Nichole Hungerford of Frontpage Magazine has just posted an article on the attempt by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to distort the reality of the recent Yorba Linda protests. Yours truly is mentioned.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/03/16/does-radical-muslim-malik-ali-speak-for-the-yorba-linda-islamic-community/
Hungerford is correct. Of the hundreds of people who turned out to protest the dinner hosted by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), CAIR is distorting the nature of the event by splicing together a 5 minute video clip showing dozens of people who formed a separate group to protest the attendees as they arrived. That action was wrong, and I make no defense of it. Yet, the words of our speakers have been edited out of context, and it is being implied that the entire protest took part in the heckling. That is patently false.
In addition, CAIR and ICNA have taken special aim at one of the local politicians who spoke, Deb Pauly. They are demanding that she be reprimanded, that she apologize, be fired, be tarred and featered, what have you. I say she has nothing to apologize for. Her (edited) words referred to Islamic terrorists.
Finally, isn't it interesting that in all the propaganda CAIR/ICNA are putting out they don't mention their own speakers by name (Amir Abdel Malik Ali and Siraj Wahhaj)? The whole reason the protest took place was because both these speakers have a history of inflammatory and radical statements.
Hate speech, I believe the term is.
That ICNA chose these two speakers for their event speaks volumes about an organization that claims to be "peaceful and moderate".
Even if she does have something to apologize for, I am getting tired of rhetorical mobs demanding someone be fired every time they say something stupid. If their entire value to their employer is the commercial appeal of their name, maybe they just made themselves useless. Otherwise, as Angela Merkel said about her defense minister, before she changed her mind "I didn't hire a research assistant."
ReplyDeletePublic officials don't get fired because somebody doesn't like their speech. That's how we missed a great opportunity to reject Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court (his own autobiography admits he didn't know the answer to questions about the law posed in hearings) because the Democratic leadership got sidetracked with irrelevant innuendo from Anita Hill.