CAIR'S CONNECTION TO HAMAS

THE MUSLIM "CIVIL RIGHTS" GROUP CERTAINLY HAS SOME INTERESTING FRIENDS.

CAIR Revealed (IBD)

Trail Of Terror: We've wondered why the Council on American-Islamic Relations director has spurned Senate invitations to answer terror charges. Now we know.

For the first time, evidence in a major federal terror case puts CAIR's current executive director — Nihad Awad — at a Philadelphia meeting of alleged Hamas leaders that was secretly recorded by the FBI.

Related Stories: Who Are CAIR's Paymasters? | CAIR's Fuzzy Math

CAIR AND HAMAS

CAIR: Youngest Member of Hamas Family Tree. (Counterterrorism)
An organization headquartered in Washington, DC, tasked with political activism, born out of the IAP? Maybe a vague reference at first glance, but growing evidence points to the identity of the mystery organization listed in the bylaws as the youngest in the family of HAMAS front groups founded on American soil.

Fast forward to July 30, 1994, just weeks after the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded. A Palestine Committee meeting agenda lists several issues to be discussed, including a review of the reports of the “working organizations.” Listed among these organizations right beside HLF, IAP, and UASR – all members of the Palestine Committee as listed in the bylaws – is the word “CAIR."

The same CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) that is headquartered in Washington, and whose co-founders - executive director Nihad Awad and chairman emeritus Omar Ahmad - served as president and public relations director, respectively, of the IAP.

Add to that recently-released evidence that both Ahmad and Awad were present at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia attended by two-dozen HAMAS members and supporters. According to an FBI analysis and transcripts of wiretapped conversations, they spent three days discussing the most effective approach to derail the Oslo Accords, a peace deal with the potential to end the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

This latest document tying CAIR to HAMAS is just one more piece of the puzzle, and it raises serious questions about the organization’s political agenda in the United States. Should an organization listed on Muslim Brotherhood documents, with leaders directly tied to the movement, really escape scrutiny and be accepted as the “mainstream” voice of an entire community? Or should the American public and political establishment take another look?

CAIR PART OF MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD'S PALESTINE COMMITTEE

CAIR: Part of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee (LGF)
There was a real bombshell of a revelation yesterday in the Hamas funding trial in Dallas, as an FBI agent testified about the roots of the Council on American Islamic Relations: Counterterrorism Blog: CAIR Identified by the FBI as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.

Dallas—In testimony Tuesday, FBI Agent Lara Burns reported before the jury in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, right alongside HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). Agent Lara Burns further testified that CAIR received money from HLF - a claim that Nihad Awad blatantly denied in a congressional testimony in September of 2003.

Burns also said that both Omar Ahmed and Nihad Awad, CAIR co-founders who today serve as CAIR’s chairman emeritus and executive director, respectively, were also listed as individual members [of] the Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in America.

Awad and Ahmed are further connected to the Palestine Committee based on their positions as president and public relations director of the IAP, a Hamas front group that was responsible for the dissemination of propaganda, and has since been closed down as a result of a multi-million dollar civil judgment in a trial involving the murder of an American teenager by HAMAS terrorists.

CAIR, which touts itself as America’s premier Muslim civil rights organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial. Burns’ testimony so far has placed both Ahmed and Awad at a 1993 Philadelphia meeting where the HAMAS members and supporters discussed a strategy to kill the Oslo Peace Accords, which threatened to marginalize HAMAS.

The group also discussed ways to improve HAMAS fundraising in America.

Government testimony regarding the role of CAIR reflects the prosecution’s attempt to prove that the HAMAS network in America was established through the Palestine Committee, or what the indictment called “a sub-group of active Muslim Brotherhood members of Palestinian origin.” The leader of this Committee was Musa Abu Marzook, a Specially Designated Terrorist since 1995, and Hamas’ current Deputy Political Bureau Chief. Through this committee, a number of organizations were established to promote HAMAS politically and financially, including HLF, IAP and UASR.

It’s disgraceful how little coverage this hugely important trial is receiving in mainstream media. Read the whole report at Counterterrorism Blog; it’s incredibly damning stuff.

MORE TIES BETWEEN CAIR AND HAMAS

CAIR Executive Director Placed at HAMAS Meeting (Counterterrorism)
The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Nihad Awad, participated in a three-day summit of U.S.-based HAMAS members and supporters in 1993.

Until now, he had been identified only as Nihad LNU (last name unknown) in FBI reports and analyses. The meeting occurred in a Philadelphia hotel in the wake of a White House ceremony formalizing the Oslo Accords, a peace deal with the potential to end the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

CAIR, which touts itself as America’s premier Muslim civil rights organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its officials. Omar Ahmad, who founded CAIR with Awad in 1994 and was previously identified as attending the Philadelphia meeting, also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The FBI already had wiretap warrants on several people who wound up organizing the 1993 meeting and agents listened in on the meeting itself. They concluded the two-dozen men present were HAMAS members or supporters. Transcripts and FBI analyses released since then show the meeting sought a strategy to kill the peace accord, which threatened to marginalize the Islamist movement. The group also discussed ways to improve HAMAS fundraising in America.

According to FBI reports, the men tried to hide their true agenda, agreeing not to even say the word “HAMAS” - but to call it “SAMAH” its reverse - even in their private conversations. Most of the participants were identified through surveillance and an examination of the hotel registry. But until Thursday, the identity of one person at the meeting – Nihad LNU - remained a mystery.

Awad was asked about the meeting during a 2003 deposition for a civil lawsuit. He initially said he didn’t think he had attended the Philadelphia meeting. When pushed he replied, “I don’t remember.” Nor did he remember whether he was invited.

Previously available evidence shows Awad was at the 1993 HAMAS meeting. He can be seen on videotape the following summer, acknowledging “I am in support of the HAMAS movement” during a seminar at Miami’s Barry University.

The idea for the meeting was discussed in a telephone call recorded by the FBI on Sept. 14, 1993. A day earlier, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shared an uneasy handshake on the White House lawn. That paved the way for the Palestinian Authority’s creation, and, it was hoped at the time, a path toward a more peaceful future.

On the telephone, three men discussed who should be invited to join them in a meeting to discuss what to do next. The call included Omar Ahmad (CAIR’s chairman emeritus), who at the time served at President of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), Shukri Abu Baker, President of the Holy Land Foundation and one of the defendants now on trial, and Abdelhaleem al-Ashqar, the Executive Director of a HAMAS-linked charity known as the Al Aqsa Educational Fund.

They discussed inviting people from the “Union,” a code reference to the IAP. They mentioned “Akram,” “Abdul Rahman” and “Nihad.” In 1993, Nihad Awad was the spokesman and public relations director for the IAP.

During that same telephone conversation, the men on the telephone call referred to Nihad’s work in “media.” Shukri Abu Bakr mentioned “a full article in Dallas Morning News...and every few lines: Mr. Nihad said this and that....” The Dallas Morning News did publish an article that day. It ran under the headline “Dallas’ Mideast Observers Warn of Conflict Ahead.” It extensively quoted “Nihad Awad, spokesman for the Dallas-based Islamic Association of Palestine.”

A few weeks later, at the Philadelphia meeting itself, two men again referenced “Nihad” and an invitation he received to speak at a conference for the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) on October 30, 1993. The program from that NAAA Annual Convention, obtained by the IPT, lists the name of Nihad Awad, representing the Islamic Association for Palestine, as a speaker on a panel entitled “Israel-PLO Agreement: Analytical Perspectives.” Nobody else named Nihad is listed in the program.

NEWSWEEK SHILLS FOR RADICAL ISLAM

Newsweek Shills for Radical Islam (Again) (LGF)
Newsweek has become the public relations arm for radical Islam. Case in point, their deceptive and ridiculous article on the Hamas funding trial in Dallas: Trial Against U.S. Muslim Charity Begins.

In their latest whitewash piece, they begin with a glowing portrait of the daughter of Ghassan Elashi (she wants to “shatter stereotypes”) and then proceed to do everything possible to cast doubt on the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation.

And they refer to radical Islamic front groups CAIR, ISNA, and the North American Islamic Trust as “well-respected mainstream organizations.”

Many Muslims have criticized the way the Feds have pursued their case. Several well-respected national Muslim American organizations are included in a list of 300 “unindicted co-conspirators.” Among them: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group; the Islamic Society of North America, the country’s largest Muslim educational source, and the North American Islamic Trust, the largest holding company of deeds to hundreds of mosques, Islamic centers and schools in the United States. “We are not violent, we condemn terror in every shape or fashion,” says Khalil Meek, vice president of CAIR and president of the Muslim Legal Fund of America. “They are trying to marginalize the Muslim voice. These are mainstream, moderate, productive American Muslim institutions that are being effectively muted or stigmatized.” The government hasn’t explained why these groups are listed as co-conspirators, but it may be because Elashi also opened the Texas chapter of CAIR. Another theory is that prosecutors want to be able to include comments from leaders of those organizations without it being hearsay.

And in case you missed the opening of the article, they close with another glowing portrait of Elashi’s daughter.

No doubt such allegations incense Elashi’s daughter, Noor. In 2005, she won a prize at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference for her essay about her father’s arrest. In it, she described the early-morning pounding on the door, how her father was taken away, how he shuffled into court in an orange jumpsuit and chains. “I know my father is innocent, and that his only crimes were helping feed Palestinian orphans and being an Arab-American,” she wrote.

THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CAIR AND HAMAS

CAIR and Hamas: A Live Network Graph (LGF)

Using the Semantic Web software at the University of Maryland to investigate terrorism, Aaron Mannes has produced a fascinating and very revealing network graph, showing the web of connections among the leadership of CAIR, the Islamic Association of Palestine, and Hamas : CAIR & Hamas: Implications and an Illustration .

This network graph below is incomplete, but (hopefully) helps to illustrate the links between CAIR's leadership, the (now defunct) IAP, and Hamas. The big dark blue tangle in the middle is Hamas' leadership. The lighter blue lines represent contacts and meetings. Those coming off of Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Mashal show his meetings with leaders from other Palestinian movements and regional governments. The light blue lines in the upper right indicate the web of events behind the 2002 Passover Massacre suicide bombing. The broken line between Mohammed Deif (Hamas' military chief) and Zarqawi indicate rumors that they were in contact.

Here's a live version of the graph, on which you can drag the nodes around to better see the links.

The red dot in the middle is Mousa Abu Marzook, whose op-ed was recently published in the LA Times.

FRED THOMPSON CALLS OUT CAIR

Good News about CAIR (ABC Radio)
I've talked before about the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- most recently because it filed that lawsuit against Americans who reported suspicious behavior by Muslims on a U.S. Airways flight. Better known just as CAIR, the lobbying group has come under a lot of scrutiny lately for its connections to terror-supporting groups. This time, though, The Washington Times has uncovered some very good news about the group.

For years, CAIR has claimed to represent millions of American Muslims. In fact, they claim to represent more Muslim in American than ... there are in America. This has alarmed Americans in general as the group often seems to be more aligned with our enemies than us -- which isn't surprising as it spun off from a group funded by Hamas. As you know, Hamas has been waging a terrorist war against Israel and calls for its total destruction. It also promises to see America destroyed. Nowadays, Hamas is busy murdering its Palestinian political rivals.

Even with this history, and CAIR's conspicuous failure to condemn Hamas by name, it has been treated as if represents Muslim Americans by our own government. The good news is that the financial support CAIR claims to have among American Muslims is a myth. We know this because The Washington Times got hold of the group's IRS tax records.

CAIR's dues-paying membership has shrunk 90 percent since 9/11 -- from 29,000 in 2000 to only 1,700 last year. CAIR's annual income from dues plunged from $733,000 to $59,000. Clearly, America's Muslims are not supporting this group -- and I'm happy to hear about it.

Of course, every silver lining seems to have a cloud; and this cloud is that CAIR's spending is running about $3 million a year. They’ve opened 25 new chapters in major cities across the country even as their dues shrank to a pittance. The question is; who’s funding CAIR?

CAIR's not saying. The New York Times earlier this year reported that the backing is from "wealthy Persian Gulf governments" including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Obviously, we have a bigger problem here than the one with CAIR.

IS U.S. MUSLIM CIVIL RIGHTS GROUP SUPPORTING HAMAS?

CAIR's Legal Tribulations (Daniel Pipes Weblog)
Federal prosecutors have named CAIR and two other Islamic organizations, the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust, as "unindicted co-conspirators" in a criminal conspiracy to support Hamas, a designated terrorist group.

In a filing last week, prosecutors described CAIR as a present or past member of "the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations." They listed ISNA and NAIT as "entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Josh Gerstein of The New York Sun reports that spokesmen for CAIR did not respond to requests for comment.

This development occurred in connection with the trial, scheduled to start on July 16 in Dallas, of five officials (Shukri Abu-Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader, and Abdulraham Odeh) of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, accused of sending funds to Hamas. This court filing listed some 300 individuals or organizations as co-conspirators.

What is an unindicted co-conspirator? Someone by and about whom hearsay is permissible in the courtroom. Here is a definition by legal journalist Stuart Taylor, discussing an entirely unrelated case:

The prosecutor is saying in essence in court … that we believe this man was part of the criminal conspiracy, along with the people who are on trial. We haven't indicted him but the relevance of that for the purposes of the trial is that [it] lets them get in more evidence about the unindicted co-conspirator's … out-of-court statements than they otherwise could. It's a way around the hearsay rule. … For example, if they want … one of their witnesses, to talk about what [a person] said to him, ordinarily that would be barred by the so-called hearsay rule. You can't … testify in a trial about what somebody else said out of court. That rule has a lot of exceptions. One of the exceptions is if the person who you're trying to quote … is named by the prosecution as an unindicted co-conspirator, then you can talk about what he said out of court.

Substitute "organization" for "man" and "person" and this description applies to the situation of CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT.

Comments: (1) CAIR being named as an unindicted co-conspirator complements the fact that many of its staff and associates are associated with terrorism, as I have documented.

(2) It is only logical that CAIR, whose origins lie in the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was founded by Hamas, be legally investigated in connection with Hamas.

(3) This may be the first time since 1994 that the press could not find a CAIR spokesman for a comment.

(4) If it turns out that there is substance to the CAIR-HLF connection, then CAIR will be caught out by the changed political and legal environment since 9/11. Put simply, Islamists can no longer get away with they could before then. (I elaborated this in a different context at "Nike and 9/11.")

(5) Whatever the future brings, this designation will hang as a permanent albatross around CAIR's collective neck.

SEE ALSO: CAIR PROMOTING CARTER'S BOOK and ELLISON TO JEWS: REACH OUT TO CAIR

ELLISON TO JEWS: REACH OUT TO CAIR

Ellison: Reach out to CAIR (JTA)
The first American Muslim in the U.S. Congress called on Jewish groups to engage with a controversial American Muslim body.

"If CAIR is willing to talk, talk to CAIR," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said of the Council on American Islamic Relations in his address Tuesday to the Reform Movement's Consultation on Conscience conference in Washington.

Ellison was answering a question; most of the speech focused on his positive impressions of Israel and the Palestinian areas during a recent tour. The address was his first speech to a national Jewish group, and Ellison emphasized that he does not share all of CAIR's views. CAIR is among the harshest critics of Israel, and in the 1990s defended Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization. It has muted such support since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but still will not condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks as it does attacks by al-Qaida.

CAIR PROMOTING CARTER'S BOOK

YOU CAN JUDGE A PERSON BY THEIR FRIENDS. LOUIS FARRAKHAN AND THE NATION OF ISLAM AND ISLAMIC JIHAD HAVE PROMOTED JIMMY CARTER'S HATEFUL ANTI-ISRAEL SCREED. NOW, THE SAUDI-FUNDED FRONT GROUP FOR THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR) HAS JOINED THE PARTY: CAIR Promoting Carter's Book in US Libraries (LGF)

CHICAGO TRIBUNE CALLS OUT ANTI-SEMITES TO SUPPORT CARTER

Chicago Tribune Antisemitism Watch (LGF)
This week the Chicago Tribune published an op-ed by antisemitic ex-Congressman Paul Findley, a Saudi sycophant (whose rabid articles for the ArabNews web site have been the subjects of several LGF posts, but have now been purged from the web), lending his support to America’s worst former president: Carter enters lions’ den. Good work, Trib. Who’s next on the op-ed page, David Duke? Here’s a video of Nihad Awad of radical Islamic front group CAIR, also an admirer of Findley’s work.