Muslim Mafia (18 page)

And declassified transcripts of FBI wiretaps place CAIR executive director Awad, as well as co-founder and former chairman Ahmad, at the notorious Philly meeting with Hamas leaders, where a scheme was hatched to hide payments to Hamas suicide bombers and their families as charity. Both Awad and Ahmad have suffered a convenient bout of amnesia in claiming they cannot remember whether they attended the Hamas summit—even though it lasted three days, and even though Ahmad signed a reservation voucher for a room at the hotel where they met.
¹³

They don’t deny attending though. And both their names appear in a secret phone book alongside key Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk, whom the government says directed and coordinated Hamas terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel.
¹⁴

Moreover, Awad and Ahmad spun off CAIR from a known Hamas front they previously headed. As president of IAP, Ahmad paid to bring Hamas leaders to speak at annual conferences.
¹⁵
One IAP confab even featured a veiled Hamas terrorist.
¹⁶
Awad, for his part, proclaimed his support for Hamas in a speech, while churning out pro-Hamas and anti-Israel propaganda as IAP’s public-relations director.

U.S. prosecutor Jim Jacks reiterated in a separate court filing that CAIR had “conspiratorial involvement with HLF [Holy Land Foundation] and others affiliated with Hamas,” and that its involvement in the conspiracy to support Hamas is “ongoing” and did not end with the Holy Land trial and convictions.

Fearing CAIR remains actively involved with Hamas, the FBI has suspended all formal contacts with it. And the agency suggests CAIR and its leaders—namely “its current president emeritus [Ahmad] and its executive director [Awad]”—are the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation stemming from the Holy Land case. “Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” assistant FBI director Richard C. Powers recently informed the Senate Judiciary Committee.
¹⁷

CAIR’s insistence that it has no ties to Hamas rings absolutely hollow against these facts.

WHOPPER NUMBER
8
: “CAIR has some fifty thousand members,” Hooper contends.
¹⁸

In fact, the actual figure is one-tenth that size—5,133—according to internal CAIR records.
¹⁹

After the
Washington Times
reported in 2007 that CAIR’s membership was rapidly shrinking due to negative publicity over its terror ties, CAIR accused the “right-wing” newspaper of “falsely suggesting there has been a drop.”

“Our membership is increasing steadily,” Awad insisted.

“Support for CAIR has grown,” Hooper added.
²⁰

Two months later, CAIR filed a court brief in which it acknowledged membership indeed was down, blaming it on bad publicity from the Holy Land terror trial. It pleaded with the judge hearing the case to strike its name from the list of co-conspirators.

“This negative reaction by the American public can be seen in the decline of membership rates and donations resulting from the government’s publicizing of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator,” CAIR attorney William Moffitt wrote in the brief.
²¹

Among the proof he submitted to the court was the same
Washington Times
article Hooper just two months earlier had trashed as false and biased. Apparently even CAIR’s lawyers can’t keep up with CAIR’s lies.

WHOPPER NUMBER
7
: CAIR calls allegations it receives money from foreign governments “disinformation.” “This is yet another attempt to invent a controversy,” Hooper says.
²²

There’s no invention. CAIR, for example, has received at least half a million dollars from Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. Hooper argues he’s technically not “an official of any foreign government.”

But such hair-splitting doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Hooper himself admits that officials running the government of the United Arab Emirates have set up an endowment to help CAIR finance a massive $50 million public-relations campaign. And though he claims CAIR has not yet received “a penny” of those funds, CAIR did receive a nearly $1 million investment from the ruler of Dubai through his charitable foundation.
²³

In fact, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum in the early 2000s owned a controlling stake in CAIR’s three-story headquarters in Washington. Local land records show he held the deed to the building.
²⁴

A State Department cable, moreover, directly contradicts CAIR’s denials about foreign governmental support.

The sensitive but unclassified
communiqué
was written by U.S. Embassy staff in Saudi Arabia, who in June 2006 reported the following after meeting with a CAIR delegation: “One admitted reason for the group’s current visit to the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] was to solicit $50 million in governmental and non-governmental contributions.” The core delegation, according to the cable, consisted of then-CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed, Awad, and Hooper.
²⁵

Just three months after the trip, Hooper denied soliciting Saudi government funds. “To my knowledge, we don’t take money from the government of Saudi Arabia,” he said in a September 2006 appearance on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show.
²⁶

What’s more, some of CAIR’s biggest private donors are members of the Saudi royal family, according to copies of wire transfers obtained from CAIR’s executive files (see Appendix). The group’s shady financing will be explored in detail in a separate chapter.

WHOPPER NUMBER
6
: “Islam and democracy are compatible,” and Islam values Western principles, CAIR maintains in its “Journalist’s Guide to Understanding Islam.”
²⁷

Funny, because that’s not what CAIR’s longtime board member Ihsan Bagby thinks.

“Ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country,” Bagby has lectured, “because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”
²⁸

As the late Muslim Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb preached, Western-style democracy, as exemplified by the United States of America, is a man-made system of government, and therefore
haram
, or un-Islamic.

Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the most revered Brotherhood leader in the world today, agrees. Repeatedly championed by CAIR, al-Qaradawi also rejects the call for secularism.

“Acceptance of secularism means abandonment of
Shariah
,” he argues. “The call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of
Shariah
is downright apostasy.”
²⁹

The Brotherhood views American democracy—with secularism and individualism as its hallmarks—as incompatible with Islam, because Islam does not believe in separation of mosque and state. It also considers Islam a complete system of religion and government, ethics and law, military and jihad, as well as worship. The Quran is the law for state and society, and supersedes even the authority of the U.S. Constitution.

No less than CAIR’s co-founder and former chairman of the board has said as much. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” Ahmad has said. “The Quran should be the highest authority in America.”

U.S. Brotherhood leaders advising CAIR—such as ISNA’s Muzammil Siddiqi—constantly remind Muslims in America that “Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands,” including one day the U.S. Then there’s senior Brotherhood leader Ahmad Totonji, who has stated: “We do not have any separation between religion and state.
³⁰

By pretending otherwise, however, CAIR makes
Shariah
-based Islam appear more palatable and acceptable. And by lowering the guard of skeptics, the Brotherhood gains bigger footholds in American politics and society.

To understand the cynical depths of CAIR’s subterfuge regarding this issue, it’s instructive to review its unusual interference in Egyptian politics in 2007, when the relatively secular Mubarak government amended that country’s constitution to ban religious-based parties. CAIR ostensibly was angry that Egypt was further suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is based there, and lodged a formal protest.

Egypt’s constitutional amendments further restrict the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is trying to turn Egypt away from secularism and toward an Islamic government based on
Shariah
law—something CAIR’s own leaders say they’d like to see happen in this country.

In 2007, the Brotherhood drafted a party platform, under the banner “Islam is the solution,” which called for establishing an undemocratically selected board of religious scholars with the power to veto any legislation passed by the Egyptian parliament and approved by the president that’s not compatible with Islamic law. It also called for banning women and Christians from high office.

When the anti-theocracy amendments were passed by a majority of Egyptian voters, CAIR went ballistic, firing off a complaint to the U.S. State Department charging the referendum was rigged and “would essentially lock out any meaningful political opposition”—i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood—to challenge the more secular Mubarak regime. In a critical letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-CAIR chairman Ahmed chided the U.S. for its “tepid” response to what he characterized as the Egyptian government’s “backsliding on promised democratic reforms.”

CAIR is a domestic-based nonprofit organization, not a registered foreign agent. For its chairman to go out of his way to write the secretary of state about a foreign election speaks volumes about CAIR’s vested interest in the Brotherhood.

But here’s the ironic part: the Egyptian embassy got wind of the complaint and rebuked CAIR for its interference, reminding it that democracies are supposed to separate religion and state.

“I find this interference rather hypocritical,” Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy blasted Ahmed in a letter obtained from CAIR’s files, “since I assume you are aware of the notion of separation of church and state as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which governs your own country.”

He closed by advising CAIR to “to focus on its core mission” in America, and butt out of foreign affairs.
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It’s a sad commentary when an Arab nation has to lecture an American “civil rights group” about Western jurisprudence and liberties.

‘MOST MUSLIMS HAVE VERY POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARD AMERICA’

A companion lie CAIR peddles is that Muslims around the world love America and its values.

After 9/11, “some politicians and media commentators argued that there exists a clash of civilizations and values between the Muslim world and the West, claiming that the Muslim world hates ‘Western freedoms’ and the ‘American way of life,’” CAIR intones in its media guide.

“The reality is that the relationship between the Middle East and the West—particularly the United States—is complex and multi-faceted,” CAIR goes on. “In simple terms, Muslim attitudes toward the West are not shaped by American culture or values, but rather by U.S. foreign policy.”

Beyond that sticking point, “most Muslims worldwide have very positive attitudes toward” America, CAIR insists.
³²

Now for a reality check: a Gallup poll conducted in nine Muslim nations after 9/11 found widespread hatred toward the U.S. Subsequent polls confirmed raging anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and Pakistan.

There is a “violently deep hatred of America in the Islamic world,” major international Muslim Brotherhood figures, including CAIR guru Sheik Qaradawi, warned President Obama in an open letter they signed after his inauguration.

And it’s not just U.S. foreign policy (which they complain is tipped too heavily toward Israel) that they have a problem with. It’s American values.

And it’s not just foreign Muslims who hate America. It’s American Muslims—including members of CAIR’s own advisory board.

Take longtime CAIR advisor and fundraiser Siraj Wahhaj. He likens America to a dumpster.

“You know what this country is? It’s a garbage can,” he snarls. “It’s filthy.” He prays it “crumbles” and is replaced by Islam.
³³

Wahhaj, who also serves on ISNA’s board, echoes Obama’s longtime preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright in calling America a “racist” nation.

“Deep down to its core this nation is racist!” the New York
imam
seethed in one sermon. “Racism is at the very root of this nation.”

He also demonizes the U.S. government. “The government of America is so steeped in evil that most people are blinded by it,” Wahhaj tells his flock. “America is the most wicked government on the face of the planet Earth.”
³⁴

Wahhaj, known affectionately among the Muslim Brothers as “America’s
Imam
,” has been actively involved in CAIR’s operations. Recent internal fundraising documents show CAIR has enlisted him to help raise large sums.