Numerous politicians get photo-ops with CAIR also. There is plenty of upside, in demonstrating one’s commitment to “diversity” and “inclusion,” and no downside, for no establishment media outlet would ever tell its readers about CAIR’s ties to Hamas. So why not invited Dawud Walid? Sterling Heights authorities, if they’re paying attention to the zeitgeist, know they have nothing to lose.
“Michigan Town Invites Islamist Antisemite to ‘Diversity Dinner,’” by Dexter Van Zile, Focus on Western Islamism, September 13, 2022:
A city in Michigan has invited an Islamist who has declared homosexuals to be cursed and Jews to have “incurred the wrath of Allah” to speak at a “diversity dinner” later this week. The Diversity Distinction Awards dinner, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September 14, is organized by Sterling Heights’s Ethnic Community Committee. Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), will give the keynote speech.
Walid has a well-documented history of promoting antisemitism and Islamist extremism. His invitation to a dinner to celebrate diversity is remarkable given his advice to Muslims who work as diversity officers at public institutions.
In 2021 he told attendees of the of Islamic Circle of North America’s (ICNA) annual convention that Muslims who work in such positions should adhere to Islamic practices over the policies of their employers. He offered this warning after he was asked how Muslims should respond when asked to promote advertising for the “LGBPTQ lifestyle.”
“It depends on the type of job. If it’s part of your job to be a diversity officer then a tough decision has to be made,” he said. People can either protect their jobs and share the information, knowing that they are sinning, he explained, or they can object to promoting it on religious grounds at the risk of losing their job.
“It’s better not to share the information,” Walid said, because to do so would “normalize or celebrate what Allah and his messenger have not only prohibited but also consider as a curse,” he said. “We are talking about certain things that are not simply prohibited, but it is said in the Quran and [in a reliable Hadith] that it’s a curse.”
Walid has also said hostile things about Jews. In a May 2012 sermon he asked, “Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?” Answering his question in Arabic, he declared, “They are the Jews, they are the Jews.” In January 2012, Walid declared that a follower of Muhammad who called for the mass killing of Jews (which the Qur’an recounts) had made the correct ruling….
