The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, honors New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie in a new report on “Islamophobia” that was released on September 19. The Clarion Project has played a leading role in exposing Christie’s associations with Islamists.
The new report, Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States, has a list of people and groups that CAIR praises for “their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends in 2011 and 2012.”
The second name on the list is N.J. Governor Chris Christie, who is cruising to an easy re-election and a new CNN poll shows is leading the pack for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
CAIR’s write-up on Christie points out what he said in August 2011 when he attacked those warning about the attempts by Islamist elements to introduce sharia law into the U.S. legal system: “This Sharia law business is just crap. It’s just crazy and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”
Christie has long defended Imam Mohamed Qatanani, a Hamas-linked cleric that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport from the country. Qatanani’s attorney, Sohail Mohammed, was appointed by Christie to serve as a state Superior Court Judge.
In 2012, the Clarion Project broke the news that four Islamists, including Qatanani, sit on Christie’s Muslim outreach committee. Christie’s Attorney General that oversees the committee, Jeffrey Chiesa, was appointed by Christie to serve as an interim state Senator.
Earlier this month, Clarion learned that these Islamists remain on the committee and continue to meet with the top tier on N.J. law enforcement. A fifth member was also identified as a convicted felon. Shockingly, on June 5, the committee members were briefed on how non-profit organizations can win Homeland Security grants.
The only other time Christie has acknowledged the criticism of his Islamist ties was at an Iftar dinner at the Governor’s Mansion on July 24, 2012 that had Qatanani as an attendee. He insulted his critics and those of Qatanani as “bigots.”
“You’ll all be fascinated to learn that in many publications around the country, I’m called an Islamist,” Christie said.
“These are the kind of red herrings that people put up who are bigots, who want to judge people based upon their religious beliefs, want to judge people with a broad bush,” he stated.
Christie told the Muslim audience that the criticism is part of a “gaze of intolerance that’s going around our country that’s disturbing.”
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) was also honored by CAIR for his criticism of the House Homeland Security hearings on homegrown Islamic terrorism.
The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood listed CAIR’s predecessor, the Islamic Association for Palestine, as one of its fronts in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood strategic memorandum. The memo says its “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…"
The U.S. government designated CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financial trial in U.S. history, involving the Holy Land Foundation, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. CAIR was described by federal prosecutors as an “entity” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body set up to politically and financially support the terrorist group Hamas.
CAIR’s endorsement should be another warning sign to Christie that he’s on the wrong side.
