It’s 2019, and the Council of American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) new year’s resolution seems to be ‘Continue ignoring Islamist hate speech.’
And so far, this year has given several CAIR chapters—along with the national office—plenty of opportunities to ignore Islamist hatred (though CAIR never misses an opportunity to condemn “Islamophobia"—whether it’s real or not).
In the last month, we found that CAIR-Florida’s Communications Director Wilfredo Amr Ruiz participated in a recent Florida forum event at the Darul Uloom Institute. During the forum, panel speaker Imtiaz Mohammad, a former candidate for Florida State House, claimed “America [is] run on hate” and “American people are the most uneducated nation in the world.”
Another panel speaker, Shafayat Mohamed, has published an article on Darul Uloom’s website claiming that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.”
Also: In an August 2015 speech he gave at Darul Uloom, Shafayat Mohamed complained about the existence of LGBT Muslims and LGBT influence, saying, “Don’t deny it. They already got Muslim gay communities... They got it in London and they got it in America ...Listen, I used to have a lot of positions in the board in Broward County and, because I spoke out on homosexuality, I got sacked from many boards, because there were a lot of gay people who said, ‘We don’t want him on that board,’ but I had a choice to sit in paradise or... sit on the board and go to hell.”
We wrote to CAIR-National’s Communication’s Director, Ibrahim Hooper, and CAIR-Florida’s Executive Director, Hassan Shibly, but both men refused to condemn the event or apologize for CAIR’s participation.
Later in January, we wrote to Hooper and the executive directors of all three Ohio CAIR chapters—Karen Dabdoub of CAIR-Cincinnati, Julia Shearson of CAIR-Cleveland, and Romin Iqbal of CAIR-Columbus—to ask for comment on the recent story of Ohio-based physician, Lara Kollab, who tweeted that she would “purposefully give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds”. Again, not a single CAIR official would condemn these remarks.
Finally, we contacted Hooper once more—along with CAIR-New Jersey Executive Director James Sues—to ask for their comment on the postponement of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s event at Imam Mohammed Qatanani’s mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County. The event was cancelled after MEF contacted Governor Murphy with information about Qatanani’s long history of extreme incendiary statements.
To nobody’s surprise, Sues and Hooper refused to condemn Qatanani’s remarks, and would not comment on the event’s cancellation.
