Council on American Islamic Relations

Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group” and “America’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties orga­ni­za­tion.” Found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine (IAP)—an enti­ty iden­ti­fied as part of the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture at the time—CAIR has long been linked to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work in the Unit­ed States. Doc­u­ments intro­duced dur­ing the 2007–2008 Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al estab­lished that CAIR’s founders and cur­rent lead­ers were part of the Brotherhood’s U.S. Pales­tine Com­mit­tee, cre­at­ed to sup­port Hamas, and that CAIR itself was a com­po­nent of this struc­ture. In 2008, the Deputy Leader of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood pub­licly acknowl­edged a rela­tion­ship between the Broth­er­hood and CAIR, and in 2009 a U.S. fed­er­al judge ruled that “the Gov­ern­ment has pro­duced ample evi­dence to estab­lish the asso­ci­a­tions of CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT with HLF, the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine, and with Hamas.” Over the years, CAIR and its lead­er­ship have defend­ed indi­vid­u­als accused of ter­ror­ism by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, fre­quent­ly fram­ing such pros­e­cu­tions as part of a broad­er “war on Islam.” The orga­ni­za­tion has also faced crit­i­cism for pro­mot­ing Islamist and anti­se­mit­ic rhetoric. Its long­time Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Nihad Awad—one of CAIR’s orig­i­nal founders—has remained a cen­tral fig­ure. In Decem­ber 2023, the New York Times report­ed that the Biden White House had dis­avowed CAIR after Awad stat­ed that he “was hap­py to see” Pales­tini­ans break out of Gaza on Octo­ber 7, the day of the Hamas ter­ror­ist attack on Israel that killed approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 peo­ple and led to the tak­ing of 240 hostages; Awad lat­er said his remarks were mis­con­strued. Despite these con­tro­ver­sies, CAIR con­tin­ues to oper­ate as a major advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion for Amer­i­can Mus­lims while main­tain­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal ties to the glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Sources:
Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions – Offi­cial Website
CAIR and Extrem­ism – Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Research Cen­ter (PDF)
Inter­view with the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Deputy Leader – PJ Media
U.S. Dis­trict Court Rul­ing on HLF and Asso­ci­at­ed Enti­ties – Inves­tiga­tive Project on Terrorism
Nihad Awad – Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report
White House Dis­avows CAIR After Leader’s Remarks – The New York Times
Coun­cil on American–Islamic Rela­tions – Wikipedia
The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s U.S. Net­work – Hud­son Institute