Nihad Awad

Nihad Awad, born in 1964 in Amman, Jor­dan, is the co-founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR), an orga­ni­za­tion advo­cat­ing for Mus­lim civ­il rights in the Unit­ed States. Before found­ing CAIR in 1994, Awad worked for the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine (IAP), which has been described as part of Hamas’s U.S. infra­struc­ture. Awad attend­ed a 1993 meet­ing in Philadel­phia involv­ing senior Hamas affil­i­ates and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions to dis­cuss strate­gies against the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian peace process, accord­ing to FBI wire­taps. He has also faced crit­i­cism for express­ing sup­port for Hamas dur­ing a 1994 sem­i­nar. More recent­ly, Awad sparked out­rage with remarks at a Novem­ber 2023 con­fer­ence where he described Hamas’s Octo­ber 7 attack on Israel as Gazans “break­ing the siege” and referred to their actions as self-defense while deny­ing Israel’s right to self-defense. Awad’s com­ments, which includ­ed anti­se­mit­ic tropes about U.S. polit­i­cal influ­ence, were strong­ly con­demned by the White House and Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions, lead­ing to pub­lic crit­i­cism and dis­tanc­ing by officials.

Ref­er­ences:

1. Wikipedia (Eng­lish) — Nihad Awad

2. Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch

3. CAIR Offi­cial Profile

4. The Mus­lim 500 Profile

5. DAWN Pro­file

6. All4Palestine Pro­file

7. The New York Times