New York College Assigns Former Leader of Muslim Brotherhood Group to Investigate Anti-Semitism Allegations

US media is report­ing that the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York (CUNY) has tasked Saly Abd Alla, the for­mer civ­il rights direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) Min­neso­ta chap­ter, to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of anti-Semi­tism made by a CUNY Kings­bor­ough Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege pro­fes­sor. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the NY Post:

Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022 Vernikov and SAFE CUNY – a group of stu­dents and fac­ul­ty fight­ing against anti­semitism on CUNY cam­pus­es – were refer­ring to a report in the Dai­ly Caller detail­ing CUNY’s assign­ment of chief diver­si­ty offi­cer Saly Abd Alla, a for­mer employ­ee of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions, to an ongo­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion case tied to CUNY’s Kings­bor­ough Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Lax.

Read the rest here.

Saly Abd Alla over­sees dis­crim­i­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tions at CUNY, which encom­pass­es 25 cam­pus­es and near­ly 300,000 stu­dents, and is also the CUNY Chief Diver­si­ty Offi­cer. She for­mer­ly served as civ­il rights direc­tor of CAIR Minnesota

Jef­frey Lax, an ortho­dox Jew, had filed a com­plaint after sus­pect­ing that anti-Zion­ist fac­ul­ty mem­bers at CUNY’s Kings­bor­ough Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege were plot­ting to exclude him from appear­ing at a March 2018 meet­ing to dis­cuss alleged dis­crim­i­na­tion against LGBT mem­bers on cam­pus by delib­er­ate­ly sched­ul­ing it on a Fri­day night––the start of the Sabbath––so he couldn’t attend. Since 2013, there have been numer­ous reports of anti-Semit­ic inci­dents at CUNY, includ­ing swastikas carved into doors and a high-rank­ing uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tor alleged­ly com­plain­ing about “too many Jews” on the faculty.

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 founders. Recent­ly, CAIR has been gen­er­al­ly por­trayed in the media as a Mus­lim civ­il rights group. In 2008, the then Deputy leader of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood acknowl­edged a rela­tion­ship between the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood and CAIR. In 2009, a US fed­er­al judge ruled, “the Gov­ern­ment has pro­duced ample evi­dence to estab­lish the asso­ci­a­tions of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.” CAIR and its lead­ers have had a long his­to­ry of defend­ing indi­vid­u­als accused of ter­ror­ism by the US gov­ern­ment, often label­ing such pros­e­cu­tions a “war on Islam,” and have also been asso­ci­at­ed with Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism and anti-Semitism.

For more on CAIR, go here.