My Condolences, but not my Money

It seems I can't watch Fox News for five minutes these days without smelling a rat....

This morning, one Rizwan Mowlana appeared on Fox News to promote a charity he purports to be for the relief of Tsunami victims in his native Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia. According to the interview, he'd lost something like 41 relatives to the disaster, for which he deserves our condolences.

Sadly, I'm afraid he doesn't deserve our money. Unfortunately, another fact arose during the same interview: Mowlana is an official of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Moslem organization which has filed a lawsuit against a small watchdog site called Anti-CAIR and which has been said to have ties to terrorism. The following quote from an article (via LGF) concerning an attempt to promote a constitutional amendment to prohibit "blasphemy" in the United States is also revealing:

The tolerance segment includes a link to the Council on American Islamic Relations, whose communications director Ibrahim Hooper griped to Seattle’s Times on “misuse” of Arabic script—a month after CAIR friends and affiliates attended a terrorist conference in Beirut.[2] The Times missed that news, meetings CAIR had arranged for radical Bassam Alamoush (for whom murdering a Jew is a “good deed” that needs no religious decree)—and CAIR board member Siraj Wahaj’s testimony in favor of convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman. Since 2002, several CAIR officials have been arrested and linked to al-Qaeda.

Mowlana certainly deserves our sympathy for his loss, but this does not in any way exculpate him for his involvement with CAIR. He may or may not be running a legitimate charity here, but his association with CAIR should at the very least raise suspicions. Send your money to other charities if you wish to help the victims of this horrific disaster.

If birds of a feather flock together, then we have yet another tsunami vulture. (Also, via Michelle Malkin, is this excellent post on other sham tsunami charities.)

-- CAV

Updates

1-5-05: Mowlana appears on Fox News again, but is listed with the following affiliation: "Council on U.S.-Islamic Relations." This affiliation, if correct, exists in addition to his association with CAIR.
1-24-05: Michelle Malkin becomes interested in Mowlana.