CAIR Publishes Report Alleging Islamophobia in US Government, GIOR Investigation Shows Deception in Past Reports

In April. the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) pub­lished this year’s edi­tion of an annu­al report, titled “Still Sus­pect: The Impact of Struc­tur­al Islam­o­pho­bia,” which lists anti-Mus­lim inci­dents and hate crimes in the US. Accord­ing to the report introduction:

The title of this report is Still Sus­pect: The Impact of Struc­tur­al Islam­o­pho­bia. The word struc­tur­al is sig­nif­i­cant in the under­stand­ing that Islam­o­pho­bia has seeped into every part of our soci­ety. It has made its way into gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and the pub­lic sphere through laws and poli­cies, polit­i­cal rhetoric, and oth­er manifestations.

Read the rest here.

The doc­u­ment was pub­lished dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the CAIR head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, DC, where CAIR Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Nihad Awad char­ac­ter­ized the report­ed rise in anti-Mus­lim inci­dents as “alarm­ing.” He urged Con­gress to adopt leg­is­la­tion mak­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for local law enforce­ment agen­cies con­tin­gent on doc­u­ment­ing and report­ing hate crimes to the FBI’s nation­al database.

A Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) inves­ti­ga­tion found that a 2021 report list­ing legal achieve­ments made by the group in US civ­il rights failed to men­tion that at least one ver­dict had already been over­turned by a US Court of Appeals. The case involved a 2018 law­suit filed on behalf of a school speech pathol­o­gist who lost her job after refus­ing to sign an employ­ment con­tract pledg­ing not to boy­cott Israel. CAIR list­ed the case as one of its achieve­ments in chal­leng­ing Tex­an leg­is­la­tion, although by 2020, the deci­sion had been tossed out by the 5^th US Cir­cuit Court of Appeals.

In 2009, the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch report­ed that CAIR had manip­u­lat­ed hate crime sta­tis­tics for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, cre­at­ing and includ­ing new cat­e­gories of hate crimes to show an alleged increase in those crimes.

CAIR describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group and as “Amer­i­ca’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” It was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time. Doc­u­ments dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ter­ror­ism tri­al of the Holy Land Foun­da­tion con­firmed that the founders and cur­rent lead­ers of CAIR were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and that CAIR itself is part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion is led by Nihad Awad, its long­stand­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and one of the three orig­i­nal founders. In recent times, CAIR has been gen­er­al­ly por­trayed in the media as a Mus­lim civ­il rights group.CAIR reg­u­lar­ly cam­paigns against laws restrict­ing state busi­ness with com­pa­nies that boy­cott Israel and its lead­ers have a his­to­ry of defend­ing indi­vid­u­als accused of ter­ror­ism by the US gov­ern­ment, often label­ing such pros­e­cu­tions a “war on Islam.”

For more on CAIR, go here.