The latest American official to be targeted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for exercising his freedom of speech is the mayor of Clarksville, Tenn., Johnny Piper. CAIR joined Clarksville-area Muslims in scolding Piper for forwarding an e-mail that protests against an Islamic stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
Too many politically correct officials cower before CAIR. They accept its self-definition as a civil rights organization (which it is not) and ignore the facts that it is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case and that several of its officials have been convicted of terrorism-related offenses.
But Piper -- refreshingly enough -- is not backing down.
It all started last Friday, when without comment Piper forwarded to city council members and other Clarksville officials a viral e-mail that has been circulating for years, although Piper received a new version that erroneously blames Barack Obama for the stamp. The e-mail calls upon “patriotic Americans” to protest against the stamp that commemorates the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The e-mail exhorts readers to “remember the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!”
Ahmed Joudah of the Islamic Center of Clarksville declared the e-mail was marked by “appalling ignorance of what Islam is, and who Muslims are. I laughed when I read it, but at the same time, I felt sorry that we still have people around us that think that way.”
In what way did the e-mail manifest “ignorance”? Apparently Joudah was referring to its designation of the 1993 World Trade Center attack as an example of “Muslim terrorism.”
One of the foremost elements in the playbook of CAIR and like-minded organizations is to pretend that the only people who are “linking Islam to terrorism” are those who are calling upon non-Muslims to resist the jihad and Islamic supremacism, not Islamic jihadists themselves. One very common false assumption evident in the reaction to Piper’s e-mail is that to characterize the attacks perpetrated by Islamic jihadists in the name of Islam and because of Islamic texts and teachings as “Muslim terrorism” is somehow hateful or bigoted.
In fact, it is simply accurate reporting: Osama bin Laden, for example, wrote in his letter to the American people of October 6, 2002: “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.” The 9/11 plotters, led by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, wrote in December 2008: “We ask to be near to God, we fight you and destroy you and terrorize you. The Jihad in god’s cause is a great duty in our religion.”
It is “anti-Muslim” or “ignorant” to notice that Islamic jihadists again and again invoke Islam to explain and justify what they do? Of course in the real world, it isn’t. Another claim is that to identify as Islamic terrorism violent acts that are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam somehow characterizes all Muslims as terrorists. According to the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, “With 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, Joudah said it is unfair to blame all Muslims for the actions of a radical fringe.”
But did Piper really do that? Acts of Islamic terrorism are simply facts. That they exist no more tars all Muslims as terrorists than it tars all Martians as terrorists. But in response to Piper’s terrible act of “Islamophobia,” CAIR announced that it was planning to send a copy of the Koran to Piper, as well as to Clarksville city council officials.
I am glad that CAIR is sending a Koran to Piper. I hope he reads it. He and all Americans need to know what is in it. He should especially read chapter nine, in which Muslims are instructed to wage war against Jews and Christians and subjugate them as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law. And if Piper needs help understanding the Islamic holy book, for it is not a book that is especially inviting to outsiders, he can consult my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran.
Despite the opprobrium, however, Piper was not intimidated. He explained: “It was an innocent sending off, but I’m not taking it back, either. I don’t like people killing Americans.”
Neither do I, Mr. Mayor. But once again the allegedly “moderate” CAIR and its ilk have demonstrated that they get angrier when Americans begin to speak out and resist jihad and Islamic supremacism than they have ever gotten about any actual incidents of Islamic terrorism.
