Marathon Pundit: CAIR vs. Robert Spencer

Author Robert Spencer, who operates both the Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch web sites, is the latest target of Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)--all 1,700 members.

That's CAIR's Capitol Hill neighborhood headquarters above.

Despite its tiny size, the mainstream media and (ugh!) various government agencies view CAIR as the voice of Muslims in America, which gives the group a level of power it simply does not deserve. But CAIR has money--more on that later.

I've reported on how CAIR bullied its way into the Thomas Klocek free speech struggle at DePaul University. That's their style. Now CAIR is trying to use the same tactics against Robert Spencer, who's been invited to give a speech to the Young Americans for Freedom.

From FrontPage Magazine:

It is one of the oddities of American politics that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) can describe itself as a "civil-liberties group" while crusading to crush the free-speech rights of its critics. But that's exactly what happened last week when CAIR deployed its legal arsenal in a bid to stop author Robert Spencer from speaking at a conference of the Young America's Foundation (YAF).

In a letter to YAF dispatched by its lawyer, former Democratic National Committee staff counsel Joseph E. Sandler, CAIR threatened to "pursue every appropriate legal remedy" if Spencer were not immediately silenced. In the event, the YAF honorably refused to yield. The moral of the story: If CAIR disagrees with what you have to say, it'll fight furiously to deny your right to say it. To heck with civil liberties.

CAIR is not a first-time offender in this regard. Indeed, Spencer is only the most recent target of the organization's ongoing campaign to strangle free debate, especially when it turns on Islamic extremism. Other recipients of CAIR's wrath have included scholar Daniel Pipes, conservative columnist Cal Thomas, talk radio host Michael Graham, venerable news pundit Paul Harvey, National Review magazine, Fox's 24, and Andrew Whitehead, the proprietor of the website Anti-CAIR. In a telling example of CAIR's bullying tactics, Whitehead's dogged criticism of the organization got him slapped with a defamation suit. When CAIR's suit was decisively dismissed last year, the victory of an independent critic against the 32-chapter group, with its war chest filled by millions in petrodollars from Saudi royals and Gulf sheikdoms, had a certain David-vs.-Goliath resonance.