CAIR Caught Backing Fake Police Harassment

The Council on American Islamic Relations, an organ of the Palestine Committee of the North American Muslim Brotherhood, was embarrassed this week when they lent their name to a Youtube video purporting to show the harassment of two young Muslim men in traditional attire by the New York Police Department.  The episode was meant to show further evidence in CAIR’s ongoing Jihad against the NYPD which has targeted their intelligence gathering capability for counterterrorism. The episode was breathlessly reported by the Huffington Post.

Except the incident never happened, and rapidly the narrative began to unravel. CAIR is now “demanding an apology” from Adam Saleh and Sheikh Akbar, the producers of the video.

Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national communications director, said their actions were “unacceptable” and potentially damaging to the Muslim community. Hooper said he fears that the next time a Muslim calls in a hate crime, critics will claim he or she is faking it.

“Muslims are already under the microscope, and to do this just to gain some cheap publicity is totally unacceptable,” Hooper told The Huffington Post. “There should be no attempt to justify it; they should just apologize and ask people to forgive them for their irresponsible actions.”

You almost have to feel bad for Saleh and Akbar. After all, CAIR has gone along with faked hate crimes on numerous occasions. (More here and here.) That CAIR might turn around and bite the faking hand that feeds must have come as a surprise.  Still CAIR is sticking with a claim of “fake but accurate“, the last refuge of frauds:

CAIR-New York’s director of operations, Sadyia Khalique, told HuffPost that regardless of its authenticity, the video illustrates the very real discrimination that Muslims in New York often face at the hands of the NYPD. Just last week, Khalique said, a Muslim man had reached out to her organization complaining that an officer singled him out at a subway station for wearing a thobe, a long religious gown.

Last year, a U.S. district judge ordered sweeping reforms to the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk initiative, ruling that the practice has resulted in discrimination against minorities. Although the number of stops has declined significantly since the ruling, Khalique says Muslims are still at risk of being targeted for stops.

Kudos to the Huffington Post, for doing the right thing, and reporting on the fakery when it came to light. Unfortunately it’s unlikely to result in the Huffington Post treating CAIR with the discredit they deserve. But still, if they give even a moment of pause in reporting a CAIR-hyped “hate crime” in the future, it will be an improvement.  In the mean time another fake bites the dust.