California Conservative

Based on this Washington Times article, CAIR’s ship is sinking. I don’t know how much more water it can take before sinking totally of of sight:

The number of reported members spiraled down from more than 29,000 in 2000 to fewer than 1,700 in 2006. As a result, the Muslim rights group’s annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000, when yearly dues cost $25, to $58,750 last year, when the group charged $35. The organization instead is relying on about two dozen donors a year to contribute the majority of the money for CAIR’s budget, which reached nearly $3 million last year.

I had hoped that we’d find out who those donors were but the IRS redacted the names. Nonetheless, it paints a bleak picture of CAIR, which touts itself as a bigtime operation. That’s the picture that Parvez Ahmed tried painting here:

“We are proud that our grass-roots support in the American Muslim community has allowed CAIR to grow from having eight chapters and offices in 2001 to having 33 today,” Mr. Ahmed said. The self-described civil liberties organization for Muslims seeks to portray “a positive image of Islam” through public relations and the press, but instead has alienated some by defending questionable accusations of discrimination.

That isn’t an image that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser buys into:

M. Zuhdi Jasser, director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says the sharp decline in membership calls into question whether the organization speaks for American Muslims, as the group has claimed. “This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population. They only represent their membership and donors,” Mr. Jasser said. “Post-9/11, they have marginalized themselves by their tired exploitation of media attention for victimization issues at the expense of representing the priorities of the American Muslim population,” Mr. Jasser said.

Dr. Jasser is the man that stepped forward after CAIR filed a discrimination lawsuit against US Airways on behalf of the Flying Imams. Based on the numbers, I’d say that Dr. Jasser’s assessment of CAIR is the more accurate perspective of the organization. Here’s what Dr. Jasser said in his initial press release:

The constant exploitation of America’s culture of political correctness especially in this setting of what is the most dangerous environment of air travel is out of touch with America’s priorities. Such misguided priorities by Muslim activist organizations like CAIR will make the legitimate defense of our civil rights far more difficult when more serious complaints of racism and discrimination are involved. America is quickly becoming numb to their constant refrains and the polls demonstrate the profound ineffectiveness of their tiring campaigns.

CAIR has a reputation of being the whiniest special interest group in Washington, DC, not as the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group. I can’t wait until they’re shut down because they’re an SDGT group.

Technorati Tags: CAIR, SDGT, Civil Rights, Parvez Ahmed, Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD, Flying Imams, Islamic Extremists

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 5:43 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, CAIR, Liberals, Media, Special Interests, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.