The Council on American-Islamic Relations has declared a jihad against radio host Dennis Prager, and now are demanding that a Chabad Center invite a Muslim speaker to “balance” Prager’s planned talk: Controversy follows Dennis Prager to Yorba Linda.

Now, the tumult is extending to Prager’s scheduled appearance at the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, where he will speak tonight on “Islam, Iran, the West and Israel.”

The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling him an “Islamophobic speaker,” while the director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California has said he “seeks the marginalization of American Muslims.” Those groups, along with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, has called for the Chabad Center to invite a “Muslim representative” to balance Prager’s views.

Rabbi David Eliezrie, who heads the Yorba Linda congregation, said the criticism of Prager in a press release issued Monday by the Islamic relations group was “outrageous” and “akin to a blood libel.”

“I think CAIR in this case has smeared a wonderful Jewish leader, somebody respected by Jews all over the country, in a despicable fashion,” Eliezrie said.

Eliezrie said he disagreed with Prager’s position on whether the Minnesota congressman should swear his oath on the Koran but added it was possible to do so civilly. Prager, he said, had championed interfaith dialogue for years as host of “Religion on the Line” on KABC-AM (790). …

“I have great skepticism of CAIR,” Eliezrie said. “I haven’t seen them condemn specific groups who are involved in terror in the Middle East, and that to me is very scary.”

And sure enough, even the Los Angeles Times is forced to note that CAIR will not specifically condemn Hamas (or Hizballah) by name:

The council describes itself as a mainstream civil-rights organization. In an interview with The Times, the group’s Southern California spokeswoman Munira Syeda generically condemned “terrorist actions” but declined to condemn Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. “I don’t understand what the relevance is,” Syeda said.

She said that Prager, in his column, had “undermined all the values of pluralism, diversity and respect for different minorities’ religious freedom.”

“He is using the anti-Muslim sentiment that is prevalent in the country right now to spread hate against Muslims,” she said.

For Prager’s part in this controversy, which began when he criticized Rep. Keith Ellison for taking his oath on a Koran, he has issued a retraction and apology. This has no effect on the CAIR fatwa, of course:

Prager said in an interview that he wrote the column about Ellison “in the heat of passion about losing the Judeo-Christian basis of American society.”

“It was a rare example of my passion getting the better of my reason,” said Prager, who regrets any implication that Ellison should not have the legal right to swear on the Koran. Prager said he did not believe a “religious test” should be a requirement to hold office.