Megyn Kelly Declares CAIR Is 'Not Getting' a Retraction for Covering Film on Islamic Women

April 4th, 2014 10:36 PM

On Tuesday, the host of The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel discussed Honor Diaries, a documentary intended to depict the “systematic, institutionalized misogyny against Muslim women around the world.”

The first segment aired on Monday and drew a demand for an apology from the Council of American-Islamic Relations. Twenty-four hours later, Megyn Kelly told CAIR: “Well, guess what -- you’re not getting it.”

She made that remark during another segment discussing the film on Tuesday with two guests: Agnieszka Karoluk, senior communications coordinator for CAIR-Chicago; and human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein, whom Kelly stated “first brought this issue to our attention.”

Kelly began the discussion by stating there's “a growing backlash tonight over a film that is trying to bring attention to the so-called 'honor violence' inflicted on Muslim women around the world.”

“The film is called Honor Diaries,” she noted, “and while it has been shown dozens of times on U.S. college campuses -- not to mention at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva -- several U.S. universities have postponed or flat out-and-out canceled screenings of the film” after groups like CAIR complained that the documentary is “Islamophobic.”

The Fox News host then showed a clip of the film in which the female narrator stated that in Muslim-majority societies, the system “is really the basis of a lot of harm that is perpetuated against women.”

Kelly then asked Karoluk: “Why would CAIR want to silence this film?”



The group's representative referred to a statement released by her organization:

We are against female genital mutilation, honor killings, any form of violence against women.

What we do want to do, however, is tell the public about the funders behind this film so that the public can make their own informed decision about whether or not they want to show it, screen it or watch it.

At that point, Kelly noted: “It seems that you object to the film, ...  you appear to be happy when a showing of the documentary was canceled on a university campus.

“That's not true at all,” Karoluk charged.

“Well, you sent out a tweet today with a smiley face saying that it had been canceled at one of these universities,” Kelly fired back.

The CAIR representative then stated that one university decided to postpone showing the film once they found out who was behind it: “the Clarion Project, which is a well-known Islamophobic organization.”

Karoluk added: “What I'm personally disgusted by, as a Muslim woman, as a feminist, is that someone like the Clarion Project would take this film and use it to promote their own hate-filled agenda.”

Goldstein then turned the tables on Karoluk by calling CAIR's viewpoint “an indefensible position. I think the audience deserves to know who the Council on American-Islamic Relations is. It was set up to be the PR arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

She added:

CAIR is not an authority on what Americans can and can not see. The organization operates as “speech police” by bullying and intimidating anyone who is brave enough to speak publicly about the threat of Islamist terrorism and violence in the Muslim world.

If CAIR doesn’t want you to see it, you should take it as a cue to go out and watch this movie because you know there’s truth contained therein.

When Karoluk asserted that “CAIR is actually a domestic organization, the biggest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group” in the nation, Goldstein countered by declaring:

They're a self-appointed group that claims to be a civil-rights group, but it's anything but.

CAIR has a systematic campaign to go around and target anybody who speaks publicly about the threat of militant Islam as Islamophobic time and time again. Shame on them for doing that.

Kelly then turned to Karoluk: “I still do not understand why calling attention to this problem that affects Muslim women would be objectionable to you. As a Muslim woman yourself, don't you want this to stop, and how do we make it stop if we don't shine a light on it?”

“Of course I want it to stop,” the CAIR representative responded, “and as I said, there are many Muslim women in organizations right here in the United States that are working on this issue.”

Goldstein then took the discussion in a different direction by asking Karoluk: “What's wrong with the people who are funding the movie because they're Jews?”

The human rights lawyer continued by stating: “What qualifies as being Islamophobic is raising awareness about Islamist terrorism and advocating for the human rights of Muslim women.”

Judging from the emotional debate regarding the documentary on Muslim women, CAIR can expect that not only will they not receive an apology from Megyn Kelly, but she is very likely to address the subject again -- and soon.