Textbook Al Sharpton move.
Via Weekly Standard:
On a frigid, windy night in Washington, a couple hundred people trekked to the Newseum for a vigil for the murdered French journalists from the Parisian weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police that died trying to protect them, and those that were wounded.
Olivier Roumy and Alex Cournol, the two main organizers and French expatriates both, spoke to the camera-wielding press about the importance of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and thanked the participants for joining them in solidarity. That lasted about three minutes, until Roumy introduced Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
“He called me,” said Roumy, “and asked to join us tonight, and I think that’s…” Roumy couldn’t finish his sentence, as Awad popped in front of the cameras to take center stage. After introducing himself and his organization CAIR, Awad opened: “Thank you very much for doing this, you are all united.” He continued: “This is not about religion, this is about narrow mindedness. It is about a myopic ideology that knows no religious bounds and has no respect for human life. As my friend said, one of the two officers who were gunned down, his name is Ahmed Merabet, he is Muslim, and that shows that these people are killing more Muslims than others. And there’s no religious justification for the murder that they did today. We are all, Muslims, Christians, Jews, religious, not religious, we are all united against this barbaric act — and we are all united in the face of tyranny and the face of this murderous act and mindset.”
Roumy and Cournol briefed the crowd on the next step — heading back outside into the cold Washington evening to read off the names of the deceased, one by one, followed by a cry of “Je Suis Charlie!” I chatted with a cameraman from a local TV outlet about Awad’s mic grab and was told, “We [a local TV station] actually called him, and he’s like ‘what are you doing now?’ He didn’t know about it. So he came here because we called him.”A few moments later, the crowd was mostly organized for the relocated cameras, and Nihad Awad made his way to the front and center of the crowd, between Cournol and another organizer, who read the names of the dead. Unlike everyone around him, Awad was not holding not a Je Suis Charlie sign, but one for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.