CARE yes, CAIR no
We suppose you have to be of a certain age to remember those ads showing CARE packages being offloaded and distributed in poor countries from Europe to Africa to the Far East. The first 20,000 CARE packages were sent to France in 1946. CARE was a great relief organization; like the March of Dimes, it is still around, though its mission has changed and broadened.
It is no credit to the world that CARE’s homonym, CAIR, is popularly recognized. (With a little luck, it might go the way of the Ayds diet plan.) Front Page Magazine, whose work we cited yesterday as well, has an excellent interview today with Reed Rubenstein, the attorney who successfully represented Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR in CAIR’s libel suit. Here are a couple of excerpts:
CAIR filed suit against Andrew Whitehead, claiming Mr. Whitehead’s statements on the Anti-CAIR website (www.anti-cair-net.org) were false and defamatory. The main statements were that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization, that CAIR was founded by Hamas supporters seeking to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy, and that CAIR receives funding from Islamic terrorist supporting countries. In other words, this case was about CAIR’s connections to and support for radical Islam….As stated in papers filed with the court, CAIR has been connected to the Islamic Association of Palestine (which has been held civilly liable for the Hamas murder of an American teenager), convicted Hamas financier Ghashan Elashi, Saudi interests, and radical groups, among others. The court papers state:
– CAIR is connected to Musa Abu Marzook (“Marzook”), a key Hamas operative. Marzook was named a terrorist and deported from the United States….
– CAIR is connected to Ghassan Elashi, a founder both of CAIR’s Austin, Texas, chapter and the notorious Holy Land Foundation (Hamas’ U.S.-based fundraising front), was convicted in July 2004…
– CAIR is connected to a variety of foreign funding sources, primarily Saudis. For example, a press release from the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington states that in August 1999, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) – functionally controlled by the Saudi government – gave CAIR $250,000…
– CAIR is connected to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY)….Both Indian officials and the Philippine military have cited WAMY for funding terrorist groups and militant Islamists. Osama Bin-Laden’s brother was WAMY’s treasurer….
– CAIR is connected to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which gave CAIR $14,000 in 2003. IIIT is part of an interwoven group of terror-financing conduits that sent money to, among others, Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian….
– CAIR is connected to the IAP, a radical Islamic organization that preached the inevitability of conflict between “divinely inspired” Islamic civilization and the materialistic, God-less West….
– CAIR Founder and Executive Director Awad was IAP’s public relations director….He is an admitted supporter of “the Hamas movement.”…
– CAIR Founder and Board Chairman Ahmad, also a former IAP official, was heard on FBI surveillance tapes of Hamas meetings in the United States during 1993 explaining that for political reasons the IAP could not admit its support for Hamas, and then discussing how the Hamas agenda could be cloaked and advanced in the United States….
– Doug AKA “Ibrahim” Hooper (“Hooper”), CAIR’s director of Communications, also worked for the IAP before joining CAIR. He has said, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future…” On the Michael Medved radio show in 2003, he said that if Muslims ever become a majority in the United States, it would be safe to assume that they would want to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law…
– Ihsan Bagby, a CAIR board member, has written Moslems “can never be full citizens” of the United States “because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country”…
– Randall (“Ismail”) Royer, CAIR’s communications specialist and civil rights coordinator, is serving a 20-year prison term, having pled guilty after being charged with conspiring to help Al Qaida and the Taliban kill Americans in Afghanistan….
– Rabih Haddad, a CAIR fundraiser, was arrested on terror-related charges and deported from the United States….
– Siraj Wahaj, a CAIR advisory board member, is a former member of the Nation of Islam (NOI) who supports polygamy and full implementation of Islamic law in the United States. In 1991, speaking to the Islamic Association of North Texas, Wahaj called Operation Desert Storm “one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history”…
The interview by Jamie Glazov is excellent, and should be read in its entirety. Reed Rubenstein has done a remarkable job of helping to expose a number of seedy and dangerous men, many of whom live in the United States. We hope they become guests of Uncle Sam as situations permit. (HT: Powerline)
UPDATE
Powerline provides an update on the nastiness that is CAIR:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR was founded by three leaders of a front for the terrorist organization Hamas, in June of 1994. Since its creation:
*Four of CAIR’s officials have been charged with terrorist activities, in relation to Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Two of those officials are behind bars in the United States; the other two have been deported. One of them, Ghassan Elashi, was just sentenced, this past Thursday, to seven years in prison. Another CAIR official was listed by the U.S. Attorney’s office as a potential co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
*CAIR has solicited money for two terrorist “charities” which were shut down shortly after the attacks on 9/11 for raising millions of dollars for Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Leaders of both these organizations were representatives of CAIR.
*CAIR has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit put forward by the family of the former Chief of the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Section, John P. O’Neill, for his murder during the 9/11 attacks.
*CAIR’s parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine, in 2005, was shut down after it was found liable for the murder of an American boy, David Boim, during a Hamas terror operation in Israel.
After hearing all of this, one could easily ask the question, “Why would this organization still exist?” It’s a good question – one that I have no real answer for.
We’re in a War on Terrorism – That’s what our government has said, since the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. We’re fighting that war in Afghanistan. We’re fighting that war in Iraq. But what our government – and much of our populace – hasn’t yet quite grasped is that the war begins at home!
Yes, there have been organizations that have been shut down in America – their assets frozen. And yes, there have been individuals that have been taken into custody in America – many individuals. But not enough groups have been shut down, and not enough individuals have been taken into custody, for if that were the case, CAIR would have been gone five long years ago.
My friends, we are here to protest two individuals who have taken money from leaders of CAIR. But they’re not just any individuals – no. They are two people that are seeking high political office within the United States. One is a Minnesota State Representative, Keith Ellison, who is running for United States Congress. And the other is a U.S. Congressman, Jim Davis, who is running for the Governorship of the beautiful state of Florida.
Congressional Candidate Keith Ellison has taken campaign donations from CAIR’s National Chairman Parvez Ahmed, CAIR’s National Government Affairs Director Corey Saylor, and CAIR’s co-founder and National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who in March of 1994 declared, “After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.”
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Within this building, a CAIR sponsored event is taking place, with Keith Ellison as its Keynote Speaker. One of the individuals hosting the event is a man by the name of Altaf Ali. He is the Executive Director of CAIR-Florida. I have had personal dealings with this man. Exactly one month after 9/11, on October 11, 2001, I debated Mr. Ali about the attacks, on a local radio program. During the show, this individual derided me for being Jewish and repeatedly refused to answer the question of whether or not the people that perished in the World Trade Center were innocent.