The roots of the Council on American Islamic Relation's [CAIR] intimidation program

The roots of the Council on American Islamic Relation's [CAIR] intimidation program [Excerpts]

In January 1993, a new, left-leaning U.S. administration, inclined to be more sympathetic to the Islamist clause, came to power. But before he could bat an eye, President Bill Clinton was confronted by the murder and depraved mutilation of American soldiers in Somalia. A few weeks later, on February 26, jihadists bombed the World Trade Center. The public was angry and appeasing Islamists would have to wait. Yasser Arafat, however, sensed opportunity.

If Arafat could resell his “I renounce terrorism” carpet yet again, chances were he could cash in. And so he did, purporting to commit the Palestinians to the 1993 Oslo Accords — an empty promise of peaceful coexistence exchanged for hundreds of millions in aid (much of which he pocketed), an open invitation to the Clinton White House (where he became a regular visitor), international recognition (as a statesman, no less!), and a ludicrous Nobel Peace Prize (forever degrading a once prestigious honor into a punch line).

Though the United States had been a cash cow for Hamas, it was thus a perilous time for the organization when 25 of its members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993. They were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: How best to back Hamas and derail Oslo while concealing these activities from the American government?

A little more background to the Philadelphia meeting: For nearly two decades until his extradition in 1997, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook was the most consequential Muslim Brotherhood operative in the United States. In the early Nineties, he actually ran the terrorist organization from his home in Virginia.

In the United States, the “political work” was crucial. The overarching mission, of course, was quite clear. As the IAP had explained in a December 1988 edition of its Arabic magazine, Ila Filastin, “The call for jihad in the name of Allah is the only path for liberation of Palestine and all the Muslim lands. We promise Allah, continuing the jihad way and the martyrdom’s way.” But while blatant summonses to jihad might stir the faithful in Islamic countries openly hostile to Jews, they were not going to fly in America…The Brotherhood’s approach in the U.S. would have to be more subtle.

That was where the new organization would come in, as those gathered in Philadelphia — including Marzook’s brother-in-law and HLF co-founder Ghassan Elashi — explained. Although the Brotherhood had ideological depth and impressive fundraising mechanisms, Marzook had long been concerned that his network lacked the media and political savvy needed to advance an agenda in modern America. Now more than ever, they needed what HLF’s Shukri Abu Baker called “a media twinkle.”

Nihad Awad, then the IAP’s public-relations director, was also a Philadelphia conferee. Indeed, the FBI’s recordings showed him to be an active participant, though he, too, later testified to a bout of amnesia about the meeting. No wonder: He had ardently concurred in Ahmad’s suggestions about adopting “different but parallel types of address.” “When I speak with the American,” he elaborated, “I speak with someone who doesn’t know anything. As for the Palestinian who has a martyr brother or something, I know how to address him, you see?” Shukri Abu Baker, the head of HLF (who was eventually convicted of financing Hamas), concurred in that sentiment. The Islamists were at war, he reminded his confederates, and, as the prophet Mohammed counseled, “War is deception.”

In 1994, less than a year after the Philadelphia Hamas meeting, the Islamists unleashed their new organization: the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Just as the Palestine Committee by-laws had foretold, CAIR sprang from the womb of IAP and set up its headquarters in the nation’s capital. 

Actually, CAIR was already in existence and firmly in the Brotherhood fold even before its incorporation was announced. We know that because, in preparing for a meeting held on July 30, 1994, the Palestine Committee prepared a written agenda that was later seized by the FBI. It stated that a top discussion topic would be “suggestions to develop work” for several named “organizations.” Included among these was “CAIR,” in addition to the IAP and HLF, among others. The agenda elucidated that “complete coordination” was sought among the various groups. Critically, it stressed that the effort was under Brotherhood direction: “This is not a separate movement from the mother Group.”

The principal aim of that Palestine Committee meeting was the development of a plan to counter efforts by Israel and American Jewish groups to normalize relations between Jews and Muslims. According to the Committee, such normalization would break what Edward Said, the late Islamist academic, called the “psychological barrier” — the mindset that prevents Muslims from accepting Israel’s right to exist. 

The Committee was determined to fortify this barrier. The meeting agenda explains some of its plans toward that end. It would form “an internal Brotherhood committee to fight the normalization of relations and monitor brotherhood organizations.” It would activate the “MAS” [i.e., the Muslim-American Society -- the Brotherhood’s quasi-official presence in the U.S.] to conduct education programs in “all work centers, mosques, and organizations on the necessity of stopping any contacts with the Zionist organizations and the rejection of any future contacts.” And, relying on Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna’s strategy of using “Islamic Centers in major cities” as the axis of the Islamist movement, imams and administrators in these centers would “activate their role in confronting the [Jewish] infiltration of their organizations.” 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375620/roots-cairs-intimidation-campaign-andrew-c-mccarthy