FLA Governor OUSTS Terror-Tied CAIR From Governor’s Faith and Community Initiative

Just to be clear, “It is false for CAIR to claim that they were affirmatively selected to receive any sort of recognition. This was an automatically generated thank you note to any faith-based entity that self-enrolled in our Faith and Community Based Initiative via a website. Every person and entity that signed up received this automatically generated response.”

The terror-tied Islamic group routinely exploits the horror of Islamic terror to further their pernicious, supremacist agenda. After every Islamic attack, CAIR uses its considerable influence in the media to blame the target (infidels), smear and defame anyone who opposes jihad terror and not-so-subtly demand more adherence to the sharia (do not criticize Islam under penalty of death – or as is the case in the West, character assassination).

Remember: CAIR has multiple ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It issues pro-forma condemnations of jihad terror, but has actually opposed every counterterror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented. Its focus on Islamophobia is just a diversionary tactic to intimidate people into thinking that taking action against jihad terror is wrong, and we just have to surrender.

I have spent years studying the evidence demonstrating that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) is a terrorist organization operating as a front group for Hamas and its affiliated organizations. I have consulted with FBI agents, CIA agents, local law enforcement officers, and attorneys who specialize in national security law. All of these consultations confirm that CAIR was begun as a Hamas front group to carry out the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-American agenda.

Much, but not all of this evidence, was documented in United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development  et al., 3:04-cr-00240-P (N.D. Texas) (“HLF”).  I have personally invested hundreds of hours reading written documented evidence and listening to audio-taped evidence that had been introduced at the trial.

The evidence shows that CAIR is a criminal terrorist organization. This conclusion is shared by the United States government. The Department of Justice named CAIR in the federal criminal trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development,[1] which concluded with multiple guilty verdicts, as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive conspiracy to fundraise for, and otherwise pursue, the terrorist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Committee, a public relations and fund raising arm of Hamas in the United States.[2]  See generally HLF.[3]  Specifically, CAIR was named as one of the organizations formed by the defendants and co-conspirators to create the appearance of legality in the effort to raise funds and public support for Hamas and its jihad abroad.  As the evidence in the HLF trial demonstrated, these plans were part of the 1993 Philadelphia planning meeting carried out by Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives, a meeting which the FBI secretly recorded pursuant to a lawful court order, the entire transcript of which was introduced into the record at the HLF trial.[4]  Two of the key participants at this Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas planning meeting were Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad.[5]  Ahmad co-founded CAIR, along with CAIR’s executive director Awad, in 1994 soon after this meeting. Ahmad served as CAIR’s chairman of the board until 2005 and Awad still serves as CAIR’s executive director.

Further, the federal prosecutors successfully resisted every effort by CAIR to have the public designation of CAIR as an “unindicted co-conspirator” removed from the court record and concluded as follows in its brief to the court:

Indeed, CAIR’s request to strike its name from the government’s co-conspirator’s list is moot, since its conspiratorial relationship with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) was confirmed by testimony and documentary evidence admitted at trial prior to the date CAIR even filed its brief.[6]

1. After the convictions, CAIR and another co-conspirator filed motions to have their names stricken from the co-conspirator list.  The trial judge refused based on the fact that the evidence fully supported this co-conspirator designation.  (Filed as Doc. No. 1356 in HLF; see also Ex. B to the Declaration of John Stemberger filed in support of Defendant’s opposition to Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment.)
2. A key piece of evidence introduced at the HLF trial and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine Committee-Hamas conspiracy was a “planning memo” which describes the purpose of the “legal” organizations, such as CAIR, that the Muslim Brotherhood sought to establish in the United States:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means.  The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.[7]

1. In addition, the FBI has publicly stated that it will have no formal or official contacts with CAIR precisely because of the evidence that linked CAIR and its senior management to Hamas and its purposes.[8] Finally, in response to a letter from Congresswoman Sue Myrick, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the U.S. Department of Justice recently wrote in relevant part: (above)

DeSantis Accuses CAIR of Deception, Ousts It from Florida Program

By Susannah Johnston, Focus on Western Islamism, September 1, 2022:

The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has told FWI it will be removing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in its Faith and Community Initiative.

In 2019, the governor founded the Governor’s Faith and Community Initiative “to facilitate the efforts of the state’s faith-based entities by improving communication and collaboration among them,” according to Dylan Fisher, the program’s director.

On August 18, a Facebook post by the Florida branch of CAIR claimed to be a leading member of the initiative, declaring, “Governor Ron DeSantis recently presented CAIR-Florida with a Certificate of Recognition for our continued work in service of the vulnerable populations of Floridians.”

Governor DeSantis has, however, previously taken a strong stance against CAIR, noting its identification by the U.S. government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation’s funding of the terror group, Hamas.

CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in 2014, at which participants yelled “We are Hamas.” In 2017, then-director, Hassan Shibly, endorsed a conference that promoted violent jihad and personally referred to Muslims from the moderate Ahmadiyya as “heretical.”

When FWI asked the governor’s office how CAIR had received recognition, DeSantis’ Press Secretary, Bryan Griffin, explained “The faith office will certainly review this oversight and remove CAIR from our list of partner organizations.”

“It is false for CAIR to claim that they were affirmatively selected to receive any sort of recognition. This was an automatically generated thank you note to any faith-based entity that self-enrolled in our Faith and Community Based Initiative via a website. Every person and entity that signed up received this automatically generated response.”

Critics accuse CAIR-Florida of a history of misrepresentations. In 2020, the Islamist group presented known terror supporters and a convicted murderer as misunderstood “activists” on a webinar to “highlight the government’s use of imprisonment as a fear and intimidation tactic targeting both individuals and communities, and eroding civil liberties.”

The first, Sami Al-Arian, is an advocate of violent jihad, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to supporting the designated terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The second, Moazzam Begg, is a leading British Salafi who, according to the Pentagon, “trained at three terrorist camps.” Begg says he told the CIA under interrogation that he “wanted to live in an Islamic state” and described the Taliban as “better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past 25 years.”

CAIR-Florida also picked a convicted cop-killer as another victimized “activist,” Jamil Al-Amin. Al-Amin shot two sheriff’s deputies, killing one in March 2000. He has made the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list more than once, has been investigated in connection to multiple murders, and views the United States Constitution as “diametrically opposed to what Allah has commanded.” Al-Amin also benefits from CAIR financially, as they seek to get him off the cop-killing charge.

The governor’s office responded to FWI’s inquiry about the “recognition” of CAIR saying, “We welcome the efforts of any legitimate faith-based organization that wants to work to serve the needs of Floridians. However, CAIR does not reflect our shared values, and this will be corrected immediately.”

CAIR-Florida did not respond to FWI‘s request for comment.

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