Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: January 18, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/7864
The mentality of radical Islam includes
several main components, of which one is Muslim supremacism: A belief that
believers alone should rule and otherwise enjoy an exalted status over
non-Muslims. This outlook dominates the Islamist worldview as much in the
streets of Paris as in the caves of Afghanistan.
Two recent American criminal cases
highlight this attribute. Both involve the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, a Saudi-funded group whose leadership sometimes announces its
goal to Islamize America ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other
faith, but to become dominant.")
The first criminal case concerns
Dale Ehrgott, a non-Muslim insurance broker living in Reno, Nev. Appalled
by CAIR's record of apologizing for terrorism, plus the then-recent arrest
on terrorism-related charges of its former employee Ismail Royer, Mr. Ehrgott
dashed off four angry e-mails to CAIR in mid-2003.
One read: "We accept you [sic] holy
war. Looking forward to it very much. We can deal with you easily especially
since you are on our soil. You have taught us much about terrorism so get
ready to be the receiver." In another message, some weeks later, he wrote:
"You are making a lot of people angry and you idiots are sitting ducks."
"It wasn't a threat, just a nasty
email," Mr. Ehrgott told The Associated Press. He described CAIR as "an
anti-American organization" and pointed out that at no time did he physically
intimidate it. CAIR saw matters differently and forwarded the notes to
law enforcement agencies, which came down heavily on Mr. Ehrgott, perhaps
because the Department of Justice decided to make an example of him.
Describing these e-mails as containing
"a threat to injure members" of CAIR, the American attorney for Nevada,
Daniel Bogden, convinced a federal grand jury in March 2004 to indict Mr.
Ehrgott. Mr. Bogden then threw the book at Mr. Ehrgott, who, if convicted,
faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
But after his September 2004 trial
ended in a hung jury, the feds abruptly lost their taste for prosecuting
Mr. Ehrgott. They settled with him on January 13, letting him off with
a trivial sentence: One year's probation and 50 hours of community service,
implicitly acknowledging that he had acted rashly but not dangerously.
The second case concerns Taiser
Hosien Okashah, a Muslim food broker (and an illegal immigrant from Syria)
living in Miami Beach. On June 3, 2004, Mr. Okashah threatened to destroy
the Best Buy store in Plantation, Fla., because, according to the store
clerk's sworn testimony, he was displeased with a rebate offer on a laptop
computer. "I am going to come back and blow up this place if I do not get
my money this time," the clerk quotes him as saying. On June 29, the authorities
arrested Mr. Okashah, charged him with threatening to detonate an explosive,
and briefly jailed him without bond.
The executive director of CAIR's
Florida office, Altaf Ali, leapt to Mr. Okashah's defense. Muslims, he
said, are "very concerned that a very humble member of the community, for
asking a question about a rebate, can be put in jail."
Mr. Ali attributed Mr. Okashah's
travails to a miscommunication exacerbated by the negative stereotyping
of Muslims. A CAIR press release further specified that the arrest stemmed
from "language barriers and overreactions by store employees and law enforcement
officials."
Mr. Ali also sought to have the
judge in the case removed because he had ordered Mr. Okashah to undergo
a psychological evaluation. Nonetheless, Mr. Okashah is scheduled to go
to trial on February 14 for the second-degree felony charge of "threatening
to detonate an explosive device."
In CAIR's eyes, then, when a non-Muslim
broker responds too emotionally to terrorism, he deserves years in jail
and financial ruin. But when a Muslim broker threatens a store, he's the
innocent victim of "negative stereotyping" who deserves release without
any punishment at all.
The Ehrgott and Okashah incidents
fit an ugly Islamist pattern of double standards. Although CAIR presents
itself as a civil-rights group, it is just the opposite: An organization
asserting special privileges for Muslims and derogating the rights of others.
When Western institutions grant
legitimacy to Islamist organizations like CAIR, they strengthen Islamist
supremacism and its drive for Muslim dominance. Those institutions need
to get smart and retract that legitimacy, reserving it for Muslims who
reject radical Islam.
