One week after the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Ohio chapter in Hilliard was fired for spying on the organization for an anti-Muslim group, the national office of CAIR announced Tuesday via its Twitter account that a second "spy" had been identified.The unnamed second person that CAIR said was spying on the organization and American Muslims came forward voluntarily. While the individual did not work for the nonprofit, he was an active volunteer in a large mosque and was invited to national meetings and events, the tweet said.
So if he wasn't an employee at CAIR, what sort of "spying' did he do?
Steven Emerson, the founder on the anti-Muslim IPT, paid the second individual $3,000 per month to record prominent Muslim leaders, CAIR's tweet said.
If this spy was not a member of CAIR, that means that all he could record were what CAIR leaders were telling Muslims during their seemingly public events.
It sounds like this person was simply recording speeches that were given to the Muslim community at large.
What is wrong with that - unless, as this CAIR tweet implies, Muslim leaders say things to their fellow Muslims that they don't want the rest of the world to hear.
If that is true, then the real problem isn't that Emerson's group paid someone to record the speeches. The real issue is that "prominent Muslim leaders" say things to Muslims that they don't want anyone else to hear.
Israeli newspapers publicize things that haredi leaders say to their flocks all the time, including things that are embarrassing or that they take out of context to make them sound embarrassing.
When it happens to Jews, it is brave whistleblowing journalism. When it happens to Muslims, it is underhanded spying.
