Haters Against "Hate"
By John Perazzo
Wednesday, January 09, 2008

The immensely popular conservative broadcaster
Michael Savage, who won the 2007 Talkers magazine
Freedom of Speech Award, is under assault from a
newly formed, benignly named organization: the Hate
Hurts America Interfaith and Community Coalition
(HHA). But as you will see shortly, HHA itself has
intimate ties to some of the vilest hate, bigotry, and
intolerance imaginable.

~~~~~ What Is HHA? ~~~~~

HHA describes itself in sanctified terms as "a coalition
of religious and civic organizations that was formed to
address the rising problem of hatred against American
minorities." "Hate hurts America by eroding our
country's great traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect," says HHA. "Hate-filled
words can and do lead to violent actions."

Closely allied with the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), HHA was established for the singular
purpose of trying to ban Mr. Savage, host of the daily
program The Savage Nation, from the airwaves. Toward
this end, it has sent letters urging the program's sponsors
to "stop supporting" the "hate speech" of a "hatemonger"
and to "pull their advertising dollars" from Savage's
show.

This campaign was ostensibly sparked by what HHA
calls Savage's "history of hateful and bigoted comments
against minorities including African Americans,
Hispanics, Asians, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and
women." But clearly HHA's chief concern is the
broadcaster's critical commentary about Islam and
Muslims, as evidenced by
this excerpt from its letter to the sponsors:

"As people of diverse faith and cultural backgrounds,
we realize that maligning any religion negatively
impacts our country by perpetuating stereotypes and
discrimination in society. We stand in solidarity with
our Muslim brothers and sisters against bigotry."

Deceitful Knaves Who Twist the Truth

HHA cited the following comments by Savage as being
particularly egregious:

"I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not
gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not getting'
on my all-fours and braying to Mecca. And you could
drop dead if you don't like it. You can shove it up your
pipe. I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don't
wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your
religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."

"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are
you living in when you let them in here with that
throwback document [the Koran] in their hand, which
is a book of hate. Don't tell me I need re-education.
They need deportation. I don't need reeducation.
Deportation, not reeducation."

"Make no mistake about it, the Koran is not a
document of freedom. The Koran is a document of
slavery and chattel. It teaches you that you are a
slave."

"I think [Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to
Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably
turn them into human beings."

Notably, HHA made no mention of the fact that the
context of all these comments was the rising tide, in
the United States and around the world, of violent
Islamic extremism -- with its calls for jihad, Muslim
dominion over the earth, the slaughter of infidels, the
universal adoption of Muslim customs, and the
institution of Sharia (Islamic law) in non-Muslim
nations. Nor did HHA point out that Savage had made
positive comments about Muslims who have rejected
such hateful extremism. But then again, cheap,
transparent smear jobs are not very well known for
presenting both sides of an issue.

Taking exception also to a few more remarks by
Savage, HHA cited the following quotes as
objectionable:

"In referring to Asians in 2004, he [Savage] stated,
'the Asians still chew 'em [dogs] up.'"

In actuality, as the full context of the quote clearly
reveals, Savage was not speaking about Asians per
se; he was referring specifically to natives of China,
where in fact dogs are eaten in relatively large
numbers. Simply because he chose not to phrase
this fact more delicately is not a signal that he is
bigoted against Asians.

"In reference to African Americans and the Civil
Rights Movement, Mr. Savage stated, 'Everything's
about Brown v. The Board of Education, it's
sickening. .."

By presenting this quote out of context, HHA
apparently aims to give readers the impression
that Savage has disparaged the Brown decision
and somehow favors America's return to a
segregated public school system. But nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact, Savage's
point had nothing whatsoever to do with the Brown
case, as a reading in full context clearly shows.
Rather, he was complaining about the Left's unceasing
propensity to depict America as an irredeemably racist
nation, and about the Left's attempt to draw what he
called a "seamless connection between the black civil
rights movement ... and the gays getting married."
"Mr. Savage has also smeared Hispanics.... [He] said
that 'our brown brethren' entering the United States
may 'erase' the 'European-American, or the white
person...'"

Members of the HHA Coalition

The two most notable HHA coalition members
are the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association
- West. Let's take a brief look at each:

A) Council on American-Islamic Relations

CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper,
Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had
close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine
(IAP), which was established by Hamas operative
Mousa Abu Marzook and served as Hamas'
recruitment arm in the United States. CAIR
opened its first U.S. office with the help of a
$5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation
for Relief and Development (HLF), a
self-described charity (founded by Marzook)
which in December 2001 would be shut down by
President Bush for collecting money on behalf of
Hamas.

CAIR knows a great deal not only about hate
speech, but also about plain, old-fashioned,
unvarnished hate:

Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994
meeting at Barry University, "I am a supporter
of the Hamas movement."

On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo
White named CAIR Advisory Board member
Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons
who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in
Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's
foiled plot to destroy several New York City
monuments. On June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio
affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor of
Wahhaj.

In September 2003 CAIR's former Community
Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty
to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud
and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal
investigators said that a group Khafagi founded,
the Islamic Assembly of North America, had
earmarked money for terrorism-supporting
activities and had published material advocating
suicide attacks against U.S. interests.

In July 2004 Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board
member of CAIR's Texas chapter and a former
Holy Land Foundation (HLF) official, was
convicted of having illegally shipped computers
to the terrorism-sponsoring states of Libya and
Syria. That same month, he was charged with
having funneled more than $12.4 million
through HLF, to Hamas. And in April 2005 he
was convicted of knowingly doing business with
Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, his
brother-in-law.

Randall Todd Royer, who served as a
communications specialist and civil rights
coordinator for CAIR, trained with
Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qa'eda-tied Kashmir
organization that is listed on the State
Department's international terror list. He was also
indicted on charges of conspiring to help al
Qa'eda and the Taliban battle American troops in
Afghanistan, and was later sentenced to twenty
years in prison on firearms charges.

Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was
deported from the U.S. because of his work as
Executive Director of the Global Relief
Foundation, which helped finance
al Qa'eda and other terrorist organizations.

There you have it: CAIR -- which has all these
ties to Islamist organizations dedicated to
Jew-hatred, terror, and genocide -- thinks it has
the moral standing to lecture Michael Savage
(and everyone else) about "hate" and its fearsome
capacity to breed violence. Perhaps someone
should inform the bigots at CAIR that this all
sounds like a very bad joke.

B) Muslim Students Association - West

Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
which Islam expert Robert Spencer has called
"the parent organization of Hamas and al Qa'eda,"
MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim
Brotherhood memorandum as one of the
Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our
friends" who shared the common goal of
destroying America and turning it into a Muslim
nation. These "friends" were described by the
Brotherhood as groups that could help teach
Muslims "that their work in America is a kind of
grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging'
its miserable house by their hands ... so that ...
God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all
other religions."

MSA solicited donations for the aforementioned,
now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development. MSA also has strong ties to the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was
founded by Osama bin Laden's nephew and
raises funds for Palestinian terrorist groups,
including Hamas.

On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, then-
President of the UCLA Muslim Students
Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the
Israeli consulate in chants of "Death to Israel!"
and "Death to the Jews!" One guest speaker at
the event was Hamid Ayloush, a member of
CAIR, which co-sponsored the rally. In his
speech, Ayloush solicited contributions for none
other than his beloved Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development.

In recent years, MSA members at UCLA have
raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah
terrorists at their annual "Anti-Zionist Week."

In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told
an MSA meeting at Queensborough Community
College in New York, "The only relationship you
should have with America is to topple it!"

At the February 2006 MSA West Conference
at Sacramento State University, guest speaker
Abdel Malik-Ali praised the late Hamas founder
Ahmed Yassin and rejoiced at Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's failing health.

MSA co-founder Ahmad Totonji was a major
figure in the Virginia-based, Muslim
Brotherhood-dominated SAAR network which,
according to federal investigators, may have had
financial ties to al Qa'eda, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and Hamas.

This is but a tiny sampling of what MSA and its
various chapters all over North America have
said and done. As with CAIR, the notion that this
group has the moral standing to chastise others
for allegedly promoting "hate" and "violence" is
absurd in the extreme.

Additional HHA Members

Most of HHA's other coalition members are
individuals (such as Rabbi Michael Lerner of
Tikkun) affiliated with religious groups and leftist
organizations such as:

The War Resisters League West: One of the
oldest anti-war organizations in America, WRL
is a member organization of the United for Peace
and Justice anti-war coalition led by the longtime
pro-Castro Communist, Leslie Cagan. WRL was
among the first major anti-war groups to blame
America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

On that very day, WRL released a statement
saying, "The policies of militarism pursued by the
United States have resulted in millions of deaths.
... [M]ay these profound tragedies [of 9/11]
remind us of the impact U.S. policies have had
on other civilians in other lands."

The American Friends Service Committee:
AFSC has a long history of supporting
Communist causes and condemning the United
States, all under the banner of pacifism. In the
1970s John McAuliffe, who then headed AFSC's
Indochina program, initially characterized the
news of Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot
as an American "misinformation campaign," and
lauded the Pol Pot regime as "the example of
an alternative model of development and social
organization." In recent decades AFSC has
agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the
United States.

HHA's Leading Official

HHA is headed by Sabiha Khan, who also serves
as Communications Director for CAIR- Southern
California. Previously, she was a spokesperson for
CAIR-Los Angeles and Executive Director of
CAIR-Orlando. She attended the University of
California, Irvine, where she was a member of the
Muslim Student Union, an organization notorious
for featuring guest speakers who advocate
Israel's destruction, liken Israelis to Nazis, and
deny the Holocaust.

During her tenure as CAIR-LA spokeswoman
(from 2001-06), Khan worked closely with
Hussam Ayloush, the chapter's Executive
Director, to defend the radical cleric Wagdy
Ghoneim. Ghoneim is affiliated with Hamas
and the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for his
repeated calls for violent jihad against Jews. When
Ghoneim was denied bond after his 2004 arrest in
the U.S. for immigration violations, Khan organized
an "emergency town hall" meeting to address the
matter. She told the Orange County Register,
"Yes, people are worried that we are being
persecuted because we are Muslim."

In May 2005, Khan penned a guest editorial for
The Geeze news website, where she conflated
American society's concern about "[t]he actions
of extremist Jews, Muslims, Christians or others,"
disingenuously implying that Americans as a
whole felt equally threatened by extremism from
each of those quarters. Her piece said nothing
about Islamic extremism specifically, focusing
almost entirely on such alleged U.S.
transgressions as "actions at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay, the torture tactics, the long,
indefinite detentions of prisoners without charges,
the use of heavy bombs on largely civilian areas,
and the constant disregard of the Geneva
Conventions and our own American values."

This, then, is the Hate Hurts America Interfaith
and Community Coalition, the organization
hounding Michael Savage about his "hate speech";
an organization that wouldn't be caught dead
supporting bigotry of any kind; an organization
solemnly pledging its undying "support for the
American traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect."

Go ahead. It's all right; go ahead and laugh.

John Perazzo is the author of The Myths That Divide Us:
How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations.
called a "seamless connection between the black civil
rights movement ... and the gays getting married."

Members of the HHA Coalition

The two most notable HHA coalition members are
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
and the Muslim Students Association - West.
Let's take a brief look at each:

A) Council on American-Islamic Relations

CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper,
Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had
close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine
(IAP), which was established by Hamas operative
Mousa Abu Marzook and served as Hamas'
recruitment arm in the United States. CAIR
opened its first U.S. office with the help of a
$5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation
for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described
charity (founded by Marzook) which in December
2001 would be shut down by President Bush for
collecting money on behalf of Hamas.

CAIR knows a great deal not only about hate
speech, but also about plain, old-fashioned,
unvarnished hate:

Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994
meeting at Barry University, "I am a supporter
of the Hamas movement."

On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo
White named CAIR Advisory Board member Siraj
Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who
may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic
Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot
to destroy several New York City monuments. On
June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio affiliate held a large
fundraiser in honor of Wahhaj.

In September 2003 CAIR's former Community
Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty to
three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and
agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal
investigators said that a group Khafagi founded,
the Islamic Assembly of North America, had
earmarked money for terrorism-supporting
activities and had published material advocating
suicide attacks against U.S. interests.

In July 2004 Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board
member of CAIR's Texas chapter and a former
Holy Land Foundation (HLF) official, was
convicted of having illegally shipped computers
to the terrorism-sponsoring states of Libya and
Syria. That same month, he was charged with
having funneled more than $12.4 million through
HLF, to Hamas. And in April 2005 he was
convicted of knowingly doing business with
Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, his
brother-in-law.

Randall Todd Royer, who served as a
communications specialist and civil rights
coordinator for CAIR, trained with
Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir
organization that is listed on the State
Department's international terror list. He was also
indicted on charges of conspiring to help al
Qa'eda and the Taliban battle American troops in
Afghanistan, and was later sentenced to twenty
years in prison on firearms charges.

Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was
deported from the U.S. because of his work as
Executive Director of the Global Relief
Foundation, which helped finance al Qa'eda and
other terrorist organizations.

There you have it: CAIR -- which has all these ties
to Islamist organizations dedicated to Jew-hatred,
terror, and genocide -- thinks it has the moral
standing to lecture Michael Savage (and everyone
else) about "hate" and its fearsome capacity to
breed violence. Perhaps someone should inform
the bigots at CAIR that this all sounds like a very
bad joke.

B) Muslim Students Association - West

Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
which Islam expert Robert Spencer has called "the
parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda,"
(among others) MSA was named in a May 1991
Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the
Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our
friends" who shared the common goal of
destroying America and turning it into a Muslim
nation. These "friends" were described by the
Brotherhood as groups that could help teach
Muslims "that their work in America is a kind of
grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging'
its miserable house by their hands ... so that ...
God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all
other religions."

MSA solicited donations for the aforementioned,
now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development. MSA also has strong ties to the
World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was
founded by Osama bin Laden's nephew and
raises funds for Palestinian terrorist groups,
including Hamas.

On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama,
then-President of the UCLA Muslim Students
Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the
Israeli consulate in chants of "Death to Israel!"
and "Death to the Jews!" One guest speaker at
the event was Hamid Ayloush, a member of CAIR,
which co-sponsored the rally. In his speech,
Ayloush solicited contributions for none other than
his beloved Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development.

In recent years, MSA members at UCLA have
raised money for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists
at their annual "Anti-Zionist Week."

In March 2003, speaker Muammad Faheed told
an MSA meeting at Queensborough Community
College in New York, "The only relationship you
should have with America is to topple it!"

At the February 2006 MSA West Conference at
Sacramento State University, guest speaker
Abdel Malik-Ali praised the late Hamas founder
Ahmed Yassin and rejoiced at Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's failing health.

MSA co-founder Ahmad Totonji was a major
figure in the Virginia-based, Muslim
Brotherhood-dominated SAAR network which,
according to federal investigators, may have had
financial ties to al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and Hamas.

This is but a tiny sampling of what MSA and its
various chapters all over North America have
said and done. As with CAIR, the notion that
this group has the moral standing to chastise
others for allegedly promoting "hate" and
"violence" is absurd in the extreme.

Additional HHA Members

Most of HHA's other coalition members are
individuals (such as Rabbi Michael Lerner of
Tikkun) affiliated with religious groups and
leftist organizations such as:

The War Resisters League West: One of the
oldest anti-war organizations in America, WRL is
a member organization of the United for Peace
and Justice anti-war coalition led by the longtime
pro-Castro Communist, Leslie Cagan. WRL was
among the first major anti-war groups to blame
America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. On that
very day, WRL released a statement saying,
"The policies of militarism pursued by the United
States have resulted in millions of deaths....
[M]ay these profound tragedies [of 9/11] remind
us of the impact U.S. policies have had on other
civilians in other lands."

The American Friends Service Committee:
AFSC has a long history of supporting
Communist causes and condemning the United
States, all under the banner of pacifism. In the
1970s John McAuliffe, who then headed AFSC's
Indochina program, initially characterized the
news of Cambodian massacres under Pol Pot as
an American "misinformation campaign," and
lauded the Pol Pot regime as "the example of an
alternative model of development and social
organization." In recent decades AFSC has
agitated for the unilateral disarmament of the
United States.

HHA's Leading Official

HHA is headed by Sabiha Khan, who also serves
as Communications Director for CAIR of Southern
California. Previously, she was a spokesperson for
CAIR-Los Angeles and Executive Director of
CAIR-Orlando. She attended the University of
California, Irvine, where she was a member of the
Muslim Student Union, an organization notorious
for featuring guest speakers who advocate Israel's
destruction, liken Israelis to Nazis, and deny the
Holocaust.

During her tenure as CAIR-LA spokeswoman
(from 2001-2006), Khan worked closely with
Hussam Ayloush, the chapter's Executive
Director, to defend the radical cleric Wagdy
Ghoneim. Ghoneim is affiliated with Hamas and
the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for his
repeated calls for violent jihad against Jews.
When Ghoneim was denied bond after his 2004
arrest in the U.S. for immigration violations,
Khan organized an "emergency town hall"
meeting to address the matter. She told the
Orange County Register, "Yes, people are
worried that we are being persecuted because
we are Muslim."

In May 2005, Khan penned a guest editorial for The Geeze news website,
where she conflated American society's concern about "[t]he actions of
extremist Jews, Muslims, Christians or others," disingenuously
implying that Americans as a whole felt equally threatened by
extremism from each of those quarters. Her piece said nothing about
Islamic extremism specifically, focusing almost entirely on such
alleged U.S. transgressions as "actions at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay, the torture tactics, the long, indefinite detentions of prisoners
without charges, the use of heavy bombs on largely civilian areas, and
the constant disregard of the Geneva Conventions and our own American
values."

This, then, is the Hate Hurts America Interfaith and Community
Coalition, the organization hounding Michael Savage about his "hate
speech"; an organization that wouldn't be caught dead supporting
bigotry of any kind; an organization solemnly pledging its undying
"support for the American traditions of religious and cultural
tolerance and mutual respect."

Go ahead. It's all right; go ahead and laugh.

John Perazzo is the author of "The Myths That Divide Us:
How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations."