To the editor: Contributing writer Josh Hammer’s recent column repeats bigoted, discredited conspiracy theories about American Muslims (“Label the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches as terrorist organizations,” Aug. 15).
Just as extremists once smeared Catholic and Jewish Americans as disloyal and accused Black civil rights leaders and Vietnam War protesters of being communist agents, Islamophobes today falsely claim that American Muslim institutions are part of a global terrorist conspiracy. The main target of Hammer’s article was my civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
For more than 30 years, CAIR has defended free speech, racial equality and religious liberty while consistently condemning all forms of bigotry — including antisemitism and Islamophobia — and unjust violence. We have spoken out against terrorism so often that ISIS once put a target on our executive director. Like other American Muslim institutions, CAIR is an independent nonprofit, not an agent of any foreign group.
If Hammer’s real grievance with CAIR is our advocacy for Palestinian human rights, polls show that most Americans oppose U.S. support for Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. Does Hammer smear American Muslim groups because he fears our growing civic engagement will continue to reorient U.S. policy on Israel and Gaza in a more just, humane direction?
Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian activists are entitled to lash out, but the rest of us should not take their bigoted conspiracy theories seriously.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Washington, D.C.
This writer is a civil rights attorney and the national deputy director of CAIR.