Is CAIR a "Moderate" Islamic Organization?

Is CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) a moderate Islamic group which should be allowed a place at the table and accorded respect as an organization that promotes mutual respect for religious differences and Western values?

Andy McCarthy, author of The Grand Jihad, says no. But many Left-wingers say yes. So which is it?

The Hill reports that CAIR is giving Helen Thomas a lifetime achievement award:

The longtime White House correspondent who resigned from Hearst newspapers in June in the wake of comments she made about Israel will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR is honoring Helen Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va.

Speakers will also include Oxford Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan.

Thomas started at the White House as a reporter during the Kennedy administration. In a video interview captured at a White House Jewish heritage event for RabbiLIVE.com that spread quickly across the Internet, Thomas advised Israeli Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland, Germany, America and "everywhere else."

So here it the bottom line. Maybe Andrew McCarthy is crazy and wrong about the ties of CAIR and many other Muslim organizations in America to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas etc. But no one can deny that CAIR is giving an award to a vicious, life-long, anti-Semite.

So it seems obvious to me that, if McCarthy is wrong and CAIR is properly to be regarded as a "moderate" Islamic organization, then the definition of "moderate" must be "Anti-semitic." Now, if the meaning of moderate must be stretched to this extent - so that it includes honoring Anti-semitism, then I think we should all be opposed to this kind of "moderate Islam" just as strongly as we ought to oppose Islamic terrorists like Hamas and al-Qaeda.

But that, we must remember, was McCarthy's point in the first place. Game, set and match to McCarthy.