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| CAIR decries Baptist leader's claims about Islamic 'takeover' of U.S. |
| 2006-11-04 |
| Leaders from a prominent American Muslim group have denounced reported comments by the Missouri Baptist Convention's executive director claiming that "Islam has a strategic plan" to take over the United States. Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Nov. 1 that David Clippard's assertions "are too bizarre to even comment on." According to two Missouri newspapers, Clippard, in his address at the opening session of the convention's annual meeting Oct. 30 in Cape Girardeau, said Muslims are trying to infiltrate North American schools and take over U.S. cities in order to impose Islam and Islamic law on an unwilling populace. "They have a plan to take over," he said, according to Cape Girardeau's Southeast Missourian newspaper. "They are trying to establish a Muslim state inside America, and they are going to take the city of Detroit back to the 15th century and practice Shar'ia [Islamic religious] law there," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Clippard saying. In his message, Clippard claimed there are now 300,000 Muslims in Detroit, which would comprise a majority of that city. However, in a 2000 survey, the Association of Religion Data Archives estimated that 46,492 Muslims lived in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit. The largest religious body in the city in 2000 was the Catholic Church, with 451,069 adherents. According to 2004 estimates by the American Religious Identity Survey, about 1.5 million adult Muslims live in the United States. Hooper noted that the Detroit metropolitan area has long been home to a large Arab-American community, but that many of those are Catholics and other Arab-American Christians. Clippard, reached via e-mail Nov. 2, cited multiple sources for the assertions and figures he quoted, including several books and research institutions. A "primary source" for the material, he said, was Jim Slack, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board in Richmond, Va. Clippard claimed that Slack "has a primary Muslim scholar's paper that documents the plans for Detroit," but said he had not read it. Slack did not respond to a telephone message requesting comment by press time for this story. In his speech, Clippard also reportedly said the Saudi Arabian government has funded more than 100 Islamic study centers and mosques in North America -- including ones on or near the University of Missouri campuses in Columbia, Rolla and St. Louis. According to the Post-Dispatch, a spokesman at the St. Louis campus said the Saudi government does not subsidize the university's Muslim Student Association or the school itself. In addition, Clippard said, the Saudi Arabian government paid for 15,000 Muslim college students to come to North America to study with the intention, he claimed, of taking the continent for Islam. "What they are after is your sons and daughters," Clippard said, according to the Post-Dispatch. "They are coming to this country in the guise of students, and the Saudi government is paying their expenses." CAIR's Hooper said Clippard's claims about schools are also baseless. "If he has evidence of that, I'd like to see it -- but the Muslim Student Association has many chapters on college campuses around the country, just as other faith groups do," he said. "They're all just students trying to pass their courses like anybody else. Somehow to claim that they're [there to form an Islamic revolution], paid for by the Saudi government, is, again, too bizarre to even be commented on." Clippard said the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada is the conduit for Saudi funding of campus Islamic centers. A telephone number listed Nov. 2 on the group's website was disconnected, and nobody from the group had responded to a message sent to the contact e-mail address listed on the site by press time for this story. But a statement on the site says: "We do not receive funding from overseas governments. We do not accept funding from any one source that might potentially seek control of MSA National's agenda or affairs." Hadia Mubarak, a former president of the group who is currently a member of CAIR's board, echoed that statement. The MSA and its regional and campus affiliates "have absolutely no connection to Saudi Arabia or any foreign government, for that matter," she said in a Nov. 2 e-mail interview. "In fact, it is a policy of our organization to refuse any funding from foreign governments, as this is an indigenous organization created by American Muslims for American Muslims." She continued: "We set our own agenda and would never allow others to influence our agenda from abroad. The objective of MSA National is to foster respect and tolerance for religious diversity, a cornerstone of American democracy." Mubarak said the assertion that MSA is tied to the Saudi Arabian government and its fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam has been primarily propagated by two authors: Joe Kaufman and Stephen Schwartz. Kaufman has articles on a conservative website called Discover the Networks (www.discoverthenetworks.org), which bills itself as "a guide to the political left." Schwartz has written for FrontPageMag.com, another conservative website whose most famous contributor is right-wing lightning rod Ann Coulter. Mubarak said the two authors' "failure to provide any evidence for their claims leads me to conclude that their sole intention in propagating this myth about MSA National is to curb the growth and popularity of this organization. Their motives clearly stem from their deep hatred of Islam and nothing else." Clippard, for his part, told the Post-Dispatch that his comments were not borne of hatred for Muslims. "I don't hate Islamic people," he said. "We need to love these folks, go after them and love them, one at a time." |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #10 Message to CAIR: TRUTH? You can't HANDLE the truth. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2006-11-04 22:44 |
| #9 Muslims exclaim the ascendancy of Islam in America and then decry anyone else pointing out their aspirations. As usual, Muslims want it both ways. We need to give it to them both ways, coming and going. We need to begin implementing Islam un-friendly legislation that makes their |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-04 14:01 |
| #8 Keep talking there Rev Clippard. We need to get the info to the masses. Slight enhancements are perfectly accepatable. The Muzzie shitbags use the tactic daily. Isn't someone from FBI detailed to shadow this Hooper daily ? Can a small accident be arranged ? |
| Posted by: SpecOp35 2006-11-04 12:03 |
| #7 jim 2006-11-04 Excellent timing on that quote. I forgot about it. The Baptists - Jerry Vines was first - are aware that Islam is not merely one of many religions. Muslims are supremacists. |
| Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 2006-11-04 11:06 |
| #6 Remember they breed like rats compare to other communities. The West fears their birth rates even Iran knows this!!! |
| Posted by: Crairong Glager5686 2006-11-04 10:15 |
| #5 I believe that CAIR stated it quite plainly: "CAIR founder Omar Ahmad was cited by a California newspaper in 1998 declaring the Quran should be America's highest authority. He also was reported to have said Islam is not in America to be equal to any other religion but to be dominant." From WND, Oct. 13, 2006 |
| Posted by: jim 2006-11-04 08:36 |
| #4 the struggle of our times Yes. And the answer is plain. Islam has to go, regardless of how many Muslims have to be exterminated. A horrible thought, I know, but it is either that or surrender and conversion/dhimmitude. Take your pick. |
| Posted by: Mick Dundee 2006-11-04 08:04 |
| #3 the struggle of our times |
| Posted by: anon 2006-11-04 07:01 |
| #2 The Baptist isn't well educated, but Muslims are Koran bound to work for conversion to the point where Muslims are in a majority position. Then they take over. Muslim births in Spain, France, and Germany are double the rate of Caucasians. As more immigrate/infiltrate and breed, at some time they will dominate. The fact of terror-chill - which already infests Europe - further aids jihad advance. Once they take over one European country, then the bloody-borders phenomena takes over. |
| Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 2006-11-04 05:01 |
| #1 ok this is bullshit. why in the hell can't a baptist say something like this without outcry buta fuckin muslim can fuck goats rape women and behead ppl and no one but my fellow rantburgers seem to notice that no one gives a shit. |
| Posted by: sinse 2006-11-04 04:24 |