CAIR’s Dawud Walid: Civil Rights Champion or Radical Hiding in the Open?

Dawud Walid is the longtime executive director of Michigan’s chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His Twitter profile currently bills him as a “human rights advocate and political blogger,” and his blog sells him as an imam who lectures on topics such as how to maintain your manners when dealing with hostile people (the irony of this will soon become abundantly clear), and how to address the very real problem of anti-Black racism within the Muslim community.

To anyone less familiar with Walid’s persona -- especially online -- he could easily appear to be a champion of civil rights, a man before his time in terms of addressing intra-community problems as well as hostilities between Muslims and non-Muslims. A more comprehensive review of his activities -- or even just a cursory review of his commentary on one of the days he has chosen to lash out at anyone with whom he disagrees -- reveals a more sinister, even cruel, man. Further, his true aim seems not to be civil discourse and community cohesion, but rather the furtherance of a particularly malignant, vicious strain of political Islam.

I have seen Walid demean, bully, and slander other Muslims for years. He has actively worked to silence discussion of critical issues, by working to shut down screenings of Honor Diaries, a film addressing the mistreatment of women in the name of “honor” culture; instigating online hate campaigns and witch hunts against dissidents -- women in particular -- and pushing Muslims to ostracize those with whom he disagrees. While this behavior has been abhorrent and has brought significant distress and even potential danger to those he has targeted, the broader public has paid little mind.

His most recent tirade on social media, however, may -- and should -- wake the public up to his real agenda.

On March 25 of this year, Walid took to social media to talk about the Easter holiday, and how he believes Muslims should treat Christians on this day. Rather than using the opportunity to offer best wishes to Christians and condemn the slaughter of Christians by ISIS, Walid urged Muslims not to “encourage infidels” by wishing Christians a “Happy Easter.” His comments were at best hateful, at worst incitement. His is the kind of thinking that leads to attacks such as the one against Christians in Pakistan over Easter, or when the Pakistani Taliban blew up a crowd of mostly women and children of Ahmadi Muslims, or when Asad Shah, stabbed 30 times, was assassinated recently in his store in Glasgow, Scotland, for wishing Christians a Happy Easter.

Dawud Walid wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post:

In the above post, Walid is referencing blasphemy -- a crime in places such as Pakistan, where Christians and even minority Muslims are marked for death under archaic “blasphemy” laws, perceived insults to Muhammad or Islam. He further suggests that he believes Christianity to be a polytheistic religion, again asserting his belief in the doctrine of blasphemy. Finally, he instructs Muslims to self-isolate from both family and friends, by not extending the normal human kindness of a “Happy Easter” greeting, lest they seem to be affirming “shirk” (idolatry, polytheism) and “kufr” (disbelief; related to kafir, often used to mean “infidel”). Where blasphemy laws exist, and where this mentality takes hold, the punishment for what he calls “kufr” is death -- sometimes by the state, sometimes by mobs tacitly endorsed by the state.

With this post, Walid cemented his position as a preacher of hate and radicalism. He has already become known to many Muslims as an extreme figure, who bullies anyone who disagrees with him, maligns dissidents, harasses gay Muslims, and foments anti-American sentiments. The above post could have been written by Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam who preached violence. In fact, when blogging about Awlaki’s long overdue assassination by an American drone in 2011, Walid’s few comments were not reserved for the opinions of Awlaki, who had radicalized countless Muslims who have massacred countless innocent Americans, but instead he referred to yours truly as “the lone wolf.”

For years he has advocated for every radical Islamist he could get away with defending. For example, Detroit’s radical Islamist imam Luqman Abdullah has long been the focus of Walid’s innumerable grievances against local police and FBI. He continues to this day to portray this armed militant imam, who led a separatist “Ummah” (or Islamic State) group (long before ISIS), as the “victim” of an overly aggressive FBI shooting, despite every investigation having shown otherwise and despite Abdullah’s core anti-American separatist militant ideology.

It should raise many alarms that his social media posts, such as the one this Easter (which he deceptively took down), was written not by a known radical in Yemen, but by a man employed as a leader of the self-appointed “representative” of American Muslims, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in one of the regions of the United States most densely populated by Muslims. It is beyond denial to ignore the fact that Muslims such as Walid are leading radicalizers of American Muslims, and their efforts are dedicated to pushing vulnerable Muslims away from integration and reform against Islamist movements.