DC Watson: CAIR: Trivializing 9/11 for the sake of Islam?

DC Watson considers how CAIR wants to airbrush more than just a few hijabs:

Who knows? Perhaps drawing hijabs on bareheaded women in photographs is more demanding than we could've imagined.

What happens if a woman shows up for a CAIR photo-op without a hijab? No problem! They'll just Photoshop one on!

These photos were kindly sent to me by Jihad Watch reader Ana. Above is a screenshot of CAIR's front page when this photo was featured; it has now been taken down, perhaps while the photo doctorer attends Photoshop classes. The Google cache of the front page is here.

Here is the picture alone:



And here is a blowup showing the crude Photoshop work:



This is a small thing, of course. Just a bit of silliness. But coming from an organization that brands the truth about Islam "Islamophobia" and has never answered uncomfortable questions about its own loyalties and affiliations, it raises larger issues of trust. Why do the mainstream media and many government organizations still give CAIR a free pass as a neutral civil rights group when its commitment to the truth is so manifestly tenuous?

ADDENDUM: The doctored photo is still at CAIR's site. (Thanks to alliswell.)

SECOND ADDENDUM, 11:00AM: CAIR has taken down the picture, indicating that they are paying close attention to what goes on at Jihad Watch. The photo is also now missing from the Google Cache. It looks as if the good folks at CAIR very much do not want you to know about their little adventure in Photoshopping. (Thanks to Dr. Glenn Reynolds.)

THIRD ADDENDUM, 12:30PM: The UNdoctored photo is now at CAIR's site, confirming that not only was the clumsy hijab added to the woman standing next to the speaker, but to two female heads in the audience. In a nice Orwellian touch, the undoctored photo now also appears in Google's Cache of the page. We have always been at war with Eurasia, eh, Ibrahim? Here is the undoctored and doctored photos:




(and now to cont.)

Nevertheless, it seems to be time for yet another reminder, and a lesson in reality for the Van Goghs at the Council on American Islamic Relations -- for they have incorrectly described some of those who died on September 11th, 2001, and failed to mention who it was that killed them.

From their own article:

News Releases
Tuesday, September 13, 2005

CAIR: CO Rep's 'Crescent' Comments a Ploy to Gain Publicity
GOP leaders urged to repudiate Tancredo's Islamophobic views

WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/13/05) The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today dismissed Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) comments on the design of a memorial to those aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 as a cynical political ploy designed to gain national attention. (See: http://tancredo.house.gov/)

CAIR also called on state and national leaders of the Republican Party, including President Bush, to repudiate Tancredo's Islamophobic stance on the memorial issue.

In a letter sent to the National Park Service, Tancredo opposed the design's shape "because of the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam." Extremist and anti-Muslim Internet bloggers have associated the design's semi-circular shape with Islam, despite the fact that the designer, the park service and relatives of crash victims say the shape is a circle broken by the flight pattern of Flight 93 when it crashed near Shanksville, Pa. (The crescent itself has no religious significance in Islam, but is commonly associated with that faith.)


http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1746&theType=NR

"Those aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11"?
"Crash victims"?

"Islamophobic remarks", "extremist and anti-Muslim internet bloggers". It just goes on and on with them, doesn"t it? Round and round we go.

CAIR should again be reminded that we are fully aware why these people were aboard a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. Flight 93 crashed because a handful of brave Americans overpowered their devout Muslim captors and prevented the plane from reaching its designated target. Quite simply, with no Muslim hijackers on Flight 93, the likelihood of the plane ever crashing would have been significantly reduced. These people were not “crash victims. They were victims of an Islamic terrorist attack, and for what they did, they are American heroes.

Regarding the association between the crescent and Islam, this conclusion is not â"slamophobic"; it is accurate. Perhaps the crescent doesn't have any religious significance in Islam. However, it has had a defining relationship with Islam since the days of the Ottoman Empire. To this day, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Comoros, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Uzbekistan, and Western Sahara all employ the use of the crescent on their national flags.
http://www.fotw.net/flags/islam.html

CAIR's apparent trivializing of the deaths of innocent Americans who lost their lives at the hands of Muslim lunatics, defining them as "crash victims," is just another shameful episode in the history of an organization that is well acquainted with shameful episodes.

If Islamic symbols, or anything that resembles them were ever to be included in any of the planned 9/11 memorials, should it not be for the purpose of permanently enshrining an indictment of those who perpetrated the most deadly terror attack on American soil in the history of our great nation?

Perhaps photographs of the nineteen hijackers, their commanders, and their apologists should be encased into the sidewalks at the memorials' sites, so that they can be stepped on and walked across by all who live in freedom.

In the meantime, the designers, with thanks to all who contacted them and requested that they return to earth, have decided to do so, and alter the design of the Flight 93 Memorial. Read about it here:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003543.htm

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.