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A number of American Muslims have made similar observations:
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The late Seifeldin Ashmawy, who published Voice of Peace, called CAIR the champion of "extremists whose views do not represent Islam."
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Tashbih Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance (CDT) called CAIR "the most accomplished fifth column" in the United States. Jamal Hasan, also of CDT, said that CAIR's goal is to spread "Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook."
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According to Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism, CAIR and similar groups "condemn terrorism on the surface while endorsing an ideology that helps foster extremism," and adds that "almost all of their members are theocratic Muslims who reject secularism and want to establish Islamic states."
In 1998, CAIR co-hosted a rally at Brooklyn College where Islamic militants exhorted the attendees to carry out "jihad" and described Jews as "pigs and monkeys." The crowd chanted: "No to the Jews, descendants of the apes." Referring to Israel as a "racist country and state," CAIR was a signatory to a MAY 20, 2004 "Joint Muslims/Arab-American Statement on Israeli Violence in Gaza," which "strongly condemn[ed]" Israel's "indiscriminate killings of innocent Palestinians, including many children," and its "demolition of Palestinian homes." In August 2006 CAIR accused Israel of practicing state terrorism in its war against the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah. Said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, "Our [American] government must end its support for Israel's campaign of terror in Lebanon and join an international effort to protect and bring humanitarian aid to the civilian population of that devastated nation."
CAIR officials have displayed a double standard for denouncing violence. For example, Ibrahim Hooper in a Pittsburg Post-Gazette interview refused to denounce the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah, stating, "we're not in the business of condemning." By contrast, when Israeli troops killed Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, CAIR condemned "the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian Muslim religious leader," calling the operation "an act of state terror."
According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson: "Hussam Ayloush, the Executive Director of the Southern California chapter of [CAIR] ... is known to use the term 'Zionazi' to refer to Israelis, and [he] compare[s] Zionism to Nazism, once writing in an e-mail, 'Indeed, the Zionazis are a bunch of nice people; just like their Nazi brethren!'"
CAIR chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 "Free Muslims March Against Terror," an event whose stated purpose was to "send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered ... [and to send] a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them."
CAIR states that it "works in close cooperation with other civic and civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, NAACP, Hispanic Unity, Organization of Chinese Americans, Japanese American Citizens League, Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force, among many others." CAIR also identifies the National Council of Churches as a "partner" organization.
On December 12, 2006, CAIR Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed called the war in Iraq a "pure unadulterated projection of raw power" and said the U.S. should withdraw its forces immediately.
Another notable CAIR official is Altaf Ali, the organization's Florida Director. Ali alleges that America responded to the 9/11 attacks by trampling on the civil liberties of all Muslims, and he has wavered on the question of whether or not the victims who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 could be classified as innocents whose killings were unjustified.
In 2007 CAIR became involved in the infamous "flying imams" lawsuit, a case that centered around six Muslim clerics aboard a November 2006 US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. Shortly before takeoff, they began engaging in bizarre behaviors eerily reminiscent of those that had been used by the 9/11 hijackers: shouting slogans in Arabic; leaving their assigned seats to position themselves in different places; requesting seat belt extenders that they positioned on the floor, rather than using them to secure themselves. Responding to the concerns of alarmed passengers and the flight crew, authorities removed the imams from the plane. Soon thereafter the imams filed a lawsuit against US Airways, claiming that they had been removed from the flight for no reason other than anti-Muslim discrimination. The lawyer representing the imams was Omar T. Mohammedi, who as of 2006 was President of CAIR's New York chapter.
In February 2007, CAIR endorsed a call by the American Muslim Taskforce for Civil Rights and Elections, for a worldwide "rolling fast" in support of the incarcerated Sami Al-Arian, who had initiated a hunger strike on January 21 to protest his detention and treatment by federal authorities. Participants in the campaign agreed to fast every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for as long as Al-Arian continued his hunger strike.
On June 4, 2007, the New York Sun reported that CAIR had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged criminal conspiracy to support both Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The federal prosecution document, in naming CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator, described the organization as a present or past member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee.
Also named as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial were groups such as Hamas, INFOCOM, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the United Association for Studies and Research, and the North American Islamic Trust. The list also included many individuals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas. Among these were Omar Ahmad, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Jamal Badawi, Yousef al-Qaradawi, Abdallah Azzam, Mohammad Jaghlit, Mousa Abu Marzook, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Ahmed Yassin.
In the summer 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, it was learned that CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine, had been named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends" who shared the common goal of conducting "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."
According to a June 2007 Washington Times report, CAIR's membership had declined more than 90 percent since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, from approximately 29,000 in the year 2000, to fewer than 1,700 six years later. As a result, CAIR's annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000 (when yearly dues cost $25 per person), to $58,750 in 2006 (when dues cost $35). As of 2007, the majority of CAIR's $3 million annual budget derived from about two dozen individual donors.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, Director of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, said in June 2007 that the decline in CAIR's membership contradicted the organization's claim that it represents the interests and concerns of 7 million American Muslims. "This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population," said Jasser. "They only represent their membership and donors."
CAIR has received funding from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, the New York Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.
CAIR also receives considerable funding from Saudi Arabia, whose Washington embassy in 1999 announced a $250,000 grant by the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank to help CAIR purchase some land in Washington, DC -- to be used in the construction of "an education and research center." In 2002 the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which is bankrolled by the Saudi government, financed CAIR's distribution of books on Islam and CAIR's immensely expensive advertising campaign in a number of American publications -- including a weekly ad in USA Today which cost approximately $1.04 million over the course of the year. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to help CAIR distribute the Koran and other Islam-related books throughout the United States. Two years later, a Saudi Arabian named Adnan Bogary gave CAIR's Washington branch a donation of more than $1.36 million.
In 2006 Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, financed the building of a property in the United States to serve as an endowment for CAIR. That property now generates some $3 million annually for CAIR.
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