There are nearly 2,000 results for a Google News search of “Khairullah.” All of them are about the Secret Service recently barring Mohamed Khairullah, the mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, from attending a White House Eid celebration. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations handled the publicity for this non-event, and there are at least 10 local TV newscasts featuring CAIR calling for an end to the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), or watchlist.
Of course, this is not the first time that CAIR and Mohamed Khairullah have met. In fact, CAIR and Khairullah are well acquainted.
Here is CAIR calling for a person’s resignation for saying “Sharia law” as Khairullah disrupted a public meeting.
Here is CAIR handling the publicity when Khairullah was detained at JFK in 2019.
And here is CAIR’s latest press conference in response to Khairullah’s disinvitation from the Secret Service.
According to Mayor Khairullah and CAIR, the problem with the Secret Service’s decision to bar Khairullah from the party is the watchlist.
Here Khairullah says that the list effects 1.5 million people. And here it is indeed stated that 1.5 million Americans are on the list. But here, CAIR’s Justin Sadowsky admits only 1% of the list are Americans.
Here is mayor Mohamed claiming that the watchlist is still in use even after a federal judge found it to be illegal. However, the judge’s decision was overturned and remanded. CAIR attorney Sadowsky even admits this here.
Although Sadowsky attributes the Fourth Circuit’s overturning of Judge Anthony Trenga’s decision to partisan politics, an actual reading of the decision shows that the court was basing its decision upon common sense.
The delays and burdens experienced by plaintiffs at the border and in airports, although regrettable, do not mandate a complete overhaul of the TSDB . . . U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee, penned in his opinion. Wilkinson ruled that the Muslim-Americans didn’t adequately demonstrate that they had been denied crossing borders, obtaining permits and the like — just that they had experienced delays. In fact, they were allowed to go through security without incident “a fair percentage of the time.” None of them alleged that they were on the “no fly” list.
“Speculation coupled with a few isolated incidents inadequately tethered to TSDB status is not enough,” “We are simply not permitted by the Supreme Court to give dispositive weight to outlier experiences.”
Like he suggested during oral arguments, Wilkinson said it would have been better for plaintiffs to file individual lawsuits based on their own experiences.
Well, that is what CAIR is doing: using individual cases to change the public perception that the watchlist is bad. The problem for CAIR is that the examples it finds of watchlist abuse turn out to be self-owns, as is the case with Mayor Khairullah.
There are more commonalities between CAIR and Khairullah than just the watchlist. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush and Khairullah have both been board members of the Syrian American Council.
SAC staffers were effective lobbyists for US intervention in the Muslim Brotherhood jihad campaign in Syria, which was part of the so-called “Arab spring.” And the SAC was firmly in support of the rebels, that is: al Qaeda, ISIS and al Nusra.
- Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, senior political adviser, strategist and government relations director for the Syrian American Council, said:
Since I visited Aleppo, the United States has designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization and an affiliate of al-Qaeda in Iraq. While Jabhat al-Nusra leaders undoubtedly profess an ideology similar to al-Qaeda’s, Syria experts agree that the timing of the designation has been disastrous for mainstream Syrians’ perception of the United States. First, Jabhat al-Nusra has helped on the ground in ways Washington has not: The group cooperates closely with the Free Syrian Army; it has achieved military successes and has delivered critical civilian aid. Second, the U.S. designation failed to distinguish between Jabhat al-Nusra’s core of hard-line ideologues and Syrians who join because Jabhat al-Nusra has money, weapons and proven military successes.
“I am warning the Alawites to get out of the country or they will all be slaughtered. There can be no reconciliation with the Alawites,” Sharafeddine said. “The only way for us to take [power] from them is over their dead bodies.”
- Khairullah praisied the rebel takeover of Idlib. “A linked video in the post showed a tank flying the flag of Jabhat al-Nusra.”
- Khairullah appeared at a Syrian al Nusra rally.
- The trailer for “Mayor Mohamed” briefly shows Khairullah working the crowd in Syria.
- Khairullah is a board member of Watan. According to the Investigative Project On Terrorism, “Watan’s partner organizations and some of its leaders have supported and assisted Al-Qaida in Syria.”
- Watan signed an agreement with the Turkish Relief Organization IHH (here is a translation): “In their keenness to expand the scope of humanitarian work, the Watan Organization has concluded a joint work and cooperation partnership with the Turkish Relief Organization IHH.” IPT: “Leaked Turkish documents show IHH provided logistical and financial support to al-Qaida’s then-Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2013, in conjunction with Turkish intelligence agency, the MIT. IHH has aided al-Qaida since the 1990s and maintains close relations with Hamas, according to a report by terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, published by the Danish Institute for International Studies.”
- IHH is a Turkish conduit to aid jihadist rebels in Syria.
- Former U.S. State Department spokesperson Philip J. “P.J.” Crowley has said (at 15:09 here):
Well, we know that IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria and Gaza over the past three years. That is obviously of great concern to us.
Then there is CAIR. CAIR is acting like some kind of foreign agent, judging only by its representatives’ appearances on TV. They use their almost daily presence on local newscasts to attack working-class Americans or counter-terror efforts as often as three times a month.
Here is the list of CAIR’s targets in 2023, as of the first week of May. Targeting Nazis is one thing, but note also that the targets include the Oklahoma police, a senator, and even Whole Foods:
- Nazi Club 131
- “KKK” boots
- Art professor
- Oklahoma police
- Officer Patrick O’Donnell
- Jonathan Boone
- Shaw University
- Missouri prison
- Whole Foods
- Nazi Club 131
- Michael’s Restaurant
- Antioch Police Officers
- Mohamad Bekheet
- Senator Mark Steffen
- The Watchlist
This has been going on for years, with over 120 examples of CAIR clashing with people on TV. CAIR uses its astonishing media access to force terminations, threaten livelihoods, defame reputations, charge people with hate crimes, thwart counter-terror efforts, and sometimes even cause terror incidents. This is the group that apparently triggered a terror incident last year in Colleyville, Texas.
There is no other group on earth that is getting on TV as often as CAIR to push someone out of a job.
We can only hope that CAIR itself is on some kind of watchlist, but that is unlikely in the extreme. In an ideal world, the media would also be on the list, because as Daniel Greenfield put it:
Don’t worry, you have better odds of being killed in an Al Qaeda attack than the media actually covering any of this. CNN fails to mention any of this even though it was all revealed the last time it happened in 2019.