The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations’ ties to terrorism are not limited to Hamas and cross over to al-Qaida, America’s No. 1 enemy, a top-selling new book alleges.
In just one of several shocking and previously unreported findings, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America” details a secret meeting between CAIR’s founding chairman and al-Qaida’s spiritual leader in America – blind Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman – who is now a convicted terrorist. Al-Qaida’s top leaders have vowed revenge for the federal imprisonment of the Egyptian-born cleric.
CAIR has come under fire in the past for supporting the Blind Sheik, who was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing investigation. But the group maintains “this is a lie. No evidence substantiating this falsehood has ever been offered.”
However, “Muslim Mafia” – co-authored by former federal agent P. David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry – reveals that around the time the Blind Sheik was plotting to bomb major New York landmarks, he traveled from New York to San Jose, Calif., to meet privately with Omar M. Ahmad, CAIR’s long-time chairman, who is now under active federal investigation.
The CAIR leader allegedly hosted the senior al-Qaida figure and his phalanx of bodyguards at his home, according to the book. Just a few years later, the Blind Sheik’s longtime Egyptian friend Ayman al-Zawahiri, now second in command of al-Qaida, showed up at a San Jose mosque led by Ahmad and other Muslim Brotherhood figures. The mosque hosted a fundraiser for him.
Ahmad, aka Omar Yehia, this year abruptly stepped down from CAIR’s national board after U.S. prosecutors named him an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal plot led by the Holy Land Foundation charity to underwrite Palestinian terrorism. The trial, which ended in convictions on all 108 felony counts, marked the largest terror-financing case in U.S. history.
“During that trial,” assistant FBI Director Richard C. Powers this April wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and its Executive Director) and ... HAMAS, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.”
But Hamas is not the only terrorist group connected to CAIR, which claims to be a moderate civil-rights advocacy group. Its ties to al-Qaida raise even more alarms.
Among other revelations in the heavily footnoted book, which is based on some 12,000 pages of confidential documents collected from inside CAIR’s headquarters:
- A senior CAIR official, operating out of its national building, worked closely with the imam who ministered to some of the 9/11 hijackers and whom U.S. authorities now believe to be a top al-Qaida recruiter. Former CAIR civil-rights coordinator and spokesman Ismail Royer – who was hired by CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper – also led a jihadist group who trained to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan alongside an al-Qaida sleeper agent recently convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush.
- According to visitors logs and other records obtained by “Muslim Mafia,” CAIR’s acting executive director met at CAIR’s headquarters with relatives of the al-Qaida agent and personally traveled to Saudi Arabia with them demanding the confessed terrorist’s release from the custody of Saudi police and the FBI.
- After 9/11, a former UAE defense minister who supplied Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan took a controlling $978,000 stake in CAIR’s headquarters property, located just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. UAE served as the operational and financial base for the 9/11 hijackers.
- As a secret U.S. underboss of the dangerous Brotherhood, which spawned both Hamas and al-Qaida, CAIR founder Ahmad helped support a pro-jihad Islamic compound in Guyana run by the father of the most wanted al-Qaida sleeper agent in the world – Adnan El-Shukrijuma. U.S. officials believe he has been handpicked by al-Qaida leadership to carry out a nuclear 9/11. His late father served as the Blind Sheik’s interpreter.
- One of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America – convicted terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi – served as a CAIR board member.
CAIR denies ties to terror. “Nothing we do is illegal,” CAIR Chairman Larry Shaw said.
And CAIR spokesman Hooper insists the group has condemned al-Qaida.
However in 2001, when most of the civilized world condemned bin Laden for attacking New York and Washington, CAIR abstained for more than three months, while blaming instead “the Zionist network” and demanding a halt to U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s home base.
In an interview with journalist Jake Tapper, now with ABC News, Hooper refused to condemn bin Laden outright for 9/11, even after the government stated he was clearly responsible for the attacks.
In fact, CAIR didn’t assign guilt to the 9/11 mastermind, even under direct questions from the press, until bin Laden incriminated himself in a videotape aired in December 2001. (And even in Hooper’s belated press release, the group does not expressly condemn bin Laden. It merely concedes the undeniably obvious fact that he is connected to “the events of September 11.”)
On the other hand, CAIR has suggested Jews were behind 9/11, the book says.
A month after the attacks, with Ground Zero still smoldering, “CAIR made outrageous claims that Mohamed Atta and other hijackers were alive, that Atta’s passport was stolen, that the attacks were not caused by Muslims, and that the media should investigate the Israelis,” it argues.
“What about the world Zionist network?” demanded CAIR’s New York executive director Ghazi Khankan. “Why are you in the media not looking at them?”
CAIR has even rushed to the defense of al-Qaida’s kingpin.
In 1998, after bin Laden was fingered for blowing up the U.S. embassies, CAIR demanded that Los Angeles-area billboards with his picture under the headline “Sworn Enemy” be taken down.
CAIR has received funding from two of bin Laden’s favorite charities.
In 2000, for example, CAIR research director Mohamed Nimer solicited $18,000 from the Global Relief Foundation, reveals an internal letter featured in “Muslim Mafia.”
The donation was made a year before the Bridgeview, Illinois-based foundation was shut down as a charitable front for al-Qaida. Global Relief, in fact, helped fund the bombings of the U.S. embassies, according to the Treasury Department.
And the U.S. offices of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization contributed at least $12,000 in financing to CAIR. The Treasury Department has blacklisted IIRO’s branches in the Philippines and Indonesia for fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.
CAIR has maintained that it receives “no foreign support.” However, “Muslim Mafia” uncovered wire transfers showing members of the Saudi royal government pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars directly into CAIR’s bank account at Citibank.
Cementing CAIR’s support for bin Laden is a 2004 political “talking points” memo found by the authors in CAIR chief Awad’s personal files dealing with the agenda of the so-called American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, which CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts formed after 9/11 to help elect more sympathetic politicians, including the president. The memo is basically a wish list for pro-Islamist changes in Washington policy.
Under the heading “American-Islamic Relations,” which are the last three words in CAIR’s name, the memo recommends Washington abandon Israel and start currying favor with bin Laden and al-Qaida to avoid another 9/11.
Under talking point No. 8, the memo advises the U.S. to “attempt to understand Islamic movements in the area, and start supporting Islamic groups including Mr. bin Laden and his associates.”
CAIR and the 9/11 imam
The 9/11 imam, top al-Qaida recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, is considered a rock star among jihadists, and has cultivated some fans among CAIR officials. Hooper’s protege Royer and his terrorist cell chauffeured al-Awlaki around Washington as he looked for new terrorist recruits. Prosecutors also found his phone number stored on their cell phones.
Currently heading his booster club within the organization, with Royer now behind bars, is the civil-rights coordinator for CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, Affad Shaikh, who has listened to al-Awlaki’s lectures and posted links to his Web site on his blog Muslamics, the book says.
Shaikh, who in 2008 was questioned by Homeland Security agents near San Diego, appears to have a death wish.
“In death there is something to celebrate,” he recently wrote on his blog in a post titled “Celebrating Death.” The essay mirrors one al-Awlaki previously posted on another Web site titled “Why Muslims Love Death.”
“Our culture of martyrdom needs to be revived,” the imam preaches, “because the enemy of Allah fears nothing more than our love of death.”
Global Islamic domination is the goal.
“We will implement the rule of Allah on earth by the tip of the sword whether the masses like it or not,” al-Awlaki has written.
The U.S. Justice Department recently blacklisted CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator and a U.S.-based front for the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that seeks to institutionalize Shariah law in America through mass conversion and political infiltration.
The FBI last year severed ties to CAIR, citing evidence that its leaders were participating in an “ongoing” conspiracy to support terrorists.
An FBI official in Washington says the Brotherhood and al-Qaida share the same goals but use different methods to achieve them.
“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics,”
“Muslim Mafia” quotes the official saying.