As reported by Matt Cover at CNSNews.com, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday that “the Tea Party and the Republican Party have given the green light” for the harassment and hatred of Muslims in America.

“[W]e used to deal with individual cases of Islamophobia, harassments, and discrimination against Muslims,” Awad said.  “Today, and in the past few months – almost maybe one year, we can say one year — we have seen an organized effort, we have seen organizations built to fight the presence of Muslims in the United States and to deny Muslims’ right to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and even to be an elected official.”

“[Y]es it is a mid-term election year, and unfortunately the Tea Party and the Republican Party have given the green light for these people to defame and stereotype Muslims, and unfortunately as we’ve said, these have led to violence against Muslims,” Awad went on to say.

CAIR’s communications director Ibrahim Hooper also linked the Tea Party to anti-Muslim attacks.

“We’ve seen a really strong uptick in Islamophobia recently – primarily sparked by the controversy over the Manhattan Islamic center,” Hooper said at the press conference.  “We’ve seen hate vandalism at mosques in California; in Tennessee, we had an arson attack; at a mosque in Arlington, Texas, we had an arson attack; and something that wasn’t even reported nationwide, in May we had a bomb attack at a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida”.

“The question is, why?” Hooper asked.  “Is it tied to the November elections?  Is it tied to the rise of the Tea Party movement?  Is it tied to the economy?”

“I think it’s pretty clear that it’s been sparked…by these hate groups and their opposition to the Islamic community center in Manhattan,” Hooper said.

According to Cover, Hooper dodged questions about whether CAIR agreed with the Ground Zero Mosque planner, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who said that America was an “accessory to the crime” of 9/11, and that Osama bin Laden was “made in the USA” in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview.

Awad also told reporters that the 9/11 terrorist attacks, conducted by radical Muslims, were in no way connected to the religion of Islam.

“[W]e totally reject the false assumption that our faith, Islam, has to do anything with 9/11,” Awad said.  “So submitting to this false assumption is really condemning our own faith in the 9/11 attacks and this is really a collective guilt that we do not submit to.”

Awad made similar comments last month in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

In that interview, Awad repeated the false notion that no link exists between Islam and 9/11, and said that he is “sick and tired of condemning” Muslim terrorists.

CAIR’s assertion that Islam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks is completely false and targets the insanity level in terms of denial.

The 9/11 terrorists, like most terrorists, all believed themselves to be good followers of Islam.  As I and others have argued, they are in fact followers of a totalitarian ideology known as Islamism.

Even if you separate the religion of Islam from the ideology of Islamism, there is still a link to Islam that goes back hundreds of years.

There are a brave few in the Muslim community who embrace this reality and are working to expel the Islamist ideology from their religion, but CAIR accepts Islamism and promotes it through their organization.

While Awad may be “sick and tired” of condemning the Islamists who murder Americans at home and overseas, American citizens are sick and tired of not hearing Muslims condemn such radicalism enough.

As for the Tea Party linkage, it has been my personal experience with Hooper that he simply hates conservatives and the Tea Party in general, even before the false claims made Wednesday.

“Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., just handed over a seven-figure check to Republicans to help beat Democrats across the country this fall,” Stewart said in the e-mail.  “When a supposed news organization jumps into the 2010 elections with a huge donation like this, I take it as a direct challenge to this movement.”

“These conservative special interests seem to think they can buy their way into power,” says Stewart.

Organizing for America, the successor of Obama for America, is an organizing and fundraising project of the Democratic National Committee.

According to the Organizing for America website, BarrackObama.com, the By the People Fund was set up to combat the high-powered special interests with millions of citizen donations.

“Conservative special-interest groups are plotting to spend more than $200 million on the elections this fall,” says a description of the appeal.  “This movement has never relied on PACs or corporate cash to fund our campaigns — and we never will.  We made a choice to take on these special interests in Washington — and now these groups are vowing payback this November.”

I contacted Organizing for America about the e-mail, and a representative confirmed that the “supposed news organization” comment was targeted directly at Fox News, not News Corp., saying Fox News’ claim to be fair and balanced was “ridiculous.”

News Corporation, which owns Fox News Channel, wholly owns or owns large shares in news stations and newspapers around the world including Sky News Channel and The Times in the United Kingdom, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg first reported that News Corp. gave the Republican Governors Association $1 million in June of this year.

In an e-mail sent to Politico, News Corp. Spokesman Jack Horner said, “News Corporation believes in the power of free markets, and the RGA’s pro-business agenda supports our priorities at this most critical time for our economy.”

In October of 2009, senior White House personnel claimed that Fox News was not a real news organization.

Then White House communications director Anita Dunn said on CNN’s Reliable Sources that Fox News operates “almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

“When (President Obama) goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point,” Dunn said.  “He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with John King in October of 2009, said, “I suppose the way to look at (Fox News), and the way we, the President looks at it, we look at it is it’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.  And that’s a different take.”

“And more importantly is not have the CNN’s and the others in the world basically be led and following Fox as if that what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization in the sense of both sides’ sense of a valued opinion,” said Emanuel.

When asked about Anita Dunn’s comments about Fox News, David Axelrod, a senior advisor to President Obama, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in October of 2009, “I understand that (Fox News’) programming is geared toward making money.”

“All — the only argument Anita was making is that they’re not really a news station, if you watch — even — it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming, it’s really not news. It’s pushing a point of view,” Axelrod said.  “And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.”

“We’re going to appear on their shows.  We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view,” said Axelrod.

In response to the attacks from the Obama administration at the time, Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said, “Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars.  The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues.”

(Research for this article was conducted while I was a news correspondent for CNSNews.com.  CNSNews.com made an editorial decision not to run this piece.  Printed with permission.)

Rep. Ryan stressed the need to address the looming financial crisis before it is too late.  He created the Roadmap plan to:

1. Ensure universal access to health insurance, fulfill the missions of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and make these programs permanently solvent.

2. Return Federal spending growth to sustainable levels and lift the debt burden looming over future generations.  And,

3. Promote sustained economic and job growth and put the U.S. in a position to lead – not merely survive – in the international marketplace.

Ryan said there is support for the plan on both sides of the political aisle, but the political reality of dealing with these issues causes his colleagues to hesitate because most of them are more concerned about losing their jobs than facilitating a just government.

“This is what we have to do,” said Ryan.  “If I lose my job, fine.”

Leading into the first question, MSNBC’s Monica Novotny shows a select clip from a now famous speech by West where he talks about America’s Founding Fathers as insurgents who fought against a tyrant.  Novotny then asks West, “Do you feel that we’re living under a tyranny?”  West spoke about liberty, personal responsibility, and love of country during the speech MSNBC referenced, but Novotny instead tried to paint Lt. Col. West as an angry right-wing nut trying to incite violence.

Novotny then labels West a “Tea Party candidate.”  After West says that he is not a Tea Party candidate, and explains that he is a conservative Republican, footage begins to roll of a protest with a sign depicting President Obama as Hitler, and the words “ALLEN WEST IS SUPPORTED BY THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT” appear under the Hitler image.  Despite the revelation that the image of Obama with the Hitler mustache came from a leftist organization called LaRouche PAC, MSNBC and other left-wing media sources continue to associate this image with the conservative Tea Party movement.

I immediately sent a Tweet over to the good folks at NewsBusters right after I watched this hit piece, but it helps ease some of the frustration to write a bit about the lies and hatred coming from the Left myself.  The leftist agenda to paint conservatives as violent bigots will surely be their downfall.  Democrat politicians and leftist pundits are the ones actually inciting hatred and violence, and the American people are beginning to see the truth of the matter.

The conduct of MSNBC was absolutely deplorable today, but that’s par for the course with them.  The left-wing media will go to any lengths to destroy the Tea Party movement and silence the American people, even if it involves smearing a true American hero like Lt. Col. Allen West in the process.

Baran explained that one of the biggest mistakes Westerners make in looking at the conflict against radical Muslims around the world is not differentiating between the religion of Islam, and the political ideology of Islamism.  She went on to say that defining “moderate Muslims” as simply those that are non-violent is a flawed method of identification.  Mainstream Muslim organizations in the US such as CAIR or ISNA seem like moderate non-violent groups, but in fact they support the Islamist ideology and the violence that comes with following that ideology.

Baran says that moderate Muslims are those live their lives understanding that Islam is compatible with democracy, the Rule of Law, and reverence for human rights.  According to Mirahmadi, most of the Muslim organizations she has had experience with in her life are set up to make the United States a Muslim state.  The Qur’an comes before the US Constitution in many of these institutions.  Dr. Jasser spoke about the need to separate mosque and state, and said that Americans should be free to practice their faith as long as they adhere to the Constitution.

According to the authors, real moderate Muslims struggle to have their voices heard because of the influence groups like CAIR, and because they are not the types of people who wear their religion on their sleeve.  The group also agreed that the US policy makers need to support the few moderate voices who do speak out against political Islamism if there is to be any hope of winning the current conflict.

I wrote more about this topic in an article I submitted to the Young Americans for Freedom New Guard Magazine which will hopefully be published in the next few months.