In FrontPage today I discuss the UAE-designated terror organization, Hamas-linked CAIR:
The United Arab Emirates last week approved a list of 86 “designated terrorist organisations and groups, including the usual suspects – the UAE Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State – along with two surprises, both with ties to Hamas: the Muslim American Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
This surprising listing probably stemmed from both groups’ links to the Muslim Brotherhood. UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan doesn’t want to find himself overthrown by Islamic hardliners, and replaced by a Sharia government.
When the story first broke, I wrote at my website Jihad Watch: “If this is authentic, no doubt Hamas-linked CAIR’s Nihad Awad and Ibrahim ‘Honest Ibe’ Hooper are furiously working the phones today, calling on all their contacts in the U.S. government and elsewhere to get this reversed. What fun it would be to be a fly on the wall in Honest Ibe’s sumptuously appointed office today. Will the Obama administration’s Justice Department now denounce the UAE for ‘Islamophobia’?”
Close. It wasn’t Justice, it was State. U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Monday that the Obama Administration was “aware that two U.S.-based groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, were included on the list.” Rathke said that the government was “seeking to gain more information on why, and “engaging UAE authorities” in order to do so.
A reporter then asked Rathke: “The State Department works…with CAIR all the time, no? I mean, there’s all sorts of outreach programs between the government and CAIR, right?”
Rathke seemed taken aback by the question: “I don’t know offhand whether we have a particular…I don’t have that information at my fingertips. But at any rate, we’re engaging UAE officials. These are U.S.-based groups so of course our – we are not in the lead then for domestically-based groups generally.”
It’s perfectly clear why CAIR and MAS were listed as terror organizations: because of their links to the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Obama Administration cannot accept that, as it has itself done so much to aid the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere. Hence their inquiries to Emirati officials, which are a fresh indication of the unwholesome influence these groups wield in Washington. But the UAE has the right idea, even if it reverses itself under pressure from State — and we can only hope for a restoration of sanity in Washington that will end these groups’ influence before they do more damage.
CAIR is not a terrorist organization, if one considers violent acts an essential part of what defines terrorism: it doesn’t blow things up or exhort others to do so. It is, however, an Islamic supremacist organization with the same goals as those of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State: the imposition of Islamic law wherever and whenever possible. And while CAIR is quite mainstream these days, this self-styled “civil rights group” was actually named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented.
CAIR’s dark side has been well known for years. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) said that CAIR is “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.” Another United States Senator said of CAIR that “we know it has ties to terrorism,” and “intimate links with Hamas.” Those were the words of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and they have been proven correct.
Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA) has said: “Time and again the organization has shown itself to be nothing more than an apologist for groups bent on the destruction of Israel and Islamic domination over the West.”
In June 2007, Federal prosecutors named CAIR as a participant in what the New York Sun called “an alleged criminal conspiracy to support a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Hamas.” This was when CAIR was first designated an unindicted co-conspirator for its support for the Holy Land Foundation. The federal prosecution document described CAIR as a present or past member of “the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization of both Hamas and Al-Qaeda.
CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad. Awad had been the President of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), and Ahmad its Public Relations Director. The IAP, which was shut down by the government in 2005 for funding terrorism, was founded in 1981 by a Hamas operative, Mousa Abu Marzook. Marzook currently heads Hamas’s “political bureau,” and is engaged in negotiations with Fatah in hopes of forming a Palestinian unity government. In the course of these negotiations, Hamas reaffirmed its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist – which is tantamount to vowing its total destruction.
According to a report dated August 14, 2001, from the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the IAP was dedicated to “publishing and distributing HAMAS communiqués printed on IAP letterhead, as well as other written documentation to include the HAMAS charter and glory records, which are tributes to HAMAS’ violent ‘successes.’“ The same report also stated that IAP had received “approximately $490,000 from [Mousa Abu] Marzook during the period in which Marzook held his admitted role as a HAMAS leader.”
Randall Todd (“Ismail”) Royer was CAIR’s communications specialist and civil rights coordinator. He was part of the “Virginia jihad group,” which was indicted on forty-one counts of “conspiracy to train for and participate in a violent jihad overseas.” They were accused of association with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihad terrorist group.
Matthew Epstein of the Investigative Project has said that Royer helped recruit the other member of the group to the jihad while he was working for CAIR.
Royer was also among those charged in a separate indictment saying that they conspired to help Al-Qaeda and the Taliban fight against American troops in Afghanistan. And Royer admitted to a grand jury that he had already waged jihad warfare in Bosnia – with and that his commander took orders from Osama bin Laden.
According to Daniel Pipes, “Royer eventually pleaded guilty to lesser firearms-related charges, and the former CAIR staffer was sentenced to twenty years in prison.”
Then there was Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter. He was charged in July 2004 with giving Hamas more than 12 million dollars while he was running the Holy Land Foundation. Elashi was convicted in November 2008 of providing material support to terrorism in connection with his role in the HLF. Earlier, Elashi was convicted in July 2004 of illegally shipping computers to two state-sponsors of terrorism, Libya and Syria. Then he was convicted in April 2005 of knowingly doing business with Mousa Abu Marzook, the senior Hamas leader who founded the IAP. Elashi was found guilty of conspiracy, money laundering, and dealing in the property of a designated terrorist.
Bassem Khafagi was CAIR’s community relations director. He pled guilty in September 2003 to lying on his visa application and passing bad checks, and he was deported. Before he worked for CAIR, he was president of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) — which is under investigation by the Justice Department for terrorism-related activities. According to court documents, the IANA was devoted to spreading “radical Islamic ideology, the purpose of which was indoctrination, recruitment of members, and the instigation of acts of violence and terrorism.”
Rabih Haddad was a CAIR fundraiser who was arrested in December 2001 and deported. Again the charges were terror-related.
Maybe all these people had jihadist sentiments either before or after working for CAIR, but were completely moderate while working for it. Maybe. But this is just part of the picture. CAIR is, evidently, a moderate group has several onetime employees arrested on terror charges. It is a moderate group came out of another group that has been identified as the “primary voice in the U.S.” of a terror group. A moderate group that traffics in legal threats and intimidation against those of which it disapproves.
A moderate group?
No, the UAE was right: it’s a terrorist organization.
David, Thailand says
The White House must be shifting uncomfortably, trying to figure out how to protect its America-hating, white-hating, Jew-hating Muslim Socialist.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Yeah, the White House is shifting and squirming alright. So are the news entertainers, the judges, the Professoriat and the news entertainers. This unfortunate action by the Gulf Moslems puts them all in an uncomfortable position.
U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Monday that the Obama Administration was “aware that two U.S.-based groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, were included on the list.” Rathke said that the government was “seeking to gain more information on why, and “engaging UAE authorities” in order to do so.
Do so? What is this “so” that is not present anywhere in this scenario that must be done? My guess is that this “so” was a Freudian slip that just popped out of the reporter’s keyboard.
Wait, *I* know what this “so” is, it’s to decide whether to change the US’s longstanding laissez faire policy toward CAIR, a policy that includes recognition of and cooperation with this civil rights organization (MLK and all that). “So” the gubmint must either hold the line or give CAIR the same designation that the Moslems in the Gulf gave them: a terrorist organization. I agree with the Moslems, as kleptocrat dictators they are doing the right thing by telling the truth.
But our ruling elite cannot do that, when they look at the CAIR website they must see Unicorns. Call it hopeful thinking. Gee, I wonder what the federal gubmint will do on this troubling matter.
Shane says
Yes, CAIR is an Islamic supremacist group; their members are loyal to Islam first.
DogOnPorch says
CAIR terrorist? Say it isn’t so…lol.
Jay Boo says
While Fox news is against Obama’s immigration plan
http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2014/07/09/bill-oreilly-president-obama-getting-hammered-over-illegal-immigration/
CAIR on the other hand calls it praiseworthy in an article at their website \.
— It isn’t just Mexicans sneaking into the US illegally.
Jae M says
Yes it is an open door for terrorists. These seem to be the days of lies being called truths and truths being ignored. It is sinister and beyond belief that people are so complacent.
Shane says
Yes, there are tens of thousands of Muslims that Obama just gave an amnesty to.
Wellington says
CAIR is, at the very least, a rank apologist for Islamic terror, if not actually a terrorist organization itself. But CAIR pales in comparison to the man presently occupying the Oval Office who in no way whatsoever (and how telling this is) sees CAIR for what it truly is. Indeed, he’s still trying to enable CAIR as he is the Muslim Brotherhood (and in between doing other things like rankly violating the Constitution’s requirement for the separation of powers).
And herein lies the far greater problem. Oh yes, far greater. CAIR is a junior varsity player respecting danger to America. The man in the Oval Office is very much a varsity guy here.
And may I thank again all the fools who voted for the present occupant of the Oval Office for President, especially those of you who voted for him twice for this office. A la Henry V, the sin upon your heads. For a long time to come. Preferably forever. Shame on you all.
Don McKellar says
Good piece! Well researched and overwhelming in its case for the declaration of CAIR as a terrorist organization. The only reason the Obama administration wouldn’t declare the same as the UAE, is because of internal corruption and/or stubborn clinging to the leftist delusional politically correct fantasy that cripples so badly America’s ability to address and confront its greatest enemies.
mortimer says
All you need to do join CAIR:
1) bang your head until you lose critical thought
2) believe the end justifies the means
3) believe that terrorism, genocide, repression of women, political supremacism, ethnic cleansing, theocratic fascism, blasphemy censorship are all mandated by the ficticious ‘Allah’
4) think daily of ways to betray Americans and lie to them
jewdog says
Do you think that a Jewish group, or a Christian group, with as many indictments and ties to violent terrorist organizations would be described by anyone as a civil rights organization? Perhaps Muslims are the new privileged class.
Salah says
“But the Obama Administration cannot accept that, as it has itself done so much to aid the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere.”
The proud Egyptian people said NO to the Obama administration and they kicked out his Muslim Brotherhood thugs from power.
And they did it without firing one single shot!
It saddens me to watch the once free peoples of the West unable to kick out their respective traitorous PC governments from power.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-end-of-muslim-brotherhood.html
duh_swami says
All this bad publicity must be making the boys over at CAIR central highly nervous…Just when they thought they had all the marbles, ‘POW right in the kisser’ (Jackie Gleason)…I bet that hurts…
jay says
Nicely done and thank you sir for soldiering on and being a voice against Islam that isn’t from a skinhead/stormfront bro. More sensible talented people need to step up and join you. I think one of the biggest problems with standing up to Islam is the unwanted association with white supremacist groups that pro-Islamists love to use as ‘proof’ that anyone against Islam is obviously a racist nazi.
dumbledoresarmy says
I observe, from the article, the following names of three American politicians who appear to have had the measure of CAIR:
“Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) said that CAIR is “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.”
“Another United States Senator said of CAIR that “we know it has ties to terrorism,” and “intimate links with Hamas.” Those were the words of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), and they have been proven correct.
“Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA) has said: “Time and again the organization has shown itself to be nothing more than an apologist for groups bent on the destruction of Israel and Islamic domination over the West.” END QUOTE
Are these three gentlemen – Richard Durbin, Senator, Charles Schumer, Senator, and Bill Shuster, Congressman – still in harness?
Irrespective of what any of them has said or done on anything else, if they were prepared to publicly voice misgivings about CAIR, they may be further educable on the subject of Islam.
Wellington says
All three, dda, are “still in harness.” Durbin and Schumer are quite liberal on most every issue but they’ve got CAIR down pat. Since Schumer is Jewish, even though very leftist, he tends to be relatively good where Israel is concerned. As for Bill Shuster, he is the son of Bud Shuster who held the Congressional seat his son now holds for many years. The 9th Congressional District of Pennsylvania is just about the most conservative Congressional district one could find in the entire northeastern US. Of the three, Shuster is easily the one who would be most likely to be further educable on Islam.
BTW, the 9th District is where I hale from originally. It covers south central Pennsylvania, a most beautiful area, where loads of people still have their heads on straight and where gun control means a steady hand. Hope you’re doing well, my friend.
Wellington says
That’s “hail from” and not “hale from.” Go figure.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
We all in here agree that the handling of Moslem aggression is insane. The facts are so obvious. You can look it up in the Holy Ko-Ran, in the Hah-Deaths, ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari blah blah blaaaah.
But the American people are too stupid, or racist, for the news entertainers to be able to go through those urgently relevant facts. When Prez Barack Hussein Obama threw the weight of taxpayer money and arms behind the Mo-Bro-Hood, it wasn’t possible for the talking haids to mention the long term master planning document found by the Swiss police in a raid on an Moslem safe hourse, but shouldn’t that have been at least brought up in “debating” the nation’s Mo-Bro-Hood alliance?
No, the nation, and the other Western nations, no longer have the air time or column inches or inclination to delve down one level to credibly frame the report or analysis. Salience facts, ones that render a report or analysis – or policy – missing those facts to be laughable to anybody with common sense *and* knowledge of the facts that are for some reason never mentioned.
No, the damning facts, the easily obtainable and verifiable damning facts, of the existence of CAIR in this country is far down the list of missing damning facts that must not be mentioned.
Cultural norms and standard prevailing today make it improper to do the single-step delve dive and acknowledge a damned urgent fact.