CAIR founder Omar AhmadThe Council on American-Islamic Relations's new website is priceless!

The background: CAIR took a lot of heat when founder Omar Ahmad was reported as saying that "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant", and that "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." Later they got flak for placing a link on their website that requested donations for 9/11 victims but instead led to the site of an organization that raised funds for Hamas.

So apparently someone over at CAIR decided they needed an image overhaul, because their new website starts with a Flash presentation that's so hippy-dippy and one-world-we've-got-to-love-one-another, you-may-say-that-I'm-a-dreamer-but-we-believe-the-children-are-our-future that I could feel my ego dissolving and my consciousness melding into the cosmos just from watching it.

Go and watch. Learn. Expand your mind. And make sure you have the volume turned up if you want the full crystals-and-incense experience. And note the part at the end about how their new open typeface reflects CAIR's openness and love of dialogue! OMG, that's magnificent!

Daniel Pipes despises CAIR, and thinks they are shameless apologists for, and enablers of, terrorism. I'm no fanboy of Pipes, but I absolutely cannot wait to hear his reaction to the new website.

And after you watch the Flash presentation you can read their lead article: it's titled "CAIR: Life for U.S. Muslims Very Different After 9/11". Gee, you don't say. See, that's the kind of inside info that only one of these on-the-ground, on-the-inside, communal leadership organizations can provide...

UPDATE: CAIR's taken down the Flash presentation and the splash page that followed it. They must have gotten calls from younger members warning them that it was unintentionally humorous. I've contacted them to ask when and where I will be able to enjoy the presentation again. Until then, I've consoled myself by ordering one of CAIR's free DVDs of the life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.