Letter to the Editor
The Washington Post
1 Franklin Square
Washington, D.C. 20071
Dear Editor:
In “Jewish schools boost security as protests intensify” and “Some in GOP test free speech in targeting of campus protesters’ visas” (both October 22), The Post identifies the Council on American-Islamic Relations as “a national civil rights group” and “the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”
CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in this country’s largest terrorism funding trial to date, the 2009 federal retrial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development case. Five men were convicted of raising $12 million for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that committed the October 7 massacres in Israel. One of the five, co-founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter, Ghassan Elashi received a 65-year sentence.
Over the years four other CAIR lay leaders or staffers have been arrested, convicted and/or deported on weapons or terrorism charges.
In 2005, CAIR agreed to an out-of-court settlement of its libel suit against a critical website. The settlement let stand charges that the group was founded by Hamas members, founded by Islamic terrorists and funded by Hamas.
Council co-founder Omar Ahmad once declared that the Quran, Islam’s scripture, “should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
CAIR claims to speak for American Muslims, but a U.S. Appeals Court ruling suggested the organization be tried for fraud. It had been accused of defrauding hundreds of people who had relied on the group for legal aid. In 2019, after two adverse legal decisions, CAIR settled with several of the plaintiffs.
CAIR is to civil rights like professional wrestling is to sports, but more deceptive.
Sincerely,
Eric Rozenman
Communications Consultant
Jewish Policy Center
