CAIR Upset with FBI

[Warrior-Mentor]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is upset over what it says is increasing government surveillance in mosques. It is also upset with new Justice Department guidelines that it claims encourages profiling. And it is especially upset with the FBI's decision to end its cooperation with CAIR. The FBI's action stems from a trial in Dallas last year in which CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development — a group charged with bankrolling schools and social welfare programs which the U.S. government says are controlled by Hamas.

CAIR describes itself as a "non-profit, grassroots membership organization … established to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America," to protect Muslims from hate crimes and discrimination, and to present “an Islamic perspective on issues of importance to the American public.” According to the Council's Director of Communications, Ibrahim Hooper, "We are similar to a Muslim NAACP." As of June 2007, CAIR claimed 32 branch affiliates in the United States and one in Canada.

CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, both of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and functioned as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the United States. Awad and Ahmad previously had served, respectively, as IAP's Public Relations Director and President. Thus it can be said that CAIR was an outgrowth of IAP.

CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity founded by Mousa Abu Marzook. In May 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American." When President Bush closed HLF in December 2001 for collecting money "to support the Hamas terror organization," CAIR decried his action as "unjust" and "disturbing."

From its inception, CAIR has sought to portray itself as a moderate, mainstream organization, and as early as 1996 its officials became frequent guests at State Department and White House events. In the aftermath of 9/11, when the Bush administration tried to reassure American Muslims that Islam was not the target of the war on terrorism, CAIR officials were prominent among the invitees. CAIR was the main Islamic group to gain U.S. media access in the post-9/11 period, providing the “Muslim view” of the terrorist attacks and of America's response to them. As self-acclaimed Muslim spokesmen, CAIR officials typically refused to “simplify the situation” by blaming Osama bin Laden for the attacks on America. Moreover, while they eventually were induced by journalists to condemn Palestinian suicide terror in a pro forma manner, they hedged their disavowals by describing it as an understandable response to Israeli brutality.

Contending that American Muslims are the victims of wholesale repression, CAIR has provided sensitivity training to police departments across the United States, instructing law officers in the art of dealing with Muslims respectfully.

CAIR further claims that U.S. foreign policy is dictated largely by Zionist extremists. As Evan McCormick of the Center for Security Policy puts it: “By convincing moderate Muslims that they are being targeted unfairly by the Bush administration's [anti-terror] policies, CAIR incites fear in members of that demographic. If innocent Muslims are then convinced that they will be the target of government action, then they have no incentive to reject an extremist ideology that resists the government’s anti-terror policies. ... This is the essence of CAIR’s strategy: shock moderate Muslims about the motivations of the U.S. Government, turn them into post-[9/11] victims, and then recruit them as supporters for your political agenda when they are ripe for the taking.”

Along the same lines, a civil suit filed by the estate of 9/11 victim and former high-ranking FBI counter-terrorism agent John O’Neill, Sr. asserted that CAIR's goal “is to create as much self-doubt, hesitation, fear of name-calling, and litigation within police departments and intelligence agencies as possible so as to render such authorities ineffective in pursuing international and domestic terrorist entities.”

CAIR endorsed an October 22, 2002 "National Day of Protest" whose premise was: “Since September 11th thousands of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians have been rounded up, detained and disappeared. ... Hard-won civil liberties and protections have been stripped away as part of the government's 'war on terrorism.' The USA-PATRIOT Act brings in a new set of repressive laws and restrictions on people and grants even greater power to law enforcement agents of all kinds.” Moreover, this document explicitly defended the convicted murderers Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, as well as Lynne Stewart and Jose Padilla, who were convicted on terrorism-related charges -- depicting all four as persecuted political prisoners of a repressive American government.

CAIR was a signatory to a February 20, 2002 document, composed by C. Clark Kissinger's radical group Refuse & Resist, condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations. The document lamented that “the denial of any due process for Arab[s], Muslim[s], South Asians and others” bore “chilling similarities to a police state.”

In February 2003, CAIR joined the American Muslim Council, the American Muslim Alliance, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council in forming a coalition to repeal and amend the Patriot Act -- alleging that it violated the civil liberties of Americans, particularly Muslims. CAIR also endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, which was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

CAIR promotes a radical Islamic vision, as evidenced by the fact that its co-founder Omar Ahmad told a Fremont, California audience in July 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

In a similar spirit, co-founder Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter in 1993: “I 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.” In 2003 Hooper stated that if Muslims ever become a majority in the United States, they will likely seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law, which they deem superior to man-made law. In the late 1980s, Ihsan Bagby, who would later become a CAIR Board member, stated that Muslims “can never be full citizens of this country,” referring to the United States, “because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”

In 2003 CAIR invested, according to its own Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service, $325,000 from its California offices with the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). According to Newsweek, authorities say that over the years "NAIT money has helped the Saudi Arabian sect of Wahhabism -- or Salafism, as the broader, pan-Islamic movement is called -- to seize control of hundreds of mosques in U.S. Muslim communities." A recent study by the Center for Religious Freedom found that a very large number of American mosques teach hatred of Jews and Christians, coupled with doctrines of Islamic supremacism.

Writes Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz: “CAIR should be considered a foreign-based subversive organization, comparable in the Islamist field to the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA, and the Cuban-controlled front groups that infiltrated ‘Latin American solidarity’ organizations in the U.S. during the 1980s. It has organized numerous community branches and has had immense success in gaining position as an ‘official’ representative of Islam in the U.S.”

[Warrior-Mentor]

Notable facts about CAIR's pas de deux with Islamic extremism and terrorism include the following:

* Co-founder Nihad Awad asserted at a 1994 meeting at Barry University, "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."

* On February 2, 1995, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.

* On June 6, 2006, CAIR's Ohio affiliate held a large fundraiser in honor of Siraj Wahhaj. Following the event, CAIR-Ohio issued a press release heralding the more than $100,000 that Wahhaj had helped raise that evening for the organization’s “civil liberties work.”

* In October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy." According to CAIR, this depiction was "offensive to Muslims."
*

In 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa. According to Ibrahim Hooper, the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."
*

In September 2003, CAIR's former Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Federal investigators said that a group Khafagi founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America, had funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and had published material advocating suicide attacks against the United States. Khafagi’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
*

In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board member of CAIR's Texas chapter, was convicted along with his four brothers of having illegally shipped computers from their Dallas-area business, InfoCom Corporation, to Libya and Syria, two designated state sponsors of terrorism. That same month, Elashi was charged with having provided more than $12.4 million to Hamas while he was running HLF. In April 2005, Elashi and two of his brothers were also convicted of knowingly doing business with Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, who was Elashi's brother-in-law. Elashi's illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR, whose Dallas-Fort Worth chapter depicted the Elashis’ indictment as “a war on Islam and Muslims.”
*

On September 6, 2001, the day that federal agents first raided Infocom’s headquarters, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad denounced the U.S. government for “tak[ing] us back to the McCarthy era.”
*

FBI wiretap evidence which was introduced during the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation (a trial that explored HLF's financial ties to Hamas), proved that Nihad Awad had attended a 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and operatives who collaborated on a plan to disguise funding for Hamas as charitable donations.
*

CAIR co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmad was named, in the same 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, as an unindicted co-conspirator with HLF. During the trial, evidence was supplied proving that Ahmad had attended, along with Nihad Awad, the aforementioned 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and operatives. Moreover, prosecutors described Ahmad as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee" in America.
*

The home of Muthanna al-Hanooti, one of CAIR's directors, was raided in 2006 by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation. FBI agents also searched the offices of Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations, al-Hanooti's Michigan- and Washington DC-based consulting firm that investigators suspect to be a front supporting the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq.

Al-Hanooti is an ethnic Palestinian who, according to a 2001 FBI report, "collected over $6 million for support of Hamas" and attended, along with CAIR and Holy Land Foundation officials, the previously cited Hamas fundraising summit in Philadelphia in 1993. Currently a prayer leader at a Washington-area mosque that aided some of the 9/11 hijackers, he is a relative of Shiek Mohammed al-Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Muthanna al-Hanooti formerly helped run an organization called LIFE for Relief and Development, a suspected Hamas terror front whose Michigan offices were raided by the FBI in September 2006, and whose Baghdad office was raided by U.S. troops in 2004.
*

Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State Department's international terror list. He was also indicted on charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American troops in Afghanistan. He later pled guilty to lesser firearm-related charges and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Royer's illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
*

Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was arrested on terrorism-related charges and was deported from the United States due to his subsequent work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation, which in October 2002 was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
*

During the 2005 trial of Sami Al-Arian, who was a key figure for Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the United States, Ahmed Bedier of CAIR’s Florida branch emerged as one of Al-Arian’s most vocal advocates.
*

In the aftermath of 9/11, federal agents raided the Washington-area home of CAIR civil rights coordinator Laura Jaghlit as part of a probe into terrorist financing, money laundering and tax fraud. Her husband Mohammed Jaghlit, a director of the Saudi-backed SAAR Foundation, is a suspect in the still-active (as of January 2008) investigation.
*

Abdurahman Alamoudi, one of CAIR's former directors, is a supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah, and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for terrorism-related convictions.
*

Current CAIR board member Nabil Sadoun co-founded, along with Mousa Abu Marzook, the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), which investigators consider to be a key Hamas front in America. Sadoun now sits on UASR's board.
*

Current CAIR research director Mohamed Nimer previously served as a Board Director for UASR.
*

One of CAIR's founding directors, Rafeeq Jaber, is a supporter of Hezbollah and served as the longtime President of the Islamic Association for Palestine.
* CAIR Board member Hamza Yusuf was investigated by the FBI shortly after 9/11 because, just two days before the attacks, he had told a Muslim audience: "This country [the U.S.] is facing a terrible fate and the reason for that is because this country stands condemned. It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."

The foregoing affiliations have drawn the notice of numerous commentators:

*

Steven Pomerantz, the FBI’s former chief of counter-terrorism, has stated that “CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups.”
*

WorldNetDaily quotes an FBI veteran as saying: "Their [CAIR's] offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters."
*

The family of John P. O’Neill, Sr., the former FBI counter-terrorism chief who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, named CAIR in a lawsuit as having “been part of the criminal conspiracy of radical Islamic terrorism” responsible for the September 11 attacks.
*

[Warrior-Mentor]

Terrorism expert Steven Emerson, citing federal law enforcement sources and internal documents, characterizes CAIR as “a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas.”
*

U.S. Senator Richard Durbin has said, "CAIR is unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect."
*

On September 17, 2003, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer stated that CAIR co-founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad have "intimate links with Hamas." He later remarked that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism."
*

According to U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick (R - North Carolina), co-founder of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus: "Groups like CAIR have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States."
*

During September 2003 hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Chairman Jon Kyl noted the connections between such groups as CAIR and the Saudi government, stating: “A small group of organizations based in the U.S. with Saudi backing and support is well advanced in its four-decade effort to control Islam in America -- from mosques, universities and community centers to our prisons and even within our military. Moderate Muslims who love America and want to be part of our great country are being forced out of those institutions.”

A number of American Muslims have made similar observations:

*

The late Seifeldin Ashmawy, who published Voice of Peace, called CAIR the champion of “extremists whose views do not represent Islam.”
*

Tashbih Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance (CDT) called CAIR “the most accomplished fifth column” in the United States. Jamal Hasan, also of CDT, said that CAIR’s goal is to spread “Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook.”
*

According to Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism, CAIR and similar groups “condemn terrorism on the surface while endorsing an ideology that helps foster extremism,” and adds that “almost all of their members are theocratic Muslims who reject secularism and want to establish Islamic states.”

In 1998, CAIR co-hosted a rally at Brooklyn College where Islamic militants exhorted the attendees to carry out "jihad" and described Jews as "pigs and monkeys." The crowd chanted: "No to the Jews, descendants of the apes." Referring to Israel as a "racist country and state," CAIR was a signatory to a MAY 20, 2004 "Joint Muslims/Arab-American Statement on Israeli Violence in Gaza," which "strongly condemn[ed]" Israel's "indiscriminate killings of innocent Palestinians, including many children," and its "demolition of Palestinian homes." In August 2006 CAIR accused Israel of practicing state terrorism in its war against the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah. Said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, "Our [American] government must end its support for Israel's campaign of terror in Lebanon and join an international effort to protect and bring humanitarian aid to the civilian population of that devastated nation."

CAIR officials have displayed a double standard for denouncing violence. For example, Ibrahim Hooper in a Pittsburg Post-Gazette interview refused to denounce the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah, stating, "we’re not in the business of condemning." By contrast, when Israeli troops killed Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, CAIR condemned "the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian Muslim religious leader," calling the operation "an act of state terror."

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson: "Hussam Ayloush, the Executive Director of the Southern California chapter of [CAIR] ... is known to use the term 'Zionazi' to refer to Israelis, and [he] compare[s] Zionism to Nazism, once writing in an e-mail, 'Indeed, the Zionazis are a bunch of nice people; just like their Nazi brethren!'"

CAIR chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 "Free Muslims March Against Terror," an event whose stated purpose was to "send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered ... [and to send] a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.”

CAIR states that it “works in close cooperation with other civic and civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, NAACP, Hispanic Unity, Organization of Chinese Americans, Japanese American Citizens League, Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force, among many others.” CAIR also identifies the National Council of Churches as a “partner” organization.

On December 12, 2006, CAIR Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed called the war in Iraq a "pure unadulterated projection of raw power" and said the U.S. should withdraw its forces immediately.

Another notable CAIR official is Altaf Ali, the organization's Florida Director. Ali alleges that America responded to the 9/11 attacks by trampling on the civil liberties of all Muslims, and he has wavered on the question of whether or not the victims who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 could be classified as innocents whose killings were unjustified.

In 2007 CAIR became involved in the infamous "flying imams" lawsuit, a case that centered around six Muslim clerics aboard a November 2006 US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. Shortly before takeoff, they began engaging in bizarre behaviors eerily reminiscent of those that had been used by the 9/11 hijackers: shouting slogans in Arabic; leaving their assigned seats to position themselves in different places; requesting seat belt extenders that they positioned on the floor, rather than using them to secure themselves. Responding to the concerns of alarmed passengers and the flight crew, authorities removed the imams from the plane. Soon thereafter the imams filed a lawsuit against US Airways, claiming that they had been removed from the flight for no reason other than anti-Muslim discrimination. The lawyer representing the imams was Omar T. Mohammedi, who as of 2006 was President of CAIR’s New York chapter.

In February 2007, CAIR endorsed a call by the American Muslim Taskforce for Civil Rights and Elections, for a worldwide “rolling fast” in support of the incarcerated Sami Al-Arian, who had initiated a hunger strike on January 21 to protest his detention and treatment by federal authorities. Participants in the campaign agreed to fast every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for as long as Al-Arian continued his hunger strike.

On June 4, 2007, the New York Sun reported that CAIR had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged criminal conspiracy to support both Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The federal prosecution document, in naming CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator, described the organization as a present or past member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.

Also named as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial were groups such as Hamas, INFOCOM, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the United Association for Studies and Research, and the North American Islamic Trust. The list also included many individuals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas. Among these were Omar Ahmad, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Jamal Badawi, Yousef al-Qaradawi, Abdallah Azzam, Mohammad Jaghlit, Mousa Abu Marzook, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Ahmed Yassin.

In the summer 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, it was learned that CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine, had been named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who shared the common goal of conducting "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."

[Warrior-Mentor]

According to a June 2007 Washington Times report, CAIR's membership had declined more than 90 percent since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, from approximately 29,000 in the year 2000, to fewer than 1,700 six years later. As a result, CAIR’s annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000 (when yearly dues cost $25 per person), to $58,750 in 2006 (when dues cost $35). As of 2007, the majority of CAIR’s $3 million annual budget derived from about two dozen individual donors.

M. Zuhdi Jasser, Director of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, said in June 2007 that the decline in CAIR’s membership contradicted the organization’s claim that it represents the interests and concerns of 7 million American Muslims. “This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population,” said Jasser. “They only represent their membership and donors.”

CAIR has received funding from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the New York Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

CAIR also receives considerable funding from Saudi Arabia, whose Washington embassy in 1999 announced a $250,000 grant by the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank to help CAIR purchase some land in Washington, DC -- to be used in the construction of “an education and research center.” In 2002 the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which is bankrolled by the Saudi government, financed CAIR's distribution of books on Islam and CAIR's immensely expensive advertising campaign in a number of American publications -- including a weekly ad in USA Today which cost approximately $1.04 million over the course of the year. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to help CAIR distribute the Koran and other Islam-related books throughout the United States. Two years later, a Saudi Arabian named Adnan Bogary gave CAIR's Washington branch a donation of more than $1.36 million.

In 2006 Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, financed the building of a property in the United States to serve as an endowment for CAIR. That property now generates some $3 million annually for CAIR.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6176

[Box]

Why is the FBI wasting time around Mosques anyway...

...arent there some returning war veterans that need watching?

[Team Sergeant]

Why is the FBI wasting time around Mosques anyway...

...arent there some returning war veterans that need watching?

I heard the FBI was directed by DHS to begin surveillance on the American Legion, West Point, The Heritage Foundation, Boy Scouts of America, Foxnews and the GOP.

America is in need of a new government.

[Paslode]

I heard the FBI was directed by DHS to begin surveillance on the American Legion, West Point, The Heritage Foundation, Boy Scouts of America, Foxnews and the GOP.

America is in need of a new government.

I hope your joking about that :confused:

[greenberetTFS]

I heard the FBI was directed by DHS to begin surveillance on the American Legion, West Point, The Heritage Foundation, Boy Scouts of America, Foxnews and the GOP.

America is in need of a new government.

TS,

You really are joking about this aren't you? Because if your not, I'm ashamed of what our country is up too and we are in serious trouble..............:(

GB TFS :munchin

[Team Sergeant]

I hope your joking about that :confused:

TS,

You really are joking about this aren't you? Because if your not, I'm ashamed of what our country is up too and we are in serious trouble..............:(

GB TFS :munchin

Yeah, I was joking..... makes you wonder how far off that may be...

[Warrior-Mentor]

The Importance of the FBI's CAIR Cutoff
By Douglas Farah
January 30, 2009

Mary Jacoby of The Investigative Project brings the important news that the FBI, after years of legitimizing CAIR as a mainstream Muslim organization, has finally cut of their dealings with the organization.

This is the first time a part of the government has publicly linked the presence of CAIR in meetings to the government entity's refusal to attend the meeting. This stand is long overdue, and one that should be followed by other government agencies. The FBI has said it won't deal with CAIR until "certain issues" are addressed to the FBI's satisfaction, and must be addressed by the national FBI, not local field offices.

Why? Because CAIR, as has now been amply documented, was formed to support Hamas and has organic ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Holy Land Foundation documents show this clearly. (For a look at how the package ties together from what is now public evidence, see this NEFA Foundation piece I co-authored.

It is worth recalling how CAIR came into existence, is historical relationships, and what its group of organizations actually said, in their own words, about what they are doing here. These are some of the issues the FBI wisely would like explained by the CAIR leadership. The full citations can be found in the NEFA paper.

It is important to note that the authenticity of the documents and their content were not disputed during the trial, but were accepted as legitimate. This should be borne in mind as CAIR and its allies launch an intensive lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill and elsewhere to get rehabilitated.

Rather than actually address any of these issues, it is a fair bet that CAIR will focus on claims that the FBI action is a result of "islamophobia," "intolerance," and present themselves as victims of a campaign to deprive them of civil rights. They should not be allowed to get away with less than a full explanation of their own actions and words.

CAIR does not speak for all Muslims in this country, or even most. Its membership has plummeted in recent years and it thrives because of is access to the FBI and other government institutions.

First, the MB is not al Qaeda, but it is Hamas, and Hamas is the MB.

Article 2 of the Hamas founding charter:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement of modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgment ,the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.”

The parent organization of CAIR advocated internally for the use of front groups:

“[Fronts groups are] one method to communicate the Ikhwan’s point of view. A front is not formed until after a study and after an exhaustive study. I mean, the last front formed by the Group is the Islamic Association for Palestine. So, Ikhwans, this did not come out over night, or it was not the Ikhwnans who are in charge went to sleep, dreamed about it and met the next day and decided to do it. Not at all, by God. This went through lengthy meetings and took long discussions.”

http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/446/the-importance-of-the-fbis-cair-cut-off.com

[Warrior-Mentor]

CAIR's War on Truth
IPT News
March 13, 2009

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1010/cairs-war-on-truth

The FBI severs its relationship with a group due to its ties to Hamas. Though it touts itself as "America's largest Islamic civil liberties and advocacy group," an FBI agent has testified that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a Hamas front.

A ranking member of Congress asks the Bureau for more information. He viewed the response he got back as incomplete and he pointedly asks the FBI to try again, mentioning his role on a congressional committee responsible for FBI budgets.

CAIR - frozen out by the FBI since last summer - issued a statement Thursday, accusing the congressman, Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, of having "abused his power." His hard line, the statement says, is an act out of vengeance because CAIR has disagreed with some of Wolf's policies and statements.

Wolf is in his 15th term and has been re-elected easily. CAIR's disagreements with him have done little to slow his work. But the statement still tries to deflect attention from bad news for CAIR about the FBI cut-off first reported in late January by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Evidence from the Hamas-support trial of five former officials at the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) show CAIR and two of its founders were part of a Muslim Brotherhood-created support network in America. CAIR founder and current executive director Nihad Awad is listed on a telephone list of "Palestine Committee" members, along with CAIR chairman emeritus Omar Ahmad and Hamas Deputy Political Director Mousa Abu Marzook.

Other records show Awad participated in a secret 1993 meeting of Hamas members and supporters called to discuss ways to "derail" the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords, which then offered hope for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If CAIR wants to regain its access, the FBI has said "certain issues must be addressed to the satisfaction of the FBI." In a letter to the FBI, Wolf sought details about those "certain issues" and asked what conditions might prompt the FBI to reverse its stance. The four-paragraph response from FBI spokesman John Miller did not address those questions, prompting a harsh rebuke.

The questions about CAIR are not plucked from thin air, but from exhibits in a terror-financing trial that ended with convictions on 108 counts. The FBI case agent called CAIR a front organization. But CAIR ignores all of this, with Awad choosing instead to attack the messenger:

"It appears that Congressman Wolf is seeking payback for all the times CAIR and American Muslims have challenged his political positions using their constitutionally-protected right to petition elected representatives. It is unfortunate that Wolf has abused his office to pressure a government agency to target those he obviously views as political opponents. Public office should be used to serve the people, not to pursue personal vendettas."

This is classic CAIR. Read Wolf's letter back to the FBI here. He asks a series of questions about a policy the FBI has acknowledged. There is absolutely no pejorative reference about CAIR or any of its officials. Since when is a member of Congress' attempt to learn about a policy decision a personal vendetta?

By attacking Wolf, Awad and his organization hope to avoid the difficult questions about their roots and true agenda. Similarly, the statement labels the IPT report "smears against CAIR by Internet Muslim-bashers like Steven Emerson."

Please. Make that "accurate and documented smears against CAIR" and we're just fine.

Now take a look at Awad's own words over the years.

· During the secret meeting on Oslo, Awad gave a presentation about how to sell opposition to the peace deal to Americans without seeming to support terrorists. The following exchange, captured by FBI wiretaps, shows Awad in agreement with his colleagues' assessment that the peace deal was both invalid and inappropriate:

Unidentified Speaker: There is no one jurisprudent who says this peace treaty is legal at all because peace must be between Muslims and infidels and there isn't one person among those who prays.

Omar Ahmad: It is between infidels and infidels.

Unidentified Speaker: Yes. The second thing is that peace shouldn't be endless.[SEE ATTACHED: It's the LAW. Read bottom of o9.16, "If muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary...it is not permissible to stipulate longer than that, save by means of new truces, each of which does not exceed ten years."]

Nihad Awad: This is correct.

· Months after the secret meeting about Oslo, Awad publicly expressed his support for the Islamist Hamas.

· Speaking at a 1999 conference of the Islamic Society of North America which, like CAIR, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial and has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, Awad argued that, by spreading the message of their faith, Muslims would rise to power in America:

"And Muslims in America are in the best position to show Islam and to show action and to show vision, not only for aMuslim school how it should be run, but for the entire society – how it should be run. Who better can lead America than Muslims? But to lead you have to be in the front. You have to be in the driving seat."

· During a June 2001 sit-in outside the State Department, Awad defended support for what he called "Palestinian resistance against the occupation." The sit-in occurred just five days after a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub killed 21 people, mostly teenagers. Awad said he condemned the death of innocent civilians in any circumstance but did not condemn the attack itself. Earlier, he seemed to justify Palestinian violence:

"These people have been occupied. Had they been Europeans or of other nationalities, had Texas been occupied by Mexico, we would support the Texans to drive the Mexican forces out. So this is what happened in Palestine. And the Palestinians are using legitimate means of resistance. We should not be shy about it and we should not be apologetic about it."

· In August 2008, Awad spoke at a forum on the case of Sami Al-Arian, who pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide goods or services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Al-Arian was charged with violating a 1995 executive order by President Clinton banning transactions with terrorist groups including the PIJ, and with violating 1996 legislation prohibiting material support. Clinton said his order was signed because groups like PIJ were responsible for "grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists that disrupt the Middle East peace process constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."

In his remarks, Awad suggested that the law of the land be ignored, suggesting it was not in American interest:

"And I think many people have asked have to answer this question by pushing back, by reminding our government that this is the American government. It is not the Israeli government. America should take care of its own interests and should not prosecute cases on behalf of the state of Israel, because it is an occupational state."

And what of Frank Wolf and his "vendetta?" Wolf has an earned a reputation as a strong human rights advocate. He is co-chairman of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, with more than 200 Members of Congress. He has made repeated trips to Sudan and worked to stop the genocide in Darfur, spoken out against Chinese human rights violations, and traveled throughout Africa to see the devastating effects of corrupt governments, war, AIDS and famine. He has a long history of standing up against violence towards Muslims around the world, including in Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo.

In 2005, current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who also focuses on China's human rights record, lauded Wolf as "an unmatched leader in his commitment to human rights. From Sudan to Sierra Leone to China and Tibet, Frank Wolf has used his position in Congress to give a voice to the suffering of people all over the world. We all want to commend and thank Congressman Wolf."

His request for additional information about the FBI's policy toward CAIR is not only reasonable; it is the responsible move for someone in his position. Awad exposes the desperately low depth his organization has sunk to in launching an ad hominem attack based on nothing.

It appears to be a lesson he learned during that 1993 meeting, when HLF director Shukri Abu Baker described to the group how "War is deception. Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you're leaving while you're walking that way … Deceive your enemy."

[dr. mabuse]

Funny TS should mention Boy Scouts. There used to be a child in my son's troup and his father is a FBI agent. His father was nosey about finding out where you stood on many issues such as guns, politics, etc. My son's troup is gun friendly and polically right of center, to say the least.

We didn't notice at first, but something didn't feel right about this guy. My son said he would dig for info when it was just the FBI guy and other kids. Attempts to re-drect the conversation away from his akward snooping were uncomfortable to say the least. We bumped heads early on when I called him on his obvious snooping in the middle of a conversation.

He and his son eventually left for another troup in north Texas.:rolleyes:

[greenberetTFS]

Funny TS should mention Boy Scouts. There used to be a child in my son's troup and his father is a FBI agent. His father was nosey about finding out where you stood on many issues such as guns, politics, etc. My son's troup is gun friendly and polically right of center, to say the least.

We didn't notice at first, but something didn't feel right about this guy. My son said he would dig for info when it was just the FBI guy and other kids. Attempts to re-drect the conversation away from his akward snooping were uncomfortable to say the least. We bumped heads early on when I called him on his obvious snooping in the middle of a conversation.

He and his son eventually left for another troup in north Texas.:rolleyes:

dr.mabuse,

Are you absolutely sure this guy was FBI? :confused: Something smells funny about him! :rolleyes:

Big Teddy :munchin

[HowardCohodas]

Yeah, I was joking..... makes you wonder how far off that may be...

The fact that so many of us paused to wonder is scary. OTOH, therein lies hope.

[dr. mabuse]

Yes greenberetTFS, I'm sure. I made a discreet inquiry.;)

[incarcerated]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35774


CAIR's Congressional Stooges

By: Steven Emerson
Investigative Project on Terrorism
Friday, July 31, 2009

Seven House Democrats have written Attorney General Eric Holder invoking a list of grievances from radical Islamist groups and asking that Holder meet with representatives from those groups to hear their concerns.
The grievances include the use of convicted felons as informants in mosques, alleged religious profiling of Somali Muslims in Minnesota and elsewhere and allegations that the FBI is working with foreign governments to question American citizens who are terror suspects. In the letter, the representatives said:

"These concerns raise legitimate questions about due process, justice, and equal treatment under the law. We hope you will meet with American Muslim leaders to ensure that core American values are respected for all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, or faith. For your convenience, we have attached a contact list of American Muslim leaders."

....The letter was signed by California representatives Loretta Sanchez, Adam Schiff, Mike Honda and Lois Capps, along with Ohio representatives Mary Jo Kilroy and Dennis Kucinich. Northern Virginia Congressman James Moran joined the group. Moran serves on the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense. Schiff and Honda serve on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. Kilroy sits on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Schiff also serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

....Letters like the Democrats' letter to Holder representing constituents' concerns are not unusual and are "part of the propaganda war that goes on beneath the surface all the time and part of their efforts to undermine law enforcement," said Bob Blitzer, who led the FBI's domestic terrorism section in the 1990s. He said he encountered "a couple hundred" letters of this nature during his career. Each is handled seriously because members of Congress signed the letters....


Read more at:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35774

[Warrior-Mentor]

Rep Frank Wolf (R-VA 10th)
12 June 2009

VIDEO:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1091/us-rep-frank-wolf-who-is-cair