Department of Strange Bedfellows

I'm on a State Department mailing list for consular notices. (I signed up for them just before a trip to India in 2002, so State could send an email to my empty apartment if war were to break out between India and Pakistan.) Today I received a consular notice, not from Delhi but the U.S. consulate in Cairo!

Here's what it says. This is the sum total of the email. Note that it reads like a spam, which is just what it is:

From: consularcairo@state.gov
To:
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 2:21 AM
Subject: Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet ( Free book + DVD )

A lively, thorough, and revealing portrait of Muhammad - taking viewers to the world of 7th century Arabia to examine the life and history of the man whom Muslims consider to be the last prophet ...
To order your FREE DVD,
please visit: http://www.cair-net.org/Muhammad/default.asp

Seems that CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has begun an "educational campaign" prompted by the Danish cartoon flap, and our government is spamming people throughout the world to promote it! Isn't that nice?

Here's an anti-CAIR website to get a whole lot of reasons why maybe it isn't so nice.

Odd, isn't it? As I noted yesterday, a consular officer in India recently gave a distinguished Indian scientist the third degree and denied him a visa. Meanwhile, over in Cairo, another consulate is promoting a DVD from an controversial U.S. Islamic group that is widely condemned for its stance on terror. Something's wrong with this picture.