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- Civil rights and civil liberties group
- Opposes U.S. aid to Israel
- Opposes ethnic profiling of Arab Americans
- Opposes Patriot Act and the U.S. war on terror
- Supports Palestinian "martyrdom" campaigns in Israel
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) was founded in 1980 by James Zogby
and James Abourezk (a South Dakota Democrat who was the first Arab
American to serve in the U.S. Senate, from 1973-79) as a non-religious
civil rights group “which welcomes people of all backgrounds, faiths and
ethnicities as members.” It was created in imitation of, and even as a
rival or counterweight to, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil
rights organization.
ADC in 2004 contributed $1,000 to the congressional campaign of Cynthia McKinney
(D – Georgia). Samer Khalaf (Chairman of the ADC Political Outreach
Committee in New Jersey) and Hareth Raddawi (a Board member of ADC’s
Chicago branch) made personal contributions to McKinney’s campaign as
well.
ADC originally concentrated its attentions on Christian Arab Americans,
who make up a majority of the Arab American population, and established
chapters on campuses and in communities across the U.S. The
organization currently has at least 35 local offices in the United
States. Its President since 2003 has been Mary Rose Oakar, whose predecessor was Dr. Ziad Asali. ADC’s current Executive Vice President is Khalil Jahshan.
ADC identifies five major objectives that govern its activities:
(a) “Empowering Arab Americans”: A key means of achieving this is voter registration in large numbers.
(b) “Promoting civic participation”
(c) “Supporting freedom and development in the Arab World”
(d) “Defending the civil rights of all people of Arab heritage in the United States”:
After the beginning of the U.S. war on terror, a perceptible shift
occurred in the orientation and activities of ADC. It suddenly became a
strident voice protesting what it said were plans by the Bush
administration to curtail the civil liberties of Arab Americans. It
depicted all anti-terrorism efforts by the Justice and Treasury
Departments as unfair persecution based on ethnic discrimination. And
it endorsed
the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, which was designed to roll
back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital
national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11
terrorist attacks.
ADC was a co-plaintiff in the first major legal challenge to a section
of the Patriot Act -- specifically Section 215, which allows for
government access to such information as medical, educational, and
library records pursuant to a terrorism investigation. The organization
has also endorsed the Community Resolution to Protect Civil Liberties
campaign, which tries to influence city councils to pass resolutions of
noncompliance with the provisions of the Patriot Act.
ADC was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter
exhorting members of the U.S. Congress to oppose Patriot Act II on
grounds that it contained “a multitude of new and sweeping law
enforcement and intelligence gathering powers … that would severely
dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights.” Fellow
signers included the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Library Association, the Arab American Institute, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Law Center, the National Lawyers Guild, People for the American Way, and Women Against War.
The Georgia and San Francisco chapters of ADC were signatories to a February 20, 2002 document composed by the radical group Refuse & Resist,
condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants
apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations. The
document accused the U.S. government of rounding up and incarcerating
large numbers of Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants without cause.
(e) ADC's fifth major objective is “Encouraging a balanced U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East”:
In effect, this means discouraging American support for Israel, which
ADC views as an oppressor nation that routinely violates the human
rights of Palestinians. In August 2006 ADC drew up, for its supporters
to sign, a petition
that read: “If the United States is to be taken seriously as a peace
making nation, it cannot continue to provide the weapons being used by
Israel to kill hundreds of innocent people in such brutal and inhumane
ways.” In ADC's view, America has more than once been guilty of genocide
against foreign populations -- sometimes directly through the use of
its own military might, and in other cases indirectly, through Israel.
In 1994, then-ADC President Hamzi Moghrabi said, “I will not call [Hamas]
a terrorist organization. I mean, I know many people in Hamas. They are
very respectable … I don’t believe Hamas, as an organization, is a
violent organization.” Two years later, his successor, Hala Maksoud,
defended Hamas’ partner in Mideastern terrorism, Hezbollah.
“I find it shocking,” Maksoud said, “that [one] would include Hezbollah
in … [an] inventory of Middle East ‘terrorist’ groups.” In 2000, new
ADC President Hussein Ibish characterized Hezbollah as “a disciplined and responsible liberation force.” James Abourezk called Hamas and Hezbollah “resistance fighters.”
ADC was a signatory to a MAY 20, 2004 Joint Muslims/Arab-American Statement on Israeli Violence in Gaza,
which "strongly condemn[ed]" Israel's "indiscriminate killings of
innocent Palestinians, including many children," and its "demolition of
Palestinian homes." The organization has also expressed its view that
Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank is an illegal "apartheid
wall." As noted by Debbie Schlussel, when Israel released hundreds of Hezbollah
prisoners in early 2004, Imad Hamad, ADC’s Midwest Regional Director,
openly celebrated the freedom of "the Heroes." This sentiment was
consistent with ADC's longstanding pattern of praising both Hezbollah and Hamas.
ADC formerly ran ads in its publication ADC Times for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which in 2001 President Bush shut down for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.
ADC is composed of five major departments:
(a) The Legal Department
is staffed by a team of full-time attorneys who provide advice and
referrals “whenever Arab Americans face discrimination.” “Since the
attacks of September 11,” ADC laments, “our … community is becoming
increasingly vulnerable. The documentation of hate crimes or
discrimination based on ethnicity, nationality or religion is important
to our community as a collective.”
ADC is particularly opposed to law-enforcement making any distinctions
on the basis of race or ethnicity, and thus “has been on the forefront
working against racial profiling since the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001.” According to ADC,
profiling has become so widespread in the post-9/11 era, that Arab
Americans, Muslims, and South Asians can rightfully be considered “among
the secondary victims of the attacks …” ADC’s opposition to profiling
long predates 9/11, however. In 1993 the organization joined forces with
the American Civil Liberties Union to
sue Pan American World Airways for having detained a man of Iranian
descent during the first Persian Gulf War. “Arab Americans will not
tolerate such blatant acts of corporate discrimination which unfairly
treat us as a suspect class of criminals and terrorists,” said ADC
President Albert Mokhiber.
(b) The Education Department
“works with schools, teachers and Arab-American parents across the
country to combat discrimination and tensions in school and ensure that
the curriculum does not perpetuate stereotypes or misinformation about
the Arab world or Islam.” Says ADC:
“Popular culture aimed at children is replete with negative images of
Arab women ... and Arab men … American textbooks are often Eurocentric,
while Arab points of view regarding such issues as the nationalization
of resources or the Arab-Israeli conflict are presented inadequately or
not at all.”
To combat these perceived problems, ADC encourages
teachers and administrators to “include Arab Americans and the Arab
world in your multicultural curriculum”; to “teach students to
appreciate the Arab world, one of the great cultures when Europe was
still a backward, under-developed region on the periphery of world
civilization”; to have students “write letters of concern about
anti-Arab incidents and media stereotyping”; to “recognize Ramadan and
other Muslim holidays”; to “arrange the state and school schedule to
avoid Islamic holidays”; and “not to order pepperoni sausage for the
class pizza party.”
(c) The Organizing Department “mobilizes the [Arab American] community
by coordinating the efforts of chapters, local offices and activists
across the nation, and directing ADC's national campaigns.”
(d) The Governmental Affairs Department
“works with Congress, the White House, the State and Justice
Departments, and other elements of government to promote the interests
of the [Arab American] community.” It has established a political action
committee, to which members can contribute in support of candidates for
public office.
(e) The Communications Department “combats defamation, stereotyping and bias in films, television and news reporting …”
Just as ADC’s domestic civil rights posture shifted dramatically after
9/11, so did its positions on foreign affairs. For example, before
September 11th ADC had never seriously concerned itself with the
suffering of Muslims in the Balkans or Chechnya. However, during the
Afghan and Iraq interventions, the Committee became most outspoken in
painting these military operations as conspiratorial intrigues
controlled by Israel. To register its opposition to America’s foreign
wars, ADC became a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War anti-war
coalitions. The Committee also became a leading defender of Palestinian
“martyrdom” campaigns inside Israel; of Saudi Arabia, whose role in
funding Wahhabism had come under scrutiny; and of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, which it characterized as innocent of terrorist associations.
ADC receives financial backing from the Boston Foundation, the General Motors Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Joseph R. and Helen Shaker Family Foundation. The group has also received Saudi funds through third parties such as mosques and charitable organizations.
ADC is notable not only for its programs and campaigns, but also for its
open expressions of support for some controversial figures. For
instance, in 1987 the Committee honored filmmaker Michael Moore for his “courageous efforts in journalism.” A decade and a half later, when University of South Florida professor Sami-Al Arian was indicted on terrorism-related charges, ADC’s Hussein Ibish depicted FBI investigations of Al-Arian “a political witch hunt, a vendetta, and a kind of very, very ugly post-9/11 McCarthyism.”
ADC and its Research Institute have received funding from George Soros's Open Society Institute.
Small portions of this profile are adapted from the article "An Activist’s Guide to Arab and Muslim Campus and Community Organizations in North America," written by Stephen Schwartz, and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on May 26, 2003.
- Civil rights group partially funded by the Saudi Wahhabi establishment
- Has numerous ties to extremist Islamic organizations
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes itself as a
"non-profit, grassroots membership organization … established to promote
a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America," to protect Muslims
from hate crimes and discrimination, and to present “an Islamic
perspective on issues of importance to the American public.” According
to the Council's Director of Communications, Ibrahim Hooper, "We are similar to a Muslim NAACP." As of June 2007, CAIR claimed 32 branch affiliates in the United States and one in Canada.
CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, both of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook
and functioned as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the
United States. Awad and Ahmad previously had served, respectively, as
IAP's Public Relations Director and President. Thus it can be said that
CAIR was an outgrowth of IAP.
CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development
(HLF), a self-described charity founded by Mousa Abu Marzook. In May
1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the
U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist
acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as
"anti-Islamic" and "anti-American." When President Bush closed HLF in
December 2001 for collecting money "to support the Hamas terror
organization," CAIR decried his action as "unjust" and "disturbing."
From its inception, CAIR has sought to portray itself as a moderate,
mainstream organization, and as early as 1996 its officials became
frequent guests at State Department and White House events. In the
aftermath of 9/11, when the Bush administration tried to reassure
American Muslims that Islam was not the target of the war on terrorism,
CAIR officials were prominent among the invitees. CAIR was the main
Islamic group to gain U.S. media access in the post-9/11 period,
providing the “Muslim view” of the terrorist attacks and of America's
response to them. As self-acclaimed Muslim spokesmen, CAIR officials
typically refused to “simplify the situation” by blaming Osama bin Laden
for the attacks on America. Moreover, while they eventually were
induced by journalists to condemn Palestinian suicide terror in a pro forma manner, they hedged their disavowals by describing it as an understandable response to Israeli brutality.
Contending that American Muslims are the victims of wholesale
repression, CAIR has provided sensitivity training to police departments
across the United States, instructing law officers in the art of
dealing with Muslims respectfully.
CAIR further claims that U.S. foreign policy is dictated largely by
Zionist extremists. As Evan McCormick of the Center for Security Policy
puts it: “By convincing moderate Muslims that they are being targeted
unfairly by the Bush administration's [anti-terror] policies, CAIR
incites fear in members of that demographic. If innocent Muslims are
then convinced that they will be the target of government action, then
they have no incentive to reject an extremist ideology that resists the
government’s anti-terror policies. ... This is the essence of CAIR’s
strategy: shock moderate Muslims about the motivations of the U.S.
Government, turn them into post-[9/11] victims, and then recruit them as
supporters for your political agenda when they are ripe for the
taking.”
Along the same lines, a civil suit filed by the estate of 9/11 victim
and former high-ranking FBI counter-terrorism agent John O’Neill, Sr.
asserted that CAIR's goal “is to create as much self-doubt, hesitation,
fear of name-calling, and litigation within police departments and
intelligence agencies as possible so as to render such authorities
ineffective in pursuing international and domestic terrorist entities.”
CAIR endorsed an October 22, 2002 "National Day of Protest" whose
premise was: “Since September 11th thousands of Muslims, Arabs and South
Asians have been rounded up, detained and disappeared. ... Hard-won
civil liberties and protections have been stripped away as part of the
government's 'war on terrorism.' The USA-PATRIOT Act
brings in a new set of repressive laws and restrictions on people and
grants even greater power to law enforcement agents of all kinds.”
Moreover, this document explicitly defended the convicted murderers Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, as well as Lynne Stewart and Jose Padilla,
who were convicted on terrorism-related charges -- depicting all
four as persecuted political prisoners of a repressive American
government.
CAIR was a signatory to a February 20, 2002 document, composed by C. Clark Kissinger's radical group Refuse & Resist,
condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants
apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations. The
document lamented that “the denial of any due process for Arab[s],
Muslim[s], South Asians and others” bore “chilling similarities to a
police state.”
In February 2003, CAIR joined the American Muslim Council, the American Muslim Alliance, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council
in forming a coalition to repeal and amend the Patriot Act -- alleging
that it violated the civil liberties of Americans, particularly Muslims.
CAIR also endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, which
was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil
liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after
the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
CAIR promotes a radical Islamic vision, as evidenced by the fact that
its co-founder Omar Ahmad told a Fremont, California audience in July
1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to
become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America,
and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." In a similar spirit,
co-founder Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter in 1993: “I wouldn’t want to
create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United
States to be Islamic sometime in the future.” In 2003 Hooper stated that
if Muslims ever become a majority in the United States, they will
likely seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law, which
they deem superior to man-made law. In the late 1980s, Ihsan Bagby,
who would later become a CAIR Board member, stated that Muslims “can
never be full citizens of this country,” referring to the United States,
“because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions
and ideologies of this country.”
In 2003 CAIR invested,
according to its own Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue
Service, $325,000 from its California offices with the North American
Islamic Trust (NAIT). According to Newsweek,
authorities say that over the years "NAIT money has helped the Saudi
Arabian sect of Wahhabism -- or Salafism, as the broader, pan-Islamic
movement is called -- to seize control of hundreds of mosques in U.S.
Muslim communities." A recent study by the Center for Religious
Freedom found that a very large number of American mosques teach hatred
of Jews and Christians, coupled with doctrines of Islamic supremacism.
Writes Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz: “CAIR should be considered a
foreign-based subversive organization, comparable in the Islamist field
to the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA, and the Cuban-controlled
front groups that infiltrated ‘Latin American solidarity’ organizations
in the U.S. during the 1980s. It has organized numerous community
branches and has had immense success in gaining position as an
‘official’ representative of Islam in the U.S.”
Notable facts about CAIR's pas de deux with Islamic extremism and terrorism include the following:
- Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994 meeting at Barry
University, "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor
that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four
Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous
year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."
- On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.
- On June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor of Siraj Wahhaj. Following the event, CAIR-Ohio issued a press release heralding the more than $100,000 that Wahhaj had helped raise that evening for the organization’s “civil liberties work.”
- In October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles
billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy." According to
CAIR, this depiction was "offensive to Muslims."
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In 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda
bombings of American embassies in Africa. According to Ibrahim Hooper,
the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."
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In September 2003, CAIR's former Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi,
pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and agreed
to be deported to Egypt. Federal investigators said that a group Khafagi
founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America,
had funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and had published
material advocating suicide attacks against the United States.
Khafagi’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
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In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi,
a founding Board member of CAIR's Texas chapter, was convicted along
with his four brothers of having illegally shipped computers from their
Dallas-area business, InfoCom Corporation, to Libya and Syria, two
designated state sponsors of terrorism. That same month, Elashi was
charged with having provided more than $12.4 million to Hamas while he
was running HLF. In April 2005, Elashi and two of his brothers were also
convicted of knowingly doing business with Hamas operative Mousa Abu
Marzook, who was Elashi's brother-in-law. Elashi's illegal activities
took place while he was employed by CAIR, whose Dallas-Fort Worth
chapter depicted the Elashis’ indictment as “a war on Islam and
Muslims.”
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On September 6, 2001, the day that federal agents first raided
Infocom’s headquarters, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad denounced the
U.S. government for “tak[ing] us back to the McCarthy era.”
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FBI wiretap evidence which was introduced during the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation (a
trial that explored HLF's financial ties to Hamas), proved that Nihad
Awad had attended a 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and
operatives who collaborated on a plan to disguise funding for Hamas as
charitable donations.
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CAIR co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmad was
named, in the same 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, as an unindicted
co-conspirator with HLF. During the trial, evidence was supplied proving
that Ahmad had attended, along with Nihad Awad, the aforementioned 1993
Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and operatives. Moreover,
prosecutors described Ahmad as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee" in America.
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The home of Muthanna al-Hanooti, one of CAIR's directors, was raided in 2006 by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation.
FBI agents also searched the offices of Focus on Advocacy and
Advancement of International Relations, al-Hanooti's Michigan- and
Washington DC-based consulting firm that investigators suspect to be a
front supporting the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq.
Al-Hanooti is an ethnic Palestinian who, according to a 2001 FBI report, "collected over $6 million for support of Hamas" and attended, along with CAIR and Holy Land Foundation officials,
the previously cited Hamas fundraising summit in Philadelphia in 1993.
Currently a prayer leader at a Washington-area mosque that aided some of
the 9/11 hijackers, he is a relative of Shiek Mohammed al-Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Muthanna al-Hanooti formerly helped run
an organization called LIFE for Relief and Development, a suspected
Hamas terror front whose Michigan offices were raided by the FBI in
September 2006, and whose Baghdad office was raided by U.S. troops in
2004.
In March 2011, al-Hanooti was sentenced to a year in federal prison for violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq. According to the FBI,
al-Hanooti also raised more than $6 million for support of Hamas and
was present with CAIR and Holy Land Foundation officials at a secret
Hamas fundraising summit held in Philadelphia during the 1990s.
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Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba,
an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State
Department's international terror list. He was also indicted on charges
of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American troops in
Afghanistan. He later pled guilty to lesser firearm-related charges and
was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Royer's illegal activities
took place while he was employed by CAIR.
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Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad
was arrested on terrorism-related charges and was deported from the
United States due to his subsequent work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation,
which in October 2002 was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department
for financing al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
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During the 2005 trial of Sami Al-Arian, who was a key figure for Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the United States, Ahmed Bedier of CAIR’s Florida branch emerged as one of Al-Arian’s most vocal advocates.
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In the aftermath of 9/11, federal agents raided
the Washington-area home of CAIR civil rights coordinator Laura Jaghlit
as part of a probe into terrorist financing, money laundering and tax
fraud. Her husband Mohammed Jaghlit, a director of the Saudi-backed SAAR Foundation, is a suspect in the still-active (as of January 2008) investigation.
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Abdurahman Alamoudi, one of CAIR's former directors, is a supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah, and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for terrorism-related convictions.
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Current CAIR board member Nabil Sadoun co-founded, along with Mousa Abu Marzook, the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), which investigators consider to be a key Hamas front in America. Sadoun now sits on UASR's board.
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Current CAIR research director Mohamed Nimer previously served as a Board Director for UASR.
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One of CAIR's founding directors, Rafeeq Jaber, is a supporter of Hezbollah and served as the longtime President of the Islamic Association for Palestine.
- CAIR Board member Hamza Yusuf
was investigated by the FBI shortly after 9/11 because, just two days
before the attacks, he had told a Muslim audience: "This country [the
U.S.] is facing a terrible fate and the reason for that is because this
country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood
condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe
suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."
The foregoing affiliations have drawn the notice of numerous commentators:
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Steven Pomerantz, the FBI’s former chief of counter-terrorism, has
stated that “CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid
to international terrorist groups.”
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WorldNetDaily quotes an FBI veteran as saying: "Their [CAIR's] offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters."
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The family of John P. O’Neill, Sr., the former FBI counter-terrorism
chief who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, named CAIR in a
lawsuit as having “been part of the criminal conspiracy of radical
Islamic terrorism” responsible for the September 11 attacks.
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Terrorism expert Steven Emerson, citing federal law enforcement sources
and internal documents, characterizes CAIR as “a radical fundamentalist
front group for Hamas.”
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U.S. Senator Richard Durbin has said, "CAIR is unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect."
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On September 17, 2003, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer stated that CAIR
co-founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad have "intimate links with Hamas."
He later remarked that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism."
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According to
U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick (R - North Carolina), co-founder of the House
Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus: "Groups like CAIR have a proven record of
senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from
the United States."
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During September 2003 hearings held by the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Chairman
Jon Kyl noted the connections between such groups as CAIR and the Saudi
government, stating:
“A small group of organizations based in the U.S. with Saudi backing
and support is well advanced in its four-decade effort to control Islam
in America -- from mosques, universities and community centers to our
prisons and even within our military. Moderate Muslims who love America
and want to be part of our great country are being forced out of those
institutions.”
A number of American Muslims have made similar observations:
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The late Seifeldin Ashmawy, who published Voice of Peace, called CAIR the champion of “extremists whose views do not represent Islam.”
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Tashbih Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance (CDT) called
CAIR “the most accomplished fifth column” in the United States. Jamal
Hasan, also of CDT, said that CAIR’s goal is to spread “Islamic hegemony
the world over by hook or by crook.”
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According to Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslim Coalition Against
Terrorism, CAIR and similar groups “condemn terrorism on the surface
while endorsing an ideology that helps foster extremism,” and adds that
“almost all of their members are theocratic Muslims who reject
secularism and want to establish Islamic states.”
In 1998, CAIR co-hosted a rally at Brooklyn College where Islamic militants exhorted the attendees to carry out "jihad"
and described Jews as "pigs and monkeys." The crowd chanted: "No to the
Jews, descendants of the apes." Referring to Israel as a "racist
country and state," CAIR was a signatory to a MAY 20, 2004 "Joint
Muslims/Arab-American Statement on Israeli Violence in Gaza," which
"strongly condemn[ed]" Israel's "indiscriminate killings of innocent
Palestinians, including many children," and its "demolition of
Palestinian homes." In August 2006 CAIR accused Israel of practicing
state terrorism in its war against the Lebanese terrorist organization
Hezbollah. Said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, "Our
[American] government must end its support for Israel's campaign of
terror in Lebanon and join an international effort to protect and bring
humanitarian aid to the civilian population of that devastated nation."
CAIR officials have displayed a double standard for denouncing violence. For example, Ibrahim Hooper in a Pittsburg Post-Gazette interview refused to denounce the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah, stating, "we’re not in the business of condemning." By contrast, when Israeli troops killed Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin,
CAIR condemned "the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian
Muslim religious leader," calling the operation "an act of state
terror."
According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson: "Hussam Ayloush, the
Executive Director of the Southern California chapter of [CAIR] ... is
known to use the term 'Zionazi' to refer to Israelis, and [he]
compare[s] Zionism to Nazism, once writing in an e-mail, 'Indeed, the
Zionazis are a bunch of nice people; just like their Nazi brethren!'"
CAIR chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 "Free
Muslims March Against Terror," an event whose stated purpose was to
"send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are
numbered ... [and to send] a message to the people of the Middle East,
the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful
coexistence that we support them.”
CAIR states that it “works in close cooperation with other civic and civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, NAACP,
Hispanic Unity, Organization of Chinese Americans, Japanese American
Citizens League, Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force, among many
others.” CAIR also identifies the National Council of Churches as a “partner” organization.
On December 12, 2006, CAIR Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed called the war in Iraq a "pure unadulterated projection of raw power" and said the U.S. should withdraw its forces immediately.
Another notable CAIR official is Altaf Ali,
the organization's Florida Director. Ali alleges that America responded
to the 9/11 attacks by trampling on the civil liberties of all Muslims,
and he has wavered
on the question of whether or not the victims who died in the World
Trade Center on 9/11 could be classified as innocents whose killings
were unjustified.
In 2007 CAIR became involved in the infamous "flying imams"
lawsuit, a case that centered around six Muslim clerics aboard a
November 2006 US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. Shortly
before takeoff, they began engaging in bizarre behaviors eerily
reminiscent of those that had been used by the 9/11 hijackers: shouting
slogans in Arabic; leaving their assigned seats to position themselves
in different places; requesting seat belt extenders that they positioned
on the floor, rather than using them to secure themselves. Responding
to the concerns of alarmed passengers and the flight crew, authorities
removed the imams from the plane. Soon thereafter the imams filed a
lawsuit against US Airways, claiming that they had been removed from the
flight for no reason other than anti-Muslim discrimination. The lawyer
representing the imams was Omar T. Mohammedi, who as of 2006 was
President of CAIR’s New York chapter.
In February 2007, CAIR endorsed
a call by the American Muslim Taskforce for Civil Rights and Elections,
for a worldwide “rolling fast” in support of the incarcerated Sami Al-Arian,
who had initiated a hunger strike on January 21 to protest his
detention and treatment by federal authorities. Participants in
the campaign agreed to fast every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for as
long as Al-Arian continued his hunger strike.
On June 4, 2007, the New York Sun reported that CAIR had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged criminal conspiracy to support both Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The
federal prosecution document, in naming CAIR as an unindicted
co-conspirator, described the organization as a present or past member
of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.
Also named as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial were groups such as Hamas, INFOCOM, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the United Association for Studies and Research, and the North American Islamic Trust. The list also included many individuals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas. Among these were Omar Ahmad, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Jamal Badawi, Yousef al-Qaradawi, Abdallah Azzam, Mohammad Jaghlit, Mousa Abu Marzook, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Ahmed Yassin.
Two weeks after the Justice Department had named CAIR as an unindicted
co-conspirator in the HLF trial, the organization legally changed its name to "Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network."
In the summer 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, it was learned that CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine,
had been named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of
the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who shared
the common goal of conducting "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and
destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its
miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is
made victorious over all other religions."
According to a June 2007 Washington Times
report, CAIR's membership had declined more than 90 percent since the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, from approximately 29,000 in the
year 2000, to fewer than 1,700 six years later. As a result, CAIR’s
annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000 (when yearly dues
cost $25 per person), to $58,750 in 2006 (when dues cost $35). As of
2007, the majority of CAIR’s $3 million annual budget derived from about
two dozen individual donors.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, Director of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, said
in June 2007 that the decline in CAIR’s membership contradicted the
organization’s claim that it represents the interests and concerns of 7
million American Muslims. “This is the untold story in the myth that
CAIR represents the American Muslim population,” said Jasser. “They only
represent their membership and donors.”
CAIR has received funding from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the New York Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.
CAIR also receives considerable funding from Saudi Arabia, whose
Washington embassy in 1999 announced a $250,000 grant by the Saudi-based
Islamic Development Bank to help CAIR purchase some land in Washington,
DC -- to be used in the construction of “an education and research
center.” In 2002 the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which is bankrolled by the Saudi government, financed CAIR's
distribution of books on Islam and CAIR's immensely expensive
advertising campaign in a number of American publications -- including a
weekly ad in USA Today which cost approximately $1.04 million over the course of the year. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated
$500,000 to help CAIR distribute the Koran and other Islam-related
books throughout the United States. Two years later, a Saudi Arabian
named Adnan Bogary gave CAIR's Washington branch a donation of more than $1.36 million.
In 2006 Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, financed the
building of a property in the United States to serve as an endowment
for CAIR. That property now generates some $3 million annually for CAIR.
According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism,
CAIR in 2006 sent delegations to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates in an effort to procure millions of dollars in donations from
wealthy Gulf donors.
According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism,
in September 2009 CAIR executive ditector Nihad Awad (along with CAIR
national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper and chairman Larry Shaw) praised
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his "leadership" and his "continuing
efforts for world peace," and asked him to underwrite a CAIR program to
distribute a million copies of the Quran to American government
officials and the general public. "We want to assure you that Muslims in
America are your brothers and
supporters," Shaw said. "They share with you your interests and
aspirations." The CAIR officials also asked Gaddafi for financial
assistance to help them run an entity known as the Muslim Peace
Foundation, founded in 2008 ostensibly to help repair American-Muslim
relations. One of the foundation's founders was a man named Winslow
Seale, a Muslim convert who later changed his name to Johari Abdul
Malik. Malik's Dar al-Hijrah mosque is believed to be
"associated with Islamic extremists" and "has been linked to numerous
individuals linked to terrorism financing."
In November 2010, Muneer Awad, director of CAIR's Oklahoma state chapter, filed a federal lawsuit
challenging a measure -- approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters --
that barred the state's judges from considering Sharia, or Islamic law,
in formulating their rulings. According to Awad, the measure not only
violated the First Amendment right to "free exercise" of religion, but
also singled out Islam for "profound stigma."
In October 2010, CAIR announced that it was forming a new “Islamophobia” department
that would produce an annual report tracking “trends in rhetorical
attacks on Islam and Muslims and ... offer accurate and balanced
information to be used in the struggle for tolerance and mutual
understanding.” The CAIR website devotes a section
to the concept of
“Islamophobia.” CAIR has also released a video titled “Islamophobia: A Growing Problem.” In particular, CAIR has conducted a public-relations war against various Tea Party
movements that have hosted speakers which CAIR deems Islamophobic.
In April 2011, CAIR's co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, spoke at an Islamophobia conference held at UC-Berkeley. In his speech, he said that "this epidemic [Islamophobia] ... needs to be fought by all
Americans and needs to be rejected by all Americans, not only American
Muslims."
IslamistWatch reports
that CAIR "uses Press TV, the biased English-language channel run by
the Iranian government, as a platform to peddle its favored meme of
"Islamophobia" in the U.S." Numerous examples can be seen here. Produced and broadcast from Tehran, Press TV's hosts/presenters include George
Galloway and Tariq
Ramadan. Another media outlet that remained open to CAIR leaders was
the Hamas-linked Palestinian network Al-Quds
TV.
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) suggests
that "CAIR talking heads" now must resort to making appearances in such
venues because America's 24-hour cable news networks, uncomfortable
with CAIR's "proven ties
to Hamas and [its] unindicted co-conspirator status in the Holy Land
Foundation trial," have become reluctant to feature the group's leaders in broadcast interviews.
PressTV
is now the self-appointed propaganda arm for CAIR, a job that no one
else will do. For example, "Video:
Anti-Muslim Hate Promoted by Vocal Minority (CAIR),"
and a recent hit piece on Pamela Geller's new book: "Video:
Leading Islamophobe Publishes New Anti-Islam Book (CAIR)."
In June 2011, CAIR appointed Hassan Shibly as the new chief of its Tampa, Florida chapter. Following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, Shibly had characterized
Hezbollah as a "resistance movement" and a provider of valued social
services to the Lebanese people. "They're absolutely not a terrorist
organization," Shibly said, and "any war against them is illegitimate."
Shibly has also
depicted America as an imperialistic nation consumed by its insatiable
lust for oil; questioned the veracity of the U.S.
9/11 narrative which traced the terror attacks to al Qaeda; suggested
that Sharia law
should be implemented in countries with Muslim-majority populations; and
defended the late Imam Luqman Abdullah, an advocate of violent jihad
who urged his followers never to surrender peacefully to authorities.
(True to his own counsel, Abdullah was killed in a gunfight with FBI
agents who had come to arrest him; subsequent to that, both Shibly and
CAIR spoke in support of him.)
In September 2011, CAIR called for an investigation into an alleged “secret NYPD-CIA
program to spy on Muslims.” CAIR's outrage was based on an Associated
Press report that after 9/11, the CIA, in response to an NYPD request,
had assigned CIA operatives David Cohen and Larry Sanchez to help the
police department build its intelligence-gathering capabilities. With the help of these individuals,
the NYPD had hired informants as “mosque crawlers” to infiltrate
mosques and monitor them for evidence of extremism or terrorist ties.
Similarly, the department had hired Pakistani and Palestinian personnel
to become part of New York's Pakistani and Palestinian communities and
to monitor daily activities therein. Viewing these NYPD measures as
egregious violations of civil liberties, CAIR called the AP report “shocking.”
In October 2011, CAIR's New York chapter expressed its support for the anti-capitalist movement Occupy
Wall Street, which, according to CAIR,
brings "into the international spotlight" many issues that "affect
Muslim communities disproportionately." "[I]t is up to us to stand up
for our rights and show the world what democracy and peaceful protest
look like," said CAIR.
In early January 2012, the FBI announced the arrest of Sami Osmakac, a 25-year-old Muslim man (and a naturalized American citizen) from the former Yugoslavia. According to the FBI’s criminal complaint,
Osmakac had been planning a massive terror attack targeting everything
from businesses to nightclubs and bridges in Florida, with the aim of
killing and injuring as many people as possible. As part of the attack,
he intended to set off a weapon of mass destruction planted in a parked
car, then capping off the attack by detonating a suicide belt. Instead,
Osmakac’s plans were foiled by an FBI sting operation. Undercover agents
tracked the would-be terrorist for months, monitoring his every move
and even supplying him with the (secretly non-functional) weapons that
he had planned to use before moving in this week to make a decisive
arrest. But no sooner was Osmakac in handcuffs than CAIR spokesman
Hassan Shibly suggested
that the FBI was more culpable in the case than the jihadist in their
custody. “The weapons and explosives were provided by the government.
Was he just a troubled individual, or did he pose a real threat?” asked Shibly, before expressing his “concern about a perception of entrapment.”
In mid-November 2012, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began striking Hamas
targets in retaliation for a relentless campaign of missile attacks
launched against southern Israel by the Gaza-based terror group. The IDF
actions prompted Cyrus McGoldrick, CAIR’s civil rights manager in New
York, to denounce
the killing of Hamas's “resistance leaders”; to pray that God would
"protect them [Hamas] and grant them victory"; and to openly endorse
Hamas terrorism: "Palestine is a land occupied by foreign settlers. They
have the right to resist, to defend themselves, 'by any means
necessary.'"
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