In case you missed it, this week has seen an uneven battle between the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Robert Spencer (director of Jihad Watch, author, and incidentally a dedicated Bob Dylan afficionado). I say uneven because Spencer has seen fit to unfairly employ in the fight such allies as facts, integrity, transparency and accuracy, while CAIR has happily fought without any such advantages.

The sequence of events this week began with CAIR spokeman, Ibrahim Hooper, attributing a genocidal comment about Muslims to Spencer. The comment he waved around on the Paula Zahn show had been left by an unidentified visitor to the Jihad Watch website on the previous day, (as explained by Spencer here) and it had been deleted and the poster banned. It was entirely coincidental, we are to suppose, that someone from CAIR just happened to be reading that particular comments thread during that time interval, and printed out that comment before it was deleted. We are also to assume that the person trawling Jihad Watch for unsavory comments is innocently unable to understand the distinction between Spencer’s own content, and that of the other contributors, versus the remarks of random website visitors.

Following up on this wilful slander, CAIR then attempted to intimidate the Young America’s Foundation, who were due to have Robert Spencer speak yesterday (on the very subject of CAIR) with a letter from a lawyer, threatening action over “defamatory statements” should YAF allow the talk to go ahead. Spencer’s reply was simply “remember McAuliffe at Bastogne.” YAF’s Jason Mattera responded somewhat less allusively: “CAIR can go to Hell and they can take their 72 virgins with them.”

(In all of the above, it should be noted, CAIR did not come up with one actual defamatory or bigoted remark made by Spencer, verbally or in writing, although they sought to leave the impression that he is habitually making such statements.)

The talk went ahead yesterday, and was covered closely by Michelle Malkin at this link. The Washington Times also reported excerpts from Spencer’s talk:

If CAIR succeeds in smearing and silencing all those who dare to speak about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their actions, and who dare to call upon CAIR itself and other groups to go beyond vaguely-worded condemnations of terrorism to real efforts to teach against the jihad ideology in schools and mosques, what chance do we have to resist the spread of that ideology? …

And so I conclude today by asking the CAIR officials … to set aside the weapons of legal threats and intimidation, and the reckless purveying of personal smears and defamation, and enter into a genuine public discussion of the material I have presented here. … Let’s have a dialogue, or a debate, whenever and wherever you say. Or you can sue me now, or sue the YAF, and try to silence me. But you won’t be able to sue or silence all the American people who are deeply concerned about what you are doing. …

Robert Spencer and YAF’s Jason Mattera also made succinct remarks on video directly after the talk, covered by Hot Air at this link.

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Addendum:Video of Spencer’s full talk at YAF is now available via Hot Air.

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