The Council on American-Islamic Relations was an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism funding case. At least five current or former CAIR staff and supporters have been jailed or deported on terrorism-related charges. Yet news media often treat it uncritically as a civil rights organization.
After the Fort Hood massacre, allegedly by Maj. Nidal Hasan, USA Today quoted communications director Ibrahim Hooper and identified CAIR only as “a Muslim advocacy group.”
When five American Muslims from the Alexandria area were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of intent to wage jihad, The Washington Post reported without context that “two major groups ‹ the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations ‹ said this week that they would launch counter-radicalization programs aimed at young people.”
The same day, National Public Radio introduced a segment with Hooper about the Americans arrested in Pakistan by alluding to something more: " ... It’s important to note that there’s been a contentious relationship between CAIR and the FBI in recent years.” But details like the following were absent:
• In 2009, Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu Baker, founding members of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once America’s largest Muslim charity, were each sentenced to 65 years in prison in a federal case charging HLF with funneling more than $12 million to Hamas. Hamas ‹ the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement ‹ is responsible for the murders of hundreds of Israelis. Elashi also was a founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter and had been convicted in a 2004 Hamas-related case.
• Mousa Abu Marzook, a one-time CAIR official, was designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a “terrorist and Hamas leader.” He now helps direct Hamas from Syria.
• Randall Royer, CAIR’s former civil rights coordinator, began serving a 20-year federal sentence in 2004 for, among other things, helping al Qaeda and the Taliban fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadi network blamed for the 2008 Mumbai massacres.
• Bassem Khafagi, CAIR’s former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America. IANA was suspected of aiding sheiks opposed to the Saudi Arabian government and linked to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Khafagi pled guilty to visa and bank fraud charges and was deported.
• Rabih Haddad, once a CAIR fund-raiser, was arrested on terrorism-related charges. In 2002, the U.S. Treasury designated the Global Relief Foundation, which Haddad had co-founded, as a terrorist-financing organization. He was deported.
In 2009, members of the Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis protested at a CAIR ice cream social, alleging that the group had discouraged local Somalis from cooperating with the FBI. The bureau was investigating the disappearance of at least 20 young Somali-American men, who reportedly traveled to Somalia to wage jihad against the U.N.-supported transitional government.
In 2006, CAIR reached an out-of-court settlement with a Web site called anti-cair-net.org. The agreement seemed to let stand three of five original anti-CAIR claims: that the group was founded by Hamas members, was founded by Islamic terrorists, and was funded by Hamas supporters.
CAIR’s Hooper once was quoted as saying he “wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”
CAIR co-founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, the council’s current executive director, had been members of the Islamic Association for Palestine. Other IAP founders included abu Marzook of Hamas, and Sami al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor who pled guilty to raising money for and supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad, like Hamas, is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
When reporters turn to CAIR as a credible source on Islam in America, readers, listeners and viewers should ask why.