This has caused tremendous damage, according to the study, because the mainstream media has given these “fringe organizations” a forum to raise money and build “social networks within elite conservative circles.” So, essentially the public college professor has determined that conservatives and the mainstream media—notorious foes—have joined forces to trash Islam.

This is truly earth-shattering news! The alarming study was conducted by Christopher Bail, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which interestingly is the nation’s first public university. He used plagiarism detection software to track the influence of 1,084 press releases about Muslims from 120 organizations on more than 50,000 newspaper stories and television transcripts produced after the terrorist attacks in 2001 through 2008.

Bail found that organizations with negative messages about Muslims “captivated the mass media” after the 9/11 attacks resulting in the spreading of negative messages that stoke public fears about Muslims. “They are now so much a part of the mainstream that they have been able to recast genuinely mainstream Muslim organizations as radicals,” the professor said in an announcement promoting his study.

Could he be referring to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national group that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas? CAIR bills itself as the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization but is described by FBI counterterrorism experts as an entity that promotes and finances terrorism. CAIR has extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists, was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation and is largely funded by Islamic terrorist-supporting countries. In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Judicial Watch has investigated CAIR for its role in the Holy Land Foundation scandal and last year sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) for records related to the agency’s decision not to prosecute the group, likely for political reasons. Special agents of the FBI and federal prosecutors in Texas objected to the Obama DOJ’s decision not to prosecute CAIR, which has been linked by government investigators to Hamas. Press releases provided to the media about this case certainly would be viewed as hostile towards Muslims in the North Carolina professor’s study.

Here’s another one; earlier this year JW sued the FBI for records detailing a secret February 2012 meeting with Director Robert Mueller and a coalition of Islamist organizations that swayed the agency to purge training curricula deemed offensive to Muslims. Some of the organizations that met with Mueller at FBI headquarters have ties to radical terrorist organizations, according to some news reports and Americans have a right to know who they are.  

Incredibly, the district’s Diversity Committee is seriously considering it and is holding special meetings to gather information before making the final recommendation. This is all going down in Broward County, which has the nation’s sixth-largest public school system and the second largest in the Sunshine State. The district has more than 258,000 students whose educations are being financed by American taxpayers.

Like most of the nation’s public schools, breaks in Broward County are secular so as not to favor or offend any religion. For instance, there is winter break around Christmas and spring break around Easter. Throughout the academic year there are also teacher planning days in which students aren’t present as well as federal holidays acknowledged by the government. Florida also has a state law to allow students to take off religious holidays without penalty.

Never the less, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national organization that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, wants Broward to officially acknowledge two sacred Islamic days; Eid al-Fitr – the end of Ramadan – and Eid-al Adha, which marks the end of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Public school districts Massachusetts, New Jersey and Michigan have caved into the Muslim demand and one Maryland district is considering it.

CAIR, described by top FBI counterterrorism chiefs as an entity that not only promotes terrorism but also finances it, is behind the movement. This is outrageous because the group has extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists, was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation and is largely funded by Islamic terrorist-supporting countries. In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

 None of this seems to matter to the chairman of the Broward school board’s Diversity Committee, Roland Foulkes, who was quoted in a local newspaper saying “this is about inclusive diversity, and the Muslim community has too long been excluded.” He added that Acknowledging Islamic holy days is “long overdue” to reflect the full diversity of everyone.  

The superintendent of Broward County schools, Robert Runcie, opposes the idea but it could be out of his hands if the board votes to pass the Muslim holiday schedule. “If we do that for everybody and every cause out there, even though they’re all valid, we would literally have a problem squeezing in the number of instructional days we need,” Runcie said. A local newspaper columnist asks: “If we close schools for Muslims, do we close them for every religion that demands it? Do we close for the Wiccans?”

And what do they have in common? Shamefully, both are tight with the Obama Administration and wield tremendous influence in the government’s civil rights matters. We’re talking about Al Sharpton and the U.S.-based Hamas branch known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Later this month Sharpton, who has made the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) his lapdog, will deliver the keynote address at CAIR’s annual shindig in Virginia. In its announcement, CAIR laughably refers to Sharpton as a “civil rights icon,” one of the “nation’s most respected civil rights leaders” and a “life-long advocate for social justice.”  

Sharpton and CAIR will take the opportunity to draw parallels between the current challenges faced by Muslims in the U.S. today and those faced by other minority communities throughout the nation’s history. After all, the CAIR statement says Sharpton has “been praised by President Obama as the voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden.”

Conveniently omitted from the press release is Sharpton’s shameful history, the fact that he’s a dangerous individual whose malicious rhetoric has led to serious violence and hatred of white people, especially Jews. Sharpton and his “community group,” National Action Network, were behind the deadly Harlem riots intended to drive Jewish businesses out of the area in the mid 1990s.

One of Sharpton’s picketers, an ex-con with an extensive criminal record, walked into a Jewish-owned clothing store with a gun, ordered all the black customers to leave and poured paint thinner throughout the store. He then set the place on fire, killing eight people. The whole thing started to protest the eviction of a black merchant subletting from the Jewish store owner who simply needed the space to expand his own business.

Sharpton made it a racial issue, created a “Buy Black” committee and rounded up troops to hit the streets. Jewish store owners were referred to as “crackers” and Sharpton proudly offered media sound bites that should still haunt him, but clearly don’t. Here are some excerpts: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street…There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business on 125th Street….[O]ne of our brothers…is now being threatened.”

CAIR is an Islamic group that raises money for Hamas and was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance trial. It was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine. CAIR has extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists, was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation and is largely funded by Islamic terrorist-supporting countries. Read more in a 2007 Judicial Watch special report.

Regardless, the Obama Administration is tight with CAIR. In fact, a few months ago a news report revealed that President Obama’s deputies are holding hundreds of closed-door meetings with CAIR. The meetings are held so that government departments and agencies can discuss a “range of issues,” with CAIR, according to a White House director quoted in the story.

It’s bad enough that the Obama DOJ takes orders from Sharpton. Earlier this year Sharpton demanded the DOJ investigate a state matter involving the shooting of a black Florida teenager who had been suspended from school. It was a local case to be handled by authorities in the area where the incident occurred and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made the administration’s intentions clear: “obviously we’re not going to wade into a local law enforcement matter.” A day later the feds took over at Sharpton’s request.