Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)


SUBSCRIBE TO ADL'S ONLINE NEWSLETTERS

Israel

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

January 28, 2008

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization with offices around the country, defines its mission as “to enhance understanding of Islam, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.” Since its founding in 1994, CAIR has with some success sought to position itself as a prominent community organization facilitating government outreach to Muslim Americans.

Unfortunately, CAIR’s credibility as a community relations agency promoting “justice and mutual understanding” is tainted. Founded by leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a Hamas affiliated anti-Semitic propaganda organization, CAIR has never been willing to unequivocally condemn Hezbollah and Palestinian terror organizations, which the United States and international community have condemned and isolated.

In May 2007 CAIR was identified by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving a charity that was allegedly affiliated with Hamas. Federal prosecutors in the case of the Holy Land Foundation listed CAIR under the category: “Individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The government also listed Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s founder and chairman emeritus, under the same category.

It is true that CAIR has condemned terrorism in general terms - including a May 2004 petition against terrorism and a statement condemning a suicide bombing in Israel. However, CAIR has also participated in and endorsed several rallies where support for terrorist groups was undeniable, including a rally in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2002, in which CAIR’s director spoke from the podium next to a Hezbollah flag.

CAIR’s position on terrorism is further complicated by its ambiguous stance on innocent civilians - a notion that allows for an interpretation that all Israelis are a legitimate target because of Israel’s mandatory military service.

CAIR was founded by several leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which has been described by the U.S. government as part of “Hamas’ propaganda apparatus.” Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s first chairman, was president of IAP between 1991 and 1994. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, served as IAP’s public relations director during the early 1990s and was contributing editor of the IAP publication Muslim World Monitor. Other CAIR founders included Rafeeq Jaber, who is IAP’s current president, and Ghassan Elashi, who founded CAIR’s Texas chapter. Elashi, who served as chairman of IAP, is also a co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity group that the United States has accused of funding Hamas. In April 2005, Elashi was convicted of supporting terrorism by funneling money to senior Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.

IAP published and distributed the Hamas Charter and Hamas communiqués, endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and encouraged supporters to participate in a global Jihad against Jews. According to the FBI, in the year prior to CAIR’s founding, IAP and Holy Land Foundation leaders, including Ghassan Elashi, met with Hamas leaders to discuss fund-raising and political activities in the United States.

This past summer, in response to renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza , CAIR did not condemn the terror organizations that provoked the fighting by attacking Israeli soldiers across international borders and bombing Israeli cities. Rather, CAIR launched a concerted public relations campaign that sought to persuade Americans that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is harmful to American interests, issuing statements claiming that Israel controls American politics and monopolizes its public debate. It further called for a halt to American economic and military aid to Israel.

CAIR also endorsed and participated in several anti-Israel rallies supporting Hezbollah. In August, it hosted professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago for a presentation on their controversial paper on the “Israeli lobby” and the war in Lebanon at a press event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In addition to its ambiguity on terrorism, CAIR has also offered a platform to conspiratorial Israel-bashers and outright anti-Semites.

CAIR’s December 2006 statement condemning the Holocaust denial conference hosted by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran, echoes the sentiments of most Americans. However, if CAIR truly seeks to “challenge those who would fan the flames of anti-Semitism,” it should first address its past affiliation with groups whose ideology is rooted in the same anti-Semitism. Furthermore, CAIR’s statement will be seen as genuine only once it unequivocally condemns by name terrorist organizations that seek to destroy Israel, and denounces anti-Semitism at rallies in the U.S., instead of endorsing them.

The chronology below illustrates CAIR’s longstanding support for terror organizations and hostility toward Israel.

Chronology

January 21, 2008: Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR - Southern California, accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in an entry on his blog. Ayloush wrote: “Israel continues to engage in the illegal and immoral practice of collective punishment against the people of Gaza. Gaza today is a ghetto, possibly, the largest concentration camp in history…. Do your part to stop this war crime. Genocide is illegal, even for Israel.”
November 7, 2007: In an article in Southern California InFocus, a CAIR-affiliated publication, CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed described the Holy Land Foundation trial as a "classic case of guilt by association and a political vendetta against American citizens to carry out the agenda of a special interest group – the Israel Lobby."
October 27, 2007: Ahmad al-Akhras, CAIR's vice-chairman, published an article in the Saudi online publication, Arab News, titled: "HLF Case: An Israeli Trial Conducted on American Soil." In the article, al-Akhras argued that the trial was an attempt "to chill the First Amendment rights and charitable giving of American Muslims and other people opposed to our nation's one-sided policies in the Middle East. In essence, this was an Israeli trial tried on American soil in which guilt by association was used as a substitute for actual evidence."
October 24, 2007: CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed, wrote in his blog: "The case against HLF was a political witch-hunt that had nothing to do with America's security. The closure of HLF appears to be an attempt to block humanitarian assistance to some of the most impoverished people in the world - Palestinians living under Israel's Apartheid-like occupation." According to Ahmed, the case was also an attack on the Muslim community's religious practice and an affront to Muslims' sense of justice. He wrote: "Muslims raised funds to pay for the defense of HLF and will continue to do so… so that they can fulfill their God-given obligation [to give charity]."
October 22, 2007: Khalil Meek, a board member of CAIR in Texas and the primary spokesman for the Hungry for Justice (HFJ) coalition that formed to support HLF, stated in response to the mistrial that "this was an Israeli trial tried on American soil." HFJ also released a statement calling the charges "politically-motivated."
August 2-7, 2007: During the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas, FBI agent Lara Burns testified about evidence connecting CAIR and two of its founders to the Holy Land Foundation as well as to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that established Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. The agent identified CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as one of the scheduled participants at a meeting of Hamas officials in a hotel in Philadelphia in 1993. At the time, Awad was a representative of IAP. Burns also identified CAIR co-founders Awad and Omar Ahmed as members of the Palestine Committee set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
July 2007: CAIR has helped organize the Hungry for Justice Coalition in defense of the Holy Land Foundation and its officials, including Ghassan Elashi. A central figure in the Coalition is Khalil Meek, the interim president of CAIR – Dallas. He also heads legal fund that assists Holy Land Foundation with trial expenses. Other Coalition members include the Muslim American Society and ANSWER.
July 2007: In Focus published an article by staff writer Lawrence Swaim that claims that Jews enjoy unprecedented and destructive influence in the corridors of power in the U.S.; due to what it calls, "the new Philo-Semitism." According to the article, there is among Christian Americans "a deep and even fanatical affection for Jews [a] power-worship, masking a desire to use Jewish organizations to advance a political agenda." It further stated: "The U.S. corporate upper class would love nothing more, for example, than to give Jews a seat at the table of empire, if only they will help Israel become the flagship of U.S. hegemony over the Middle East — and the neoconservative movement arose precisely to service this political tendency." The article, written to explain why Norman Finkelstein did not get tenure at DePaul University, also describes Israel as the Jews’ “disastrous experiment with religious nationalism in Palestine."

The July In Focus issue also included a cartoon from the Council for the National Interest depicting the presidential candidates competing for whose going to be first at “The Israel Lobby sign up;” an article that defends Hamas (the article was also posted to the blogof Hussam Ayloush); and an article that accuses the Pew Research Center for reporting a low number of Muslim Americans to serve an anti-Muslim agenda, possibly inspired by the American Jewish Committee. Also, an article about religious extremism claimed that while Muslims may be attracted to extremism as a result of poverty and injustice, in Western societies it “is born out of exclusivist view of the world,” for example, “Jewish Zionists in Israel and in West Bank illegal settlements who advocate removal or wiping out of Palestinians based solely on Biblical claims.”
June 3, 2007: Responding to accusations that a Muslim student group at the University of California’s Irvine campus has organized anti-Semitic events, Hussam Ayloush said in a newspaper interview that he found no anti-Semitism among the students; this, despite the fact that the group hosted several known anti-Semites for a series of anti-Israel events that spring.
April 2007: Hussam Ayloush told In Focus, a CAIR affiliated publication, that “there is a well-coordinated attempt by extremist pro-Israel circles to silence American Muslims.” The article, “Pro-Israel groups target American Muslims,” argued that criticism of CAIR by “right-wing pro-Israeli groups” is motivated by a desire to prevent all Muslims from acquiring “influence in the political and social arenas.” According to In Focus, “CAIR officials say such attacks seek to marginalize the American Muslim voice and disenfranchise this minority.”
April 11, 2007: In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Omar Ahmad, CAIR founder and chairman emeritus, falsely claimed that Israel’s archaeological excavations in Jerusalem “threaten the foundation of the compound that houses the Al Aksa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine.”
February 2007: CAIR began actively promoting President Carter’s book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,sending complimentary copies to public libraries.
January 9, 2007: In an Agence France-Presse interview, Rima Kapitan, a civil rights lawyer for CAIR’s Chicago chapter, described the trial of Muhammad Salah, a suspected Hamas supporter, as “a case where the Israeli government is using the US courts to fight its own so-called war on terrorism.”

October, 2006: A CAIR affiliated publication, InFocus, printed an article supporting Hezbollah for its war against Israel. The commentary ignores Hezbollah’s culpability in provoking the hostilities, claiming the war was part of an American-British conspiracy, a “phase of the larger plans of the colonialist superpowers.” It also praises the “epic heroism of the resistance fighters” and “the larger-than-life leader,” Hassan Nasrallah.
September, 2006: InFocus, reprinted an anti-Semitic opinion piece first published by Saudi English-language newspaper, Arab News. The commentary claims that Israel acts with impunity “because we are the Jews – we are the victims of the Holocaust” and because “Israel is in a position of dominating the U.S. government.” It further claims that “we [Israel] need to create constant conflict,” and that the ultimate goal of these conflicts is the creation of a regional empire, or “Eretz Israel consisting of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and even Cyprus.” It also says that the Zionist movement “declared war on Germany,” insinuating that the Holocaust was somehow the result of a Jewish provocation.
August 28, 2006: CAIR hosted professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for a discussion about the “Israel Lobby” and the war in Lebanon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. CAIR’s director, Nihad Awad, argued that the “American government offers unconditional support for Israel and its occupation and humiliation of its neighbors.” He further claimed that “our one-sided support for Israel is a liability in the war on terror…America’s Middle East policy should be based on our nation’s interests, not on those of a powerful domestic lobby for a foreign government.”
August 12, 2006: CAIR participated in and endorsed several rallies in support of Hezbollah and the “resistance” fighting American forces in Iraq. Speakers and protesters at the rallies, primarily organized by the ANSWER Coalition, hailed Hezbollah and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups and denounced Israel’s existence. Many of the protesters equated Zionism with Nazism. Some of the more radical chants were made in Arabic, including a call for Hezbollah to bomb Israeli cities. In calling on supporters to join the main event in Washington D.C., CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, stated: “A big turnout at the rally will encourage the silent majority in our society to stand up and voice their disapproval of American's short-sighted policy in the Middle East.”
August 10, 2006: Parvez Ahmed, CAIR’s board chairman, published an opinion piece in which he argued that “unconditional support for Israel is a liability for U.S.” Ahmed blamed the conflict with Hezbollah on Israel, calling it the “bully on the playground.” Ignoring Hezbollah culpability and its radical agenda, Ahmed claimed that the war was the result of “Israel’s inability to make peace through justice, not force of arms.”
August 7, 2006: Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR-Florida, published an opinion piece in the Sun-Sentinel, in which he compared Israel and the U.S. government to Al Qaeda. He also warned that American support for Israel may cause “the conflict [to] be transplanted here.”
July 30, 2006: CAIR issued a press release calling Israeli bombardment of Lebanon “state terrorism.” Ironically, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesman, said: “Whenever civilians are attacked to achieve a political goal, the charge of terrorism must be applied, whether the terrorist is an individual, a group or a state.”
July 17, 2006: In an opinion piece carried by newspapers in Florida and the UK, CAIR’s Chicago regional director, Ahmed M. Rehab, denounced Israel for its actions against Lebanese and Palestinian terror organizations. He further argued that “for all the billions Israel has sapped from American taxpayers, it has given us nothing back but the resentment the victims of Israel’s military transgressions feel toward those who bankroll their oppressor.”
March 16, 2006: Following an operation by Israeli forces to seize several Palestinian terrorists after American and British observers abandoned the facility in which they were being held, CAIR issued a press release alleging that the U.S. may have colluded in the “pre-planned attack.” CAIR’s director cited the Mearsheimer/ Walt paper that had just been published and stated that this incident “only serve[s] to reinforce the perception in the region that our nation's foreign policy serves Israeli, not American, interests.”
April 13, 2005: Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, and two of his brothers, were found guilty of supporting terrorism by funneling money to the leader of Hamas. They were convicted in a federal court in Texas of handling and trying to conceal an investment by senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzuq. In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi was convicted on separate charges of illegally exporting goods to Syria and of money laundering. At that time, a representative of CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, Khalil Meek, argued that the only thing the Elashis were guilty of was the “crime of being Muslims in America.”
December 29, 2004: When Wagdy Ghoneim, an extremist Egyptian cleric known for his advocacy in support of violence and hatred for Jews, decided to voluntarily leave the country after being accused of immigration violation, CAIR’s director in California, Hussam Ayloush, told The Los Angeles Times that the case demonstrated “the selective application of laws on Muslims.” CAIR has never publicly criticized the radical statements made by Ghoneim.
July 7, 2004: In an interview with BBC, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesman, defended Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Muslim cleric known for his support for terrorism, as “respectable,” adding: “I don't think there's any incitement of violence on his part.” Qaradawi openly supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, as well as groups targeting U.S. forces in Iraq, and is barred from entering the U.S. because of his advocacy of violence. Qaradawi has made numerous statements in support of suicide bombing and is famous for chastising other influential Muslims who do not express similar support. In a December 2001 fatwa that justified indiscriminate suicide bombings, Qaradawi said: “Israeli society [is] completely military in its make-up and [does] not include any civilians...They are all occupying soldiers.” In a later fatwa, Qaradawi stated: “every Jew in the world thinks himself a soldier, supporting Israel as much as he can…”
June 1-8, 2004: CAIR’s Southern California chapter sponsored a speaking tour by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, of the Neturei Karta sect, a fringe Orthodox group that is vilified by almost every Jewish organization. They view Zionism as a rebellion against God and advocates the “dismantling” of the State of Israel. CAIR billed the tour as part of an effort to “foster better cooperation between Muslims and Jews.”
November 19, 2003: CAIR included in its regular mailing a link to an article titled, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection by Justin Raimondo, an online Israel-basher. A teaser for the book says: “As the terrorists were planning the biggest and deadliest terrorist attack in American history, Israeli agents in the U.S. were watching them 24/7...Did Israeli intelligence have foreknowledge of 9/11? As one law enforcement source close to the investigation told Fox News, the real question is: how could they not have known? But if they knew, then why didn’t they tell us?"
August 2003: CAIR’s Florida chapter invited to its annual banquet William Baker, a known right-wing extremist who warned in his book Theft of a Nation that Jews throughout the world “can easily become agents for specific world powers in order to create unrest and disharmony.” Even after Baker ultimately cancelled his appearance, CAIR defended him when his record was publicly challenged.
Fall 2003: Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, publicly endorsed the Islamic American University (IAU), a Michigan-based subsidiary of the American Muslim Society, with ties to extremists. Awad commended the IAU for its “ability to educate American Muslims and future generations on how to effectively introduce Islam as a civilized way of life and perhaps as an alternative to the mainstream.” He further characterized the IAU’s work as part of “the recruitment process.” Both IAU’s chairman, Qatar-based Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, and the institute’s founder and president at the time, U.S.-based Salah Sultan, are known for their connections to Islamic extremist organizations and support for terrorism.
February 20, 2003: CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper suggested on MSNBC that U.S. investigations of terrorism were politically driven by support for Israel. “The entire controversy began with the attack dogs of the pro-Israel lobby going after Sami Al-Arian, the Holy Land Foundation [and] other groups in the United States,” he said. “The [pro-Israel lobby] wanted to shut them down because they oppose the occupation in Palestine.” Hooper added a warning about the “Israelization” of “American policy and procedures.”
December 19, 2002: CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter issued a press release condemning the arrest of Ghassan Elashi and four of his brothers, who were accused by the U.S. of dealing with Hamas, saying: “One is left wondering whether these arrest orders were issued from Tel Aviv or from Washington, D.C.!”
December 1, 2002: Hussam Aylous, executive director of the Southern California chapter of CAIR, wrote an article for the Orange County Register, in which he equated Zionism with racism. “Zionism is a political ideology whose tentacles are rooted in racism,” Aylous wrote.
April 20, 2002: Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, spoke at a large rally organized by the ANSWER Coalition in Washington D.C. He was standing next to a large Hezbollah flag that was displayed on stage. Many of the speakers at the rally called for Israel to be dismantled and many of the protesters held signs comparing Zionism and Israel to Nazi Germany or chanted violent and anti-Semitic slogans.
March 29, 2002: In response to Israeli military operations to stop suicide bombings, CAIR issued a statement asking supporters to contact the President to protest “Israeli aggression.” In its statement, CAIR alleged that “American media outlets offer only the Israeli viewpoint.” It also criticized the government, asserting that “America’s true interests are served by standing up for freedom and justice, not by blindly following the dictates of a foreign government and its domestic lobby.”
October 12, 2001: Ghazi Khankan, the executive director of CAIR’s New York office, defended Hamas in an interview with the Jewish Week: “From a religious point of view, [Palestinians] have the right to defend themselves. Such self-defense cannot be equated with bin Laden. The people of Hamas who direct their attacks on the Israeli military are in the correct position. Those who attack civilians are wrong.” Explaining what he considered to be the “Israeli military,” Khankan said: “Who is a soldier in Israel and who is not? Anyone over 18 is automatically inducted into the [military] service, and they are all reserves. Therefore Hamas in my opinion looks at them as part of the military. Those who are below 18 should not be attacked.”
October 5, 2001: Soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, CAIR’s New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims. It called on the investigation to focus on “who could ‘benefit’ from this horrific tragedy?” (The letter was unpublished, but CAIR posted it on its Web site.)
September 6, 2001: In response to an FBI raid on Texas-based company InfoCom to investigate terrorist activity, Nihad Awad stated that “we suspect that all these attempts are to please the Israeli government but not to protect the U.S. interests. Siding with Israel, a racist country and state, I think does not do us any good.” InfoCom was run by Ghassan Elashi, who founded the Texas CAIR chapter, and four of his brothers, all of whom were later convicted on terror related charges.
October 28, 2000: CAIR co-sponsored the National Rally for Free Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa in Washington, D.C. Speakers publicly expressed their support for Hezbollah. During the rally, one prominent speaker said, “Anybody who is a supporter of Hamas here? Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas.
May 16, 1998: A resolution, drafted by CAIR and adopted by several Muslim groups that gathered in San Francisco to discuss political activism in support of the Palestinians, declared: “Palestine is an inheritance and a responsibility of the entire Islamic world. It further recognizes that Palestine was surreptitiously stolen from Muslims…. restoration of peace and justice for all in Palestine, and restoration of the Muslim heritage of Palestine, are the collective responsibilities of not merely Arabs or Palestinian Arabs but of the entire Muslim world.” According to an article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a sympathetic publication, the conference discussed ways to “neutralizing the disastrous influence of the Israeli government on all branches of the U.S. government” in order to advance the cause “to restore the sacred city of Jerusalem to its rightful owners [and] recover the homeland stolen from [the Palestinians] 50 years ago.” One of the speakers at the conference, Hatem Bazian, explained that “the land, in fact, belonged to the Palestinians long before the first Jewish settler” arrived in ancient times, in contrast to the “Zionist propaganda,” according to the Washington Report. The publication also reported that a prominent Muslim leader, Agha Saeed, “emphasized that it is the duty of American Muslims to fight Zionism.”
February 24, 1998: CAIR’s Executive Director, Nihad Awad, claimed in a lecture at Georgetown University that to determine who in the Clinton Administration opposed an agreement with Iraq, one had merely to “look at their last names. Look at their ethnic or religious or racial background. These are the same people who are pushing the United States to go to war on behalf of a third party, and they are the same people who are opposing the peace agreement.” He then became more explicit, saying that “many [U.S.] presidents are servants to Israel, and it’s hard to see someone who is… disobeying the political authority of Jewish interests.”
May 7, 1996: In a press release of the Marzuq Legal Fund (devoted to defending Musa Abu Marzuq, a Hamas leader who was apprehended in the U.S. on immigration violations), CAIR joined other American Muslim organizations in condemning the court’s ruling against Marzuq, and suggested that “our judicial system has been kidnapped by Israeli interests.”
November 13, 1994: During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Nihad Awad was asked about anti-Semitic materials distributed by the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) with which he was associated and about Hamas:

WALLACE: (Voiceover) We asked him about the IAP pamphlets denigrating Jews.
Mr. AWAD: I asked them to remove that from the shelf, and I asked them to clean all these things because it does only damage to the organization and to the cause of the Palestinians – and to the Muslims in general.
WALLACE: What do you think of the military undertakings of Hamas?
Mr. AWAD: Well, I think that's--that's for people to judge there.
WALLACE: I'm asking you.Mr. AWAD: The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation to defend themselves against illegal occupation.

E-Mail This Report

Press Release:

ADL Troubled By National Islamic Civil Rights Organization's Failure To Condemn Terrorism By Name (8/21/07)

Home | Search | About ADL | Contact ADL | Privacy Policy