The Council on Arab Islamic Relations, better known as CAIR, views itself as a watchdog for Muslims in the United States. Not everyone agrees with that assessment--Daniel Pipes for one.
Until very recently, CAIR stayed away from the Danish Muhammad cartoons controversy. On January 31, CAIR offered to meet with the Danish and Norwegian ambassadors to discuss the situation. Norway's ambassador took CAIR up on the offer--they met Thursday.
Looking at the most current "Action Alerts" on CAIR web site, Help Defend the Image of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), CAIR is suggesting an educational approach for its members in dealing with the cartoons, in other words, instructing others about Islam.
Such as:
What the Prophet Muhammad means to Muslims
* Aspects of the prophet's personality
* The Messenger and the message
* Ignorance fuels adverse reactions to the prophet's message
* How the Prophet Muhammad dealt with personal attacks
- Precluding punishment for the people of Taif
- Offering kindness to abusive neighbors
- Offering amnesty to former enemies in Mecca
* Ignorance can only be countered by education and personal examples of good character
* The prophet's love, mercy, good manners, and educational approach turned foes into friends
* Turn these defamatory incidents into a learning opportunity.
* Share information about the prophet with your neighbors of other faiths.
This, to any reasonable person is a much better way to approach the Danish Muhammad cartoons than what Muslims have done in Europe and the Middle East.
CAIR was more confrontational four years ago when that other Muhammad cartoon was published. That cartoon, drawn by Doug Marlette of the Tallahassee Democrat, was a twist on a 2002 campaign by Christian evangelicals to discourage people from purchasing gas-guzzling SUVs, featuring that shame inducing tag-line, "What would Jesus drive."
CAIR organized an e-mail blitz against Marlette's Muhammad cartoon. Some of the e-mails were pretty frightening, as Marlette explained in this 2003 Columbia Journalism Review article:
Predictably, the Shiite hit the fan.
Can you say "fatwa"? My newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat, and I received more than 20,000 e-mails demanding an apology for misrepresenting the peace-loving religion of the Prophet Mohammed — or else. Some spelled out the "else": death, mutilation, Internet spam. "I will cut your fingers and put them in your mother's ass." "What you did, Mr. Dog, will cost you your life. Soon you will join the dogs . . . hahaha in hell." "Just wait . . . we will see you in hell with all jews . . . ." The onslaught was orchestrated by an organization called the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR bills itself as an "advocacy group." I was to discover that among the followers of Islam it advocated for were the men convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. At any rate, its campaign against me included flash-floods of e-mail intended to shut down servers at my newspaper and my syndicate, as well as viruses aimed at my home computer. The controversy became a subject of newspaper editorials, columns, Web logs, talk radio, and CNN. I was condemned on the front page of the Saudi publication Arab News by the secretary general of the Muslim World League.
CAIR learns from its mistakes, I guess.
As for Muslims, sad to say, there is a undercurrent of--at best--mean spiritedness that is quite troubling to non-Muslims such as myself.
Once again, I have to end with this tag line:
Islam demands more from non-believers than any other religion.
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