Security Analyst Questions Pro-Islamists' Survey
by Chad Groening
July 6, 2004
(AgapePress) - A former advisor to President Ronald Reagan feels no one should put much credence in a recent poll conducted by an Islamic group tied to terrorism. The poll shows most Muslims in the U.S. want John Kerry rather than George W. Bush in the White House.Frank Gaffney is president of the Center for Security Policy. He says no one should be surprised at the results of the fax and e-mail survey conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which indicated only two percent of American Muslims plan to vote for Bush in the next presidential election.
Gaffney believes CAIR is an organization that supports terrorism. He says its members "absolutely hate the Bush administration, are working in every conceivable fashion to undermine it. and are sympathetic to -- or certainly apologists for -- and perhaps are even more closely tied to some of the people who are our enemies in the war against terror."
The security analyst feels the Bush administration needs to take a long look at the survey. He says the CAIR poll should, for a number of reasons, put the Bush administration on notice "that the kind of approaches that it has been making towards Muslim-American groups in this country has been misbegotten, counterproductive, and potentially quite dangerous."
Also, the Center for Security Policy president has doubts about the accuracy of the CAIR survey, which he says was hardly scientific. "The Council on American-Islamic Relations is to my way of thinking an organization that nobody should give much credence to," he says.
He goes on to explain his belief about the survey results, which he feels are "probably, ironically, representative of the way the people who follow CAIR view President Bush, certainly. That's what's so frustrating about watching the Bush administration repeatedly reach out to CAIR, among other pro-Islamist groups."
Gaffney says instead of catering to groups with such adverse sympathies, Bush and his officials would be better served by reaching out to ordinary U.S. Muslims, who are not tied to CAIR and other pro-terrorist organizations.