California Democrats Working For US Muslim Brotherhood Group Publish Election Guide

Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cials work­ing for the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) have authored an elec­tion vot­ing guide pos­i­tive­ly rat­ing votes by Demo­c­rat law­mak­ers. The guide con­tains a Con­gres­sion­al as well as a leg­isla­tive score­card and state-wide propo­si­tion rec­om­men­da­tions. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment:

The 2020 elec­tion cycle presents the Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty with an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase its polit­i­cal capac­i­ty and pres­ence. To those ends, CAIR-CA has com­piled three resources to help guide com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as they plan to vote in the Novem­ber 2020 Pres­i­den­tial Gen­er­al Election.

Read the rest here.

The vot­ing guide was co-authored by Sameena Usman, the CAIR-San Francisco/Bay Area Gov­ern­ment Rela­tions Coor­di­na­tor, who has, in the past, worked as a field rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cal­i­for­nia State Assem­bly­woman Sal­ly Lieber. Usman was assist­ed by sev­er­al CAIR-CA offi­cials cur­rent­ly or for­mer­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, including:

• Amer Rashid, CAIR-CA’s Leg­isla­tive & Gov­ern­ment Affairs Man­ag­er, who has worked as a Leg­isla­tive Aide in the Office of Cal­i­for­nia State Assem­bly­woman Eloise Gómez Reyes and serves on the Board of the Arab Cau­cus with­in the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party

• Fayaz Nawabi, CAIR Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy Man­ag­er for the Greater Los Ange­les Area, who since 2017 serves as Assem­bly Dis­trict Del­e­gate of the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party

Anoth­er co-author, CAIR-Sacra­men­to Val­ley Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy Man­ag­er Ous­sama Mokke­dem, in the past, has worked as North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Region­al Coor­di­na­tor for the Mus­lim Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion-West, anoth­er group tied to the USMB.

While the guide can­not explic­it­ly claim favor­a­bil­i­ty of one can­di­date over anoth­er due to lim­i­ta­tions regard­ing US non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, it rates each leg­is­la­tor’s votes‘ pos­i­tive’ or ‘neg­a­tive’ depend­ing on how close­ly they cor­re­spond with civ­il rights and social jus­tice pri­or­i­ties iden­ti­fied by CAIR. In the guide, Repub­li­can state and fed­er­al law­mak­ers gen­er­al­ly scored low­er than their Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­ter­parts, while Cal­i­forn­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Dianne Fein­stein and 2020 Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kamala Har­ris received a favor­able score of eight and nine out of ten, respectively.

Sen­a­tor Har­ris has a his­to­ry of coop­er­at­ing with CAIR and was also among a group of Demo­c­rat law­mak­ers send­ing let­ters of sup­port to the orga­ni­za­tion in 2018. When Har­ris ran for the Sen­ate in 2016, CAIR-CA’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee donat­ed to her cam­paign. In Decem­ber 2015, Har­ris host­ed CAIR for an inter­faith com­mu­ni­ty event fol­low­ing the jihadist ter­ror­ist attack in San Bernardi­no that also fea­tured sev­er­al oth­er groups tied to the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, includ­ing the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil and the Mus­lim Stu­dents Association-West.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) recent­ly report­ed that CAIR was part of a coali­tion of Mus­lim and Arab groups tied to the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that has launched a vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve aimed at get­ting vot­ers reg­is­tered for the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and whose lead­ers  are strong­ly opposed to Don­ald Trump.

The GIOR also report­ed CAIR was part of a group of Amer­i­can Mus­lim advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions tied to the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that has under­tak­en a pre-elec­tion “Mus­lims In Amer­i­ca Pol­i­cy Poll,” sur­vey­ing 1,500 peo­ple in 45 states in which par­tic­i­pants were asked to pri­or­i­tize pol­i­cy issues.

The Coun­cil of Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions  describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group and as “Amer­i­ca’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” CAIR was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time.

For more on CAIR, go here.