NOCMES |
The Northeast Ohio Consortium for Middle East Studies (NOCMES), comprising Oberlin, Cleveland State, John Carroll, Kent State, Baldwin Wallace, Case Western, plus Hathaway Brown, is sponsoring a lecture series to with the mission of “bringing Middle Eastern scholarship to Northeast Ohio.” Yet this mission is supported in part by the Ohio chapter of CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), an organization that has been linked by the United States government to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
On Wednesday, May 2, NOCMES will host a luncheon featuring Naif al-Mutawa at the City Club of Cleveland for a talk on “Art, Narrative and Muslim Identity.” Later that evening he will appear at Baldwin Wallace College. Mutawa is the CEO of the company that has produced the first series of comic books with Muslim superheroes and primarily non-Muslim villains.
The talk is sponsored by NOCMES’ series “New Perspectives on Muslim and Middle East Societies,” a program funded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), which is funded partially by U.S. taxpayers through the State Department and the National Science Foundation.
CAIR: Linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Shunned by the FBI
The FBI severed all ties with CAIR in January 2009. In March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller reaffirmed this policy to the House Judiciary Committee.
The CAIR-Ohio chapter with which NOCMES has partnered is among the most radical CAIR chapters in the country, with a long list of troubling episodes, including:
- In 1999, CAIR-Ohio rushed to the aid of Muhammad al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, the two men who the 9/11 Commission and the FBI identified as the 9/11 “dry run” hijackers.
- The keynote speaker for CAIR-Ohio’s 1999 annual fundraising banquet was al-Qaeda financier and CAIR national advisory board member Abdurahman Alamoudi, who pled guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
- In 2001 CAIR-Ohio held a fundraiser for the defense of cop-killer and regular CAIR speaker Jamil Amin, convicted of gunning down a Georgia deputy. In October 2009, the FBI said that Amin continued to lead his violent organization from the federal Supermax prison in Colorado.
- Just a few months before 9/11, CAIR-Ohio attacked the mayor of a Columbus suburb for flying the Israeli flag on the city hall flag pole in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
- In 2006 CAIR-Ohio hosted Siraj Wahhaj - an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial - as the keynote speaker at its annual fundraising dinner.
- In 2007 CAIR-Ohio President Ahmad al-Akhras promoted an upcoming event for notorious 9/11 denier David Ray Griffin. In 2009, he reportedly sent his high school-aged daughter on a Hamas support convoy across the Middle East, where the group met with several Hamas leaders and was greeted by several designated terrorists.
- The annual fundraising banquet for CAIR-Cleveland in April 2009 featured as its keynote speaker former Hamas fundraiser Monzer Taleb, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial - the largest terrorism financing trial in American history. Videos entered into evidence during the trial by federal prosecutors show Taleb at Hamas fundraisers singing with a group glorifying the killing of Jews.
Contact the administrations of these six colleges and universities to let them know that you object to their partnership with CAIR.
Cleveland State University President Ronald M. Berkman:
Ms. Shane Connor
s.c.connor@csuohio.edu
Tel: 216-687-3544
Case Western Reserve University President Barbara R. Snyder:
Tel: 216-368-4344
Fax: 216-368-4325
Email: barbara.snyder@case.edu
Kent State University President Lester A. Lefton: Tel:330-672-3000
Baldwin-Wallace College President Richard W. Durst: rdurst@bw.edu
For more information on this case, see the Campus Watch-sponsored article, “Ohio Colleges Partner with Hamas-Founded CAIR,” by Ohio journalist Patrick Poole, published April 30, 2012, at PJ Media.
Campus Watch: A Project of the Middle East Forum
