Doha Meeting of International Muslim Brotherhood Leaders Features CAIR Executive Director

On 28 May 2022, Nihad Awad, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR), par­tic­i­pat­ed in a meet­ing of Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) lead­ers in the Qatari cap­i­tal of Doha. Accord­ing to a Face­book post by the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars (IUMS):

His Emi­nence Sheikh Dr. Ali Al Qura Daghi, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the [IUMS], held a din­ner ban­quet in hon­or of a num­ber of lead­ers of Islam­ic insti­tu­tions, sci­en­tists, researchers, aca­d­e­mics and media per­sons who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 14th Doha Con­fer­ence for Inter­faith Dia­logue. [Trans­lat­ed from Ara­bic orig­i­nal using Google.]

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Accord­ing to the post, dis­cus­sion top­ics includ­ed Pales­tine, Islam­o­pho­bia, and Mus­lim minor­i­ty soci­eties. In addi­tion to sev­er­al IUMS offi­cials, the gath­er­ing fea­tured GMB lead­ers from across the globe, including:

• Nihad Awad, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions Coun­cil (CAIR)

• Abu Jar­ra Sul­tani, an IUMS mem­ber and head of the Alger­ian GMB par­ty Move­ment of Soci­ety for Peace.

• Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, an IUMS mem­ber and the for­mer Grand Mufti of Aus­tralia. Mohammed is known for his misog­y­nist views and in 2015, was crit­i­cized for not con­demn­ing the Paris ter­ror­ist attacks.

• Abdel-Hamid Al-Ham­di, Chair­man of the Dan­ish Islam­ic Coun­cil, a mem­ber of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims. Al-Ham­di also serves as Chair­man of the Hamad bin Khal­i­fa Cen­tre in Copen­hagen, fund­ed by the Emir of Qatar.

Found­ed in 2004, the IUMS is an inter­na­tion­al body of Mus­lim the­olo­gians whose lead­er­ship is close­ly tied to the GMB and, until recent­ly, was led by GMB spir­i­tu­al guide Youssef Qaradawi. Sev­er­al promi­nent Euro­pean Mus­lim faith lead­ers tied to the GMB were IUMS mem­bers and/or have served as IUMS Trus­tees, includ­ing for­mer Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Islam­ic Stud­ies pro­fes­sor Tariq Ramadan and Ahmed Jabal­lah, a senior leader in the French and Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

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. Recent­ly, CAIR has been gen­er­al­ly por­trayed in the media as a Mus­lim civ­il rights group.

In Octo­ber 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that the IUMS had wel­comed a Tal­iban lead­er­ship del­e­ga­tion from the then new­ly estab­lished Islam­ic Emi­rate of Afghanistan to their head­quar­ters in Doha, where they vowed future col­lab­o­ra­tion. In April 2022, the GIOR report­ed that the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the IUMS Jerusalem Com­mit­tee claimed in a Turk­ish TV inter­view that Jews had insti­gat­ed the war in Ukraine to estab­lish a Jew­ish state in Ukraine, replac­ing Israel.