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Though the Council on American-Islamic Relations has received public recognition and endorsement by prominent public figures, including President George W. Bush and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, high-ranking members of CAIR have taken stances that many critics say belie its self-portrayal as a moderate organization dedicated to civil rights for Muslims. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, President Bush included CAIR, which had endorsed his 2000 campaign, in several public functions.
Critics point to several public comments, including those made by Omar Ahmad, who told a crowd of Californian Muslims 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 1994, Nihad Awad declared during a meeting at Barry University that he was a "supporter of the Hamas movement."
Critics have also taken aim at CAIR's fundraising and sources of funds. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, CAIR's website solicited donations for what it called the "NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund." However, clicking on the donation link led to a website for donations to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a charity whose assets were later frozen and confiscated by the United States Department of the Treasury because, according to United States Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, HLF "masquerade as a charity, while its primary purpose to fund Hamas."
CAIR also attracted criticism when, according to news reports, Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial was "a travesty of justice," and suggested that "there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the explosion.'" However, during a 2002 interview with an Australian news radio reporter, Awad denied those reports, calling them a "total fabrication" and saying he had been misquoted.
CAIR's alleged support of terrorism
CAIR's leadership and members are alleged to have supported organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Both groups are classified by the United States Department of State as terrorist organizations. CAIR itself has never been found guilty of supporting any terrorist organization.
Some Muslim organizations in the United States have also condemned CAIR. Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America (ISCA) denounced CAIR, saying: "There are many Muslim organizations that claim to speak on behalf of the Muslim community but that in reality are not moderate, but extremist."
Seif Ashmawy, an Egyptian Muslim and peace activist, who published the "Voice of Peace" newsletter about Muslim affairs, said: "It is a known fact that defended, apologized for, and rationalized the actions of extremists groups ... The real challenge for moderates like myself is to prevent my Muslim brethren from deceived by extremist groups that pretend to represent their interests."
After the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, in 2004, CAIR released a statement in which they condemned the killing of Yassin not as a terrorist leader, but as a religious leader. http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1051&theType=NR
Steven Pomerantz, former FBI assistant director and chief of the FBI's counter-terrorism section, once charged that CAIR's activities "effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." On February 2, 1995, CAIR advisory board member Imam Siraj Wahaj was accused by the United States Department of Justice as one of several "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993. He was a character witness during convicted Islamic terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman's World Trade Center bombing trial.
Convicted Members of CAIR
A number of other CAIR officials have been charged with, and some convicted of, offenses related to the support of Islamist terrorism.
- In December, 2001, Rabih Haddad, a CAIR fundraiser , was charged and deported from the United States because he was the executive director and co-founder of Global Relief Foundation, a terrorist front organization that for financing Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
- On December 18, 2002, Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR-Texas and a co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, was arrested by the FBI on charges of having ties with front groups that fund Islamic terrorism. In 2005, Elashi and two of his brothers were convicted on 21 counts of federal terrorism charges related to funding Hamas and the illegal export of electronics equipment to U.S. State Department-designated state sponsors of terrorism.
- According to the Washington Times, In January 2003, CAIR's director of community relations and founder of the Islamic Assembly of North America, Bassem Khafagi, was arrested by the FBI on charges of having ties to front groups that fund Islamist terrorism. Khafagi pleaded guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt. The Washington Times however went on to point out that CAIR could not be categorically held responsible for the independent actions of one of its members, and commended it for its condemnation of extremism and terrorism, while at the same time suggesting that "unsettling connections between certain CAIR officials and extremist groups" continued to exist and that CAIR's defense of high-ranking members convicted of terrorism amounted to a "dishonest campaign to create the sense of a widespread inquisition against Muslims and Arabs in America that simply doesn't exist."
- In August 2003, CAIR's former civil-rights coordinator, Randall "Ismail" Royer , along with ten other men known as the "Virginia jihad group" were indicted on 41 counts, including training and participating in jihad activities overseas. The group had connections with Lashkar-e-Taiba and five of them possessed AK-47-style rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Four of the men plead guilty while the other seven were charged with 32 new counts, including conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda and to the Taliban. He pleaded guilty and is now serving 20 years in federal prison.
CAIR named as defendant in 9/11 terror lawsuit
In December 2004, CAIR was named as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit relating to the 9/11 terror attacks. In the complaint, the plaintiff has alleged that CAIR is a "front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants," and "manipulate the legal systems of the United States and Canada in a manner that allows them to silence critics, analysts, commentators, media organizations, and government officials by leveling false charges of discrimination, libel, slander and defamation." The complaint also accused CAIR of fundraising under the guise of operating as a humanitarian organization, but in reality using those funds to promote terrorism and terrorist groups.
CAIR's disputes with critics
Investigative journalist Steven Emerson and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, among others, have criticized CAIR for attacking public speakers and celebrities who have criticized Islam.
Notably, in 2004, CAIR initiated a lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, a prominent critic of CAIR and the editor of the Anti-CAIR website. CAIR is suing Whitehead for libel and asking for $1.35 million in damages. Whitehead has counter-sued. . As of April 2006, the lawsuit has been dismissed by the courts.
Other notable disputes CAIR has had include ones with Steven Emerson , Daniel Pipes , Khalid Duran , Don Imus , Paul Harvey , Laura Schlessinger , the National Review , Michael Graham , Geoff Metcalf , and Bill Handel .
As an example, Michael Graham of WMAL in Washington D.C. was fired by his station in August, 2005 after CAIR led a campaign against him for saying that Islam is a "terrorist organization" , including the following:
"Because of the mix of Islamic theology that, rightly or wrongly, is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam's name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn't have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don't support terror will step forward and re-claim their religion."
While CAIR has been active in condemning instances of speech that it claims are unjustly critical of Islam, it has received criticism for being unwilling to condem terrorist organizations. In regard to its refusal to condemn Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper has said that "it's not our job to go around denouncing" and "we're not in the business of condemning" .
Muslim population statistics
The American Jewish Committee as well as several demographers have questioned CAIR about its estimate that there are seven million Muslims in America. Other estimates of the Muslim population have ranged from 1.5 to 3.4 million.
In a November 24, 2001 article in the Washington Post, CAIR's methodology was described thus:
- "Researchers called the nation's 1,209 known mosques and interviewed leaders at 416 of them. Respondents were asked to estimate the number of people involved in their mosque in any way. The average response was 1,625 participants. Multiplying that figure by the 1,209 mosques, lead researcher Ihsan Bagby determined there were two million 'mosqued Muslims' in the United States.
- "Bagby, a professor of international relations at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., multiplied that number by three to account for people who identify themselves as Muslims but might not participate in mosque activities. He calls this multiplier an educated guess based on years of observation of the Islamic community.
- "CAIR's Awad, asked why his group settled on an estimate of seven million in its press statements rather than Bagby's range of six million to seven million, said the organization had used six million for six years. "If we still used the number six," he said, "people would say, 'Haven't we grown?' "
Other studies include a 2002 study by researcher Tom Smith at the University of Chicago, incorporating prior national surveys, that estimated America's Muslim population in 2000 at 1.89 million (Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, 404-417, 2002 ); that study explicitly criticized a number of previous studies, including CAIR's, for poor and irregular survey methodology. Another survey of 50,000 people done by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2001 concluded that the Muslim population in the United States was about 1.1 million.
Photo doctoring in a press release
A photo of a CAIR press conference released on its webpage was digitally modified by the organization so that all women, Muslim and non-Muslim, on stage and in the crowd, who were not wearing the hijab had a digital hijab super-imposed over their bodies .
CAIR’s response to critics
CAIR has responded to critics who suggest that it is a front group for terrorism by denouncing their critics as mostly right-wing zealots who wish to discredit and disenfranchise the American-Muslim community. They suggest that Zionist organizations and individuals have targeted prominent American Muslim leaders and organizations with accusations aimed at reducing American-Muslim involvement in the public policy process.
CAIR is particularly critical of Daniel Pipes, an historian, founder of the Middle East Forum, and CAIR critic, who has made statements that Muslim groups have viewed as insensitive and Islamophobic . Critics of Pipes, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have suggested that "the real agenda" of he and others who have suggested prominent Muslim political groups of being "Islamist" "is to block and destroy the entry of Muslim political groups into American civil society."
CAIR also frequently charges that its comments are misconstrued or misused by the media.