A closer look at CAIR action alerts

The graph clearly shows that nothing gets CAIR's PR machine
rolling like a few bad cartoons

I was looking through the "action alerts" on the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) web site this morning, and noticed that they've posted on their site every alert issued since June, 1996. I thought it might be fun to graph the number of alerts issued for every month from that point through September of this year. What I found was, I thought, revealing.

Their first alert was issued in June of 1996, with no others issued until July, 1997. There are a few alerts issued almost each month for the next few months, then none again until May, 1999. From that point on, they're issued on a regular basis, with only a month here and there passing with no alerts issued.

In the second half of 2004, the CAIR PR machine gets serious. From May, 1999 to July, 2004, CAIR averages just under 2.5 action alerts per month. From August, 2004 to present day, the average jumps to 11.2 per month.

One might think that some of the big terror attacks (WTC/Pentagon, Sep. 2001; Madrid train bombings, Mar. 2004; London transit bombings, Jul. 2005) might elicit a flurry of action alerts. One would be mistaken. The only spike correlating to either of those events is July, 2005, but a review of the alerts issued during that time shows a slew of alerts concerning WMAL radio host Michael Graham's anti-Muslim remarks along with similar alerts regarding other anti-Muslim remarks.

The other major spike occurs in February, 2006 during the height of the Great Cartoon Jihad. That just happens to be the biggest spike.