Introduction
What you are about to read in Part One below concerning the coverup by CAIR of Hassan Shibly’s sexual misconduct is based on a document which I recently learned was made available to the CAIR community in June of 2019. But many people who should have read it with open minds apparently did not. Hence, CAIR is in deeper trouble today.
Silly me. I thought that document contained the worst of the worst of CAIR’s deceitfulness and complicity in Shibly’s exploits. But I was wrong. A more recent document, which Lori Saroya and her attorneys filed this past Friday, June 11, in response to the lawsuit CAIR filed against her on May 21, exposes more. (Here is the link: https://wecairblog.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/cairlawsuit62021-2.pdf) Part Two of this post will share some of that content.
And I am not promising this will be the end of the Shibly business. As I noted before, one thing seems to lead to another around here.
Sister Lori’s response is rich in examples of CAIR’s dirty dealings, misuse of donor funds, incompetence, mismanagement, bullying, sexual harassment, and gender as well as religious discrimination. CAIR is corrupt, and has left many employees and board members harmed. I expect the subject matter will keep us at reformcair.com busy for quite some time.
The grand prize for corruption and outright fabrication of truth in our times goes to Donald Trump, unquestionably. But CAIR is not all that far behind. The top bros at CAIR barter truth and principle for a measly gain, and bully as they think necessary.
So stay tuned.
Part One: What the CAIR community learned two years ago
In my previous two posts, I included bits of how CAIR National dealt with an allegation of sexual misconduct against Shibly, executive director of CAIR-Florida, in the summer of 2016. In a statement issued this past April 16, updated May 7, CAIR denies receiving any “complaints of sexual harassment” against Shibly, and claims to have only learned of the allegations against him this past December when they appeared online.
Not true, as Part Two will explain. But sticking with information that was available to the CAIR community two years ago, CAIR definitely received an allegation of an inappropriate relationship of Shibly’s with a woman–one of his secret marriages–while he was still married to the mother of his children. As a result, Shibly was invited to Washington to tell his side of the story and to discuss how to control the potential damage to CAIR over the incident.
The purpose of that meeting went beyond exoneration of Shibly and damage control. Another purpose, apparently, was to humiliate a CAIR staff person who dared to take the allegation seriously and deserving of an honest investigation. The incident demonstrates that CAIR’s assertions that it takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously, and that it holds CAIR employees to high expectations of appropriate behavior, are hollow.
In my last two posts I was tiptoeing around that 2016 meeting because I assumed the document I was drawing from had not yet circulated among many people. I have since discovered that the document was sent to several CAIR chapter leaders in June of 2019, but instead of being outraged by what the document revealed about CAIR National, it was largely ignored and may have only contributed to the disparagement of its author.
Some of you have seen the document. I know that at least one chapter leader blocked it from being viewed by other individuals associated with that chapter. I don’t know how many chapter leaders blocked it, but I am going to infer that rumors about the author must have been already circulating, and the Washington office likely had something to do with that.
Reading the whole document, I get the impression that the author (henceforth to be designated “the author”) is very knowledgeable about nonprofit organizations and best practices, and was really trying to bring more professionalism and transparency to CAIR. The basic problem with that approach was that any progress would have necessarily put constraints on the top men at CAIR.
Those guys were not about to concede any of their privileges and power, and this upstart employee was steadily undermined and isolated. In the end, CAIR cheated her out of $20,000.
In one episode, a project the author had begun and for which she was clearly the most qualified was steadily taken over by someone less qualified. When the author asked the executive director for his backing, he told her that he was siding with the other employee, since she had supported him against the efforts of CAIR National employees to unionize in 2016.
But let’s get back to the Shibly story. From previous posts you might recall that the executive director of CAIR National immediately sided with Shibly when he was accused of an inappropriate relationship in 2016. He did not allow the author and the legal director to do their jobs and conduct a formal investigation, including interviewing the woman who brought the allegation. (The latter was allegedly blocked on CAIR’s social media account).
The author submitted her initial report to the executive director, including a photo she had found online which appeared to corroborate the allegation. The author was reprimanded for the report and the photo, and was told that if it became public, “the Islamophobes would use it to attack CAIR.” The accused was invited to Washington to explain his side of the story, and discuss how to keep the issue quiet. The woman was never interviewed by anyone representing CAIR.
The author was barred from the meeting with Shibly, even though chapter-related issues and complaints were part of her job. The meeting was a brothers only thing, because the accused “would feel more comfortable with brothers in the room.” But the top men of CAIR did ask the author to join the meeting at the very end, to apologize to Shibly.
The only way that CAIR’s statement of April 16, updated on May 7, could be anything less than a bald-faced lie is if the sexual misconduct alleged in 2016 did not include sexual harassment. But the allegation was worse; it was about a secret “marriage” of Shibly’s. The fact that the same statement makes no mention of CAIR receiving any claim of sexual misconduct against Shibly (which, as we have seen, it attempted to cover up rather than investigate), demonstrates that CAIR doesn’t give a hoot about sexual misconduct, and truth has no purchasing power there.
If it were otherwise, CAIR would right now be conducting a credible investigation of the allegations Leila Fadel included in her article published by NPR on April 15 (Civil Rights Org CAIR Accused Of Ignoring Alleged Misconduct : NPR). Below are two paragraphs from CAIR’s April 16 statement, updated May 7, the first of which I quoted in post number 10 (With Enough Lawyers, Lies, and Money – Reform CAIR).
[W]e want to be clear: sexual harassment is immoral, illegal, and absolutely unacceptable to us. After learning about the allegations in the [April 15] CAIR story, we reviewed our records, interviewed our staff, and confirmed that our office never received any complaints of sexual harassment, inside or outside of the workplace, against CAIR-Florida’s former Director….
As noted earlier, we are working with outside experts to strengthen our internal procedures in order to ensure that everyone within our network can always safely report misconduct, and to ensure that complaints are always handled appropriately at the local and national level.
If you contrast what you just read with how the Shibly meeting in 2016 actually went down, you may better understand why I said several posts ago that with CAIR’s April 16 statement and three bucks, you can get a coffee at Starbucks. (I have since been to Starbucks and learned that I lied. A large coffee costs $3.22, before a tip.)
Part Two: What the CAIR lawsuit has revealed
Pages 20 through 22 of Sister Lori’s response to the lawsuit filed against her by CAIR demonstrate that the CAIR leadership could not possibly have been in the dark regarding complaints of sexual abuse and harassment, as well as other types of misconduct and mismanagement by Hassan Shibly. Indeed, in 2016, while she was attempting to investigate the allegations against him, Shibly threatened Sister Lori with a cease and desist letter. (As I may discuss in a future post, Hassan Shibly is aggressive with his accusers.) As we will see in the second paragraph of the lengthy excerpt below, she came to the verge of resigning her position due to Executive Director Nihad Awad’s determination to bury those complaints rather than deal with them properly.
From pages 20 -22 of Lori Saroya’s response:
Mr. Awad “was unhappy that Ms. Saroya had repeatedly asked CAIR to investigate allegations into sexual assault and harassment and other forms of abuse by Hassan Shibly….Mr. Awad and his fellow leaders at CAIR opposed any investigations into the allegations into Shibly, and opposed taking any action at all regarding these egregious, and well-supported allegations. On July 16, 2016, Ms. Saroya indicated in an email to Mr. Awad that she intended to resign over CAIR’s refusal to take any action at all regarding the evidence of Shibly’s mistreatment of women and others. Two days later, Ms. Saroya informed IT Director Omar Ali that she intended to resign from CAIR and gave him instructions on handling her email account after her departure. She also wrote to Mr. Ali: ‘Good news for me—will never have to deal with Hassan Shibly again’ and ‘[Shibly’s] being allowed to host an [Executive Director] retreat when there are serious allegations against him. It’s not right and not fair to the other chapters who have no clue [about allegations of secret marriages and sexual misconduct against him].’ Mr. Awad begged Ms. Saroya not to resign, referring to her as his ‘friend’ and mentee, and, ultimately, she did not resign for another year and a half. She did not attend the ‘conflict resolution training’ that Mr. Awad had asked her to attend in response to her raising concerns about Shibly’s misconduct and the need for CAIR to hold him accountable for it.”
“Ms. Saroya admits that she received an email from Mr. Awad on or about August 4, 2017 complaining about what he described as issues with CAIR staff. In fact,however, these admonitions were because Ms. Saroya had raised issues about the evidence of unethical and potentially illegal conduct by Shibly in CAIR’s Florida office… Indeed, she had received a cease and desist demand from Shibly seeking to prevent her, in her role as CAIR Chapter Director, from investigating allegations of his ‘secret marriages’ and sexual exploitation of women –including women who attended CAIR events. Mr. Awad and, of course Shibly …were upset that Ms. Saroya stated that the evidence of misconduct…was sharply inconsistent with the values that CAIR held itself out as holding. Notably, it was during the same year that Mr. Awad pronounced Ms. Saroya ‘the best Chapter Development Director that CAIR has ever had or ever will have,’ and the same year that she was given a very positive review. Only 14 days after the ‘warning,’ Ms. Saroya received a promotion in title and pay raise. An August 18, 2017 email from Mr. Awad stated: ‘I am writing to let you know that based on your performance evaluation of 2016 and our discussion, we are raising your gross annual salary to $92,000… Your new title will be Chapter Director. We appreciate your hard work and dedication to CAIR.’ See Exhibit 3. And nine months later, in May 2018, Mr. Awad begged her not to resign from CAIR, and offered to give her a promotion if she agreed to stay.”
“Ms. Saroya admits that the August 4, 2017 email from Mr. Awad stated: ‘Sr. Lori, you are a valuable staff to our national team, but I am concerned that your interactions with other staff are crippling our ability to properly function as an organization, as interdepartmental cooperation is essential to the proper functioning of our organization.’ This statement reflected Mr. Awad’s clear desire that Ms. Saroya stay silent about the misconduct of Shibly…which he and certain others on the CAIR leadership team would have preferred to remain swept under the rug.”
“Ms. Saroya admits that Mr. Awad instructed her to attend a ‘conflict resolution training’ whose purpose, in effect, was to counsel Ms. Saroya that she should not be vocal about the misconduct or unethical behavior of top CAIR officials.”
From the account above, it is clear that plenty of the staff at CAIR National, not excluding Mr. Awad himself, were quite aware of allegations of sexual harassment and other forms of misconduct against Hassan Shibly in 2016, and were determined to keep them from the light of day. One woman accuser of Shibly repeatedly contacted CAIR in March of 2016, and only in July, at the insistence of Sr. Lori and the former legal director, did the meeting with Shibly happen. And you read in Part One how that went.
As I have noted before, CAIR National had three weeks to get their response of April 16, updated on May 7, to Leila Fadel’s article right, and did not. CAIR then had another six weeks to decide not to file a lawsuit intended to silence Sister Lori and continue the coverup. But CAIR’s instinct to retaliate prevailed.
The fact that Shibly resigned as head of CAIR-Florida does not resolve the matter. The CAIR National board owes it to Shibly’s victims and the Muslim community to conduct a full investigation of all of the allegations against him, principally his secret marriages and other sexual misconduct, by a panel the women bringing those allegations can trust, and to hold him accountable for any misdeeds while he was employed by and represented CAIR in any capacity.
Even more sticky for CAIR, but no less important, there should be a full investigation of the coverup of the Shibly matter, in the middle of which was the Executive Director of CAIR National himself. And the coverup has continued, obviously, up until the present day. In 2018 a representative of CAIR National learned more about the misconduct and mismanagement of Hassan Shibly, but nothing came of it. Instead, in something of a slap-in-the-face to many of the Florida staff, in 2020 CAIR National recognized CAIR-Florida as “Chapter of the Year.”
These investigations need to happen not simply to restore some integrity to CAIR, but also because of the real harm that is caused by the sort of behavior that is alleged. A fair number of women, and some men as well, who must have felt honored to be chosen to work for CAIR and undoubtedly had high expectations, were wounded and traumatized. So, of course, were some acquaintances of Hassan Shibly who were not employed by CAIR.
No doubt, there will be very strong resistance to the idea of a thorough accounting of misdeeds and housecleaning of CAIR; the chief concern will be what the Islamophobes might do with what is revealed. But the alternative, of taking CAIR at its word that it is committed to the highest standards and has matters under control, would be irresponsible, period. Muslims, just like any others, need to face the music at times. And CAIR and the Muslim community will be better for it.
Reform CAIR 