The 20th Anniversary of CAIR’s Original Sin

The Council on American Islamic Relations has recently released a video of CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, on the occasion of CAIR’s 20^th anniversary.  That seems like a good time to remind ourselves of the circumstances of CAIR’s founding.

As much as they might fight it, or try to deny it, 20 years ago CAIR was born of an original sin.

It’s founders were all members of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood of North America, which is to say the committee of the Muslim Brotherhood dedicated to providing material support for HAMAS in North America.

The 1993 meeting in Philadelphia where Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad proposed the formation of  the organization that would become CAIR was under surveillance by the FBI. The same tapes where Omar Ahmad discusses the difficulty of finding “available people whom we could dedicate for the work we want to hide,” also contains references to using the code “Sister Samah” to refer to Hamas.

Additionally, CAIR was included on a 1994 Muslim Brotherhood list of “working organizations” of the Palestine Committee, which is the same designation held by the indicted (and convicted) Holy Land Foundation.

As noted by Federal Judge Jorge Solis in his ruling on CAIR’s efforts to remove itself from a list of unindicted co-conspirators, there exists, “sufficiency of evidence to show their [CAIR’s] association with HLF, IAP, and Hamas.”  This same evidence was sufficient for the FBI to formally terminate its association with CAIR-National, although according to an Inspector General report, individual FBI offices have continue to violate congressional mandates and headquarters guidance and meet with CAIR representatives.

Since its days as conspirator organized to further the agenda of Hamas/The Muslim Brotherhood, active and former CAIR employees have been arrested on charges including: terrorism-finance, possession of weapons and explosives, and fraud. Other prosecutions, have reportedly been scuttled, thanks to CAIR’s political influence.

CAIR has indeed had a long and, sadly, successful journey. But it cannot escape its Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas origins.