In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Media Alert

CAIR continues to misrepresent Muslim scholar
“Cut and paste” tactics divisive for American Muslim Community

For Immediate Release – 4/4/2000

(Washington, DC) – In a recent press statement released by CAIR (“American Muslim Media Watch” – 3/30/2000), the organization once again misrepresented statements of Islamic scholar, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani.

In their excerpted version of Gary Rosenblatt’s, “Monitoring the Muslim Threat,” CAIR’s selective edits of the article juxtapose Shaykh Kabbani with those whom CAIR consistently vilifies as enemies of Islam. Moreover, it seems the advocacy organization would like to re-ignite last year’s fury over statements made at the State Department in January 1999.

“By the use of their editorial tactics, CAIR enhances divisiveness within the American Muslim community once again, as they quote statements out of context,” said ISCA Vice President, Mateen Siddiqui. “The quote about extremism has been explained in detail in formal responses, press statements and public statements, yet CAIR refuses to clarify Shaykh Kabbani’s statement; rather, they continue to misrepresent him in more subtle ways now.”

Last year, in a State Department Open Forum on the topic of extremism, Shaykh Kabbani was quoted as saying that “the methodology or ideology of extremists has been spread to 80% of the Muslim population, but not all of them agree with it.” While he said this in the context of the population being exposed to this ideology, he continuously reiterated that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving and tolerant. Due to CAIR’s releases on this subject over one year ago, much confusion and furor resulted.

ISCA calls on CAIR to be more discretionary when excerpting articles out of context, lest they continue to create more confusion within the American Muslim community. We take this opportunity to remind CAIR that they represent themselves and their members, not the entire American Muslim community.

For more information on ISCA, please visit our Web site at http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.org.

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