Sixth in a Series
I try to keep up on the daily news from CAIR, most of which these days is about Palestine and Israel, of course. And naturally I more or less agree with CAIR’s positions and recommended actions on the subject. Amidst all of that, I keep hoping to find some announcement that CAIR has decided to clean up its own house. I have not yet seen it.
Indeed, learning that CAIR has initiated a defamation lawsuit against former employee Lori Saroya suggests that the good ol’ boys at CAIR are not likely to come clean all by themselves.
The injustice Israel has been perpetrating against the Palestinians and the alleged injustices inside CAIR are obviously not comparable in their human impact. And the gender discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse, retaliation, union busting, etc., which has been alleged against CAIR may yet be all too common in the United States.
But do either of those two considerations justify for one minute the failure of CAIR to fairly address the allegations, or for the hesitancy of the American Muslim community to insist on it? Is it not enough that many women have left CAIR disillusioned, hurt, and even “broken,” and some have left the community and even Islam?
What I have been discussing in this series of essays is not news to many Muslim leaders. With every passing day of silence from them, their complicity in the corruption at CAIR grows a little bit more.
At CAIR, allegations against men coming from women appear to be automatically suspect, the women deserving of retaliation. Though CAIR is a human rights organization, not a court of law, an accused man is given every benefit of the doubt. Non-disclosure agreements are used in an attempt to keep buried some very incriminating stuff. (We saw a perfect example of that today.) CAIR management is capable of downright shameful behavior to head off any loss of control in the organization, and the board of directors until now has been unable or unwilling to exercise oversight.
To reiterate one very revealing episode I wrote about in the first post of this series, when CAIR employees sought to form a union in the fall of 2016, CAIR management tried to convince the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that CAIR was organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational and charity purposes, not as the civil rights and advocacy organization everyone knows it is.
CAIR management made this preposterous argument in the hope of not having to accept an employees’ union, and all the ways that would cramp its style. When CAIR management lost that case, and the regional director scheduled another vote by which the employees would be able to decide once and for all if they really wanted to unionize, the top bros made sure that vote would never happen.
I have called for three concrete steps by the CAIR National board of directors. First, to establish a credible panel and process to investigate the allegations, one approved by the former employees and board members making the allegations. Second, to lift all non-disclosure agreements with these individuals so they may speak with investigators without fear of legal repercussions. Third, to welcome the unionization of CAIR employees.
Some of the former employees who have brought allegations have called for the immediate resignation of the executive director and the chair of the National board, and certainly in the case of the first they are on solid ground. (Please visit their website: wecair.net.)
In my last post I argued that the American Muslim community can learn from the Tuskegee Airmen of World War Two, who knew they could not succeed by merely matching the competency of white bomber escort crews. Being black, the Tuskegee Airmen knew they would have to raise the bar. And they did.
America can learn a lot from Islam. But it won’t learn anything if Muslim organizations like CAIR and the Muslim community cannot summon the humility and courage, and dare I say the proper fear of Allah, to decisively raise the bar on gender equality. For its day, Islam was progressive on the matter of women’s rights. Given that social conditions and constraints are very different today in the United States then they were in Arabia fourteen hundred years ago, why can’t Islam be progressive on women’s rights once again?
Few of my readers will doubt that CAIR management is on the right side of justice when it comes to Palestine and Israel. Unfortunately, its voice on that critical issue is compromised by the fact that women remain second-class at CAIR, while management and the National board paint a rosy picture to the contrary. The high number of women employees does not offset the endemic gender problems.
If you are a woman, the work environment at CAIR can be toxic—quite ironic for a civil rights organization–as different women have discovered. In its current unrepentant state, vividly on display today, CAIR is a stain on the Muslim community. And that stain is only going to grow until the National board finds its way to taking charge.
I realize that much of what I have been discussing is very disconcerting for Muslims especially. But we are all bound to advance social justice wherever we can, and that is rarely accomplished without some affliction of the comfortable. The point of it all, however, is to provide comfort—and actual redress—to the afflicted.
I had drafted most of this post before I learned that CAIR saw fit to sue Lori Saroya. That ill-conceived move leaves one wondering if the leadership of CAIR knows only one way to operate. As Lori posted on Facebook: “Through the courts, I’ll be forced to expose things at CAIR that I had no intention of ever making public. #CAIR has launched a real boomerang by filing this lawsuit.”
If you are bothered at all by CAIR using some of its zakat money to try to intimidate Sister Lori, please consider donating to her legal defense fund. I hope to have more details in my next post.
Reform CAIR 