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USCMO Condemns “Defamatory, Islamophobic” Attempts to Smear Minnesota Muslim Community
The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the nation’s umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim organizations, today, Monday August 19, 2024, condemned a coordinated campaign of anti-Muslim attacks aimed at smearing the Minnesota Muslim community as part of political attack on Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
On August 16th, the rightwing, anti-Muslim website The Washington Examiner published a defamatory article that falsely claimed that the Islamic Association of North America, a duly registered and widely respected national American Muslim social services organization, was raising funds for an Al-Qaeda-linked charity. IANA has sent a demand letter to the Examiner demanding a correction and apology.
In a statement, USCMO Secretary-General Oussama Jammal said:
“The US Council of Muslim Organizations strongly condemns the recent hateful, politically motivated, and transparently dishonest attempts to smear the American Muslim community, particularly the Minnesota Muslim community.
“We stand in solidarity with the Islamic Association of North America, a widely respected national non-profit organization that has worked with the state of Minnesota to provide educational, medical, and youth services to the community, especially during the COVID pandemic.
“None of this important work is or should be remotely controversial. The Washington Examiner’s twisted game of guilt by association via six degrees of separation is a stale, predictable strategy straight from the anti-Muslim playbook deployed every election season. Anti-Muslim voices must understand that this is 2024, not 2016. Defamatory attacks on the American Muslim community and our non-profit organizations will not be tolerated.
“We encourage all elected officials to reject cynical attempts by Islamophobes to turn American Muslims into a political hot potato and thereby rob our community of our right to engage in the political process. American Muslims are not going anywhere and we intend to make our voices heard everywhere from the halls of Congress to the ballot box, God willing.”
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Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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