by Christopher W. Holton
Vice President for Outreach
Center for Security Policy
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been tied to HAMAS, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. CAIR has also been named a terrorist organization itself by US ally the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to the fact that it is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the granddaddy of all modern Sunni Jihadist organizations.
Now, CAIR is conducting “outreach” to conservative groups and a major Tea Party organization in the state of Georgia.
In view of this development, we thought it important to detail CAIR’s disturbing history, members, officers and ties ahead of more of its “outreach” efforts in Georgia:
• CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the US v. Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in US history.
• The Holy Land Foundation was a Texas-based charity whose officers were sentenced in May 2009 to between 15 and 65 years in prison for funneling over $12 million to Hamas. One of the sentenced officers, Ghassan Elashi, is the founder of CAIR’s Dallas chapter. Elashi’s illegal activities took place while he was affiliated with CAIR.
• CAIR opened its first office in Washington, D.C. with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Holy Land Foundation.
• In a formal letter to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona dated 28 April 2009, the FBI stated that during the Holy Land Foundation trial, “evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and its Executive Director) and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and HAMAS, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995. In light of that evidence, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and the FBI.”
• In March 2011, Muthanna al-Hanooti, one of CAIR’s directors, was sentenced to a year in federal prison for violating U.S. sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq.
• In January of 2011, the CAIR California chapter published a poster promoting a conference called “Know Your Rights and Defend Our Communities.” That poster prominently featured the following slogan: “BUILD A WALL OF RESISTANCE DON’T TALK TO THE FBI.”
• On March 22, 1994, During a panel discussion at Barry University in Florida, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said: “I used to support the PLO, and I used to be the President of the General Union of Palestine Students which is part of the PLO here in the United States, but after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.”
• 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 Egyptian Islamic Group leader “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman’s foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.
• On April 19, 1996, in its first published report on alleged anti-Muslim discrimination, titled “The Price of Ignorance,” CAIR cited the arrest of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheikh), the Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence for conspiracy to blow up New York landmarks in 1993, and the detention of senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzuq, as “incidents of bias and violence” against Muslims in the U.S.
• On July 4, 1998, former CAIR chairman Omar M. Ahmad, told Fremont, California’s daily newspaper, The Argus, that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant, he said. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
• 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.”
• In 1993, CAIR spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that “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. … But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”
• 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.
• In 2004, CAIR-Northern Virginia director Abdurahman Alamoudi pled guilty to terrorism-related financial and conspiracy charges in 2004, which resulted in a 23-year prison sentence.
• In 2006, the co-founder of CAIR’s parent organization, IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine), Sami Al-Arian, was sentenced to 57 months in prison on terrorism charges for financing Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization according to the US State Department.
• On August 12, 2006 CAIR helped to coordinate a number of demonstrations in support of Hezbollah and “resistance” groups fighting American forces in Iraq.
• 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 on April 9, 2004. Royer’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
• 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. Haddad raised money for the Ann Arbor, Michigan chapter of CAIR.
• On April 20, 2002: Nihad Awad addressed an anti-Israel rally in Washington D.C. while standing next to Hezbollah flag.
• On October 12, 2001: Ghazi Kankan, executive director of CAIR’s New York office at the time, defended Hamas’s targeting of Israeli civilians. He told the Jewish Week that, like Hamas, he considered all Israelis over the age of 18 to be “military” because “they are all reserves.”
• In 2014, US ally the United Arab Emirates officially designated CAIR
as a terrorist organization.
Given the number of individuals associated with CAIR who have been convicted on terrorism-related causes, as well as the disturbing associations and statements from CAIR and its officials, it is very difficult to take their views seriously.
Georgia conservative and Tea Party leaders must be made aware of the facts surrounding CAIR.
Terror Trends Bulletin 