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CAVING IN TO JIHAD: NATIONAL REVIEW, CAIR, AND MY BOOK

by Srdja Trifkovic

Stalin's purged comrades were routinely airbrushed from photographs and replaced with vases, chairs, or shrubs. Last week I had an inkling of how it feels: a flattering review of my book The Sword of the Prophet was abruptly removed from the National Review Online bookstore, under pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

I first became aware of the problem when Robert Spencer's article "CAIR's War on National Review" was published on March 30 by FrontpageMagazine . Apparently CAIR had launched a campaign against National Review , seeking the removal of my book and The Life and Religion of Mohammed by the late Fr. J.L. Menezes, a Roman Catholic priest, from sale by the NR Book Service. CAIR's Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper accompanied the demand with the warning that "The National Review must clarify its position on Islamophobic hate speech and offer a public apology," and warned that "anti-Muslim rhetoric" could lead to violence.

Not quite believing that NR had actually caved in I performed a Google search for "trifkovic nrbookservice sword of the prophet," and got what looked like the right link:

What Serge Trifkovic argues in "The Sword of the Prophet," however, is that the raw stuff from which Islam is made is particularly dangerous and unpromising

. . . [www.nrbookservice.com/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=C6077.]

But when I clicked on the link all I got was a blank page with the following message: "Record not found for product code C6077-This is probably a function of the database not having pricing information or other data about this book. About the only thing you can do now is go back or contact customer support."

It looked like a first-class scandal was staring me in the face. The plot thickened the following day, March 31, when WorldNetDaily revealed that CAIR's success in imposing its will on NR may have been due to the pressure the Muslims exerted on one of its advertisers, Boeing:

The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations-which has seen three of its former employees indicted on federal terrorism charges-said National Review's decision to stop selling The Life and Religion of Mohammed and The Sword of the Prophet came after hundreds of concerned Muslims contacted the magazine and the Boeing Co., one of the magazine's advertisers. "We would like to thank all those who took the time to contact both National Review and Boeing to defend Islam and the Prophet Muhammad from defamation," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

The fact that Boeing announced delivery of the first two Boeing 777-300ER airplanes to the Emirates on March 28-with more sales in the pipeline-provided what looked like a revealing context to the story. (A correspondent of mine, whose good taste is not always on par with his wit, duly remarked that the protesters should promise not to fly Boeings into buildings if their demands are met.)

Immediately I called Boeing's Vice President for Communications, Larry McCracken, to find out what was going on. He did acknowledge that the company had received many messages demanding Boeing's pressure on NR to drop the ads, but he insisted that his company had not done anything of the kind. He said that Boeing was not in any kind of communication with NR over this issue and gave me specific assurances that it had not made any attempt to influence NR's decision one way or another, and had no intention of doing so in the future. Such clear-cut statements, I must say, rang true: A seasoned professional could have chosen more ambiguous words had he wanted to secure a fallback position.

My next call was to Jay Nordlinger, NR's managing editor. He had just returned from a trip, he said, and wasn't familiar with the details. When I expressed my dismay at what appeared to be going on, he said that his silence should not be construed as approval or agreement. I gave him my phone number, but nobody called me back.

On April 1, as I mused gloomily on how easy it was for those effette laptop bombardiers to submit to the culture of dhimmitude, some comfort came with the news that The Sword had jumped to a three-digit position on Amazon.com , and that my book and The Life and Religion of Mohammed were No. 1 and No. 2 best-sellers on http://www.humaneventsonline.com . The pleasing thought that the Muslims were doing for me what Abe Foxman had done for Mel Gibson was soon offset by e-mails informing me of Islamist gloating around the world. From Moscow Egor Engelhardt sent me the link to a Muslim site in Russia that celebrated CAIR's feat .

On April 3, I learned from Robert Spencer's Jihadwatch that my book was back on NR's site [http://www.nrbookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=C6077] but that by Fr. Menezes was not. This does not change the substance of the problem: A nasty hate group, CAIR, tainted with terrorist links and steeped in the ideology of jihad , has succeeded in forcing a prominent American institution to practice self-censorship. Once the precedent is established, and the model accepted as legitimate, it will only whet Islamist appetites and encourage their hope that the end-result will be a crescent on the Capitol a generation or two from now.

The proper way to react to CAIR's veiled threat of violence if its demands are not met is not to meet them half-way but to call the Department of Homeland Security. It claims to be "just another civil-rights group," devoted to protecting the rights of Muslims and promoting a better understanding of Islam in America, but there is much more than meets the eye:

1. CAIR has called the guilty verdict in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case "a travesty of justice" and decreed that it "represents the degree to which an anti-Muslim venom has penetrated into society."

2. CAIR condemned the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks including two tunnels in 1995, as a "hate crime."

3. CAIR advisory-board member Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White in 1995 as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City sites in 1993.

4. In August 1998, CAIR condemned the targeting of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

5. In October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama as "the sworn enemy."

6. In 1999, CAIR objected to the premiere of Touched by an Angel, which featured a story line about slavery in Sudan and forced conversions of Christians in the south of the country ( "Muslims asked to monitor 'Touched by an angel' for stereotypes" )

7. CAIR's 1999 annual report criticized American public schools for "the lack of religious accommodation" and singled out for praise Paterson, New Jersey-the scene of much public rejoicing by Muslim immigrants on September 11-where the school district cancels classes on two Muslim holidays.

8. In April 2001 CAIR issued a press release criticizing Khalid Duran's then-forthcoming book it had not seen, Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews . Its attack grew into an international campaign, with some Arab religious leaders calling the author an apostate ( murtadd )-an invitation to a compulsory death sentence under Islam. Duran, a Muslim, complained that the seal of approval given to CAIR by American politicians of both parties gave it an altogether undeserved credibility and emboldened it to become aggressive and oppressive. This is because non-Muslims do not know who speaks for whom in the Muslim community, he says:

CAIR and its fellow extremist organizations have had surprising success in being accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The picture of Awad and Hooper in the company of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a festive Ramadan dinner in the State Department's elegant diplomatic rooms (at which, to top things off, she urged them to find recruits to apply for government jobs) gave rise to consternation among many American Muslims. It also aroused suspicions, with some suggesting that CAIR is valued at Foggy Bottom as a back channel to Islamists in the Middle East and others concluding that the State Department is simply ignorant. In either case, there is legitimate cause for alarm.

Duran's fears were confirmed when, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, CAIR's leading duet-Palestinian-born Nihad Awad and Ibrahim ("Dougie") Hooper-were invited twice to the White House to meet President Bush, as part of his campaign to assure the public that the majority of Arabs and Muslims in the country do not support terrorism. When receiving them Mr. Bush may have been unaware that CAIR's condemnation of the attacks was delayed-until December of that year. Until that time it had referred to the "alleged attackers," implying that someone other than the named 19 were the real culprits.

Some days after the attacks CAIR also called on its supporters to send donations, which was seemingly nice: under a picture of the World Trade Center in flames the message said simply, "Donate to the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund." Yet the hyperling took would-be donors to the website of the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic "charity" whose assets were frozen soon thereafter by the U.S. Government because it had given millions of dollars to Hamas! A week later CAIR called on people to donate to the Global Relief Foundation, another Islamic charity based in suburban Chicago, whose assets were also frozen in December 2001. According to the Treasury Department, "The Global Relief Foundation has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al-Qaeda Network, and other known terrorist groups." To direct donations for the victims of 9-11 to an Islamic charity accused of helping terrorists is scandalous in itself. To do so twice within a week should have attracted attention to CAIR of law-enforcement agencies. In the best Stalinist tradition, however, CAIR has tried to airbrush its past record. It used to keep archives of all its public statements and activists' speeches on the web, but after 9-11 many have mysteriously disappeared. Since that date materials subsequently proven embarrassing to CAIR were routinely removed, too.

In 2002, CAIR embarked on a library campaign is to help Americans learn about Islam "as a religion of peace and justice," to counter what it saw as "a rising tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric." The goal was to place a package of books, videos, and audio cassettes in as many of the country's 16,000 libraries as possible. As Nihad Awad put it, "the lack of timely and accurate books in libraries . . . [creates a] knowledge gap that leads to increased misunderstanding and produces unnecessary divisions." CAIR claimed that the program was not subsidized by any foreign government. It kept quiet about a half-million donation for the program from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, however. This effectively gave the endeavor a solid Wahabi seal of approval on the materials included in the library package, in addition to the imprimatur that CAIR already enjoys from the closely related Egyptian Ikhwanis.

By 2003 CAIR felt emboldened to complain about the FBI surveillance of mosques, but remained mute when it was revealed soon thereafter that the Al-Farooq mosque in New York was complicit in collecting funds for al-Qaeda. Undeterred, it has continued to demand amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act to protect the Muslims from eavesdropping. It did not comment on last year's spate of bombings, from Casablanca to Istanbul; the search of its archived press releases for "Madrid" give zero results; but it never misses an opportunity to attack the slightest sign of "disrespect" for Islam in America.

CAIR's longer-term agenda became apparent in May 2004, when it issued a report claiming that anti-Muslim incidents in the United States had increased by almost 70 percent in 2003. The study "outlined" (euphemism for superficial or fraudulent research) over a thousand "incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment" last year, "the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever recorded." (The word experience is another coded term: It denotes an entirely subjective view of a situation or event that could not be pumped up into an "incident.") According to CAIR's reckoning, hate crimes alone jumped by an unprecedented 121 percent. On the basis of this report CAIR demanded a public inquiry to post-9/11 policies impacting the Muslim community, legislative actions to curb the use of profiling by law enforcement agencies, strengthening of hate crime prosecutions, and "modifications" to the PATRIOT Act to end "abuses" of the Muslim community.

With that "report" and the associated demands, reflected in the campaign to censor books uncomfortable to jihad , the real agenda of CAIR is finally clear. CAIR is a hate group that is not interested in promoting anyone's "rights," let alone increasing any "understanding" on anything. It does not want to change the nature of discourse on Islam in America, it wants to transform America into a barren wasteland of mind-numbing uniformity of thought and feeling on par with Saudi Arabia and Mauritania. Messrs. Awad and Hooper are not Islamic community activists seeking to better the lot of their co-religionists, they are political visionaries.

If CAIR sees itself as the acceptable face of Islam presented to the public and the media, one is led to wonder what "extremist" Islam must be like. It is probably correct that CAIR does not represent the majority of Muslims in America, who are said to be mostly moderates who wish a quiet life. This may be so, but it is irrelevant-not because such moderates are rare, but because they are unimportant. Religions, like political ideologies, are pushed along by money, power, and tiny vocal minorities. Those minorities must not be appeased. If and when you get a call from "Dougie" Hooper warning you that "Islamophobia" may lead to violence, tell him what he can do with his threats and call the law.

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