The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which according to FBI evidence was founded by the Egyptian-based, Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood, has filed more than 150 lawsuits over a two-year period that have been aimed at stifling speech – all with the goal of hiding “Islamic realities,” according to a think tank’s report.
CAIR has been described by authorities as a front group for Hamas to promote Islam in the U.S.
It was the Florida-based national security think tank Citizens for National Security that released the report, “Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation” to every member of Congress.
CFNS co-founder William Saxton said the study focuses on CAIR’s practice of “lawfare” to silence critics and force corporations, private citizens and charitable organizations to pay large sums of money to settle lawsuits out of court.
Saxton said the two-year task force project found CAIR has filed more than 150 lawsuits with the intention of silencing critics.
“CAIR has a pattern of behavior and a specific campaign of intimidation to stifle free speech. By stifling free speech, they’re hoping to prevent the public from seeing Islamic realities,” Saxton said.
Peter Leitner, also a co-founder for CFNS, confirmed other Islam analysts’ findings that the Muslim Brotherhood established CAIR to engage in “misinformation.”
“CAIR is the operational part of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. As such, and as part of Hamas, they’re the domestic side of an international terrorist group. What they’re doing is psychological operations,” Leitner said.
“Their mission to do misinformation and psy-ops is for the purpose of supporting jihadist movements in the United States and Canada,” Leitner said.
Contacted by WND, CAIR declined to respond to a request for comment.
Some of CAIR’s activities came to light during the Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial.
Leitner says CAIR hopes to stay one step ahead of the public.
“More people in the U. S. know about CAIR and their connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. But they’re hoping that not enough people will recognize who they are until the Muslim population in the U. S. can grow big enough to be politically powerful enough,” Leitner said.
Leitner said CAIR’s “masquerade is to divert attention from the Islamic threat in the U. S. by oversensitizing law enforcement and intelligence officials.”
“To make that happen, they’ve infiltrated their agents into the various national security agencies,” Leitner said.
CAIR intimidates the government agencies into providing “trainers” for law enforcement, he pointed out.
“They want to provide sensitivity training to misdirect people’s attention away from the real threat,” he said, and “stifle free speech among critics of Islam via lawsuits and further threats of legal action.”
Leitner explained that the Muslim Brotherhood begin infiltrating universities and colleges in the U.S. in 1962 through the Muslim Students Association, beginning with Palestinians and later through Pakistanis.
A significant portion of Muslim Brotherhood funding comes from outside the U.S., Leitner noted.
The money, Leitner says, is used to fund an entire network of Islamic groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Along with stifling free speech, Leitner points to a second major purpose.
Groups such as the Muslim American Society, Muslims of the Americas and Jam’at al-Fuqua, which began in 1980, have infiltrated the culture enough that American converts to Islam have formed their own groups.
“John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, is an example of one of their converts. We all know he ended up in Afghanistan fighting against U. S. troops,” Leitner said.
Leitner added that the method employed once influence has been gained is disinformation.
“Their greatest work is to create a grand illusion of a peaceful religion to distract attention from what their real plan is,” Leitner said.
He also says the lawfare tactics ares fundraising mechanism.
He cited a fight with Nike.
“They threatened to boycott if Nike didn’t change their logo because ‘it looked like’ the Arabic name for Allah at a great distance,” Leitner said.
CAIR forced Nike to apologize to the Islamic community, globally recalled the shoes in question, cooperated with CAIR in a redesign of logos and images and donated $50,000 to the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Washington, D.C., for playground equipment.
The report has details on CAIR’s 150 lawsuits or cases against government agencies, corporations and private foundations.
“CAIR even went after the producers of ‘South Park’ for how they portrayed Muhammad. They’ve gone after cartoonists, TV producers and tea party groups,” Leitner said.
Leitner said the sheer volume of CAIR’s legal actions prompted U. S. law enforcement agencies to dig into CAIR’s extended relationships and connections. Once the FBI and city police departments began to investigate, they found CAIR had connections to the network of the “blind sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Leitner said CAIR takes advantage of constitutional freedoms “to deny us our freedoms.”
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., a frequent advocate for persecuted Christians, affirmed that his committee research shows that CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated terrorist organizations pose a real security threat.
“The threat is real and I serve on the committee that has jurisdiction of the FBI. We’ve put language in a bill that will completely prevent the FBI from involving themselves with CAIR,” Wolf said.
“An example of the depth of the threat comes from the Somali al-Qaida-affiliate al-Shabaab. Imams recruit for al-Shabaab from Somali groups in Minneapolis. Not only that, they’re telling Somalis not to cooperate with federal authorities who are investigating the Somali mosques,” Wolf said.
The FBI has become more cautious in its dealings with CAIR, he said, as has his committee.
“I know we’ve been very careful interacting with any group that is involved with CAIR,” Wolf said. “I refused to go to any group that has connections to CAIR.”