Haters Against "Hate"
By John Perazzo
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
The immensely popular conservative broadcaster Michael
Savage, who won the 2007 Talkers magazine Freedom of
Speech Award, is under assault from a newly formed,
benignly named organization: the Hate Hurts America
Interfaith and Community Coalition (HHA). But as you
will see shortly, HHA itself has intimate ties to some of
the vilest hate, bigotry, and intolerance imaginable.
~~~~~ What Is HHA? ~~~~~
HHA describes itself in sanctified terms as "a coalition
of religious and civic organizations that was formed to
address the rising problem of hatred against American
minorities." "Hate hurts America by eroding our
country's great traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect," says HHA. "Hate-filled
words can and do lead to violent actions."
Closely allied with the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), HHA was established for the singular
purpose of trying to ban Mr. Savage, host of the daily
program The Savage Nation, from the airwaves. Toward
this end, it has sent letters urging the program's sponsors
to "stop supporting" the "hate speech" of a "hatemonger"
and to "pull their advertising dollars" from Savage's show.
This campaign was ostensibly sparked by what HHA calls
Savage's "history of hateful and bigoted comments against
minorities including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians,
Catholics, Jews, immigrants and women." But clearly
HHA's chief concern is the broadcaster's critical
commentary about Islam and Muslims, as evidenced by
this excerpt from its letter to the sponsors:
"As people of d iverse faith and cultural backgrounds,
we realize that maligning any religion negatively
impacts our country by perpetuating stereotypes and
discrimination in society. We stand in solidarity with
our Muslim brothers and sisters against bigotry."
~~~ Deceitful Knaves Who Twist the Truth ~~~
HHA cited the following comments by Savage as being
particularly egregious:
"I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not
gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not getting'
on my all-fours and braying to Mecca. And you could
drop dead if you don't like it. You can shove it up your
pipe. I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don't
wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your
religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."
"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are
you living in when you let them in here with that
throwback document [the Koran] in their hand, which
is a book of hate. Don't tell me I need reeducation.
They need deportation. I don't need reeducation.
Deportation, not reeducation."
"Make no mistake about it, the Koran is not a
document of freedom. The Koran is a document of
slavery and chattel. It teaches you that you are a
slave."
"I think [Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to
Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably
turn them into human beings."
Notably, HHA made no mention of the fact that the
context of all these comments was the rising tide, in
the United States and around the world, of violent
Islamic extremism -- with its calls for jihad, Muslim
dominion over the earth, the slaughter of infidels, the
universal adoption of Muslim customs, and the
institution of Sharia (Islamic law) in non-Muslim
nations. Nor did HHA point out that Savage had made
positive comments about Muslims who have rejected
such hateful extremism. But then again, cheap,
transparent smear jobs are not very well known for
presenting both sides of an issue.
Taking exception also to a few more remarks by
Savage, HHA cited the following quotes as
objectionable:
"In referring to Asians in 2004, he [Savage] stated,
'the Asians still chew 'em [dogs] up.'"
In actuality, as the full context of the quote clearly
reveals, Savage was not speaking about Asians per
se; he was referring specifically to natives of China,
where in fact dogs are eaten in relatively large
numbers. Simply because he chose not to phrase
this fact more delicately is not a signal that he is
bigoted against Asians.
"In reference to African Americans and the Civil
Rights Movement, Mr. Savage stated, 'Everything's
about Brown v. The Board of Education, it's
sickening. .."
By presenting this quote out of context, HHA
apparently aims to give readers the impression
that Savage has disparaged the Brown decision
and somehow favors America's return to a
segregated public school system. But nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact, Savage's
point had nothing whatsoever to do with the Brown
case, as a reading in full context clearly shows.
Rather, he was complaining about the Left's unceasing
propensity to depict America as an irredeemably racist
nation, and about the Left's attempt to draw what he
called a "seamless connection between the black civil
rights movement ... and the gays getting married."
"Mr. Savage has also smeared Hispanics.... [He] said
that 'our brown brethren' entering the United States
may 'erase' the 'European-American, or the white
person...'"
Though HHA took great exception to this assertion,
there is in fact a clearly articulated strategy by activist
Hispanic and Chicano organizations to take over the
Southwestern United States by means of a
demographic invasion of sorts, and to displace white
people as a majority in the region. Consider the
unambiguous objectives of just a few of these groups:
(a) La Raza Unida ("The Unified Race"): Claiming
that its constituents' ancestral homeland was stolen by
white Americans, this organization maintains that large
regions of the American Southwest do not rightfully
belong to the United States. It supports an open
borders policy of unrestricted immigration, as well as
amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights
for illegals already residing in the U.S. The organization
explains that its "spirit and force" were "truly embodied ...
under the leadership" of its founder Jose Angel Gutierrez,
an open borders advocate who once stated, "We have
an aging white America ... They are dying. ... They are
sh---ing in their pants with fear! I love it! ... We have got
to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the
worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."
(b) National Council of La Raza ("The Race"): This group favors
amnesty for illegal aliens already among us, and open borders
henceforth. In La Raza's calculus, any restriction on the free
movement of immigrants constitutes a violation of their civil rights,
and any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers
is "a disgrace to American values." Thus La Raza supports continued
mass Mexican immigration to the United States as a means of achieving
the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called
"Aztlan."
(c) Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF): This
organization condemned Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. government program
intended to restore integrity to a portion of the California-Mexico
border, across which many thousands of illegal aliens streamed each
year. MALDEF charged that Americans opposing unrestricted immigration
were motivated largely by "racism and xenophobia." Its founder, Mario
Obledo, said in 1998: "California is going to be a Hispanic state and
anyone who doesn't like it should leave. They should go back to
Europe."
(d) League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC): In 2005 LULAC
created an online petition calling for comprehensive immigration
reform that would convert all illegal immigrants currently residing in
the United States, into legalized citizens. Jos=E9 Velez, who headed the
League from 1990 to 1994, has said that the U.S. Border Patrol is "the
enemy of my people and always will be."
(e) Mexica Movement (MM): This organization views existing borders as
the arbitrary constructs of the "illegal squatter descendants" of
"pirates" who are unjustly occupying land that is not rightfully
theirs. "This whole continent is our [Mexicans'] homeland," says MM.
"We are not bound by the colonial illegal boundaries of the Europeans
=2E.. We have no obligation to be foreigners in our own land, on our own
continent." In MM's view, the entire North American land mass should
be open to the unfettered migrations of all its indigenous inhabitants
-- who constitute "one Anahuac nation."
(f) MEChA: This coalition of radical Chicano student groups aims to
return the Southwestern U.S. to Mexican authority. MEChA's core
philosophy is set forth in its founding manifestos, "El Plan
Espiritual de Aztl=E1n" and "El Plan de Santa Barbara." In the former
document, MEChA declares, "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on
the bronze continent [the United States]," and vows to repel the
"brutal 'gringo' invasion of our territories." MEChA's mission is
conveyed in the organization's slogan, "Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La
Raza nada," which translates to: "For the race, everything. Outside of
the race, nothing."
The foregoing facts about these pro-illegal immigration advocates make
it clear that Michael Savage was accurate in suggesting that there
exists a broad effort to "erase" white Americans from at least a
portion of the North American continent. In their own clearly worded
threats and declarations, the aforementioned groups make it known that
they not only loathe whites, but that they also, in some cases, reject
the very legitimacy of America as a sovereign nation.
Members of the HHA Coalition
The two most notable HHA coalition members are the Council on American-
Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association - West.
Let's take a brief look at each:
A) Council on American-Islamic Relations
CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar
Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for
Palestine (IAP), which was established by Hamas operative Mousa Abu
Marzook and served as Hamas' recruitment arm in the United States.
CAIR opened its first U.S. office with the help of a $5,000 donation
from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-
described charity (founded by Marzook) which in December 2001 would be
shut down by President Bush for collecting money on behalf of Hamas.
CAIR knows a great deal not only about hate speech, but also about
plain, old-fashioned, unvarnished hate:
Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994 meeting at Barry University,
"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement."
On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory
Board member Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be
alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel
Rahman's foiled plot to destroy several New York City monuments. On
June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor
of Wahhaj.
In September 2003 CAIR's former Community Affairs Director, Bassem
Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud
and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal investigators said that a
group Khafagi founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America, had
earmarked money for terrorism-supporting activities and had published
material advocating suicide attacks against U.S. interests.
In July 2004 Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board member of CAIR's Texas
chapter and a former Holy Land Foundation (HLF) official, was
convicted of having illegally shipped computers to the terrorism-
sponsoring states of Libya and Syria. That same month, he was charged
with having funneled more than $12.4 million through HLF, to Hamas.
And in April 2005 he was convicted of knowingly doing business with
Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, his brother-in-law.
Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and
civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al
Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State
Department's international terror list. He was also indicted on
charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American
troops in Afghanistan, and was later sentenced to twenty years in
prison on firearms charges.
Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was deported from the U.S.
because of his work as Executive Director of the Global Relief
Foundation, which helped finance al Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations.
There you have it: CAIR -- which has all these ties to Islamist
organizations dedicated to Jew-hatred, terror, and genocide -- thinks
it has the moral standing to lecture Michael Savage (and everyone
else) about "hate" and its fearsome capacity to breed violence.
Perhaps someone should inform the bigots at CAIR that this all sounds
like a very bad joke.
B) Muslim Students Association - West
Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Islam expert
Robert Spencer has called "the parent organization of Hamas and al
Qaeda," MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as
one of the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who
shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a
Muslim nation. These "friends" were described by the Brotherhood as
groups that could help teach Muslims "that their 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 ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over
all other religions."
MSA solicited donations for the aforementioned, now-defunct Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development. MSA also has strong ties to the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was founded by Osama bin Laden's
nephew and raises funds for Palestinian terrorist groups, including
Hamas.
On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-President of the UCLA Muslim
Students Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli
consulate in chants of "Death to Israel!" and "Death to the Jews!" One
guest speaker at the event was Hamid Ayloush, a member of CAIR, which
co-sponsored the rally. In his speech, Ayloush solicited contributions
for none other than his beloved Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development.
In recent years, MSA members at UCLA have raised money for Hamas and
Hezbollah terrorists at their annual "Anti-Zionist Week."
In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told an MSA meeting at
Queensborough Community College in New York, "The only relationship
you should have with America is to topple it!"
At the February 2006 MSA West Conference at Sacramento State
University, guest speaker Abdel Malik-Ali praised the late Hamas
founder Ahmed Yassin and rejoiced at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's failing health.
MSA co-founder Ahmad Totonji was a major figure in the Virginia-based,
Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SAAR network which, according to federal
investigators, may have had financial ties to al Qaeda, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.
This is but a tiny sampling of what MSA and its various chapters all
over North America have said and done. As with CAIR, the notion that
this group has the moral standing to chastise others for allegedly
promoting "hate" and "violence" is absurd in the extreme.
Additional HHA Members
Most of HHA's other coalition members are individuals (such as Rabbi
Michael Lerner of Tikkun) affiliated with religious groups and leftist
organizations such as:
The War Resisters League West: One of the oldest anti-war
organizations in America, WRL is a member organization of the United
for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition led by the longtime pro-
Castro Communist, Leslie Cagan. WRL was among the first major anti-war
groups to blame America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. On that
very day, WRL released a statement saying, "The policies of militarism
pursued by the United States have resulted in millions of deaths....
[M]ay these profound tragedies [of 9/11] remind us of the impact U.S.
policies have had on other civilians in other lands."
The American Friends Service Committee: AFSC has a long history of
supporting Communist causes and condemning the United States, all
under the banner of pacifism. In the 1970s John McAuliffe, who then
headed AFSC's Indochina program, initially characterized the news of
Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot as an American "misinformation
campaign," and lauded the Pol Pot regime as "the example of an
alternative model of development and social organization." In recent
decades AFSC has agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the United
States.
HHA's Leading Official
HHA is headed by Sabiha Khan, who also serves as Communications
Director for CAIR of Southern California. Previously, she was a
spokesperson for CAIR-Los Angeles and Executive Director of CAIR-
Orlando. She attended the University of California, Irvine, where she
was a member of the Muslim Student Union, an organization notorious
for featuring guest speakers who advocate Israel's destruction, liken
Israelis to Nazis, and deny the Holocaust.
During her tenure as CAIR-LA spokeswoman (from 2001-2006), Khan worked
closely with Hussam Ayloush, the chapter's Executive Director, to
defend the radical cleric Wagdy Ghoneim. Ghoneim is affiliated with
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for his repeated calls
for violent jihad against Jews. When Ghoneim was denied bond after his
2004 arrest in the U.S. for immigration violations, Khan organized an
"emergency town hall" meeting to address the matter. She told the
Orange County Register, "Yes, people are worried that we are being
persecuted because we are Muslim."
In May 2005, Khan penned a guest editorial for The Geeze news website,
where she conflated American society's concern about "[t]he actions of
extremist Jews, Muslims, Christians or others," disingenuously
implying that Americans as a whole felt equally threatened by
extremism from each of those quarters. Her piece said nothing about
Islamic extremism specifically, focusing almost entirely on such
alleged U.S. transgressions as "actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay, the torture tactics, the long, indefinite detentions of prisoners
without charges, the use of heavy bombs on largely civilian areas, and
the constant disregard of the Geneva Conventions and our own American
values."
This, then, is the Hate Hurts America Interfaith and Community
Coalition, the organization hounding Michael Savage about his "hate
speech"; an organization that wouldn't be caught dead supporting
bigotry of any kind; an organization solemnly pledging its undying
"support for the American traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect."
Go ahead. It's all right; go ahead and laugh.
John Perazzo is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have
Poisoned American Race Relations. called a "seamless connection
between the black civil rights movement ... and the gays getting
married."
"Mr. Savage has also smeared Hispanics.... [He] said that 'our brown
brethren' entering the United States may 'erase' the 'European-
American, or the white person...'"
Though HHA took great exception to this assertion, there is in fact a
clearly articulated strategy by activist Hispanic and Chicano
organizations to take over the Southwestern United States by means of
a demographic invasion of sorts, and to displace white people as a
majority in the region. Consider the unambiguous objectives of just a
few of these groups:
(a) La Raza Unida ("The Unified Race"): Claiming that its
constituents' ancestral homeland was stolen by white Americans, this
organization maintains that large regions of the American Southwest do
not rightfully belong to the United States. It supports an open
borders policy of unrestricted immigration, as well as amnesty, civil
liberties protections, and expanded rights for illegals already
residing in the U.S. The organization explains that its "spirit and
force" were "truly embodied ... under the leadership" of its founder
Jose Angel Gutierrez, an open borders advocate who once stated, "We
have an aging white America ... They are dying. ... They are sh---ing
in their pants with fear! I love it! ... We have got to eliminate the
gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we
have got to kill him."
(b) National Council of La Raza ("The Race"): This group favors
amnesty for illegal aliens already among us, and open borders
henceforth. In La Raza's calculus, any restriction on the free
movement of immigrants constitutes a violation of their civil rights,
and any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers
is "a disgrace to American values." Thus La Raza supports continued
mass Mexican immigration to the United States as a means of achieving
the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called
"Aztlan."
(c) Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF): This
organization condemned Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. government program
intended to restore integrity to a portion of the California-Mexico
border, across which many thousands of illegal aliens streamed each
year. MALDEF charged that Americans opposing unrestricted immigration
were motivated largely by "racism and xenophobia." Its founder, Mario
Obledo, said in 1998: "California is going to be a Hispanic state and
anyone who doesn't like it should leave. They should go back to
Europe."
(d) League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC): In 2005 LULAC
created an online petition calling for comprehensive immigration
reform that would convert all illegal immigrants currently residing in
the United States, into legalized citizens. Jos=E9 Velez, who headed the
League from 1990 to 1994, has said that the U.S. Border Patrol is "the
enemy of my people and always will be."
(e) Mexica Movement (MM): This organization views existing borders as
the arbitrary constructs of the "illegal squatter descendants" of
"pirates" who are unjustly occupying land that is not rightfully
theirs. "This whole continent is our [Mexicans'] homeland," says MM.
"We are not bound by the colonial illegal boundaries of the Europeans
=2E.. We have no obligation to be foreigners in our own land, on our own
continent." In MM's view, the entire North American land mass should
be open to the unfettered migrations of all its indigenous inhabitants
-- who constitute "one Anahuac nation."
(f) MEChA: This coalition of radical Chicano student groups aims to
return the Southwestern U.S. to Mexican authority. MEChA's core
philosophy is set forth in its founding manifestos, "El Plan
Espiritual de Aztl=E1n" and "El Plan de Santa Barbara." In the former
document, MEChA declares, "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on
the bronze continent [the United States]," and vows to repel the
"brutal 'gringo' invasion of our territories." MEChA's mission is
conveyed in the organization's slogan, "Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La
Raza nada," which translates to: "For the race, everything. Outside of
the race, nothing."
The foregoing facts about these pro-illegal immigration advocates make
it clear that Michael Savage was accurate in suggesting that there
exists a broad effort to "erase" white Americans from at least a
portion of the North American continent. In their own clearly worded
threats and declarations, the aforementioned groups make it known that
they not only loathe whites, but that they also, in some cases, reject
the very legitimacy of America as a sovereign nation.
Members of the HHA Coalition
The two most notable HHA coalition members are the Council on American-
Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association - West.
Let's take a brief look at each:
A) Council on American-Islamic Relations
CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar
Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for
Palestine (IAP), which was established by Hamas operative Mousa Abu
Marzook and served as Hamas' recruitment arm in the United States.
CAIR opened its first U.S. office with the help of a $5,000 donation
from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-
described charity (founded by Marzook) which in December 2001 would be
shut down by President Bush for collecting money on behalf of Hamas.
CAIR knows a great deal not only about hate speech, but also about
plain, old-fashioned, unvarnished hate:
Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994 meeting at Barry University,
"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement."
On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory
Board member Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be
alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel
Rahman's foiled plot to destroy several New York City monuments. On
June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor
of Wahhaj.
In September 2003 CAIR's former Community Affairs Director, Bassem
Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud
and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal investigators said that a
group Khafagi founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America, had
earmarked money for terrorism-supporting activities and had published
material advocating suicide attacks against U.S. interests.
In July 2004 Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board member of CAIR's Texas
chapter and a former Holy Land Foundation (HLF) official, was
convicted of having illegally shipped computers to the terrorism-
sponsoring states of Libya and Syria. That same month, he was charged
with having funneled more than $12.4 million through HLF, to Hamas.
And in April 2005 he was convicted of knowingly doing business with
Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, his brother-in-law.
Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and
civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al
Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State
Department's international terror list. He was also indicted on
charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American
troops in Afghanistan, and was later sentenced to twenty years in
prison on firearms charges.
Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was deported from the U.S.
because of his work as Executive Director of the Global Relief
Foundation, which helped finance al Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations.
There you have it: CAIR -- which has all these ties to Islamist
organizations dedicated to Jew-hatred, terror, and genocide -- thinks
it has the moral standing to lecture Michael Savage (and everyone
else) about "hate" and its fearsome capacity to breed violence.
Perhaps someone should inform the bigots at CAIR that this all sounds
like a very bad joke.
B) Muslim Students Association - West
Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Islam expert
Robert Spencer has called "the parent organization of Hamas and al
Qaeda," MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as
one of the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who
shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a
Muslim nation. These "friends" were described by the Brotherhood as
groups that could help teach Muslims "that their 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 ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over
all other religions."
MSA solicited donations for the aforementioned, now-defunct Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development. MSA also has strong ties to the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was founded by Osama bin Laden's
nephew and raises funds for Palestinian terrorist groups, including
Hamas.
On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-President of the UCLA Muslim
Students Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli
consulate in chants of "Death to Israel!" and "Death to the Jews!" One
guest speaker at the event was Hamid Ayloush, a member of CAIR, which
co-sponsored the rally. In his speech, Ayloush solicited contributions
for none other than his beloved Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development.
In recent years, MSA members at UCLA have raised money for Hamas and
Hezbollah terrorists at their annual "Anti-Zionist Week."
In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told an MSA meeting at
Queensborough Community College in New York, "The only relationship
you should have with America is to topple it!"
At the February 2006 MSA West Conference at Sacramento State
University, guest speaker Abdel Malik-Ali praised the late Hamas
founder Ahmed Yassin and rejoiced at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's failing health.
MSA co-founder Ahmad Totonji was a major figure in the Virginia-based,
Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SAAR network which, according to federal
investigators, may have had financial ties to al Qaeda, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.
This is but a tiny sampling of what MSA and its various chapters all
over North America have said and done. As with CAIR, the notion that
this group has the moral standing to chastise others for allegedly
promoting "hate" and "violence" is absurd in the extreme.
Additional HHA Members
Most of HHA's other coalition members are individuals (such as Rabbi
Michael Lerner of Tikkun) affiliated with religious groups and leftist
organizations such as:
The War Resisters League West: One of the oldest anti-war
organizations in America, WRL is a member organization of the United
for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition led by the longtime pro-
Castro Communist, Leslie Cagan. WRL was among the first major anti-war
groups to blame America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. On that
very day, WRL released a statement saying, "The policies of militarism
pursued by the United States have resulted in millions of deaths....
[M]ay these profound tragedies [of 9/11] remind us of the impact U.S.
policies have had on other civilians in other lands."
The American Friends Service Committee: AFSC has a long history of
supporting Communist causes and condemning the United States, all
under the banner of pacifism. In the 1970s John McAuliffe, who then
headed AFSC's Indochina program, initially characterized the news of
Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot as an American "misinformation
campaign," and lauded the Pol Pot regime as "the example of an
alternative model of development and social organization." In recent
decades AFSC has agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the United
States.
HHA's Leading Official
HHA is headed by Sabiha Khan, who also serves as Communications
Director for CAIR of Southern California. Previously, she was a
spokesperson for CAIR-Los Angeles and Executive Director of CAIR-
Orlando. She attended the University of California, Irvine, where she
was a member of the Muslim Student Union, an organization notorious
for featuring guest speakers who advocate Israel's destruction, liken
Israelis to Nazis, and deny the Holocaust.
During her tenure as CAIR-LA spokeswoman (from 2001-2006), Khan worked
closely with Hussam Ayloush, the chapter's Executive Director, to
defend the radical cleric Wagdy Ghoneim. Ghoneim is affiliated with
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for his repeated calls
for violent jihad against Jews. When Ghoneim was denied bond after his
2004 arrest in the U.S. for immigration violations, Khan organized an
"emergency town hall" meeting to address the matter. She told the
Orange County Register, "Yes, people are worried that we are being
persecuted because we are Muslim."
In May 2005, Khan penned a guest editorial for The Geeze news website,
where she conflated American society's concern about "[t]he actions of
extremist Jews, Muslims, Christians or others," disingenuously
implying that Americans as a whole felt equally threatened by
extremism from each of those quarters. Her piece said nothing about
Islamic extremism specifically, focusing almost entirely on such
alleged U.S. transgressions as "actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay, the torture tactics, the long, indefinite detentions of prisoners
without charges, the use of heavy bombs on largely civilian areas, and
the constant disregard of the Geneva Conventions and our own American
values."
This, then, is the Hate Hurts America Interfaith and Community
Coalition, the organization hounding Michael Savage about his "hate
speech"; an organization that wouldn't be caught dead supporting
bigotry of any kind; an organization solemnly pledging its undying
"support for the American traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect."
Go ahead. It's all right; go ahead and laugh.
John Perazzo is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have
Poisoned American Race Relations.
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