Attacks are no more than right-wing fear-mongering

Whether by opposing mosque construction, encouraging racial profiling, or fomenting anti-immigration sentiment, right-wing politicians are lining up to bash Muslims and prove their supposed patriotism before November. Here in Pennsylvania, the extreme right has decided to attack Rep. Joe Sestak as anti-Israel just because he spoke to the Muslim American community.

The neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel is spreading a thinly disguised version of the "Obama might be a Muslim" narrative, portraying the president - and American Muslims - as anti-Israel "others." In a vitriolic, deceitful ad that started to air this month, the group slams Sestak for speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at a Philadelphia banquet in March 2007. The ad says CAIR is an "anti-Israel organization the FBI called a front group for Hamas."

Sestak's U.S. Senate campaign has and will defend him, so I will speak up for the Philadelphia Muslim community. Neocons have defined CAIR as anti-Israel merely because it is a successful Muslim American organization. CAIR is concerned about America, not Palestine, Pakistan, or any other foreign land - unlike the Emergency Committee for Israel and its supporters, who place Israel first and America a distant second.

It is true that, amid the Bush administration's blacklisting of large Muslim American organizations, a single FBI agent said she thought CAIR was a front group for Hamas. But given the absence of any proof, this claim will never be valid, despite the best efforts of Muslims' detractors.

Let's not forget that the FBI wiretapped the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and called him the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country." CAIR is no King, but American minorities lawfully asserting their rights have often drawn negative attention from law enforcement.

In its 16-year history, CAIR has not been guilty of anything but professional activism. And it has earned praise from countless elected officials and the interfaith community.

Our constitutional rights are only as strong as their application to all Americans, and that is what CAIR unapologetically advocates for the 99.99 percent of Muslim Americans who aren't terrorists. That is why I signed up to work for CAIR, even though I knew that those who seek to marginalize Muslims would use it against me.