The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) "welcomed an anti-terror statement" made by the Saudi Cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, in a press release it issued on Tuesday.
Al Sheikh "called for religious moderation and said Islam prohibits terrorism, extremism and injustice," in his sermon delivered on Monday to millions of pilgrims making The Hajj in Saudi Arabia, according to the release.
"'This statement from Islam's spiritual capital should put to rest once and for all the false claim that Muslim leaders do not condemn terrorism,'" said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Yet M. Zuhdi Jasser, the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) called CAIR on its bluff.
"No previous single press release or statement by CAIR more clearly reveals its ideological ties and service to the Saudis, and their Wahhabi ideologues - and its willingness to use word games, deception and moral equivalence to avoid revealing its true objectives," Jasser writes in a column published Wednesday.
Jasser notes that the CAIR press release neglects to mention the rest of the Grand Mufti's sermon and "the mere condemnation of terrorism in this CAIR promoted sermon means nothing – because the sermon is otherwise chock full of inflammatory Muslim supremacism (Islamism) and anti-Western hatred."
Other excerpts of the Mufti's sermon include condemning the West and attributing causes for terrorism.
In his sermon, the Grand Mufti "insists the Islamic nation rejects terrorism as a deplorable crime, but that it is not the only crime. The problem, he says, is not just terrorism, but also poverty, unemployment, and diseases, stemming from global crises," according to an article published Monday by the Voice of America.
The cleric also said, "'Violence cannot be cured with violence and neither can terrorism be cured with force, but by lifting injustices levied on oppressed peoples.'"
That is "hardly a morally-clear condemnation of terrorism," Jasser writes. "Rather, it is a demagogic moral equivalency of barbaric acts committed by Al Qaeda, Hamas and other radical Islamists, which this radical sheikh insinuates are understandable by the acts of America and the West."
While CAIR asserts that the Grand Mufti called for "religious moderation," Jasser points to the Grand Mufti's history of radical religious rulings. In January 2009, the Saudi Arabian Sheik ruled that adult men can marry girls starting at the age of 10, and criticized those who wanted to raise the legal age. He has also rebuked women for appearing at a conference unveiled, warning them of "grave consequences," and told Muslims at a mosque in the UK that they should tell their children to start praying at age seven and start hitting them at age 10.
"We must not be fooled by the 'condemnation' of terrorism by the Saudi Wahhabi clerics and their tribal protectors in the Saudi royals," Jasser writes." In reality, this further reveals the dangerous synergy and propaganda role of American Islamist groups like CAIR for Saudi Wahhabi fundamentalists like the Grand Mufti. Their 'double game' is manifested from their pulpits at the Grand Mosque in Mecca and from the press releases of their advocates like CAIR in the United States."