by Randy LoBasso
Philadelphia Weekly
We just got off the phone with Moein Khawaja, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Philadelphia Chapter, and were able to speak with him about the news of the day/year/decade: Osama bin Laden’s untimely death in a Pakistani compound.
CAIR is a common target of conservative groups and right wing pundits, who often see the organization as a front group for radical Islam, rather than a non-profit seeking to bridge the gap between Islamic and traditional American culture. Radio talk show hosts often fill dead air complaining about CAIR not going out of their way to find and then condemn specific murders across the world so they can backhandedly suggest CAIR is actually in favor of religious violence — yep, that’s how right wing radio works.
So it came as no surprise that CAIR-PA sent out an email before you got out of bed on Monday – 5:47am – declaring the group “welcomes the elimination of Osama Bin Laden,” according to the presser’s subject heading.
“We join our fellow citizens in welcoming the announcement that Osama bin Laden has been eliminated as a threat to our nation and the world through the actions of American military personnel,” reads the statement from the national CAIR organization.
Khawaja agreed to get us some more comments on the matter.
‘As we stated during the original attack on 9/11,” says Khawaja, “Osama Bin Laden never represented Islam or Muslims. In fact, in addition to killing thousands of Americans on 9/11, he and al Qaeda caused the deaths of thousands of Muslims worldwide.’
He describes the initial reactions of Philadelphians and American citizens on the whole as “pretty cool.” However, “I always thought this day would come much sooner…At one point, five or six years ago, [bin Laden] was the most famous Muslim on the planet. It’s quite sad when you think about a global religion and how his face showed a whole different image of what our religion is really like – I mean, like all religions, Islam is a path to peace, love and justice.”
Now that bin Laden’s face has been removed from the global image of Islam, says Moein, CAIR feels as though a stain on the religion “has sort of melted away a little bit, too.”
Muslims worldwide are bracing for a backlash, if not in the United States, by the United States and against Pakistan, who many believe protected the terrorist for the past six years.
