Reform CAIR

Two years ago today, CAIR sent to its community a press release it knew was reckless with the facts, and would likely cause harm to its target, a former senior staff member who was a vocal critic and whom it had unsuccessfully sued for defamation.

Ever since I read internal communications of CAIR from 2016 in which leaders discussed the allegations by a woman who claimed to be a former secret wife of the director of CAIR-Florida, I have known what little regard CAIR-National has for the truth.

In its April 16, 2021 press release one day following Leila Fadel’s groundbreaking expose of allegations against it, published by National Public Radio (NPR), CAIR essentially claimed to have had no former knowledge of any of the sexual exploits of the former Florida director, Hassan Shibly.

Muslim-friendly National Public Radio is not going to publish anything critical of CAIR it does not have high confidence in. Thus, the following  paragraph was particularly concerning:

“NPR interviewed a half-dozen Shibly accusers and reviewed internal CAIR documents, social media posts and email exchanges. Together, the accounts portray Shibly as a man who used his position to seduce women and bully critics with impunity.” (See: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/15/984572867/muslim-civil-rights-leader-accused-of-harassment-misconduct)

Social media posts by the secret wife made clear that the two had been intimate. And she was privy to sensitive information regarding a CAIR lawsuit. That notwithstanding, CAIR national director Nihad Awad accepted the Florida director’s claim that the woman was a mere “stalker”, and was a very mean woman besides, and had made the whole thing up.

The person who had vigilantly pursued a proper investigation of the woman’s allegations, then the Director of Chapter Development for CAIR, had been excluded from the all-brothers meeting with the accused, and she was told afterwards to apologize to the Florida director and learn to get along with him.

The alleged secret wife was never interviewed by any representative of CAIR.

Faithful readers of this blog site are by now familiar with all of this. But it is important background to a defamation lawsuit CAIR now faces.

The lawsuit filed this past week was brought by the former Director of Chapter Development herself, Lori Saroya, after a concerted campaign by CAIR-National, including its own defamation lawsuit against her, funded by donors, which CAIR was forced to withdraw for lack of evidence.

When CAIR withdrew that lawsuit in January of 2022, it was time for some soul-searching and house-cleaning. But that is not what happened. Instead, on January 20, 2022, CAIR issued a press release intended to smear Lori in the community, with no more regard for truth–or the mental anguish and harm it was certain to cause Lori–than either its lawsuit, or its April 16, 2021 statement of denial of the allegations, or another letter to the CAIR community dated June 23, 2021.

In that January 20, 2022 statement, CAIR claimed its decision to withdraw its lawsuit was a magnanimous one, to put to rest its dispute with Lori. Unfortunately, it went on to smear her, and accused her of the crime of “cyberstalking”. But that crime includes the intention to do serious harm to someone, which is a gross misconstruction of what Lori has been doing since leaving CAIR in 2018.

In emails and on social media, Lori has been blowing the whistle on CAIR’s tolerance of sexual misconduct, gender and religious discrimination, union-thwarting, and financial mismanagement, etc. Her intent has not been to harm anyone, but to bring accountability to a very visible representative of the Muslim community, and a purported civil rights organization besides.

So now the shoe is on the other foot. CAIR will need to defend itself in court, where, to quote CAIR, “the truth matters”. CAIR has undoubtedly caused harm, and not just psychological harm, to Lori Saroya as well as to multiple other women whose dignity and civil rights CAIR has violated. 

Insha Allah, this lawsuit will finally bring accountability to CAIR-National, since there is apparently no in-house mechanism, nor any in the broader Muslim community, capable of doing so.

Here is a recent article from the Minneapolis StarTribune: https://www.startribune.com/dispute-between-blaine-councilmember-muslim-affairs-group-hurtles-forward-with-new-defamation-suit/600336979/

And here is a link to Lori Saroya’s legal Complaint: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24367247-saroyavcair024cv00110-complete-filing

On December 8, 2023, my wife, our dog Daisy, and I headed to California. Checking into a motel in Green River Utah, we turned on the news. There was Nihad Awad, telling an audience how glad he was to see Gazans on October 7 throwing off their shackles and setting foot on land of which they had been dispossessed decades ago.

Fox News had a field day with that. It undoubtedly fed Islamophobia, for the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to seemingly praise the Hamas attack. And since Islamophobia, real and imagined, keeps CAIR in business, I guess Awad’s talk was all in the way of job security.

The White House went to some effort to distance itself from CAIR, the latter being one of many Muslim organizations the Biden administration was working with to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia.

CAIR then issued a statement explaining that Awad had been referring to non-Hamas Gazans who had crossed the border after Hamas fighters had burst through. That would have been important information to have included in the first place, were it true. 

CAIR’s explanation was no more believable than its claim that it has no tolerance for sexual misconduct.

I did not rush to write this post. And it is just as well. Today the New York Times published an important article on the sexual violence Hamas perpetrated on October 7 (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html?campaign_id=57&emc=edit_ne_20231228&instance_id=111207&nl=the-evening&regi_id=69650493&segment_id=153756&te=1&user_id=442ce0b401d493bbed3b950d84a408c8). As if we needed more evidence of the depravity of Hamas.

The best argument against U.S. support for Netanyahu’s’ “mighty vengeance” on the Palestinians is that it can only create more Hamas recruits among an enraged population. As Arab leaders have put it, anyone who thinks Israel can destroy  Hamas simply does not know what he is talking about.

But as we make this argument, we need to make very clear that Hamas is one big disgrace to Islam, just as Netanyahu and his partners in crime are a total disgrace to Judaism.

Our job is tough enough without  the head of the most visible American Muslim organization seemingly praising Hamas.

As one CAIR chapter official mused some years ago, CAIR has certainly made a name for itself. But is that a good thing for American Muslims?

Preface

Many of the purported eye-witness accounts of sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7 sound credible. For all we can know now, they may indeed have been widespread. It is very important that opponents of Israel’s horrific war not dismiss the allegations of sexual violence, or attempt to debunk them. The truth will come out.

Even without allegations of sexual violence, we know Hamas is a dark and polarizing force. By seeking Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” and then promising more October sevens, Hamas has demonstrated that it is not fit to govern Palestinians in any peaceful and just agreement with Israel. Neither, obviously, is the current Israeli government fit to govern Israelis in a just agreement with the Palestinians.

It is not necessary to mince any words about Hamas to argue that Israel’s war is precisely the wrong approach, and that America should leverage its military assistance to pressure Israel to reverse course.

Dear President Biden,

Anyone paying attention to the war in Gaza can see that it cannot possibly bring security to Israel. The terrible cost in lives is elevating an otherwise unpopular Hamas in the hearts and minds of too many Palestinians. 

Without doubt, this massacre will swell the ranks of those intent on Israel’s destruction.

The only path to security for Israel is to undermine Hamas politically, by reversing course and fully committing to a viable Palestinian state. This will necessitate the relocation of approximately 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Monumental as that task will be, it is the price of security for Israel. With all those settlers relocated, Israel will still retain 78 percent of historical Palestine. 

Were it not for its preponderant military forces which the United States has made possible, Israel would have come to its senses long ago and negotiated a two-state solution. Instead, its excessive might has given Israeli governments a sense of entitlement to more Palestinian land (see: https://getrealwithisrael.com/2023/12/02/israel-and-the-curse-of-excessive-power/).

Especially for Prime Minister Netanyahu, a just peace has never been urgent. Instead, Israel has sought to dominate the Palestinians, by policies and laws that essentially amount to apartheid.

It is time for you, President Biden, and all friends of Israel to insist upon an immediate course correction. To that end, the United States must leverage the massive military aid it provides Israel. 

If this particular Israeli government is not capable of reversing course, we must insist on it in any case.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan

The action alert on Israel’s war on Gaza that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has disseminated is clear and to the point regarding an immediate ceasefire and no new military aid for Israel. But one action item or talking point could use some work. Is is this:

“Acknowledge the loss of lives and recognize the humanity on both sides, including Israelis and Palestinians.”

What does Hamas have to do to convince CAIR, and all who seek peace, security, and self-determination for Palestinians, to unequivocally condemn the organization? 

No one should doubt that the planners of the October 7 Hamas massacre fully anticipated a disproportionate response by Israel. And when that “mighty vengeance” came, a Hamas official promised more attacks like October 7, probably to the delight of some of those vengeance seekers in Tel Aviv.

Can you get any more depraved than that? In whose interests is Hamas acting? 

While condemning the Hamas attack it is nonetheless important to contextualize it, so that people can understand the despair and rage that Palestinians experience after decades of an unjust order being imposed on them, which has been aptly called apartheid. It has included land confiscation and displacement, occupation and its daily burdens and outrages, home demolitions, blockade, excessive military reprisals to Palestinian violence, relentless settlement expansion, settler attacks on Palestinian villagers, mass arrests and military justice which neglects due process, including the routine use of administrative detention.

But if we want people to stick around and listen to all this rather than dismiss us as Hamas apologists, we need to first call Hamas what it is: bad news, period. Hamas is a disgrace to Islam.

Had Hamas attacked Israelis with the single goal of capturing as many adult male hostages as possible, with no more deaths than necessary to accomplish that goal, that would have been different. Instead, large numbers of Israelis suffered horrific deaths. Some parents were murdered in front of their children, and some children murdered in front of their parents. There seem to be plausible evidence and accounts of sexual violence, whether or not it was systematic, as investigations by credible human rights groups will ask.

Israel is guilty of a grave injustice against the Palestinian people, and the ongoing retribution against mostly innocent people in Gaza is barbaric. It disgraces Judaism. The grisly excesses of Hamas do not justify it. 

But Muslims are called to respond to evil with something better. 

In truth, Hamas and Israel’s fanatical government deserve each other. They each certainly derive any legitimacy they enjoy from the other. And both hate all talk of a two-state solution.

Now, if both the Israeli government and Hamas oppose a two-state solution, there must be something good about it. Some people believe the settlement project is too far gone for there to be any hope of a viable Palestinian state. I cannot know. But if both Hamas and the Israeli government fear the idea, all sensible people should give it a fair look.

Israeli leaders, who don’t want to negotiate anyway, claim there is no legitimate Palestinian leadership to negotiate with, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has promoted Hamas over the Palestinian Authority in order to weaken the latter. Perhaps the most promising Palestinian candidate to negotiate with the Israeli government, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli prison (see: https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-barghouti-palestines-nelson-mandela/)

One thing all of us can do is call for the immediate release of Marwan Barghouti, along with the rest of Palestinian prisoners and all of the Israeli hostages, to accompany an immediate ceasefire.  Some people may object that whereas all of the hostages are presumably innocent, not all of the Palestinian prisoners are. But Hamas is not going to release the hostages without such a deal, and every day Israel refuses that deal, at least as many innocent Palestinians are slaughtered, and the risk of a larger conflagration grows.  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will resist that call, and so we will need to take the matter to the White House and every U.S. senator’s and Congressperson’s office. With Netanyahu and his extremist cohorts, the United States needs to push its weight around.

This could be the perfect project to revive Muslim-Jewish cooperation throughout the country, which cooperation undoubtedly took a big hit in recent weeks.

For more posts on the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, please go to: getrealwithisrael.com.

by Todd Buchanan

Note: What follows I composed some years ago with the input of many members of the Outreach Team at the Islamic Center of Boulder. It was intended as an introduction to Islam for non-Muslims, hence its several non-Islamic references. I post it here today to convey how compelling and vital I found Islam to be, and still do.

O ye people! Adore your Guardian Lord, Who created you and those who came before you, that ye may become righteous, Who made the earth your couch and the heavens your canopy; and sent down rain from the heavens; and brought forth therewith fruits for your sustenance; then set up not rivals unto Allah, when ye know the truth (Qur’an, 2:21-22).

               Muslims believe there is one God, the Most Merciful, in Whose hands is all power and goodness.  Islam comes from the root s-l-m, which means the peace that comes when one surrenders one’s will to God’s.  Allah is God in Arabic.

               Early in 7th century Arabia, a region plagued by tribal conflict, economic disparity and other social evils, one Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah began reciting some extraordinary verse.  Known for his honesty but not the poet’s gift, what Muhammad recited surpassed Arabia’s finest poetry. Indeed, it claimed to be revelation, from the same God who had sent revelation to all peoples before.

I swear by the stars that slide, stars streaming, stars that sweep along the sky, by the night as it slips away, by the morning when the fragrant air breathes, this is the word of a messenger ennobled…(81:15-19).

               This was the God of Abraham, the supreme example of submission.  The people who lived by the new revelations were Muslims, those who submit to God’s will.  The recitations were compiled and preserved in the Qur’an, and in the memories of millions since who memorized them in their entirety.

               When God decided to create humans with free will, His angels were baffled.  Why create beings capable of mischief and bloodshed? they asked.  God replied: “I know what ye know not” (2:30).  When Adam and Eve sinned, humans were consigned to Earth for a time. “Then learnt Adam from his Lord words of inspiration, and his Lord turned towards him; for He is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful” (2:37).

               God provides for all of our needs, urges us to worship Him alone, to be constant in prayer and regular in charity, and patient in adversity.  God sees that “For every soul there is a guardian” (86:4).

               Muslims, like traditional Christians and Jews, “fear” God.  But to truly fear God is to fear nothing else, as in this passage from the Christian song Amazing Grace:  “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”  To fear God is be ever mindful of life’s purpose and meaning.  “Life is real!  Life is earnest!” wrote Henry Longfellow.  Islam agrees.  Frederick Denny writes:

…God is believed to have revealed his will definitively through prophets, signs, and mighty acts….[P]eople cannot merely fatalistically accept what happens; their behavior must be intentional….Responsible living requires making hard choices.  History in the biblical and Islamic traditions is an irreversible process in which fateful consequences are decided, either in close covenant relationship with God or, perilously, outside of it (Islam and the Muslim Community).

Muslims do not believe in original sin, or that Eve tempted Adam; he sinned all on his own. We are born with a sound moral foundation, or fitra, which inclines us to believe in God, but we are forgetful and need constant reminding of our purpose.  Hence, the five daily prayers.  We have free will with the expectation that we will submit to God, but “Let there be no compulsion in religion”(2:256). “We must earnestly search out Allah’s Truth”, writes Abdullah Yusuf Ali, “encouraged by the fact that Allah’s Truth is also, out of His unbounded mercy, searching us out and trying to reach us” (The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an).

               With the coming of Islam, for the first time in Arabian society women had real rights: female infanticide and the sexual abuse of slave girls were banned, as was the denial of inheritance to women.  No one could be married against her will, and a wife could initiate divorce.  Many abuses of women which Westerners associate with Islam, such as “honor” killings, are cultural and have no basis in Islam. 

               Muhammad’s biggest challenge was tribalism.  In place of a multitude of gods, each associated with a specific tribe, the revelations asserted that there is One God, and by implication, one humanity.  According to Fazlur Rahman, “Muhammad’s monotheism was… linked up with a humanism and a sense of social and economic justice whose intensity is no less than the intensity of the monotheistic idea, so that the two must be regarded as expressions of the same experience” (Islam, p.12). 

               All we are and all we possess comes from God, and that includes our individual talents and qualities we typically attribute to our own ingenuity and perseverance.  There is no such thing as the self-made individual.   Wealth is provided in trust, to be circulated for the benefit of all.

               Throughout the Qur’an are vivid images of the day of reckoning:

               When the sky is torn, When the stars are scattered, When the seas are poured forth, When the tombs are burst open, Then a soul will know what it has given and what it has held back (82:1-5)

               “The Qur’an warns those who reject the day of reckoning and who are entrenched in lives of acquisition and injustice that an accounting awaits them,” writes Michael Sells in Approaching the Qur’an.  The warnings collapse a momentous future event into the present, in which we make critical choices.  Unbelievers “see the (Day) as a far off (event): But We see it (quite) near” (70: 6-7).  Yet, God’s Mercy matches His Power, and He promises mercy to all who are merciful here.

               Do you see him who calls the reckoning a lie?  He is the one who casts the orphan away, who fails to urge the feeding of one in need.  Cursed are those who perform the prayer unmindfully, who make of themselves a big show but hold back the small kindness (107:1-7).

               Many Muslims believe gratitude for God’s love suffices to inspire good deeds (righteousness): “And they feed, for the love of Allah, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive” (76:8). The eighth-century Sufi sister Rabi’a denounced anything done out of fear of punishment or desire for rewards.  In any case, Muslims believe God loves spontaneous acts of kindness. Once, a woman who was desperate for water finally found a well.  After satisfying her thirst, she noticed a very thirsty dog.  She went back down into the well and filled a shoe with water for the dog, for which all of her sins were forgiven.

               We are to give to those in need, especially what we most value. This idea is captured in the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  Soon after George Bailey’s father dies, George enters a board meeting of the Bedford Falls Building and Loan, of which his father was president.  We see a portrait of his father with these words inscribed: “All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.”

               It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards East or West; but it is righteousness—to believe in Allah and the Last Day, and the Angels, And the Book, and the Messengers; to spend of your substance despite your love of it, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer, and practice regular charity, to fulfill the contracts which ye have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic.  Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing (2:177).

               One of many things I love about Islam is the concept that the needy actually have a right to a portion of the wealth of others. It is not simply a good thing to share your wealth. Sharing your wealth does not simply better your standing before Allah. Sharing your wealth is an outright obligation.

               The number of people with a claim on a portion of others’ wealth has vastly increased in the last few years, which makes it especially shameful of CAIR-National to masquerade as zakat-eligible.

               CAIR cannot hide behind bogus determinations by scholars. The primary purpose of zakat is to circulate wealth, with the greatest in need having the greatest claim on that wealth.

               In soliciting zakat, as CAIR-National has done throughout this month of Ramadan with sometimes twice-daily pings on my phone, CAIR wants us to believe that all of its expenditures are zakat-eligible, including costly, ill-conceived lawsuits which tried to suppress the civil rights of its own employees and a former employee turned whistleblower.

               The Old Guard of CAIR-National knows exactly what wealthy donors want to hear, and much of it is stuff which it would behoove the Old Guard to actually accept and internalize. Living CAIR-National’s professed ideals would greatly enhance its reputation and workplace morale.

               At present, however, the leadership of CAIR-National remains mired in corruption and dishonesty, as though it could neutralize the truth of its practices indefinitely. It doesn’t deserve a penny of any Muslim’s zakat.  

               If this rant has not persuaded you, I hope these very informed and thoughtful essays by Ahmed Shaikh will:

CAIR-National is misleading Muslims on Zakat (substack.com)

Guide to “Zakat-Eligible” Shenanigans – by Ahmed Shaikh (substack.com)

I was planning to title this essay, “Oh Brother Waleed, Where Art Thou?” for Omar and I had not heard from him in a while. Then, at 4:41 yesterday afternoon, six minutes after CAIR pinged me with yet another zakat appeal, an email from Waleed came in.

Waleed had been out of the country, of course, as Omar and I suspected. Either that or maybe he had gotten spooked by all the ado about me being a spy. I thought I had cleared that all up, until I discovered a most peculiar sentence in the very first essay I sent Muslim friends, which I published in my last post, How I First Prayed with Muslims – Reform CAIR.

Maybe the smartest thing I can do now is just say, Let’s all agree I am a spy.

Why is that a smart thing for me to say? Because it puts to rest the question, and raises this one: What difference does it make for CAIR?

Not a mote’s worth.

Why? Because the case I and others have made against CAIR-National is based on internal CAIR documents and statements in court filings and other evidence that a spy cannot make up (see: CAIR’s Incriminating Communications – Reform CAIR, and Two Years of Deception and Retaliation at CAIR – Reform CAIR).

Now, the evidence against CAIR might not be quite so easy for spies like me or outright Islamophobes to obtain had CAIR not absent-mindedly sued a whistleblower and put her in the position where she naturally decided to defend herself, with the help of an attorney CAIR did not approve of.

Admittedly, it was bad form of her not to obtain CAIR’s approval of her attorney. If I ever meet her I will mention that.

The lawsuit did not turn out well for CAIR, with the judge telling CAIR to produce some real evidence of defamation or she would toss the case out. But it did make Robert Spencer’s job a lot easier. Spencer would seem to be an honest-to-God Islamophobe, which may be an odd choice of words on my part.

Spencer composed a nasty article about CAIR suing the above-mentioned whistleblower, even attaching the words “Hamas-linked” to “the Council on American-Islamic Relations”. The article quotes the whistleblower at length, even though she never spoke with Spencer. He got his material from her Response to CAIR’s Complaint in its lawsuit, which is a public document.

Let us hope that CAIR has learned one thing. That is, when it sets out to silence and smear a member of the Muslim community, or even a pretender like me, it should not count on controlling the outcome.

I have quipped before that the main thing CAIR-National seems to do is label this or that person an Islamophobe. By CAIR’s criteria, anyone who raises any question about any goings on at CAIR is an Islamophobe.

The problem with that way of thinking, though, is that it seems to justify CAIR circling the wagons to “defend” itself, and of course the entire Muslim community, rather than look honestly at itself. And so, we regularly get messages like this one yesterday from CAIR:

“Don’t forget to defend the Muslim community with a [zakat] donation to CAIR during the final nights of Ramadan.”

Too bad there’s no zakat-eligible charity working for justice for the victims of CAIR representatives.

In November of 2016, the executive director of a CAIR chapter wrote:

“I have really been thinking about our approach to things. Especially 15 years post 9/11 what do we really have to show for our work if we look at this high level. We made a name for CAIR. Did we help or harm our community in the process?” (cairlawsuit62021-2.pdf (wordpress.com), p.34.

Good question. Seven years later, not much has changed, except that CAIR has spent tens of thousands more donors’ zakat dollars trying to suppress civil rights, and may have earned more critics for doing so. I for one was a big fan of CAIR in 2016, and my involvement with local Muslims working to establish a Colorado chapter had something to do with my conversion.

Now, on a previous occasion when Brother Waleed was out of the country, he wrote to ask if I needed or wanted anything. I replied by asking if the Kingdom could spare a few bodyguards, for Waleed is from Saudi Arabia.

“You’re gonna need an army”, he wrote back.

Well, maybe not. The few at CAIR-National and elsewhere who appreciate the job security that Islamophobes and spies like myself provide them must be far out-numbered by the many CAIR employees who still believe in its founding mission. More power to them.

But they better start insisting that CAIR-National clean house.

by Abu Anthony

Introduction

               Did I confess to being a spy?

               The other day I made a remarkable discovery. The first essay I ever sent Muslims, which follows this introduction, contains a curious sentence early on, which could be read in different ways. Was it an admission that I was a spy?

               My grandfather used to say: we can perceive what we can first conceive of. We all tend to see what we are looking for.

               I wrote this essay before I had met a particular individual who would be instrumental in the founding of CAIR-Colorado, and who later would assert that I had admitted to being an informant before I converted to Islam. But it is certainly possible that I or someone else shared this with her at some point.

               The ambiguity of the particular sentence, which will pop out at you, may be indicative of how I might have subtly joked about the matter in the months I collaborated with this person and others in the initial effort to launch the Colorado chapter.

               And this possibly being the Night of Power, when I reflect on Qur’an 44:4, I realize I profit nothing to worry about this rumor anymore. Here is 44:4:

               In that (night) is made distinct every affair of wisdom.

And here is a footnote to the ayat by Abdullah Yusuf Ali:

               “Such an occasion is one on which divine Wisdom places before us, through Revelation, the solution to spiritual problems of the highest import to mankind.”

               In accounts of near-death experiences, it is often reported that at one point God reveals ultimate truth and how everything works out for the good; God’s own mind becomes transparent, as it were. But part of returning to this world is the erasing of any memory of what precisely was revealed. The returnee can only report that for a moment out of time, she or he was granted knowledge of everything.

Knowing that the solutions to what sure seem to be genuine predicaments in this world will be clear in the end, and conflict and strife will melt away as we all return to God, still leaves a lot for we fallibles to navigate and adapt to as best we can. We may know, abstractly, that our self-centered existence and perspective is the greatest illusion of all. But transcending it, surrendering to God’s will, is something we must strive for but will never quite achieve every day. Many days we will fall woefully short, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite convert stories. This one is very, very short. It comes from my honorary uncle, Saied.

There was an American convert who one day said: “I am sure glad I converted before I met all the Muslims I have.”

               If it takes a little humility for a Muslim to tell that brief story, humility might be the beginning of wisdom, an essential step in transcending the self and surrendering to God’s will. But I am not really claiming to be humble; there is no convincing anyone of that. I like the story, but it is not my absolute favorite. In a previous post, now deleted, I told my favorite convert story. It goes something like this:

               There was an inmate in a prison who soon came to impress the warden as being a troublemaker, because he would champion any and every inmate’s conflict with Management. One day he learned that there was a complication for some Muslim inmates praying where they always had, and it was enough of a problem that these brothers were upset. He recalled that growing up he and his friends were joyous whenever they could not attend church. But these guys were actually despondent.

               So our champion of every cause under the prison tower went to talk to the warden.

               The warden listened to his complaint with partially disguised impatience. Then he said:

               “Why is this your concern? Are you a Muslim?”

A

long,

pregnant

pause

followed.

           

    “Yes!”

               I, too, found my initial interaction with Muslims, the subject of the essay below, to be most inspiring. And I have had abundant occasions with fellow Muslims since which confirm that I made the right choice for myself. This dispute with CAIR-National notwithstanding.

Note: I wrote what follows during Ramadan, 2016. In passing I predicted more lone wolf attacks in the West by individuals claiming to champion Islam, as a result of America’s wars in Muslim countries. There have been plenty of lone wolf attacks since, but far fewer by wayward Muslims than I expected.

A few weeks before 9/11, I attended a presentation on Islam at my son’s high school, by the mother of two students.  I was glad I did; Islam seemed to be such a positive force in her life, in contrast to the dour image a westerner can have of it from never being curious enough to investigate.

Not long after 9/11 I called this person, who was happy to come speak in my little town in the mountains.  The gathering was well-attended, and she talked mostly about Islam’s emphasis on peace, and surrendering one’s will to God’s.  If one word could describe her, it would be grateful.

In those days I read a number of books on Islam and bought an edition of the Qur’an with an extensive commentary.  My son had just started homeschooling, and to keep things simple I assigned him readings on Islam, including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Crusades.   After a few weeks he was ready to move on to something else while I was not, and that is how he began a phase of educating himself.

That was fifteen years ago, and in the intervening years Islam has had to share my attention with other intellectual subjects.  But I have maintained a very positive impression of Islam, while regretting what seems to be a prevalent attitude among even my favorite secularists that we don’t have a lot to learn from a religion that seems more bound to the past than some others.  Many well-meaning people believe Islam oppresses woman and emphasizes a fear of God.  A very dear Christian friend wonders if Islam is capable of a “reformation”. 

To these friends I say, take a leap of faith.  Spend some time getting familiar with Islam as it was a reformation and as it inspires Muslims today.  In a time and land of multiple wanna be gods, Muhammad insisted there is only one God, and by implication there is one humanity.  To truly fear God is to fear nothing else, nothing humans can contrive.  Putting no stock in original sin, Islam maintains instead that people are by nature forgetful and need constant reminding of the straight path. 

Secularism may presume it has the momentum and history is on its side, but just wait and see.   British rabbi Jonathan Sacks observes that the twenty-first century “has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.”  Most people need meaning, and they will find it.  Many will find it in Islam.

For someone with such a positive view of Islam, it was unusual that I had not bothered to meet many Muslims.  That changed the other evening, when I walked into a Muslim event to discover that I was probably one of a handful of non-Muslims in a sea of happy, energized people, after a very long day without touching food or water.  For this was in the middle of Ramadan.

I was standing in the lobby, surrounded by folks greeting one another, perfectly comfortable with this guy who could pass for a Trump and was probably the only one carrying a spiral notebook.  They can’t be worried about me, I thought, because a spy would not bring a spiral notebook.  The first person I established eye contact with was Rashad, and from that moment on, I was at ease.

Rashad is from Pakistan and is a neuroscientist, so I told him I was impressed at how so many Muslims were accomplished at science and apparently had no conflict between science and faith in God.  He expanded on that in some interesting ways, which will wait for another day.

Inside the ballroom I immediately recognized the M.C. as someone I had been intending to meet.  No wonder she proposed a post-Ramadan meeting.  The first speaker recited a passage about Ramadan from the Qur’an.  It was the first time I had heard a recitation in person.  I have some recitations on CD, which years ago I discovered can mellow out two rambunctious dogs faster than you can say Khalid Mansour is your uncle.  Is this conceivably the word of God?  I don’t know, but it sure had an effect on creatures we assume are not even capable of asking the question.  

The second speaker addressed the rise of Islamophobia in the United States, which many Muslims believe recently exceeded the level after 9/11.   This is likely attributable to a combination of the Syrian refugee crisis, the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks, and certain statements by one presidential aspirant who has demonstrated what fame you can achieve by scrupulously under-thinking everything you say. 

Only a month earlier, a local mosque received a threat which impressed me as pretty explicit.  The risk of being Muslim in this country is steadily rising. Aggravating that, I see more lone wolf attacks by very troubled Muslims coming, due primarily to our fifteen years of war in the land of Islam, and an impression that the U.S. regards Muslim blood as cheap.  But it ain’t true, as the afore-mentioned presidential aspirant has said, that “Islam hates us”.

In time I made my way to Rashad’s table of medical students, as a few seats there were vacant.  What welcoming faces, I thought.  Are they just being gracious?  Are they excited that it is nearly time to eat and drink?  Are they amused by this guy who is clearly not a Muslim and is carrying a spiral notebook?   They were students at CU Denver, and seemed impressed that I had set a record for the most years to get a Master’s degree there.  I explained that I had taken three or four years to write my thesis/project, during which time the department assumed I had dropped out.  Mountain Time is a real thing.

For the remainder of the program, one speaker after another exuded gratitude to God and trust in His guidance and the hereafter, and the joy of Ramadan and assisting those in need, as this was a fundraiser for Islamic Relief USA.

The word “hereafter” conjures up Judgment Day, which over the last 15 years of pondering Islam was the biggest sticking point for me.  I was relieved when some author wrote of it as a “device” for making people feel accountable for their actions and even their thoughts.  Maybe it isn’t actually real, and neither is Hell, I thought with relief.  But whether Judgment Day and Hell are really real is less and less an issue.  Let it remain a mystery, not a game-changer.  The upshot is that life is momentous, and our actions and thoughts really count.  We are all children of the same God.  That’s the game-changer.  That’s the Big Idea.

When it came time for the evening prayer, the hall emptied, and Rashad said if I wanted to go observe he would forego praying himself and we could observe it together and he would explain it to me.  On our way to the prayer room, I asked Rashad if a story I had read about Muhammad negotiating with God the number of daily prayers was generally accepted among Muslims.  As I recalled the story, this happened the night Muhammad ascended to Heaven and met God, Jesus, Moses and other prophets.  When Muhammad told Moses that God wanted people to pray some preposterous number of times each day, Moses, who had learned a thing or two about human nature, told Muhammad there was no way people would pray that much, and he told Muhammad to go back to God and negotiate something more plausible. This went on for a while, with Muhammad going back and forth between God and Moses, until Muhammad finally talked God down to five prayers a day.  Moses said five was still too much, but Muhammad said he was done negotiating with God. 

Rashad told me I essentially had it right.

As we stood outside the prayer room, a man greeted us and asked if we were going in.  “Thank you, I’m not a Muslim”, I said.  He smiled, took my hand and said, “Follow me”.  I barely remembered to remove my shoes.

Inside we meandered around, careful not to walk in front of anyone praying.  We found a spot and he said, “You can pray or not, whatever you like.”  I thought, do I want to be the only one not praying?  And so, I did something I had no idea I was going to do.  I made only one obvious mistake, which I attribute to being left-handed: I crossed my arms incorrectly.  But Khalid immediately reached over and set things right.  I prayed to God as best I could feeling a bit awkward, and I prayed that my knee would hold.  When my knee goes out anymore, it means a week of work missed.

Following the prayer, Khalid introduced me to a dozen people or more, all of whom seemed impressed that I had come all the way to Denver from a little town in the mountains because I wanted to meet Muslims.   Not one asked me if I was considering becoming a Muslim.  They seemed glad that I was curious enough to come.  One asked me if I had any children, and I said I had a son named Anthony.  He said I could be Abu Anthony, father of Anthony.

Back at our table, I noticed that since breaking his fast, Rashad had been only sipping at water.  After sixteen hours without water, you would expect these people to be guzzling it.  For my part, I did not ask for the pitcher of coffee on the other side of the table; that was my sacrifice for the evening.  Those who know me would be impressed.  

Back out in the lobby afterward, I was immediately greeted by several men as Abu Anthony.  I made use of my notebook and asked a few for their contact information.  One was from Jordan, another from Palestine.  One held back a bit, seeming to study me.  When it was just the two of us left, he asked if I had any religious affiliation.  I told him I am an unaffiliated monotheist.  That was one line I had rehearsed earlier, for surely everyone would want to know what I was.  (Wasn’t Abraham an unaffiliated monotheist?)  This man nodded in acceptance, and then told me that God knows which path is best for me, and this will be revealed if I pay attention.

Driving home, the word that best described how I felt was, yes, gratitude.  Talk of expectations being exceeded!  America is two percent Muslim, and for those of us who hardly know any Muslims, it is time we get curious.  It’s not enough to abstractly champion their rights; we might have some vital things to learn from them.  America has helped to fan the flames of extremism, and things may get worse before they get better.  We non-Muslims need to be proactive and not just leave it to Muslims to assimilate with “us”.   

Introduction

I must assume that most of the people employed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), or otherwise associated with the organization, are not aware of the extent of the corruption that prevails in the national office.

I urge the conscientious people of CAIR and its supporters to seriously consider the credible allegations that have been made by former employees, board members, and others of the Muslim community against the organization, and its failure to address those allegations, especially in the last two years.

Are women second class in Islam? If CAIR-National is any indication, I would have to say yes.

The allegations against CAIR and certain of its representatives include sexual harassment and misconduct, domestic abuse, gender and religious discrimination, union thwarting, undisclosed foreign funding, general mismanagement, harassment and intimidation, pay-outs and cover-ups.

Rather than deal responsibly with these allegations, CAIR-National has instead tried to silence and discredit its former Director of Chapter Development, who has been quite public in her criticisms of CAIR. (Henceforth I will refer to her mainly as the “former employee” but occasionally by her title, Director of Chapter Development.)

In the aftermath of Leila Fadel’s ground-breaking article which dealt with some of those allegations, and which National Public Radio (NPR) published in April of 2021 (which article I will return to shortly), CAIR sought to buy the former employee’s silence. CAIR offered to pay money it owed her in exchange for her signing a “non-disparagement agreement”, by which she would have permanently recanted all of her critical statements about CAIR, including the circumstances which preceded her leaving the organization, in language approved by CAIR. She declined.

The circumstances which preceded her leaving CAIR, by the way, included sexual harassment by CAIR-National Executive Director Nihad Awad, and a warning from him, when she refused to sign away her right to free speech, that CAIR is a “very powerful organization”.

When bribery failed, in May of 2021 CAIR initiated a defamation lawsuit against her.

But CAIR could produce neither evidence of defamation nor evidence of violations of a non-disclosure agreement by the former employee. And so, on January 7, 2022, CAIR withdrew its lawsuit “with prejudice”, meaning it cannot file the same claims again in court. Two weeks later, on January 20, 2022, in an attempt to put the best spin possible on its failed lawsuit CAIR issued a press release that played fast and loose with the facts in order to smear the former employee.

CAIR’s point is clear: if you blow the whistle on us, we will do all we can to make your life miserable, and we will not be constrained by the truth.

The good news is that CAIR did not succeed. The target of its retaliation, like other women who have found the world of CAIR to be toxic and have left out of self-respect, is thriving and succeeding. She recently became the first Muslim elected to office in her hometown.

CAIR’s Tolerance of Sexual Misconduct

CAIR’s chief preoccupation is calling out Islamophobia wherever CAIR perceives it to be, and that’s a lot of places. The Islamophobe card is CAIR’s first and last resort whenever it attempts to discredit any critic. Its January 20, 2022 press release is a shining example. Ironically, its failure to take the allegations against it seriously will likely feed Islamophobia.

The first time I heard of any of these allegations, in the spring of 2020, I was not sure what to make of them, and did not pursue the matter. A year later, on April 15, 2021, I read Leila Fadel ‘s article, which confirmed much of what I had read earlier (see: Civil Rights Org CAIR Accused Of Ignoring Alleged Misconduct : NPR.) NPR is not going to publish allegations against a Muslim organization that are not credible. Fadel has since become a host of Morning Edition.

In the nearly two years since NPR published Fadel’s article, CAIR’s dysfunction has been on full display, beginning with a letter it sent its supporters on April 16, 2021, the day following publication of the article. Fadel carefully researched her article over many months, and CAIR had plenty of time to ponder its response. A functional organization would have decided it was time to come clean and make some changes, but instead CAIR essentially denied the allegations or any prior knowledge of them. It assured its readers that “…CAIR strives to hold every member of our team to the highest standards of personal and profession conduct. We also take allegations of misconduct, especially misconduct against women, very seriously.”

That same letter asserted that CAIR had conducted a thorough search of its records and interviewed staff and had found nothing to indicate it was aware of any allegations of sexual harassment by the executive director of CAIR-Florida, at the time. 

If that is not a lie pure and simple, it is at least proof that CAIR tolerates sexual misconduct. Had none of the people at CAIR read Fadel’s opening sentence carefully?

“For months, stories swirled around a prominent Muslim civil rights leader, alleging secret marriages, bullying, sexual harassment.”

Any real investigation would have uncovered a complaint in March of 2016 by a woman claiming to have been one of the Florida director’s secret wives, while he was still married to the mother of his children. The alleged secret wife was privy to confidential information about a CAIR lawsuit. This was of some concern to CAIR board members and officials at the time, as a dozen or so emails demonstrate (see: CAIR’s Incriminating Communications – Reform CAIR.)

If secret marriages do not qualify as sexual harassment per se, those of the Florida director did lasting harm to women, harm which surely surpassed typical harassment.

The April 16, 2021 letter claimed that CAIR had identified an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations, but thus far, no one had come forward. It invited anyone with a legitimate complaint to cooperate with the investigation.

But as religious scholar Aslam Abdullah told Leila Fadel, women mistrust that CAIR will handle their complaints seriously. Fadel wrote that “numerous women have come to him [Aslam Abdullah] with what he regards as credible allegations of harassment, sexual misconduct, or unfair treatment against senior men within CAIR or CAIR affiliates. These women don’t believe that CAIR National’s investigation will be fair and have refused to cooperate, he said.”

Were CAIR genuinely concerned about sexual misconduct and harassment, it could have reached out to the alleged victims of the Florida director in Leila Fadel’s article, including his first wife who accused him of domestic abuse, two secret wives, and a former assistant in the Florida office. Fadel was only able to interview one of the secret wives, since the director had effectively silenced the other. The first told Fadel that the director had stolen her self-worth and left her contemplating suicide daily.

Fadel interviewed a half-dozen accusers of the Florida director and reviewed internal CAIR documents, social media posts and email exchanges. Together, she wrote, “the accounts portray [him] as a man who used his position to seduce women and bully critics with impunity.”

In an interview with Fadel, the accused director emphatically denied nearly all the allegations. He did admit to being married to one of the wives but denied that it was secret. Yet, in an open letter to myself, he asserted, as he had in 2016, that the same individual was nothing more than a stalker and invented the story of their marriage. In that open letter, he claimed that he had never so much as disrespected a woman.

Parvez Ahmed, a former chair of the CAIR-National board, told Fadel that the Florida director’s case is an opportunity for CAIR to demonstrate that “they are doing everything within their power to take these allegations seriously.” Specifically, “The leadership of CAIR owes the community an explanation as to who knew what and when and how those complaints were handled.”

To date, CAIR has failed to hold the Florida director accountable, allowing him to resign with honor after his first wife went public with her story of years of domestic abuse. Instead, with its failed lawsuit and then its very imaginative press release of January 20, 2022, CAIR attacked its former Director of Chapter Development, the one who did try to hold the Florida director accountable at the time.

The Florida director was a rising star and top fundraiser for CAIR, and in that capacity he traveled frequently. After the secret wife filed her complaint, the Director of Chapter Development attempted to spur the leadership to conduct a bona fide investigation, while trying to limit the director’s travel. At one point the Florida director, quite perturbed by her due diligence, sent her a cease-and-desist letter. She did some extensive preparation leading up to what would turn out to be a brothers-only meeting, at the Florida director’s request, in the Washington office.

In that meeting, armed with a shameful letter by an attorney, the accused persuaded Nihad Awad, and presumably Ibrahim Hooper, Director of Communications, that his accuser had made the whole thing up, was a mean and dangerous woman, and had begged him and his lawyer to settle out of court. Never mind that the secret wife’s posts on social media, which Awad, Hooper, the defendant, and National board members had all read and discussed, had left little doubt that the two had been intimate. Awad told the Director of Chapter Development to apologize to the Florida director and learn to get along with him. The secret wife was never interviewed by CAIR.

Her vigilance in this episode was not the only reason CAIR retaliated against its former employee. As noted earlier, she had accused Awad himself of sexual harassment. But the National board cleared Awad of the allegations, without so much as interviewing her. (Awad is, without question, the dominant member of the board.)

CAIR’s January 20, 2022 Press Release

Eight months after CAIR filed its defamation lawsuit against its former employee, the judge in the case threatened to dismiss it if CAIR could not produce actionable evidence of defamation by the defendant or violations of her non-disclosure agreement. CAIR chose to withdraw the lawsuit, which it then portrayed as some sort of magnanimous decision.

In its January 20, 2022 press release, CAIR notes that the judge in the case had denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but omitted the judge’s threat to dismiss it if CAIR could not deliver the goods in two weeks.

 CAIR claims it could have continued with its lawsuit but decided not to in the hope of putting an end to its feud with its former employee. In truth, CAIR withdrew the lawsuit before it was forced to turn over documents and other evidence it had been withholding, and before any of its officers or board members had testified under oath.

The January 20, 2022 press release portrayed the defendant as an instigator of conflict with other staff members. It also portrayed her as some kind of extortionist, who was determined to get a bunch of CAIR’s money while undermining donor support for CAIR. To that end, CAIR asserted, she regularly conspired with Islamophobes. To make this case CAIR was quite inventive and loose with the truth.

That press release included a statement by the defendant which strongly praised CAIR on gender matters and which, out of context, seemed to flat-out contradict many of her allegations since leaving CAIR. The statement was added to a complaint the defendant made about the behavior of a male employee, and Awad told her to write it to guard against Islamophobes exploiting the incident. A minor detail.

The press release complained of the defendant sending emails in the middle of the night (Allah forbid), and noted that despite her many complaints against CAIR, she has not troubled herself to sue CAIR. Is one’s willingness and capacity to sue a measure of the validity of a claim? Unlike CAIR, its former employee does not have legions of lawyers on salary in need of something to do.

The press release noted that the former employee did take legal action against CAIR through a Washington, D.C. employment agency in order to collect money she claimed CAIR owed her. CAIR asserted: “The agency completely dismissed her complaint after we provided clear evidence that [her] complaint was unfounded.”

In truth, as her response to CAIR’s complaint in its lawsuit put it, her complaint was “denied on procedural grounds at a time when she was ill and was unable to prosecute her claims properly”( pp.3-4). Later, CAIR offered to pay her what it owed her as part of its effort to silence her with the non-disparagement agreement.

In its attempt to discredit its former employee, CAIR portrays her as a once valued team player turned troublemaker. CAIR blames her for a conflict she had with the director of the Maryland CAIR office, who, in the estimation of the former employee and other senior staff, was running the show in a haphazard and unprofessional manner which would have implications not just for that office but for the reputation of CAIR nationally.

The Maryland director had valuable attributes for CAIR, but chapter development may not have been one of them. Despite the former employee’s initiation of the Maryland project and her extensive experience and knowledge in that field (as Director of Chapter Development), the Maryland director took over operations there, excluding her. CAIR executive director Nihad Awad declined to support the Director of Chapter Development in the conflict, in part because the Maryland director had supported him in squashing efforts of national office employees to unionize in 2016 and 2017. (For a more thorough discussion of this matter between the Director of Chapter Development and the Maryland director, please see: When Competency and High Expectations Meet Mediocrity, and Worse – Reform CAIR.)

CAIR claims that the former employee resigned from CAIR after facing investigations, disciplinary action, conflict resolution counseling, and the threat of a restraining order, following her conflicts with different CAIR employees. In addition to the director of the Maryland office, the former employee had run-ins with the CAIR-Florida director, whose extracurricular activities while on travel she had sought to investigate, as I discussed above. When that matter was dropped by Nihad Awad, he asked/ordered the former employee to attend conflict resolution counseling, which she refused to do.

But what would have been the point of conflict resolution counseling in this case, after Nihad dropped the matter regarding the Florida director’s alleged secret wife, which person, the reader may recall, was never even interviewed by CAIR? Wasn’t the point to make it appear that the vigilant Director of Chapter Development was the problem, not CAIR’s tolerance of unprofessional management and sexual misconduct?  

To reiterate, by the former employee’s telling, what convinced her she needed to resign were unwanted romantic/sexual advances toward her by Nihad Awad, which she specified in her response to CAIR’s complaint in the lawsuit. That would go a long way in explaining why Nihad is intent on discrediting her.

As noted above, CAIR tosses the term “Islamophobe” around repeatedly in its January 2022 press release. One reference is to Jeff Robbins, the former employee’s lead attorney in CAIR’s recent lawsuit against her. Mr. Robbins’ views on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict do not align with either the former employee’s or mine, or with CAIR’s. But Mr. Robbins is entitled to his opinion and to express it, and he is thoughtful and a highly qualified attorney besides. Being a strong supporter of Israel (if not of the current coalition government, which he characterizes as being dominated by autocrats, fanatics and homophobes), does not make him an Islamophobe. Nor does being a past board chair of the New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

But more to the point, once CAIR set out to suppress the former employee’s free speech with a defamation lawsuit, she was under no obligation to pick a lawyer suitable to CAIR.

As for Daniel Horowitz, he took the former employee’s case after many others declined, and did so on a pro bono basis. Although CAIR portrays this episode as some sort of harassment of the Muslim civil rights organization by Horowitz and his client, in truth a half dozen or more CAIR lawyers were trying to pressure the former employee to promise to silence herself and retract her previous criticisms of CAIR. In response, she secured a bigshot attorney, Horowitz. At one point she offered to button her lip for an outrageous amount of money, three-quarters of a million dollars, which CAIR obviously would not have paid.

It is true that Daniel Horowitz had previously represented Michael Savage, a bona fide Islamophobe, in an unsuccessful lawsuit against CAIR. But that does not make Horowitz an Islamophobe, nor the former employee a collaborator with Islamophobes.

CAIR claims that the former employee repeatedly sought money from CAIR which it did not owe her. In fact, CAIR did owe her many thousands of dollars, and had attempted to use it to buy her silence and her retraction of previous statements. With the exception of the above-mentioned occasion when she offered to go mum for a ridiculous price, which put a stop to CAIR’s efforts to silence here, the former employee refused to sell her right to free speech, but that did not end CAIR’s financial obligations to her.

Suppressing Rights of CAIR Employees

In addition to overlooking sexual misconduct and harassment by CAIR representatives, as well as other types of foul play, CAIR thwarted attempts of employees in the national office to unionize in 2016-17. Here is an excerpt of a letter the national employees sent Nihad Awad on October 7, 2016, after they voted to unionize:

“We believe that unionizing and agreeing to a collective bargaining agreement is in the best interests of all current and future CAIR National employees. This agreement, which will standardize our pay and benefits, and establish rules to govern workplace conduct and policies and handle employee grievances, will undoubtedly serve to strengthen workplace professionalism and employee morale. It will also demonstrate that CAIR National is truly committed to its fundamental mission of promoting fairness and social justice while defending the civil rights of individuals in the United States, particularly in the employment context (emphasis added).”

Awad could have acknowledged the logic of that argument and done the right thing. Instead, CAIR argued a preposterous case before the regional director of National Labor Relations Board, that it is “organized and operated exclusively for religious, education and charitable purposes.”  Were it instead a civil rights and advocacy organization, which every donor knows it purports to be, it would be obligated to accept collective bargaining with its employees, workplace rules of conduct, and a grievance process with a neutral arbitrator–all things that Awad and Hooper were in a tizzy to avoid.

When CAIR management lost this bid to be exempt from the National Labor Relations Act, the regional director scheduled a meeting for employees to vote again on unionization. Awad and Hooper resolved to make sure that meeting never happened. They intimidated employees, fired some ringleaders, and bribed others into leaving.

Nonetheless, CAIR asserted in its April 16, 2021 letter that it “strongly supports the organized labor movement, including the right to organize.” With one qualification, apparently.

Conclusion

It is looking like CAIR-National is not capable of addressing the allegations on its own, without CAIR employees, CAIR supporters, and the Muslim community insisting that it do so. And it has spent too much of donors’ money trying to suppress rights it claims to uphold. What is needed is an honest-to-God investigation by a body empowered to make recommendations for both personnel and structural changes at CAIR. And with no further ado, the CAIR-National board should make known to its employees that it will welcome a vote by them to unionize.

And as a caution for any reader who was considering paying zakat to CAIR this Ramadan, CAIR’s assertion that donations to it are zakat eligible is quite a stretch of Surah 9, Ayat 60 (Qur’an, 9:60), especially considering that a not in-significant portion of its resources must go toward suppressing, not protecting, civil rights.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The above statement, attributed to Lord Acton (1834-1902) attests to the influence of circumstances on human behavior, and is validated by our experience.

Countless enterprises which began with the best of intentions, have been warped and diverted by success. The temptations of power are very hard to resist.

There is no reason to believe that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was conceived with any intention by its founders to not fulfill its mission, or to deceive donors. But in time, with growing success and influence, the largest American Muslim civil rights organization did indeed stray from its mission, and attempted to hide this from donors.

After years of CAIR supporters giving the organization the benefit of the doubt with respect to occasional rumors and allegations of improprieties, NPR journalist Leila Fadel wrote a carefully edited expose of CAIR which was published on April 15, 2021.

As we at Reform CAIR have noted in post after post after post, Fadel’s article was many months in the making, and CAIR had more than enough time to realize it needed to come clean and agree to a proper investigation of the allegations, in such a manner that no one need fear retaliation.

Instead, on April 16, the day after Fadel’s article was published, CAIR sent supporters a four-page letter which was more or less a blanket denial of the allegations. That same letter also claimed that CAIR had initiated an investigation of the allegations but thus far no former employees or board members had come forward to participate.

Five weeks later, in a clear message to anyone still considering coming forward, it retaliated with a lawsuit against a former senior employee turned whistleblower, who had publicly exposed a number of instances of sexual misconduct and harassment, gender and religious discrimination, financial mismanagement including secret foreign funding, and a general lack of accountability at CAIR.

The problem with CAIR’s lawsuit from the beginning was that the whistleblower was not disclosing any information that CAIR was entitled to expect to keep protected. When she stated publicly that Nihad Awad alone knew the identities of large foreign donors, this was not a trade secret, or at least not a legitimate one, but malfeasance.

When the whistleblower complained that CAIR had failed to investigate and then covered up an allegation by a former secret wife of a prominent chapter leader, she was not revealing a trade secret, but a blatant instance of CAIR tolerating sexual misconduct.

When the same whistleblower claimed that Nihad Awad had acted inappropriately toward her at a CAIR event, in a stairway, and at midnight in a hotel lobby, she was not exposing trade secrets, but sexual harassment.

And prior to these public allegations, when this same employee told Nihad Awad that enough was enough and she intended to resign, he cautioned her that CAIR “is a very powerful organization”.

Well, with the recent dismissal “with prejudice” of its lawsuit against this former employee, CAIR has demonstrated that its power is no match for the truth.

CAIR is in crisis. For too long it has tried to ignore the allegations against it, and keep its donors and the Muslim community believing it is their only defense against Islamophobia. But when the truth finally comes out, it will probably only add to the general public’s growing, if under-informed, concern about Muslims. The sooner CAIR comes clean, the better for the Muslim community.

And for the many victims of CAIR representatives especially, justice is yet to be done.

Following is a statement on behalf of Lori Saroya and her legal team on CAIR’s withdrawal of its lawsuit with prejudice. (See also: https://www.facebook.com/lorihaidri/posts/10159865963740786)

Council on American-Islamic Relations Drops Suit Against Former Board Member Who Spoke Out On Sexual Harassment, Discrimination and Retaliation

January 7, 2022 – The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a powerful lobbying and advocacy organization which describes itself as a civil rights organization representing Muslim-Americans, has today decided to drop the federal lawsuit it filed in May 2021 in the United States District Court in Minneapolis against its own former national Board member and employee. CAIR had accused defendant Lori Saroya, a nationally-respected civil rights advocate on behalf of Muslims, of defamation for statements she made about evidence that the organization had engaged in sexual harassment and discrimination and that it had deceived the public and donors about its fundraising practices. This afternoon, CAIR notified the Court and Ms. Saroya that it was dismissing all of its claims against her “with prejudice.”

As stated in public filings in the case, Ms. Saroya, who had founded the Minnesota chapter of CAIR before being asked by CAIR to serve on its national board in 2015, resigned from CAIR in May 2018 after the organization’s Executive Director displayed unwelcome and inappropriate conduct toward her. She is among a growing chorus of former CAIR personnel and other Muslim-Americans around the country who have spoken out about the conduct they’ve experienced and witnessed at CAIR. CAIR also sought a Court order prohibiting Ms. Saroya from speaking out about her concerns about sexual harassment, discrimination and fundraising practices at CAIR, and alleged that she had breached the confidentiality agreement that it required her to sign when she commenced her employment with CAIR.

Ms. Saroya filed a lengthy response to this lawsuit which included exhibits, placing on the public record the evidence supporting each of the statements that she had made. In response to today’s dismissal, Ms. Saroya said: “The reason I have refused to accede to CAIR’s demand that I stay silent and that I have defended myself against this retaliatory lawsuit is this: I wanted to send a strong message that women will not be silenced. Those of us who have spoken up about CAIR intend to continue to do so, more vigorously than ever. Indeed, CAIR’s unsuccessful lawsuit has inspired me, and others like me, to do more to amplify the voices of victims of sexual abuse, gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the CAIR network, and to help them get the justice, the accountability, and the healing that those victims deserve.”

CAIR’s withdrawal of its lawsuit against Ms. Saroya comes while her motions for Court orders requiring the organization to turn over documents and other evidence that it had been withholding were pending before the Court. CAIR’s decision to drop its case comes before any of the sworn depositions of its officers and Board members about the subject matter of Ms. Saroya’s statements had taken place.

“First and foremost, this is a victory for Ms. Saroya and those who, like her, have had the historic courage to challenge a powerful organization over issues of sexual harassment, sexual discrimination and retaliatory conduct. It sends  a message that voices like that of Ms. Saroya can’t easily be silenced, as CAIR obviously hoped to silence Ms. Saroya here. And it is a victory for the First Amendment, which exists precisely to protect all Americans against heavy-handed attempts to stifle criticism,” said Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr attorney Jeff Robbins, who led Ms. Saroya’s legal team.

Ms. Saroya’s legal defense team was led by attorneys Jeff Robbins, Alain Baudry, Steven Kerbaugh, Joseph Lipchitz and Kelsey Marron of the national law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr. Mr. Robbins, Mr. Lipchitz and Ms. Marron practice in the Firm’s Boston office; Messrs. Baudry and Kerbaugh practice in the Firm’s Minneapolis, Minnesota office.