Hamas-Linked CAIR’s Latest ‘Islamophobia’ Report: Sloppy and Confusing

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The ABC affiliate in San Francisco, KGO, is reporting on CAIR’s latest publication, “Examining Islamophobia On California College Campuses,” as if it were news, but apparently no one in the newsroom has actually read it.

KGO does provide a link to the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s report on the station’s website, and here is just some of what one finds by actually reading it.

On page 9 of CAIR’s report, we are told that 69% of the respondents belong to the Muslim Student Association, and 25% to Students for Justice in Palestine. These groups obviously bring their own preconceptions to their views of what they see on campus. This is, of course, not considered. Indeed, the two organizations that over 90% of the participants belong to are essentially Hamas on campus. For instance, Students for Justice in Palestine is the group responsible for organizing the college encampments around the country.

In one revealing portion of the KGO broadcast, Zaid Yousef, a UC Berkeley student, inadvertently reveals that even Muslims do not see the Islamophobia CAIR is looking for.

Especially after 911, we live in a world where Islamophobia is so normalized that even Muslims sometimes feel that Islamophobia is normal, and the causal life of a Muslim entails Islamophobia at almost every level. And so we ask the larger community to acknowledge this reality and work at undoing this normalization of Islamophobia.

Since he doesn’t give any concrete examples of what he is referring to, it sounds as if he and CAIR are trying to create a problem that isn’t there. In fact, nowhere in CAIR’s report does the organization offer an example of the problem of Islamophobia that could be verified in a news report.

Here is another example from CAIR’s report:

Had 4 police officers try to intimidate me while creating chalk art to protest the occupation. The administration has also been limiting this chalk art and censoring it consistently, calling it “offensive”, though it has been factually based and innocuous. I also have been threatened with disciplinary action if I don’t stay within a small boundary that they’ve designated as the “free speech” area. HISPANIC OR LATINO MALE, FOOTHILL COLLEGE” (page 16)

In CAIR’s Methodology section, they explain how they chose participants.

The surveys were collected through two primary methods:

1) in-person distribution to college students attending “Know Your Rights” sessions held across the state and

2) digital distribution via QR codes provided through various outreach channels, both online and in person. CAIR-CA used its network of partners, including religious centers, student organizations, and community-based organizations, to conduct outreach and request survey responses. These efforts included making announcements at large community gatherings such as Jumu’ah (Friday communal prayers), setting up information tables and distributing flyers at relevant events, reaching out to college-based student organizations, and using community newsletters and email lists. Additionally, survey links were shared on websites, social media platforms, and WhatsApp groups to ensure broad visibility and accessibility.

In other words, they are sampling their friends, like-minded people. They always do this. It is true of all their reports.

On May 16, 2024, CAIR denounced a letter sent by “U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer and Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, asking the Department of the Treasury to disclose any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) submitted by banks to the department regarding various American campus student groups, civil rights organizations, human rights groups, and advocacy groups supportive of Palestinian human rights, as well as numerous left-leaning foundations such.”

Those groups included Students for Justice in Palestine, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and American Muslims for Palestine, among others.

Both CAIR and the AMP have their origins in the Islamic Association for Palestine, a Hamas front in America. Before leaving to form CAIR in 1994, Nihad Awad, the current Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was the public relations director for the Islamic Association for Palestine. Indeed, Awad attended and partially led the 1993 Philadelphia Meeting, a summit meeting of senior Hamas leaders in this country. The meeting was called for by the Palestine Committee, the Hamas support group in America in response to the signing of the Oslo Accords that threatened Hamas’ authority in Palestine. The purpose of the 1993 meeting was to thwart the peace process, and to continue to support Hamas in the likelihood that the U.S. government declared Hamas a terrorist organization.

Nihad Awad, at least in the past, was among the inner circle of Hamas leadership in this country.

As for the American Muslims for Palestine, ten years after Nihad Awad left the Islamic Association for Palestine, a jury found the IAP liable in the Hamas drive-by assassination of David Boim. Rather than pay the $156 million awarded to the Boim family, the IAP shut down, only to return a short time later under a new name, the American Muslims for Palestine. The Boims are now suing the AMP.

The American Muslims for Palestine is facing new legal challenges in the wake of the atrocities of October 7.

Also in May, a lawsuit was filed by Greenberg Traurig, LLP, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, the Schoen Law Firm, and Holtzman Vogel, on behalf of a group of American and Israeli victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack,

seeking compensatory damages from AJP Educational Foundation Inc. (also known as American Muslims for Palestine or AMP) and the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), alleging that these organizations provided material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Then in June, only a month after the letter sent by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to the Department of the Treasury, the Attorney General of Virginia began an investigation into the AMP.

Attorney General Jason Miyares today announced that a Virginia court ordered the AJP Educational Foundation, Inc., also known as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), to produce records requested by a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) issued by his office. The Court denied AMP’s petition to set aside the CID. Under Virginia law, the Office of the Attorney General has the jurisdiction to investigate possible violations of the Commonwealth’s charitable registration and solicitation laws. In October 2023, the Virginia Office of the Attorney General issued a CID to AMP seeking information regarding its compliance with Virginia’s charitable registration and solicitation laws. The AJP Educational Foundation Inc. is a public nonprofit with its headquarters located in Falls Church, Virginia.

The following month, in July, the investigation proceeded with a major ruling that ordered the AMP to

 turn over closely guarded financial documents requested by the state attorney general as part of an investigation into its funding sources, according to a statement released by his office. The highly anticipated decision represents a significant setback for American Muslims for Palestine, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that could now be compelled to turn over sensitive financial records, including donor information it has long successfully shielded from public view.

All this is the backdrop to H.R. 9495, which seeks to revoke the non-profit tax exempt organizations that support terrorism, such the AMP and CAIR.

On page 42 of CAIR’s Campus Climate report, they include in their list of recommended student resources, American Muslims for Palestine.