In an editorial that completely ignores CAIR’s many unsavory statements and terrorist links, Ginger Rutland of the Sacramento Bee defends the Council on American Islamic Relations: Editorial notebook: The CAIR takeaway.

(You can read the article without registering at the SacBee by following the link from this Google search: “Editorial notebook: The CAIR takeaway”.)

Rutland doesn’t want to know about any of the factual allegations against CAIR, but she does like their banquets and their prayer meetings and Basim Elkarra. And she sees them in the grand tradition of leftist causes, “at a perilous time for Muslims in this country.”

I know Elkarra. I don’t believe he supports terrorism. The personable young University of California, Berkeley, graduate assumed the helm of the local CAIR chapter at a perilous time for Muslims in this country. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to reassure his fellow Americans while defending fellow Muslims.

I am also familiar with CAIR, at least as it operates locally. I have attended CAIR banquets, spoken to their youth groups and joined CAIR-sponsored Iftars, the feast and prayer services that follow the daily fasts observant Muslims practice during Ramadan.

For me, CAIR’s efforts to reach out are reminiscent of the efforts of other Americans falsely accused of disloyalty: Japanese, German and Italian Americans during World War II, civil rights activists and Vietnam War opponents casually smeared as communists in the 1950s and ‘60s. I wonder; was Boxer’s loyalty ever questioned when she opposed the Vietnam War? If so, she must understand what her casual withdrawal of a casually awarded tribute means to a Muslim American at this moment in American history. Shame on her.

This is why the term “useful idiot” was invented.

Robert Spencer has a good post on this vapid apologia.

Rutland says nothing about the allegations concerning Elkarra himself. Here is what Kaufman’s initial press release on this matter actually says about him:

As Executive Director, Basim Elkarra has defended someone who trained for jihad in a Pakistani terrorist camp; he has defended an imam who urged a Pakistani crowd to wage attacks on America; and he has defended an imam who was attempting to build an Islamic school for the purpose of teaching children how to commit violent acts against Americans. Also, Elkarra has described Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state, and he has moderated an event that featured a Hamas operative who spent five years in an Israeli prison and who is currently on trial in the U.S.

None of that apparently matters to Rutland. As far as she is concerned, if someone is charging religious bigotry, she’s on the other side. Very well. Now I am charging the same thing. In defending someone with associations like Elkarra’s and CAIR itself, Rutland is falling into the very trap she is trying to avoid: she is abetting a much more serious challenge to our “cherished traditions of religious tolerance, open debate and fair play” than the one represented by Joe Kaufman and his allies. She is abetting those who wish someday to see the U.S. as a Sharia state, with institutionalized discrimination against all but Muslim males. That is the real bigotry.