US Muslim Brotherhood Groups Criticize Insurance Company for Cancelling Event With Controversial Anti-Israel Activist

On 8 April 2022, a coali­tion of US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood groups released a joint state­ment con­demn­ing US insur­ance com­pa­ny GEICO for abrupt­ly can­cel­ing an employ­ee diver­si­ty event to have been head­lined by con­tro­ver­sial Mus­lim activist Lin­da Sar­sour, accused of anti-Semi­tism. Accord­ing to the state­ment on the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) website:

We strong­ly con­demn GEICO for bow­ing down to anti-Mus­lim and anti-Pales­tin­ian hate groups, can­cel­ing an event meant to cel­e­brate Nation­al Arab Amer­i­can Her­itage Month and smear­ing one of our nation’s most promi­nent and impact­ful activists. GEICO must imme­di­ate­ly delete its false, defam­a­to­ry and unac­cept­able attack on Lin­da Sar­sour, who has vocal­ly advo­cat­ed for jus­tice for all peo­ple and repeat­ed­ly fought against Islam­o­pho­bia, anti­semitism, xeno­pho­bia, and all oth­er forms of hatred.

Read the rest here.

CAIR Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Nihad Awad also penned an open let­ter to the GEICO CEO in which he called the deci­sion to can­cel the event “unac­cept­able” and “insult­ing” to the nation’s Arab-Amer­i­can and Mus­lim communities.

Lead­ers of Jew­ish advo­ca­cy groups had crit­i­cized the com­pa­ny for host­ing Sar­sour, point­ing to her his­to­ry of mak­ing anti-Semit­ic state­ments, includ­ing say­ing that Israel was “built on the idea that Jews are supreme to every­one else.” GEICO sub­se­quent­ly can­celed the event, issu­ing an apol­o­gy to “employ­ees, cus­tomers, and oth­ers for our ini­tial plan.”

Co-sig­na­to­ries of the state­ment includ­ed CAIR and numer­ous oth­er orga­ni­za­tions part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) net­work in the US, including:

• Unit­ed States Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions, com­prised of 35 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing almost every impor­tant com­po­nent of the GMB in the US

• MPow­er Change, a US Mus­lim civ­il rights NGO where Sar­sour serves as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, and that has coop­er­at­ed with impor­tant orga­ni­za­tions of the GMB in the US

• Islam­ic Cir­cle of North Amer­i­ca Coun­cil for Social Jus­tice (ICNA-CSJ), part of the GMB in the US

• Moga­hed Con­sult­ing, LLC, a con­sult­ing firm found­ed by Dalia Moga­hed, Direc­tor of Research at the US Insti­tute for Social Pol­i­cy and Under­stand­ing, a group whose Board of Advi­sors and staff includes promi­nent fig­ures in the GMB in the US

Lin­da Sar­sour has become known for her harsh crit­i­cism of Israel, and in 2012, our pre­de­ces­sor pub­li­ca­tion was the first to report Sarsour’s fam­i­ly ties to Hamas. In Sep­tem­ber 2019, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Lin­da Sar­sour had resigned as co-chair of the Women’s March move­ment fol­low­ing accu­sa­tions of anti-Semi­tism and finan­cial mis­man­age­ment. In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Sar­sour par­tic­i­pat­ed in an “Amer­i­can Mus­lim Pub­lic Ser­vant of 2021 Award” event host­ed by CAIR.

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.

For more on CAIR, go here.