Category Archives: CAIR

CAIR Testimony Reinforces Fringe Ideology

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IPT News
May 14, 2013

 

Making the absence of proof a proof of its own, the Council on American-Islamic Relations argues that the FBI’s failure to identify Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as terrorist threats before the Boston Marathon bombings proves that counter-terror stings don’t work. That’s among a series of fatuous claims and misguided recommendations in written testimony CAIR submitted to a House committee last week.

The testimony minimized the theological underpinnings driving terrorism by al-Qaida and other Islamists and offered instead a series of grievances and misguided policy recommendations that do nothing to avoid future attacks like Boston’s.

CAIR long has cast FBI terrorism sting operations as entrapment, an argumentrejected by Attorney General Eric Holder and one that has never proven successful in court. Its proponents are wrong on the facts “or do not have a full understanding of the law,” Holder said in 2010.

Yet, in its testimony, CAIR said it “believes that stings should be executed to prevent crime, not create criminals.” Rather than stopping people like the Tsarnaevs – committed to waging jihad in the United States – CAIR said successful stings “contributed to a false sense of security within the FBI that led to its agents missing a more well-guarded threat like Tamerlan Tsarnaev. While well-publicized FBI sting operations create an official narrative that the government is preventing acts of terrorism, they have little to no effect in stopping real tragedies like the Boston attacks, the Fort Hood shooting, the growing list of mass shootings in places like Virginia Tech, Tucson, Arizona, Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora, Colorado perpetrated by disturbed individuals, or near misses like the failed Times Square bombing.” [Emphasis original]

Under this logic, law enforcement gets no credit for interdicting a terrorist attack before anyone is hurt, but it gets the blame when people like the Tsarnaevs slip through the cracks. As we’ve noted, sting operations include numerous opportunities for the suspect to back out, but when they choose not to, the investigations thwart people determined to carry out mass casualty attacks in public places.

Read more at IPT

 

CAIR Books Radicals for Fundraising Banquets

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Hassan Shibly, Nihad Awad, Zair Shakir, Kifah Mustafa and Siraj Wahhaj (clock-wise from left)

Hassan Shibly, Nihad Awad, Zair Shakir, Kifah Mustafa and Siraj Wahhaj (clock-wise from left)

By Ryan Mauro:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is using Islamist radicals to raise money throughout the country, according to a Clarion Project review of their fundraising banquets. CAIR calls itself “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group,” but has been labeled a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity by the federal government and attacks the integrity of its moderate Muslim rivals.

The Cincinatti and Columbus, OH chapters of CAIR turned to Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a cleric with indisputable credentials as a radical Islamist, for their fundraisers. He has been recorded saying “America is the most wicked government on the face of the planet Earth” and “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

In 1995, Wahhaj was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Commenting afterwards in a sermon,  Wahhaj said, “I’m not frightened by no list, by no government! I thank Allah. I’m honored that they thought enough of me to put me on a list.”

The Chicago chapter of CAIR had some fundraising help from keynote speaker Zaid Shakir, Safaa Zarzour and Kifah Mustafa.

Shakir’s radicalism has been documented in detail by the Clarion Project. This includes preaching that Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon was not a terrorist attack, justifying attacks on U.S. soldiers and expressing a hope to see America governed by Sharia law.  Safaa Zarzour has served as the Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America, another unindicted co-conspirator labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

Kifah Mustapha is designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. He is listed among “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Palestine Committee was set up by the Brotherhood to support Hamas in the U.S. Mustapha’s mosque has extensive links to the Brotherhood and he sang in a band that performed pro-Hamas songs.

Remarkably, 56 public officials in Illinois endorsed CAIR-Chicago for the event, including Governor Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

The Minnesota chapter of CAIR’s fundraiser did not feature any prominent radicals as speakers, unlike last year when Kifah Mustapha was booked. Despite CAIR’s well-documented Islamist background, Rep. Keith Ellison and Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke at its banquet.

Noticeably absent as a sponsor was Best Buy. Last year, The Clarion Project initiated a petition (signed by 12,000 people) that called for a boycott of Best Buy until they agreed to stop its donations to CAIR-Minnesota. However, this year’s sponsors include Walmart, the University of Minnesota Law School and the Hamline University School of Law. They were joined by American Muslims for Palestine, an Islamist group, and the Muslim American Society, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

The Michigan chapter of CAIR was helped by Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. There is video of him saying that homosexuals are cursed. The Clarion Project has also documented his mosque’s extremism time and time again, including strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Read more at The Clarion Project

CAIR’s Cultural Jihad from ‘The Third Jihad’

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images (36)Exposing the duplicity of Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) that on the one hand refuse to condemn terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but on the other hand present themselves as the moderate Muslim leadership in America.
This clip is an excerpt from Clarion Project’s award-winning documentary ‘The Third Jihad – Radical Islam’s Vision for America.’

CAIR Openly Attacks Moderate Muslim Group

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There’s a power struggle in the Muslim world— between the moderates and the Islamists, including in America — and CAIR intends to win.

FaarooqIP

From a video of Abdullah Faarooq, an imam at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

By Ryan Mauro:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is yet again undermining its own “moderate” credentials by slamming its Muslim rivals (and true moderates) for being part of an “Islamophobia” network and exposing its own Islamist agenda in the meantime.

In its latest newsletter, CAIR promotes — as the top item — an article on how its rival, the American Islamic Congress (AIC) is funded by “America’s Islamophobia network.”

CAIR quotes from the article, “Despite its claim to promote tolerance, the AIC has depended on substantial support from the very same elements that fought tooth and nail to sabotage the Islamic Society of Boston …”

As reported by the Clarion Project, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center has strong Muslim Brotherhood ties and its extremism is well documented. Any moderate Muslim organization should have been fighting against it. A Muslim scholar recently talked with the Clarion Project about the radicalism he saw at the Islamic Society of Boston in 2003 and how he was sued by the mosque for speaking out.

CAIR calls itself “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” The federal government has a different description of the group: An entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation.

CAIR, the “civil liberties group,” chose to attack the American Islamic Congress (AIC). CAIR’s priority wasn’t responding to a hate crime against an innocent Muslim, nor was it taking up the cause of Egyptian-Muslim protesters against the Muslim Brotherhood. Its priority was telling Muslims that the AIC is a traitor.

The article that CAIR is promoting was written by Max Blumenthal, a journalist who speaks at their events and lambasts CAIR’s opponents as “Islamophobes.” The opening of the article provides some insight into CAIR’s motivation.

It recalls how Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick replaced the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center with an AIC official at an interfaith service following the Boston bombings.

There is a wide opening for a group like AIC to compete with CAIR. A 2011 poll found that only 12% of Muslim-American males and 11% of females picked CAIR as the organization that most represents their interests. As I wrote after the poll was published, “only 24 percent of Muslim-American men and 19 percent of Muslim-American women feel represented” by the Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups altogether.

The AIC has offices in Washington D.C., Boston, Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia. According to Guidestar, its 2010 revenue was $1,434,830. This is dwarfed by CAIR’s reported revenue of $4,748,618 for 2011 (and that’s just for its national headquarters and not its allies or individual chapters), but it shows why it fears AIC’s ascent since its founding in 2002: It’s become a force to be reckoned with.

Read more at The Clarion Project

Illinois AG Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

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IPT News:

As her assistants defend the state against a discrimination suit brought by a Chicago-area imam, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is among a slew of state officials saluting the group representing him in advance of its annual fundraising banquet.

And the imam, rejected by the Illinois State Police (ISP) due to his past work for a Hamas-support network, is being honored at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago chapter banquet Saturday evening and will help with the fundraising.

CAIR represents Kifah Mustapha in litigation claiming the state discriminated against him and violated his free speech rights when the ISP rescinded a 2009 invitation making Mustapha the agency’s first volunteer Muslim chaplain.

The reversal followed a report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism showing Mustapha had been a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted in 2008 of being part of a multi-million dollar American-based Hamas-support network. Mustapha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and had been on the Holy Land payroll.

The Attorney General’s office is defending the state police. It has moved for summary judgment in the case, arguing that Mustapha lacks standing to bring the lawsuit since the position was unpaid, so that Mustapha was not deprived of pay or benefits, as required by the federal statute which covers workplace discrimination. The ISP revoked Mustapha’s invitation after decision makers saw a confidential FBI report on him and were told he would not have passed the FBI’s background check for chaplains.

Madigan’s office also cited this video from the 1990s, showing Mustapha as part of a performing troupe singing the praises of Hamas and jihad as a young boy dances with a rifle. “O Hamas, raise the banners of Jihad,” the singers say. “The victory of God comes through it or through martyrdom. O Hamas, teach us the rifle.”

But Mustapha is a staple at CAIR-Chicago events, helping raise money for the chapter for the past eight years. For that, CAIR hasdubbed him ”The Mobilizer.”

“As a Muslim Chicagoland mobilizer,” CAIR’s promotion says, “Sheikh Kifah Mustapha has garnered the support of the Muslim and interfaith community around various causes while enlightening them through Islamic teachings and thought. Sheikh Kifah has mobilized each and every one of our past eight fundraisers.

Illinois attorneys say the video and other evidence paint a disturbingly different picture of the man. They were horrified by the video’s imagery and message, Madigan’s attorneys wrote. Keeping Mustapha as a volunteer chaplain “could lead the public to believe that ISP looked the other way when confronted with evidence that Plaintiff aided and abetted, or at least cheered for, terrorism.”

They urged the judge to watch the video, too, saying the state police “had to decide whether somebody cheering for violence while a child holds a gun is fit to be a state police chaplain. A reasonable person would decide the answer to that question is an emphatic ‘no.’”

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Wolf Legislation Brings Back 9/11 Commission

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Disappearing-CT-language-sm

(Lexicon purge chart by Patrick Poole)

This ought to be interesting. Will we get more hearings with Obama administration officials turning themselves into pretzels trying to avoid the “Forbidden Lexicon”?

IPT, by John Rossomando:

An amendment to the FBI’s appropriations bill signed into law by President Obama may bring back the 9/11 Commission to assess how its recommendations have been implemented since they were issued in 2004.

“We should not miss an opportunity to look at everything and look at anything inappropriate that we may have done differently in the past that we may have to do differently,” amendment sponsor U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “We need to bring people who have a history of dealing with things like this and bring them in front of the Congress.”

“They would look at everything,” Wolf said. “What is the radicalization issue? What were some of the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission? How have they all been carried out? Is there anything based on new technology or whatever that we should be doing different to look at everything?”

He hopes the review also will examine the problems leading up to last week’s Boston Marathon bombing.

Much has changed since the recommendations were made and al-Qaida has adapted, shifting toward using lone-wolf terrorists to attack America. It has also uses Internet tools such as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine for recruiting.

With accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev telling FBI investigators that he and his brother were radicalized online and that they found the design for their bombs in Inspire, the deficiency of traditional counter-terrorism approaches becomes apparent.

Homegrown terrorists such as the Tsarnaev brothers, Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and Sgt. Jason Naser Abdo show the threat is more difficult to intercept.

“You don’t get the chatter that you normally would if it was al-Qaida,” Wolf said. “Some are impacted by abroad and some are impacted by just reading the magazine that’s online.

Many questions remain about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and their ability to carry out the Boston attack without the FBI and other government agencies detecting them.

Among those is the FBI’s handling of a January 2011 inquiry triggered by contact from Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) about Tamerlan’s Islamic extremism.

The fact that the FBI didn’t learn about Tamerlan’s travel to Russia despite knowledge within the Department of Homeland Security underscores some of the problems that have remained unsolved since the 9/11 Commission issued its report.

A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report on the terrorism watch list from last July found that the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) lacked access to all intelligence databases despite the 9/11 Commission’s desire to break down the walls between various agencies.

Wolf blames a comprehensive political correctness that he says has consumed all aspects of the Obama administration. Involving the American Muslim community in finding the extremists before they strike is an important part of preventing future attacks, he said, but the message emanating from come Muslim groups hinders that, he said. “[Muslims] should be out there speaking out on this, but if you recall you had CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) urging … young Somalians in the Minneapolis area and their families with this line of not to participate and not deal with the FBI.”

Wolf has long been a critic of CAIR’s effort to blind the FBI, DHS and other national security agencies in their quest to catch homegrown Islamic extremists before they turn to terror.

In a 2009 floor speech, he took CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad to task for his stated support for Hamas in a 1994 speech at Berry University and nailed CAIR officials for giving aid and comfort to such international terrorist groups.

His amendment would ensure the FBI’s policy about limiting contacts with CAIR continues. “They have been more of a hindrance than a help,” Wolf said.

CAIR Banquets Honor Christian Allies

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CAIR_KYR_Pocket_Guides-646x511-443x350By Ryan Mauro:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is making a point on showing how much it treasures its interfaith defenders. Recent CAIR fundraisers and events have highlighted their partnership, flattering them enough to overlooking its well-documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. The federal government specifically identified CAIR as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body set up to advance the Hamas agenda. In 2009, a federal judge ruled in favor of preserving the label, citing the “ample” evidence linking CAIR to Hamas.

The annual banquet for the Oklahoma chapter of CAIR is honoring Reverend William Tabbernee of the Oklahoma Council of Churches with a Building Bridges Award. His group also sponsored the event. The keynote speaker of the event is Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, who endorsed attacks on Israeli infrastructure in 2001. He is the Outreach Director for Dar al-Hijrah, a Virginia mosque with extensive Islamist ties. Its imam, Shaker Elsayed, preached in favor of armed jihad at a Virginia high school in January.

The Cincinnati chapter of CAIR recently completed a series on interfaith dialogue that was hosted by the Transfiguration Spirituality Center in Glendale. Its website says it’s a “religious community for women in the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition.”

The Connecticut chapter of CAIR held a workshop on “Islamophobia” at All Souls Unitarian Church in New London. It was sponsored by the congregation and the Unitarian Universalist Fund for Social Responsibility. If the past is any indication, CAIR taught the 75 people in attendance that its critics are anti-Muslim bigots.

The New York chapter of CAIR honored the Interfaith Center of New York with a Partners of Justice Award at its fundraising banquet. One of the presenters of the award was Zead Ramadan, the CAIR-NY board president. In December 2011, he refused to condemn Hamas. He has also appeared on Iranian state television to complain about America’s treatment of Muslims. Cyrus McGoldrick, who was CAIR-NY’s leader until January 7, has a history of extremist statements that include supporting Hamas and the destruction of Israel.

Read more at Front Page

See also: CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment (meforum.org)

Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

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596_largeIPT News:

Now he’s in trouble.

It is one thing for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be seen on security camera videos placing one of the bombs that killed three people at last week’s Boston Marathon.

But now he’s really crossed a line.

Tsarnaev is telling investigators he and his brother were motivated by religion to plot their carnage, media reports citing anonymous federal sources say.

Radical Islam. It’s a label banned by the Obama administration. National Islamist groups say it doesn’t belong in conversations about terrorism. Tsarnaev didn’t get the memo.

Recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, Dzhokhar told investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev were driven by religious fervor and took their instructions from al-Qaida’s Inspire magazine, NBC News reports. Anger at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fueled their rage, the Washington Post reports.

That motivation echoes justifications offered by Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan for the Fort Hood shooting spree that killed 13 people and Faisal Shahzad’s sentencing rant about his attempt to bomb Times Square in 2010. “The crusading U.S. and NATO forces who have occupied the Muslim lands under the pretext of democracy and freedom for the last nine years and are saying with their mouths that they are fighting terrorism, I say to them, we don’t accept your democracy nor your freedom, because we already have Sharia law and freedom,” Shahzad told the court. “Furthermore, brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me.”

Despite this candor from terrorists, the Obama administration and Islamist groups have argued that referring to terrorists’ religious motivations somehow grants them religious legitimacy. “Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against jihadists,” CIA Director John Brennan said in 2009 when he was White House terrorism adviser. “Describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term ‘jihad,’ which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

Similarly, Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul Stockton squirmed and obfuscated when asked about the role radical Islam played in past terror plots.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tried to stem the tide about radical Islam that Tsarnaev unleashed by issuing a news release Tuesday. It decries the focus on a radical Islamic motive for the Boston Marathon bombings as inherently bigoted. The “wave of inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” is solely due to the Tsarnaev’s Muslim faith, the statement said.

CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad “said the recent spike in hate rhetoric comes in the wake of a coordinated long-term effort by Islamophobic activists and groups to demonize Islam and marginalize American Muslims.”

One imagines they’ll give Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a good talking-to for demonizing Islam in his statements to investigators.

The Tsarnaev case threatens the Islamist narrative that radical Islamic ideology in terror attacks should be ignored or minimized.

Read more at IPT

CAIR demands that Senate deny Israel the right to protect itself

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images (17)By Adam Savit:

Yesterday the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-fundraising trial, encouraged citizens to contact their senators asking them to block a visa-waiver provision in the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013.  The provision adds Israel to a list of 37 trusted friends and allies of the United States whose citizens may travel to the United States for tourism or business for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa.

To be approved for the program by the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, Israel must make ‘every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens.’  Candidate countries must have a very low non-immigrant visa refusal rate of not more than 3% as specified in Section 217 (c)(2)(A) of Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as ongoing compliance with the immigration laws of the United States.  Therefore, for the provision to have reached the senate floor, Israel must have been found by the U.S. government to be in compliance with all of these stringent requirements.

Nevertheless, CAIR asserts that passage of the act “would make American Muslims and Arab-Americans ‘second class citizens’” and that the U.S. ‘would diminish the rights of its own citizens in order to facilitate the discriminatory practices of a foreign government.’

Thus, CAIR is equating ‘those who would harm Israel’s national security’ with ‘all American Muslims.’  CAIR is propagating the very religious stereotypes it purportedly seeks to counter, by assuming that Israel’s legitimate right to neutralize threats would maliciously and disproportionately target Muslim Americans.  The DHS and State Department have determined that Israel’s screening methods are legitimate, and target those who are judged to be an objective threat to Israel’s security, regardless of race or religion.

Israel is surrounded on all sides by hostile entities ruled by Islamists, Iranian-proxies, secular dictators, and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Hamas in Gaza, who regularly rain rockets down on Israeli civilians.  Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists originating in Gaza and Judea and Samaria constantly seek to carry out terrorist attacks in Israel proper.  Note that CAIR itself descends from the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), founded by Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, and thus has a vested interest in enabling Israel’s Muslim Brotherhood enemies operating both internally and externally.  Israel has every reason to be concerned about ‘homegrown terrorists’ among American citizens, and it is absurd to expect Israel to give the green light to any and all U.S citizens without sensible screening processes.

This latest CAIR initiative once again belies it’s claim to be ‘America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.’  Instead it is America’s premier Muslim Brotherhood front group, promoting soft ‘civilization jihad’ domestically while running interference for terrorists who would physically harm America’s international allies such as Israel.