Why, so: now have I done a good day’s work.
You peers, continue this united league…
Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit might want to re-read Richard the Third. Especially the first scene of act two, in which the clueless and naïve Kind Edward is joyfully patting himself on the back for bringing together warring factions in his government and creating (dare I say) a new climate of civility, shorn of hatred and enmity.
Of course, as the audience well-knows, Richard’s assurances of brotherhood and friendship are as phony as the smile he wears as he shakes hands with Lord Rivers and embraces the queen.
Mickadeit was as joyful as the doomed king in a March 22nd column in which he crowed about how he was able to get CAIR Greater L.A. Executive Director Hussam Ayloush to condemn the hateful, violent rhetoric of Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, one of the speakers at the now-infamous ICNA banquet that was the object of vocal and passionate protests in Yorba Linda:
I’m happy to report that less than a half-hour after I hit the “send” button on yesterday’s column, I received from an (sic) Southern California Muslim leader the following condemnation of statements by a radical Muslim leader:
“CAIR and the Muslim community unequivocally reject what appears in the 2006 video to be the speaker’s support for targeting Israeli buses and cafes. The targeting of civilians is a crime that can never be justified, no matter what just cause it claims to serve.”
The condemnation was from Hussam Ayloush , executive director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations for the Greater Los Angeles Area, and he was referring to a video that depicts Muslim leader Amir Abdel Malik-Ali at a UC Irvine (UCI) rally telling Muslim students that because Jews in Israel are willing to be martyrs, they must be willing to be martyrs, too. “They (Jews) know this is a new day….What do we do? Might be another 9/11.”
If the Muslim community wants the Villa Park City Council to censure Councilwoman Deborah Pauly for her statements at a February protest rally, I’d asked Ayloush, shouldn’t the Muslim community condemn its own leaders for hate speech?
Mickadeit expressed his contentment with having achieved “mutual condemnation of hate speech,” a first step toward creating an atmosphere of “trust” between the two sides in the debate over the Yorba Linda incident:
So we have mutual condemnation of hate-speech. But saying so for public consumption is one thing. Getting each side to believe and trust the other is harder to achieve.
Ayloush and Malik-Ali shared the stage at an event in Santa Ana on April 30, 2005 (years after Malik-Ali began making his outrageous statements. In the video I produced cataloging his hate-filled rants, some of the clips go back to the 1990s). Ayloush must certainly have known Malik-Ali’s views on suicide bombings and the murder of Jews (which were, by then, readily available via a Google search), yet he still had no problem appearing side-by-side with him at a rally for Muslim “civil liberties” in which they were two of only three speakers.
And it gets worse. In May 2006 (after Malik-Ali uttered the remarks at UC Irvine that Ayloush condemned in response to Mickadeit’s challenge), Ayloush was specifically asked by the L.A. Times about those statements in an article chronicling the controversy over Malik-Ali’s campus appearance.
And, according to the article, this was Ayloush’s reply:
“If you haven’t been through a bit of radicalism in college, you’ve missed out,” said Hussam Ayloush, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They’re very harmless, nonviolent kids, but they’re very vocal.”
Still, some local Muslim leaders quietly acknowledged that they were no fans of Ali or his growing influence on local campuses. Ayloush questioned the wisdom of the Muslim Student Union deliberately provoking Jewish students by using “holocaust” or Nazi references.
“I wouldn’t have chosen those titles. But would I describe them as anti-Semitic? No,” Ayloush said.
Yet now, when put on the spot by a columnist at the OC Register, and with the realization that he will look like a hypocrite if he condemns the Yorba Linda protesters but not Malik-Ali, Ayloush does a complete about-face.
In the L.A. Times article, Ayloush didn’t condemn Malik-Ali’s statements. In fact, he damn-near defended them. And he certainly had no problem sharing a stage with the man. But now he does a 180, telling Frank Mickadeit exactly what Frank Mickadeit wants to hear.
And we’re supposed to “trust” that Ayloush is being honest?
In Richard the Third, Edward was too blind to understand the truth about his conniving brother. He trusted Richard, and took his words at face value. And, by the final act, Edward’s house is in ruins, and everyone who trusted Richard is dead.
We must not be as naïve as King Edward. Trying to turn enemies into friends and hatred into love is a noble goal. But if one side is unwilling to be honest and truthful, it can also be a foolish and futile one.