Negative reaction indeed
That noted American institution CAIR is currently saying that its membership decline from 29,000 members to 1,700 was due to the US government’s publicizing the organization as an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorist matters. The government responded as follows in legal papers, via Powerline:
CAIR alleges that the “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 coconspirator” (Amicus Br. at 10); that “the donations that they rely on for funding have suffered since the government named them as an unindicted co-conspirator” ( Amicus Br. at 38); and that “the government’s labeling of them as an unindicted co-conspirator has chilled their associational activity” (Amicus Br. at 51-52). In support for these assertions,
however, CAIR relies upon a June 2007 article in the Washington Times, which revealed (by reviewing CAIR’s tax filings) that CAIR’s membership declined 90 percent from 2001 through 2006, down from 29,000 members to less than 1,700. … The article provides no further factual information regarding CAIR’s declining membership since 2006. Ironically, the very same article, upon which it now relies, was publicly discredited by CAIR executive director, Nihad Awad, who claimed the article was “false and misleading.”
It is probably true to a very modest extent that a “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”. However, we among many others began to notice the negative reaction to this rather nasty organization long before that.