It’s incredibly frustrating to see American mainstream media continuing to carry water for radical Islamic groups such as CAIR, despite their well-documented history of links to Hamas and other terrorist groups, and their status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case. Most news reports that cite CAIR do not even mention their co-conspirator status—a courtesy it’s hard to imagine the media granting anyone else, under any circumstances.

This week’s most ridiculous example of willful media blindness came from ABC News, where they staged a completely phony “Islamophobia” event, then published an absurd whitewash piece on their web site to accompany it. Today Steven Emerson has an article at the Investigative Project on this travesty: The ABC’s of Radical Islam.

On its website Tuesday, ABC News posted a story titled, “Common Misunderstandings About Muslims,” which did its level best to carry water for the radical Islamist, and jihadist, movement in America, going so far as to cite America’s most notorious radical front group, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as the source to define the concept of “jihad.”

Take this incredibly problematic passage:

Misconception: Islam promotes violence and terrorism.

Truth:

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, prominent Muslims, Islamic organizations and Islamic scholars have repeatedly denounced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and terrorism in general. One letter sent to President George W. Bush was signed by leaders from nine American-Muslim organizations, which together represent most of the seven million Muslims in the United States.

Jihad is a term that is often misunderstood and associated with violent radical militants. However, according to Muslim advocates, the word jihad means to “strive, struggle and exert effort.” It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle by military forces in the battlefield for self-defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression (source: the Council on American-Islamic Relations).

CAIR, in all its public events, and in frequent quotes to the media and contacts with the government, has tried to push the line that the word “jihad” does not mean holy war; it only means a “peaceful, internal struggle.”

On the State Department list of proscribed terrorist groups, a full four organizations use the word “Jihad” in their title. Is the Islamic Jihad struggling peacefully when it blows up a bus or a caf�? Are they using that word to distort CAIR’s vision of Islam? Or do they simply not understand Arabic? Has CAIR requested that they alter their names so as not to foment this “misconception?”