The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is both a leading purveyor of ‘soft’ Islamism and a promoter of anti-Semitism. It vilifies synagogues, and the federal government responds by partnering with it to protect houses of worship from “extremists”. It charges purveyors of accurate information about Israel and about CAIR with “Islamophobia,” and the media treat it as a “civil rights” group issuing truthful reports.
CAIR was founded with $5,000 in seed money from a Hamas front-group, the HolyLand Foundation, which was later criminally convicted for financing terror. In the guise of being a “civil rights” organization, it does its best to promote the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda of securing a specially-favored position for Islamism (with the goal of eventually establishing a state ruled by Islamic law), undercutting support for the very existence of the state of Israel, and discouraging any attempt by government or private investigators to grasp the radical nature of its agenda or of the radicals it supports.
CAIR has worked to frustrate FBI terrorism investigations by persuading Muslims that they are being targeted – even persecuted – for their religion and dissuading them from cooperating with the government.
Poster from CAIR-CA’s Feb. 9, 2011 “FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas: Know Your Rights and Defend Our Communities” program.
(See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (p.21 of the linked report)). CAIR’s recently-released “Islamophobia in the Mainstream” report, discussed below, is a continuation of this tactic (a well-worn one, for CAIR) of veiling its motives, actions, and objectives by accusing investigators of prejudice.
CAIR’s obsessive anti-Zionism is not-infrequently anti-Semitic. For example, CAIR helped establish and fund InFocus News, an Anaheim, California-based monthly that published anti-Semitic articles and cartoons, as well as content expressing support for terrorist groups. CAIR’s Florida chapter operated a website, “Calling Islam,” that made anti-Semitic material available for visitors interested in learning about Islam.
More recently, the Executive Director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SFBA) affiliate, Zahra Billoo, demonized American Jews at a speech she delivered last November.
During a speech at the American Muslims for Palestine’s 14th annual convention on Nov. 27, Zahra Billoo, the Pakistani-American director of CAIR California-San Francisco Bay Area, told the audience that “polite Zionist” organizations that support a two-state solution, condemn Islamophobia and promote interfaith cooperation, such as the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel International, Jewish Federations of North America and Zionist synagogues, should be watched and are part of a vast conspiracy against Muslims (emphasis added).
CAIR utterly refused to condemn Billoo’s remarks, or even to distance itself from them. Instead, it issued a full-throated endorsement of them. (Billoo subsequently posted on Facebook that she was going on sabbatical, and complained that she was “still in the middle of a prolonged Zionist onslaught.”) Partly as a result of this, the Simon Wiesenthal Center included CAIR in its Global Anti-Semitism 2021 Top Ten list (it tied for eighth place).
Let that sink in. The head of a CAIR chapter vilified “Zionist synagogues” and promoted a conspiracy theory claiming Jews were targeting Muslims, and the organization refused to condemn her or what she said.
Seven weeks later, the Jewish community and the country as a whole are struggling to come to grips with the hostage drama that followed Malik Faisal Akram’s armed invasion of a Texas synagogue during Sabbath services on Saturday, January 15. Akram demanded that the U.S. government free convicted Islamist terrorist and anti-Semite Aafia Siddiqui (for whose release CAIR has advocated). Siddiqui was sentenced to prison for shooting at and trying to kill U.S. Army soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan. She tried to have Jews excluded from the jury pool, using genetic testing. “If they have a Zionist or Israeli background… they are all mad at me,” Siddiqui claimed.
No doubt prompted by the Billoo incident, CAIR hastily issued a press release on January 15 while the hostage drama was still ongoing. In it, CAIR claimed to disapprove of the attack on the synagogue. More likely, CAIR’s chickens were coming home to roost.
Because of CAIR’s background, the FBI cut ties with the organization in 2008.
US Dept. of Justice Inspector General report, “Review of FBI Interactions with the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations,” September 2013.
In response to an inquiry from then-Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), on April 28, 2009, Richard C. Powers, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote: “until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”
Despite the policy, the FBI continued to interact with CAIR.
Likewise, the Department of Homeland Security continued to partner with CAIR during the Obama and Trump administrations. Incredibly, despite CAIR’s ties, and barely two months after CAIR chapter head Billoo spewed hatred toward so-called “Zionist synagogues,” CAIR claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning to partner with CAIR in a February 9, 2022 training webinar. Here’s how CAIR advertised the webinar: “Houses of Worship Across All Traditions are a Target for Extremists.”
LIF reached out to confirm CAIR’s information with the Department of Homeland Security, which to date has not responded.
CAIR’s internet registration form, which reiterates FEMA’s involvement, focuses exclusively on Muslim community centers and mosques (despite the implication in CAIR’s tweet that the program is targeted toward worship places of all different religious traditions).
Registration form for CAIR February 9, 2022 webinar with FEMA about protecting Muslim community centers and mosques.
On January 11, 2022, CAIR issued a report purporting to expose 26 organizations as “Islamophobic”. (In the interest of full disclosure, the reader should be advised that the author has worked for some of the organizations listed, although not for the ones discussed in this article.)
The term “Islamophobia” was coined and is used to silence criticism of the political ideology of Islamism, a/k/a radical Islam. It is used to paint critics as prejudiced and thereby cast them out of polite society. As former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls explained:
I refuse to use this term ‘Islamophobia,’ because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of ‘Islamophobia’ is used to silence people.”
Valls also observed, “ Islamophobia is the Trojan horse of the Islamists.”
In effect, anyone who opposes the ideology that motivated the 9/11 hijackers, or the terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, or apparently the terrorist who recently held four people hostage in a Texas synagogue to secure Siddiqui’s release is, QED, “prejudiced” against Islam, according to CAIR.
The organizations CAIR has named work to expose radical Islam’s ideology and its purveyors. The type of aspersions CAIR has made discourage what passes for mainstream media today from using the information these organizations procure and distribute. CAIR doubtless also hopes its claims will discourage monetary contributions to the groups it finds so offensive.
Groups CAIR has branded “Islamophobic” include the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
CAMERA systematically monitors Middle East reporting to promote accurate, balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Staffers directly contact reporters, editors, producers, and publishers concerning distorted or inaccurate coverage, offering factual information to refute errors. Its work has been invaluable in identifying anti-Israel bias in media, churches, and so-called rights organizations like Human Rights Watch. As readers can see from the above citations, its work has graced Legal Insurrection’s website.
CAIR’s report asserted that CAMERA was inaccurate. It cited a single document, a CAMERA exposé of the Islamic Society of North America, but failed to identify any inaccuracies it contained.
Islamists like those at CAIR have shown particular animosity toward a Christian reporter and CAMERA research fellow. The reporter, Dexter Van Zile, was assaulted while covering an event last summer run by UMass Boston’s Students for Justice in Palestine group. Sadly, UMass Boston’s instinct was to do nothing to sanction its students’ misconduct.
EMET works to educate Washington-based policy makers, in Congress and elsewhere. It provides research and analysis challenging misrepresentations about Israel, radical Islam, and terrorism. In particular, EMET has spearheaded efforts to achieve justice for American victims of Palestinian terrorism. It has ridden herd on the U.S. Department of Justice and fought to prevent justice from being “contaminated by political [and] diplomatic factors,” in the words of EMET founder and president Sarah Stern. EMET has also worked to keep BDS out of the classroom.
In support of EMET’s inclusion in the report, CAIR wrote: “In 2014, Stern alleged that Muslim student groups want to destroy America from within. EMET’s board of advisors features prominent U.S. Islamophobes such as Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes.” Again, CAIR didn’t claim that any information EMET provided was inaccurate.
FDD: “Founded shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, FDD conducts actionable research, prepared by experts and scholars from a variety of backgrounds – including government, intelligence, military, private sector, academia, and journalism. It brings proficiency in foreign languages, law, finance, technology, and other skills to its work.” FDD staffers are frequently called upon to testify before Congress and think-tanks about issues such as terror financing and terror networks. For example, FDD’s chief executive, Mark Dubowitz, senior vice-president for research, Jonathan Schanzer, and senior advisor on asymmetric warfare, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, have testified before Congress several times (see, e.g., Dubowitz; Schanzer here, here, here; and Gartenstein-Ross).
CAIR cited no factual inaccuracies in FDD’s work. It tried to insult the organization by labeling it “neo-conservative”; and complains that it advances the“war on terror” narrative and associated policies and practices, which it labels “Islamophobic”. It also complained about negative characterizations of the Hamas terror organization Andrew McCarthy made 24 years ago in a National Review article he wrote while a senior fellow at FDD. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and lead prosecutor against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, is currently a senior fellow at National Review Institute and National Review contributing editor. He characterized Hamas as
savages who worship “martyrdom,” who have bombed their way to the table, and whose non-negotiable demand – a “right of return” to Israel for millions of migrant Palestinians – would sound the death-knell for a civilized democracy that is our only true friend in the region.
CAIR, the group founded with money from a Hamas front-group, took offense to McCarthy’s characterization.
MEMRI: Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI bridges the language gap by providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and other non-English language media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends. What makes MEMRI’s work so important is that Palestinian and other leaders frequently send very different messages to their own people compared to what they say to Western governments and media. For example, even as Abbas offered the West the illusion that he supported a two-state solution, in Arabic he and his supporters explained the strategy as a two-step solution – first get Israel to leave the West Bank, then go after Israel within its pre-1967 borders. MEMRI reveals such duplicity.
CAIR charged that MEMRI’s translations are inaccurate and inflammatory, and “provide justification for anti-Muslim propaganda.” Given such claims, one would think CAIR would have no trouble offering many specific examples of the supposed inaccuracies Yet, CAIR contented itself with asserting that “CNN’s Arabic department found ‘massive problems’ with MEMRI’s translation of the program,” although CAIR’s report cited no specific program or citation/hyperlink to CNN.
According to CAIR – as the above sampling shows – the mere fact that an organization publishes information putting a Muslim organization in a negative light, or that its staff has a negative view of Islamist ideology and/or supports Israel’s right to exist, is enough to classify it as “Islamophobic”. CAIR operates on this theory, and sadly, media like Time and the Washington Post treat it unquestioningly as a “civil rights” group.
The theory is absurd. It’s like saying, a trial judge who dislikes ax murderers must not show anti-ax-murderer “bias” against a defendant who has been proven – by trial evidence – to be an ax murderer.
As former-premier Valls said, CAIR is a Trojan Horse. It pretends to fight for “civil rights,” but its agenda is to promote a radical political interpretation of Islam, undermine support for Israel, demean Jews whenever possible, secure special legal privileges for Islam and Muslims, and hamstring legitimate investigations of Islamist terrorists by convincing the Muslim community and the public at large that the government is unfairly and unreasonably discriminating against them because of their religion.
CAIR’s “Islamophobia” reports employ the same tactic to hamstring investigations of CAIR’s agenda and of the organization itself by bringing many credible, hard-working, and well-informed investigators and their organizations into disrepute through shrill ad hominem attacks on the investigators. Evidently, CAIR finds it much easier to insult the investigators than address the substance of their findings. Likewise, it advertises a webinar that appears designed to help all religious traditions, two months after demonizing synagogues as conspiring against Muslims, while elsewhere advertising a program to help only Muslim organizations. Like the Trojans, the federal government and prominent media take CAIR’s offerings at face value, while ignoring the Cassandras telling them to look inside.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
