DULL INSTRUMENT

Fresh from the campaign against Juan Cole, Joel Mowbray takes aim at another potential enemy of the state, Democratic Congressional candidate Keith Ellison:

Today’s Democratic primary in Minnesota’s very blue fifth Congressional district could prove historic. If he wins, Keith Ellison would be all-but-assured to be the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congressman. It would also mark the first time that someone ascended to Capitol Hill courtesy of key support from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Ellison has received financial and other help from executives at CAIR, which has deep connections to supporters of Islamic terrorism. Also among those who have contributed money to the candidate are an official from a group that participated in a "tribute" to the Iranian despot Ayatollah Khomenei and leaders of what is considered the political front in the U.S. for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mowbray's column actually says relatively little of substance about Ellison himself, instead focusing on the contributions from Arab-American groups and relying on the sort of "he received money from someone who's brother once stood next to someone who attended a Hamas rally" guilt by very tenuous association that has unfortunately become standard both for duller instruments like Mowbray as well as for supposedly more intelligent conservatives like David Frum. These guys continually condemn moderate Muslim groups like CAIR (The Council on American-Islamic Relations) for failing to condemn Islamic extremism as vociferously or in precisely the terms that they would prefer. In other words, they condemn CAIR for not appropriately indulging in the masturbatory moral grandstanding that defines modern American conservatism.

It hardly needs pointing out that any article which similarly reported on the sources of pro-Israel contributions or the questionable past relationships of pro-Israel contributors would be met with howls of anti-Semitism by the very people who will purr contentedly over Mowbray's hack job. This is a gross double standard.

Anyway, Mowbray might want to forward his work to the editors of the Twin Cities-based American Jewish World newspaper, who were apparently so troubled by Ellison's connections to CAIR that they endorsed him.