Two weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, University of Florida student Raja Abdulrahim published a letter in her campus newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. The Sept. 26, 2001 letter stated: “I decided to respond to Guy Golan's letter (‘Jews must help all Arab people’) from Monday's Alligator because he erroneously refers to Hamas and Hizbollah as ‘fundamentalist' and ‘terror organizations' that have ‘murdered innocent Israeli civilians.’”
Her views were in line with those of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which in 2004 awarded her with a $2500 academic scholarship. (See CAIR's 2004 tax returns here, thanks to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.) Also, a July 28, 2003 CAIR document (posted on the the Investigative Project on Terrorism Web site) announces that Raja Abdulrahim was one of several students to receive a one-time $5000 Journalism and Communications Scholarship Award. The announcement noted: "CAIR established the award to encourage Muslim students to pursue careers in journalism that will help bring about fairness and accuracy in the coverage of Muslims and Islam in the media."
...[S]he is now a reporter at the Los Angeles Times where she covers, from time to time, issues concerning terrorism and the American Muslim community. Most recently, on May 3, she reported on Muslim American community officials’ reactions to the demise of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (“Experts hope it’s ‘a new era’ for Muslim Americans”).
Given her apologist history for Islamist terror (more examples can be seen here), it’s no surprise that Abdulrahim now covers up support for terrorism among certain American Muslim leaders. She casts Muslim American leaders, including her one-time CAIR benefactors, as hapless victims of unfounded bigotry.
Looks like CAIR got its money's worth from that scholarship!
Read the whole thing.