What Goes Around

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