With everything that’s known about the extremist roots of CAIR and ISNA and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim American Society, why is the US government still participating in sideshows like this? US Govt and American Muslims Engage to Define Islamophobia.

There’s a reason why this article gets such a lot of play in the Saudi government mouthpiece, ArabNews; the Saudis must be gratified to see the progress that’s been made by their front groups.

Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, argued that Islamophobia was a new word but not a new phenomenon. He presented data to indicate that hate crimes against Muslims had risen by 29 percent in the last one year, and in the ten years since 1995 that his organization had collected data on Islamophobic episodes, it has shown nothing but a steady increase. He concluded that being critical of Islam and Muslims is not Islamophobia, but to ridicule the faith and the faithful, certainly is.

Louay Safi, the executive director of the ISNA leadership Development Center, insisted that Islamophobia deepens the divide between the US and the Islamic world. He argued that increasingly Islam is being presented as a violent and intolerant religion and this message is spreading from the margins to the mainstream. A report entitled “Blaming Islam” authored by Dr. Safi and published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding was released at the event.

Imam Mahdi Bray, the executive director of MAS Freedom Foundation, expressed concern that in spite of the fact that most Muslims cherish American values, they are portrayed as seditious. He lamented the ignorance of Islam that underpins Islamophobia and suggested that occasionally some measures of the government, when in its overzealous endeavor to prosecute the war on terror it overplays its hand and undercuts Muslim civil rights, may also be contributing to the growing instances of Islamophobia.

Here’s a good post by Robert Spencer on this disheartening example of Your tax dollars at work: US government meets with CAIR and other Muslim leaders to discuss ‘Islamophobia’.