Jesse Jackson to CAIR: ‘Imam WHO?'

Holding a rally at historic New Bethel Baptist Church was supposed to be a “sign” that escalating concerns about Abdullahgate, CAIR-MI’s only current issue still breathing, were rising so fast they were overflowing the banks of Detroit’s Muslim community and flooding through the non-Muslim religious community as well.

It turned out to be a sign that the whole event was just an excuse for a reunion of the old fighters of Detroit’s Black Power movement.

Sunday's CAIR banquet was another sign.

No less serious (!) a character than the Rev. Jesse Jackson showed up at the Michigan Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations banquet at the Hyatt, retained no doubt to lend some much-needed gravitas to CAIR--not that Jesse has much left to lend.

But rather than throw his weight behind CAIR’s attack against the FBI for assassinating Imam Abdullah, Jackson said flat-out during his speech: “We didn't come to town to discuss the man who got killed.” The Detroit Free Press reports that, “Jackson instead encouraged the crowd to fight also for health care, education and job security.”

Whaa-aa-at? It’s almost as if Jackson, in his dotage, just assumes that every group that invites him is just another phony civil-rights/community organization with their hand out for Obama Bread.

“Our quest as Americans is equal protection under the law; you can't just fight for Islamic issues,” Jackson told guests, encouraging them “to focus more on such issues as getting the government to pay for educational programs instead of prison space.”

Dawud Walid can’t have been happy that Jackson was unwilling to use his speech to rally “the community” for Abdullahgate, and CAIR’s other Islamic causes. Jackson wouldn’t even use any of his inspirational rhyming skills, although we’ve heard that Jackson got stuck for a good topical rhyme for “Abdullah”: Hula? Missoula? Ashtabula?

Today’s report is also a sign that Walid may be pivoting away from being the spokesman for All Muslims in Michigan, and trying to find his way into a more promising slot as leader of at least some of the area’s black community. Consider the way Melanie Scott at the Free Press described Sunday’s CAIR banquet: “held one day after leaders in the African-American community held a rally questioning the killing of the Muslim cleric.” African-American leaders? I thought CAIR was running that show because Abdullah was murdered for being Muslim?

Then, on Sunday, Walid used his banquet speech to compare Abdullah’s death with “the death in 1969 of African-American activist Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who was killed by Chicago police and FBI agents as he lay in bed.”

At the risk of being called an unflattering name, I’m not ready to believe that Dearborn’s Muslims were moved very close to tears over how a Chicago Black Panther met his end in 1969. Maybe since one of Jackson’s early acts of self-promotion was eulogizing Hampton, Walid may have thought the name-dropping couldn’t hurt.

For that matter, I doubt CAIR’s immigrant supporters were too awfully sympathetic when Jesse Jackson said Tea Party members were “the same voices that blocked school doors ... in the name of protecting the sanctity of Alabama.”

I mentioned somewhere recently that I thought Walid’s been hoping for a job offer from the Nation of Islam, (“If he starts giving interviews wearing a bow tie, remember you heard it here first”), or some other black organization that can appreciate his rabble-rousing skills. He wants a job with a future.

And CAIR hasn’t got a future.