San Bernardino shooting: At least 14 people killed

In the days following the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, Council for American-Islamic Relations representatives partially blamed U.S. policy for terrorist attacks, accused gunman Syed Rizwan Farook’s co-workers of making fun of his beard and sought to downplay comments by Farook’s father linking him to ISIS.

"CAIR has a strategy of delegitimizing U.S. government counter-terrorism operations, often distributing articles that make it sound as if the War on Terror is manufactured by the FBI and a Zionist/anti-Muslim conspiracy machine," said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, a New York-based nonprofit that monitors Islamic terrorism. "They reflexively cast doubt on the agency, rather than the terrorism suspect, almost every single time that an arrest is announced."

“CAIR’s information is marketed and packaged so it seems that they speak for all of us, but they don’t speak for me and my group,” said Raheel Raza, president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. “CAIR does not and has never represented the majority Muslim voices which are as diverse as Muslims in America.”

The Muslim Reform Movement rebukes violent jihad, advocates for a separation of “mosque and state," and celebrates individual freedom, human rights and gender equality, and secular democracy, according to its founders, who also reject the idea of an Islamic State and its Sharia Law.

“We are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal must defeat the ideology of Islamism,” read a statement from the group.

“We want to wake up the 85 to 90 percent of Muslims in the U.S. who are sitting at home, who don’t go to mosques, but love their religion,” Jasser said.

Muslims in the West must step up and admit terrorism is rooted in extremist Islam, said four Muslim panelists.

They criticized major U.S. Muslim groups that lament such tragedies but say their religion is not responsible. They insisted the violence has roots in Islam, and that Islamist political terror is nurtured in Saudi Arabia’s strict Wahhabi branch of the faith.

“Terror is a Muslim issue, an Islamic issue within the house of Islam,” said M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, “and we must own it” to fight it. He moderated the event held at the Heritage Foundation, which had been planned after the Paris attacks.

Thursday, the finger of blame was pointed directly at Saudi Arabia, which the panelists said stands on strict Quranic literalism. This takes a seventh-century view of unbelievers, women and minorities that allows for terror, murder and deprivation of human rights, they agreed.

President Obama decried the deaths and pledged a thorough investigation of the attack but cautioned against setting blame based on the killers’ Muslim names.

She mocked the way that the administration responds to attacks. Rather than calling in progressive Muslim leaders in U.S civil society, she said: “They call in imams and they hold an interfaith event and they are all happy."

The Muslim deputy director of the ACLU of Michigan says she has "no reason to say sorry" for Islamic terrorism.

"As an American Muslim, I am consistently and aggressively asked — by media figures, religious leaders, politicians and Internet trolls — to condemn terrorism to prove my patriotism. I emphatically refuse."

I will not be bullied into condemning terror perpetrated by psychopaths who misrepresent and distort Islam for their deranged purposes.

Calls for condemnation serve only zealots who will never be satisfied. They thrive and profit off of the fear-mongering, hate and violence generated by othering and silencing an entire community who has lived and contributed to our nation since its founding. The first Muslims in the United States were brought over bound as slaves...

Asking us to apologize for violence that has orphaned generations of Muslims has the perverse effect of re-victimizing us by erasing our humanity and experiences. There is no other acceptable scenario in which the media, politicians and even our president would urge and expect victims to apologize publicly and rout out the ideology that contributed to their own persecution."

CAIR's Great FBI Scare Lecture

A recent "Know Your Rights" presentation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) New York chapter set a new standard of fomenting fear and distrust among Muslim Americans toward law enforcement.

The FBI out to get Muslims - and its agents are willing to lie and break the law to do it - an attorney and CAIR-New York board member told the audience.

Muslims should never talk to FBI agents who might approach them, she said. "And if they come to your home," she advised, "sneak out." That's because law enforcement officials will threaten, lie and even break the law to set up Muslims, she said.

"It's very important to not speak to law enforcement of any type, not just FBI agents. We're talking about New York Police Department, we're talking about tax agents, we're talking about everybody."

"They will do anything, anything within their power and oftentimes beyond their power to get you to talk," Deek said. "They will threaten you. OK? I've had one case where they tried to blackmail my client, I mean blackmail, seriously blackmail; that's illegal. But they'll do it."

CAIR officials insist they support the FBI and have been helpful in investigations. The "Know Your Rights" seminars merely seek to reinforce every American's right to "constitutionally informed cooperation with law enforcement."

That was their argument in January, after the group's San Francisco chapter posted a flyer on its website of a skulking agent roaming a neighborhood as doors slammed shut. "Build a Wall of Resistance," the flier said. "Don't Talk to the FBI."

Zahra Billoo, director of the San Francisco chapter that published the "wall of resistance" flier said the FBI "is creating these huge terror plots where they don't exist."

“We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

“Islam has always been part of America”

"Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation”

“I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.”

"we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities"

“The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer."

We never seem to evolve into anything more "Christian" an yet we tout what Christians stand for.

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." (Obama)