The Bush administration & CAIR
Andy McCarthy rightly excoriates the dhimmis in the Bush administration for pandering to CAIR...
Singing CAIR’s Tune, On Your Dime
As the Bush administration squanders a trust, Democrats prepare a new “Sister Souljah Moment.”
By Andrew C. McCarthy
On a weekend when the Bush administration achieved a new CAIR-friendly low, a prominent Democrat, following the lead of other prominent Democrats, distanced herself very publicly from the unsavory Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The Transportation Security Administration is the executive agency created after 9/11 to protect American travelers. Yet, Americans viewing its website this weekend could not have felt very protected. Aghast, instead, would have been the proper response to this posting. As if snuggling up to CAIR, coercing our law-enforcement and intelligence professionals to endure CAIR’s Islamic “sensitivity training,” and inviting CAIR to weigh in on our nation’s foreign policy were not enough, we now have a Bush-administration agency publishing an unedited CAIR press release on publicly subsidized, official government Internet space.
In this instance, right under TSA’s emblem and a memorial banner depicting the late President Gerald R. Ford, Americans were treated to a news announcement beneath the big blue headline, “CAIR Welcomes TSA Hajj Sensitivity Training.” If you have the stomach for it, compare this TSA posting to the official CAIR press release from which it cribbed. They are identical.
NAKED PROSELYTISM
This is naked proselytism on behalf of an Islamic interest group. Americans will no doubt be thrilled to learn, through TSA’s good offices, about CAIR’s delight that our travel-safety agency “has provided special training about Islamic traditions related to the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, to some 45,000 airport security officers[,]” and that this “cultural sensitivity training includes details about the timing of Hajj travel, about items pilgrims may be carrying and about Islamic prayers that may be observed by security personnel.”
And that’s just the warm-up. TSA also wants you to know that CAIR, or rather, we, as CAIR is apparently now referred to,
Quote:
“welcome the fact that airport security officers nationwide will now be better informed about Islamic traditions relating to Hajj," said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. "This proactive effort on the part of the Transportation Security Administration demonstrates that there is no contradiction between the need to maintain airline safety and security and the duty to protect the religious and civil rights of airline passengers."
:rolleyes: [Oh, really?] :rolleyes:
Hooper said representatives of CAIR chapters nationwide have met with TSA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials on issues related to cultural sensitivity and national security.
Outstanding! Don’t you feel safer now? And how’s this for the final paragraph of an official United States government public statement:
Quote:
CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
Evangelism aside, this is a shockingly incomplete and misleading version of what CAIR is and what it does. It is, in fact, the lobbyists’ own propaganda version.
WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU
Nowhere, for example, does the TSA, a key component of the Bush Homeland Security Cabinet Department, mention a word about CAIR’s embryonic ties to Hamas — a designated foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law since 1995. CAIR, you see, was birthed by a Hamas creation: the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). Several of CAIR’s top officials, including its founders, Omar Ahmed and Nihad Awad, were high-ranking IAP officers (respectively, its president and public-relations director). Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director, and now TSA’s go-to guy, is a former IAP employee — and, though you would never know it from the TSA, Hooper makes no secret that he would like to see the United States become an Islamic country under sharia law. As it happens, the IAP was started in 1981 by high-ranking Hamas operative Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook. Long a specially designated global terrorist under U.S. law, Marzook is also currently wanted on a U.S. terrorism indictment in Chicago, and named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a second U.S. terrorism indictment (which explains that he helps run Hamas’s “Political Bureau,” the branch responsible for “directing and coordinating terrorist attacks”). But he’s believed to be in Syria with other Hamas heavyweights, so maybe, using the Iraq Study Group strategy, we should just negotiate with him. In any event, so incestuous is the Hamas/IAP tie that, in 2004, a federal judge found the IAP liable for Hamas’s terrorist murder of an American citizen in Israel.
Nowhere does the TSA explain that when CAIR was founded in 1994, part of the seed money came from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLFRD). The assets of HLFRD were frozen in 2001 based on the U.S. Treasury Department’s conclusion that it provided “millions of dollars annually that is used by HAMAS.” Prior to HLFRD’s being shut down, CAIR also helped it raise money, according to Senate testimony by terrorism experts Steven Emerson and Matthew Epstein. Awad, CAIR’s executive director, indignantly denied Emerson’s claim of a CAIR/HLFRD connection, calling the seed-money claim an “outright lie” in Senate testimony on September 10, 2003, and insisting, “Our organization did not receive any seed money from HLFRD. CAIR raises its own funds and we challenge Mr. Emerson to provide even a shred of evidence to support his ridiculous claim.” Emerson then came up with some pretty good shreds — like the documentation showing a $5,000 wire transfer from HLFRD to CAIR (see Emerson July 13, 2005, testimony, p. 9 & n.53), and the IRS Form 1023 on which HLFRD disclosed the contribution (see Epstein Sept. 10, 2003, testimony, p. 11 & n.20). Thus shredded, Awad was forced to concede, in later Senate testimony, that “the amount in question was a donation like any other.” Right.
Nowhere does the TSA say a thing about the several persons connected to CAIR who have been convicted of federal felonies, including terrorism offenses. Ghassan Elashi, for example, is a founder of both CAIR’s Texas chapter and … HLFRD, the aforementioned Hamas piggy-bank. Elashi has already been convicted of terrorism related charges twice — once in 2006 for funneling money to Marzook and Hamas, and once in 2005 for illegal transactions with Libya and Syria. He is currently awaiting trial on yet another terrorism indictment — this one for using HLFRD to funnel millions more to Hamas. Then there is Randall Royer, a CAIR communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence after his conviction on explosives and firearms charges in the “Virginia Jihad” case. (At his guilty plea, Royer admitted to recruiting would-be jihadists for terrorist training in Pakistan.) Bassem Khafagi, CAIR’s community-affairs director, also makes this dishonor roll: deported to Egypt after convictions for visa and bank fraud. (He’s also a founder of the Islamic Assembly of North America, which reportedly is under federal investigation.) And let’s not forget Rabih Haddad, a fundraiser for CAIR’s Ann Arbor chapter who was deported to Lebanon after a “charity” he founded, the Global Relief Foundation, was designated as a terrorist facilitator by the Treasury Department for providing support to al Qaeda. (Like CAIR, Global Relief also got money from HLFRD.)
Nowhere does the TSA mention that CAIR vigorously opposed the Patriot Act, just like it agitates against all sensible national-security measures. Nor are we told that CAIR is suing the National Security Agency over the administration’s own terrorist-surveillance program to monitor al Qaeda communications into and out of the United States. So don’t hold your breath waiting for the ACLU, CAIR’s co-plaintiff in the NSA case, to rouse itself over the First Amendment implications of the TSA’s website. After all, what’s the big deal about government-sponsored indoctrination of a blatant Islamic agenda — in the midst of a war in which Islamic terrorists threaten all our civil liberties — when there surely must be a crèche in some remote middle-American town that needs bulldozing?
And nowhere does the TSA tell Americans about CAIR’s transparent efforts to thwart the FBI’s routine investigative and intelligence-gathering activities. On this last point, Americans may be surprised to learn, as Daniel Pipes relates, that “on the eve of the U.S. war with Iraq[,] ... CAIR distributed a ‘Muslim community safety kit’ that advised Muslims to ‘Know your rights if contacted by the FBI.’ It tells them specifically, ‘You have no obligation to talk to the FBI, even if you are not a citizen. … You do not have to permit them to enter your home. … ALWAYS have an attorney present when answering questions.’”) (Emphasis in original.)
But not to worry: CAIR is just a civil-rights organization that “enhance[s] the understanding of Islam” while “promot[ing] justice and mutual understanding.” Why shouldn’t your government spend your tax dollars to reproduce its press releases? Why shouldn’t it spend your tax dollars to school agents on what “pilgrims” may be toting along for Hajj travel at a time when you’re forbidden from carrying a four-ounce bottle of shampoo through airport security?
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Re: The Bush administration & CAIR
THE DEMOCRATS BEGIN A DIFFERENT APPROACH
While the Bush administration continues to enrage its supporters by romancing this besotted organization, top Democrats — having just run rings around GOP strategists in the midterm elections — are mobilizing in a different direction with the 2008 campaign already in swing.
Newsweek reports that, in California, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer has just rescinded the “certificate of accomplishment” her office awarded (she says, without her knowledge) to Basim Elkarra. Why? Because of Elkarra’s close association with CAIR, for whose Sacramento office he is executive director. According to Newsweek, Boxer’s press spokeswoman said the senator “‘expressed concern’ about some past statements and actions by the group, as well as assertions by some law enforcement officials that it ‘gives aid to international terrorist groups[.]’”
Boxer indicated that she had been “influenced by previous critical statements about CAIR made by her Democratic colleagues Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York.” She’s right. As Pipes notes, “Senator Charles Schumer ... describes [CAIR] as an organization ‘which we know has ties to terrorism.’... Senator Dick Durbin ... observes that CAIR is ‘unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect.’”
The more the American people learn about CAIR, the more odious they are going to find it, and the more outraged they are going to be that the Bush administration — which for now embodies the Republican party in the public mind — has cozied up to it. Along those lines, the Newsweek article features a picture of President Bush with CAIR executive director Awad right after 9/11 — notwithstanding Awad’s by then solid record of statements supporting Hamas and its atrocities. (On PowerLine Saturday, Scott Johnson provided several of Awad's more notable public comments, including his assertion, “I'm in support of Hamas movement more than the PLO[,]” and his explanation that the “military undertakings” (which is to say, the suicide bombings) of Hamas were legitimate because “[t]he United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation.”)
The Newsweek article, further, is perhaps the millionth exemplar of the CAIR playbook’s page-one response to all criticism, to wit: How can anyone possibly criticize us for terrorism support when executive-branch agencies like the FBI and DHS openly attend our fundraisers, seek our help for community outreach, and compel their agents to attend our cultural-awareness instruction (also known as, “sensitivity training”)?
This highly effective rhetorical defense is one CAIR is able to make precisely because of the administration’s recklessness. To be sure, the Bush administration is not the first to go this route. The Clinton administration was just as deeply in CAIR’s tank. Awad was appointed to a “Civil Rights Advisory Panel to the White House on Aviation Safety and Security” (yes, aviation safety and security) in 1997; and now-Senator Hillary Clinton hosted CAIR at the White House while First Lady, even as Awad, Emerson recalls, was waxing Ahmadinjad-like: “[The Jews] have been saying, ‘next year to Jerusalem’; we say ‘next year to all of Palestine!’” But President Bush has made vigilance against terrorists and their abettors his signature issue, and that has made his executive branch’s CAIR kowtowing especially unseemly.
It is worth remembering: The prestige the current Justice Department, the FBI, the new DHS, and this administration enjoy as guardians of our nation’s security against Islamic terror is not just of their own making. It is a trust painstakingly built on years of the blood, sweat, and tears of predecessors who dedicated themselves to fighting this evil — who said, “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists,” and actually meant it. Rest assured, they did not do it so the resulting cachet could be thoughtlessly squandered on the likes of CAIR.
The next presidential election, like the last, is principally going to be about American national security against a profound threat, an existential threat, to our way of life — what Frank Gaffney aptly calls the “War for the Free World,” and Norman Podhoretz “World War IV.” It is going to be won by the candidate who convinces us that he — or she — is serious about what we’re up against.
Look at CAIR, see the Bush administration’s solicitude, and watch Senator Boxer’s deft maneuver. You can just feel a “Sister Souljah Moment” coming on for some smart Democrat who wants to be president — a Democrat who can credibly say, “In my administration, we’ll be focused on CAIR’s disturbing connections, not attending its fundraisers and lectures.” It doesn’t even have to be authentic. It only has to be convincing theater … given impact by a sympathetic media and the opposition’s folly.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...I4Y2JkOTE1YWI=
Re: The Bush administration & CAIR
A Bad Day for CAIR
By Evan McCormick -- FrontPageMagazine.com
September 24, 2003
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp?ID=9981
September 10th, 2003 will forever be remembered as a grim day for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). On that day, the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, CAIR faced up to its own terrorist connections. It ran away from testifying before an influential Senate panel that heard a barrage of incriminating evidence about the group and its connections. It saw one of its former officials plead guilty to terrorist-related crimes in Federal Court. And, it was stood up by two Department of Justice officials at an immigration symposium in Florida. CAIR should find it hard to recover from this string of defeats.
Last Wednesday, The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security held the second in a series of hearings aimed at examining Saudi Arabia’s role in exporting Islamic extremism abroad. The hearing, titled “Two Years After 9/11: Connecting the Dots,” was focused on the prevalence of the radical Wahhabi Islamic sect among Muslim political groups in the U.S. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and Chairman Omar Ahmed were invited to testify at the hearing, but both declined to attend. In their absence – and in front of their empty witness chair - the committee heard compelling evidence that Saudi Arabia financially and ideologically supports a network of American organizations that act as the defenders, financiers, and front groups of international terrorists. CAIR has been a major player in this network since its creation in 1994, with a particularly soft spot for the suicide-bombing death squads of Hamas.
Senators turned out in force to connect the dots between CAIR and the deviant Islamic extremism that led to the vicious attacks of 9/11. In his opening statement, Chairman Jon Kyl said, “a small group of organizations based in the U.S. with Saudi backing and support, is well advanced in its four- decade effort to control Islam in America -from mosques, universities and community centers to our prisons and even within our military. Moderate Muslims who love America and want to be part of our great country are being forced out of those institutions.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been steadfast in his efforts to uncover the nexus of Hamas front groups in the U.S., was ruthless in his portrayal of CAIR as part of an international terror network. In his opening remarks, Senator Schumer stated that prominent members of CAIR—referring specifically to Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmed—have “intimate links with Hamas.” Later, he remarked that “we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism.”
Even Senator Richard Durbin, who has made common cause with some of America’s Wahhabi-backed groups, came down hard on CAIR. In his final comments he conceded that CAIR is “unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect,” and requested that the committee seek the testimony of mainstream Muslim groups in its place in the future.
CAIR’s affinity for terrorist causes is well documented in the press. At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, Nihad Awad stated succinctly, “I am a supporter of the Hamas movement.” Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper has defended Saudi Arabia’s financial aid to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. In recent months, three CAIR officials were indicted on terrorism-related charges.
As luck would have it, just hours before the hearing, news services reported that former CAIR official Bassem K. Khafagi had pleaded guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud in federal court in Detroit. The charges were brought against Khafagi for his role with the Islamic Assembly of North America, a group that has advocated violence against the United States and is believed to have funneled money to organizations with terrorist connections. At the time of his arrest, Khafagi was Community Affairs director with CAIR.
Khafagi is one of several IANA officials indicted on terrorism-related charges after Federal agents raided the group’s Ypsilanti, Michigan offices in February. Another arrested IANA official, Saudi-born Sami al-Hussayen ran a series of IANA websites that propagated the teachings of radical Islamist clerics closely linked with Osama bin Laden. He also ran the University of Idaho Muslim Students Association. Al-Hussayen is awaiting a deportation order after refusing to testify in his own defense.
The Chairman of IANA has stated that half of the Assembly’s funds come from Saudi Arabia, while the other half come from private donors who are primarily Saudi. IANA conferences in the early 1990’s featured lectures from Ali al-Timimi, an Islamic preacher recently identified as “co-conspirator number one” in the indictment of 11 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist recruits in a Northern Virginia Jihad network.
One of the 11 Virginia Jihadists, Randall Todd Royer, formerly served as a Communications Specialist and Civil Rights Coordinator at CAIR.
While Senators on Capitol Hill were assiduously connecting the dots to prevent future terrorist attacks, CAIR-Florida was teaming up with the American Civil Liberties Union to sponsor a town hall meeting on immigration issues in South Florida. The September 10th event was billed as an opportunity for residents to discuss “how America and Florida has [sic] changed since September 11, 2001 - our constitutional rights, inter-group relations, and the treatment of our immigrant communities, etc.” The event was slated to feature a U.S. Attorney, an FBI representative, and the Assistant Commissioner of the Florida Department of law Enforcement. None of the officials showed up.
By absenting themselves from the meeting, the officials foiled another attempt by CAIR to oppose the Bush administration’s War on Terror. CAIR has made a cottage industry out of blaming individual incidents, either real or perceived, of anti-Muslim violence and discrimination on the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, especially the USA Patriot Act. CAIR’s uses statistical manipulation and “civil rights” arguments, not to protect innocent Muslims but to exonerate its own “intimate links with terrorism” to use the words of Senator Schumer.
Meetings like the South Florida immigration symposium are an integral part of the Wahhabi groups’ strategy of gaining political access to the U.S. government. Since well before 9/11, CAIR and other organizations have alleged to speak on behalf of America’s peaceful, moderate Muslims, while simultaneously lending support and funds to terrorist causes. Certain members of the Bush administration, anxious to frame the War on terror in the context of political correctness, have then pandered to the Wahhabi organizations, providing them with phony legitimacy at the expense of the Muslim community at large.
Since September 11th, prominent Wahhabi-backed leaders have been granted meetings with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. These meetings are then used to further the notion that Wahhabi-funded organizations like CAIR are fit to represent America’s estimated 6 million Muslims.
This strategy has permitted the Wahhabi Lobby, as the collection of pressure groups are called, to become the de facto pool of consultants for government agencies willing to compromise vigilance for ethno-sensitivity in the War on Terror. The true agendas of groups like CAIR are obscured or forgotten in the process, and Wahhabis are given a blank check to oppose anti-terror policies that threaten to expose their connection to the terrorist support network in the U.S.
Combating the Wahhabi agents of influence in the U.S. will require a comprehensive assessment of the political objectives, operational strategies and sources of funding of each group and their individual leaders. A basic and important step must be to resist the Wahhabi Lobby’s attempts to influence U.S. policy. The new absence of Justice Department officials from a CAIR symposium is a welcome sign that government agencies are becoming aware of the Council’s close links with extremists. Meanwhile, we must continue to support the government’s efforts to apprehend those who serve terrorist causes from within our borders. The guilty plea of CAIR official Bassem K. Khafagi is one of many signs that the U.S. is winning the War against terrorists at home as well as abroad.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp?ID=9981
Re: The Bush administration & CAIR
In Defense of the Constitution
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/
Quote:
U.S. Senator Richard Durbin: "[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect"
Quote:
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer: "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism" "intimate links with Hamas"
Statements From Sept. 2003 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp?ID=9981
* * * *
Since its founding in 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (“HLF”), the Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”), and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy.
(From "Response" To CAIR)
-- Points to Ponder --
CAIR Employees And Officials Support Terror
Senior CAIR employee Randall Todd Royer, a/k/a “Ismail” Royer, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in prison for participating in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia. He admitted to aiding and abetting three persons who sought training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan for the purpose of waging jihad against American troops in Afghanistan. Royer’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed with CAIR
CAIR's Director of Community Relations, Bassem Khafagi , was arrested by the United States due to his ties with a terror-financing front group. Khafagi pled guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Khafagi’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.
On December 18, 2002, Ghassan Elashi, founding board member of CAIR-Texas, a founder of the Holy Land Foundation, and a brother-in-law of Musa Abu Marzook , was arrested by the United States and charged with, among other things, making false statements on export declarations, dealing in the property of a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy and money laundering. Ghassan Elashi committed his crimes while working at CAIR, and was found Guilty.
CAIR Board Member Imam Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing, has called for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate, and warned that America will crumble unless it accepts Islam.
Rabih Haddad served as a CAIR Fundraiser. Haddad was co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”). GRF was designated by the US Treasury Department for financing the Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations and its assets were frozen by the US Government on December 14, 2001.
Consistent with Hamas ideology, CAIR has served as a conduit for the distribution of materials and funds from foreign nationals to groups and institutions within the United States for the purpose of promoting radical Islam and Hamas ideology, and attacked Islamic clerics and scholars who reject radical Islam and the Hamas agenda.
* * * *
“Let there be no doubt that the Council on American-Islamic Relations
is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded
by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the
implementation of Sharia law in America.”
Re: The Bush administration & CAIR
My brother and others have pulled up a lot of information on CAIR on their blogs. It is amazing how the rights of a few can outweigh the rights of the many.
