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CAIR: An Officially Designated Terrorist Organization |
Over the weekend a blockbuster development hit the news wires: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a wealthy OPEC nation in the Persian Gulf, released a list of 86 organizations that it has designated as terrorist organizations.
Included on the list are Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram and other well-known violent Jihadist organizations.
But the really BIG news was that number 59 on the list was none other than the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s most active Muslim Brotherhood organization.
In other words, the UAE is doing what the U.S. should have done long ago: recognized CAIR for what it is.
The designation by the UAE should come as no surprise.
Many Americans still are unaware that CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the US v. Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in US history . In that trial, CAIR was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood organization.
The Holy Land Foundation was a Texas-based charity whose officers were sentenced in May 2009 to between 15 and 65 years in prison for funneling over $12 million to the Jihadist terrorist organization HAMAS. One of the sentenced officers, Ghassan Elashi, is the founder of CAIR’s Dallas chapter. Elashi’s illegal activities took place while he was affiliated with CAIR.
In fact, CAIR opened its first office in Washington, D.C., with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Holy Land Foundation.
In the wake of the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI severed ties with CAIR, which had been advising them on outreach to the Muslim community.
But the Holy Land Foundation trial and the UAE terrorist designation are merely part of the story.
CAIR is a troubling organization that can only be described as a nefarious 5 th Column unit.
Here are just some of the facts and events surrounding CAIR over the years that have caused thousands of Americans to have immense concerns about the organization:
• In March 2011, Muthanna al-Hanooti, one of CAIR’s directors, was sentenced to federal prison for violating U.S. sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq.
• In 2006, the co-founder of CAIR’s parent organization, IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine), Sami Al-Arian, was sentenced to 57 months in prison on terrorism charges for financing Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization according to the US State Department.
• In 2004, CAIR-Northern Virginia director Abdurahman Alamoudi pled guilty to terrorism-related financial and conspiracy charges in 2004, which resulted in a 23-year prison sentence.
• 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 on April 9, 2004. Royer’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
• 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.
• 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. Haddad raised money for the Ann Arbor, Michigan chapter of CAIR.
• On July 4, 1998, former CAIR chairman Omar M. Ahmad, told Fremont, California’s daily newspaper, The Argus , that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
• 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 Egyptian Islamic Group leader “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman’s foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.
It’s certainly understandable that the United Arab Emirates would designate CAIR as a terrorist organization. The U.S. should promptly follow suit.
What’s harder to understand is why the United States has not even taken the obviously needed step of designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
History will show that this action by the UAE could very well be the lynchpin to ultimately discrediting CAIR by the entire civilized world.