Austin taxpayers are footing part of the bill for a program titled “Jesus Was a Migrant,” conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Austin chapter, even though Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) recently designated the national CAIR group as a terrorist organization.
The event CAIR-Austin is part of is set to be held next week at the Asian American Resource Center, an Austin city cultural facility, as part of Austin’s “Equity and Inclusion” event, according to the Dallas Express.
City officials downplayed the cost to the taxpayers.
“The referenced event is directly tied to the City of Austin’s We All Belong initiative, dedicated to strengthening belonging, celebrating diversity, and addressing hate, discrimination and bias through community engagement, education, partnerships, transparency, and coordinated action,” said Austin Public Information Specialist Natalie Hulsey.
“The only investment for this programming is the $1,500 grant provided to host the event through the City’s We All Belong program sponsorship initiative,” Hulsey added.
Austin’s We All Belong program is backed by a $150,000 fund apportioned by the city council budget, all at the taxpayer’s expense, of course.
The claim that Jesus was a migrant is a false claim popular among left-wingers, who often say that Jesus was born to “refugees” Mary and Joseph when they “migrated” to Bethlehem. But Jesus’s parents were not migrating to Bethlehem when Jesus was born there. They were merely in town temporarily to register for Caesar’s taxes. They still had their home back in Nazareth. Further, both Nazareth and Bethlehem were in the same country, so they were not migrants, regardless.
Some leftists even claim Joseph and Mary were “Palestinians.” But Jesus’s parents were citizens of Judea, which was under the rule of the Roman Empire.
The news of CAIR-Austin’s participation in a city-sponsored event comes after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to restrict CAIR’s operations in Texas.
Abbott signed an order to designate both the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations late last year.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said. “The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable. Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
The designation opened the door for AG Paxton to sue to prevent them from operating at all in the Lone Star State. Along with the national organizations, Paxton also sought to sanction local chapters including CAIR-Austin and the chapters in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
“Sharia law and the jihadists who follow sharia law have no business being in Texas,” Paxton said in February. “I am in full support of Governor Abbott’s lawful declaration that CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are foreign terrorist organizations, and it’s imperative that they are stopped from operating in Texas. Radical Islamic terrorists are antithetical to law and order, endanger the people of Texas, and are an existential threat to our values.”
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