooting, CAIR-Tampa held a press conference to demand an independent investigation. The unconcealed message to the Muslim community is that the FBI is corrupt and cannot be trusted.
The director of CAIR-Tampa, Hassan Shibly, is on record as saying that Hezbollah isn’t a terrorist organization. He supports Sharia law for Muslim-majority countries. Shilbly also entertains conspiracy theories that the U.S. government and Israel frame Muslims for terrorism and twice posted a video on his Facebook page titled, “Former American Terrorist Denounces American Terrorism.”
Of this current case, Shibly said that "[The FBI] told him that this would be his last interview, and he would be clear. It was his last interview.” He claims that anonymous sources within the FBI confirmed to him that Todashev was unarmed and was “shot seven times and once in the head.” CAIR also claims it has proof that Todashev was not in the area at the time of the triple homicide. When asked whether Todashev confessed to the crime, Shibly answered, “Dead men can’t tell tales.”
The implication is that the FBI falsely accused an innocent Muslim of murder and then executed him.
CAIR’s event featured Todashev’s widow, who professed her belief in his innocence. A separate press conference was organized by journalist Maxim Shevchenko. At that event, Todashev’s father said he believed that the FBI killed his son to silence him. A Chechen lawyer asked, “Why do American policemen believe they can do whatever they want?” And Shevchenko said the FBI had committed “cold-blooded murder.”
Islamists often exaggerate, manipulate or altogether fabricate alleged anti-Muslim hate crimes. In the U.K., a Muslim group lost government funding because it lied about the extent of anti-Muslim incidents after the public murdering of a British soldier in London by Islamists.
As the Clarion Project recently wrote, fear over “Islamophobia” was used to gain political influence even in the mid-1990s. A former member of a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front named Abdur-Rahman Muhammad says he was at a meeting where it was decided that “Islamophobia” should be used as a political weapon. He said, “This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”
CAIR’s anti-FBI and “Islamophobia” propaganda is a reflection of its Islamist worldview. The Muslim Brotherhood believes Western society is inherently corrupt and unjust, especially towards Muslims. In one of its own documents, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood says it “presents Islam as a civilization alternative.”
To the Brotherhood, Islam is a civilization superior to the West, but permanent co-existence isn’t the end game. The same document says, " [the Brotherhood’s] work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”
If you have that type of worldview, you’ll be strongly predisposed to blame the U.S. government and exonerate your co-religionist.
CAIR might believe its own propaganda, but it also in its self-interest to demonize the FBI. After all, the FBI cut ties with CAIR after it was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. The Foundation was, like CAIR, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.
Furthermore, the theme that Muslims everywhere are at risk and CAIR is their hero is a mighty fundraising pitch. It also scares Muslims into following its leadership, allowing it to lead the community as if it were a single political party.
The FBI is not evil. Its agents have no desire to frame and murder innocent Muslims—and if they did, its detractors at CAIR would be long gone. On the other hand, CAIR officials have taken part in secret meetings where deception was advocated as a tactic. Federal prosecutors said in a 2007 court filing, “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists … the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”
If CAIR’s words contradict those of the FBI, believe the FBI.
