On October 1, 1993, a group of men gathered at the Courtyard Marriott in Philadelphia to discuss the Oslo Accords and the prospective new Palestinian Authority. Among the two dozen or so attendees, mostly members of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, the conversation focused on how to continue to support Hamas (not yet a U.S.-designated terrorist organization) given the Israeli–Palestinian peace deal. The Palestine Committee included three Hamas-supporting organizations in the United States—the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the Occupied Land Fund (later named the Holy Land Foundation, or HLF), and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR).
Unbeknownst to the group, their conversations in Arabic were being recorded by FBI wiretap and would ultimately provide evidence in the U.S. court case against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation. It was shut down by executive order on December 4, 2001 and designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization. The Holy Land Foundation, the government alleged, was funneling millions to Hamas, following the latter’s designation as a terrorist group in 1997. Legal proceedings against Holy Land resulted in the conviction of five indicted conspirators, and a trial in 2008 found them guilty on more than 100 counts.
But back in 1993, the Palestine Committee members were fretting about how to underwrite jihad without exciting the attention of U.S. law enforcement, while at the same time rallying Muslims to support their goal “to liberate its land [i.e., Israel] from the abomination and the defilement of the children of the Jews and [water] its pure soil with their honorable blood which sprouted into a jihad that is continuing until the Day of Resurrection,” in the words of a 1992 Palestine Committee internal memo.
Omar Ahmad, the president of the Islamic Association for Palestine, set the stage by attacking the recently inked Israeli–Palestinian Oslo Accords as an agreement “between infidels and infidels.” But all agreed that a frontal assault on Oslo would not serve their interests and that instead they should emphasize “democracy and freedom of expression.” They should, Ahmad argued, “make people view the [new Palestinian] Authority as collaborators… an Authority which doesn’t care for people’s interests and the interest of the national rights and the people’s.” Unlike Hamas.
The men agreed that the Holy Land Foundation (then, I remind you, called the Occupied Land Fund) would do the bulk of the serious fundraising for Hamas, dribbling small amounts to other causes to mask its operations. Nihad Awad, the IAP Director of Public Relations, made the public relations argument:
This can be achieved by infiltrating the American media outlets, universities and research centers..… It is also achieved by working with Islamic political organizations and the sympathetic ones such as…the American Muslim Alliance, such as the United Muslims of America, MPAC.… If Muslims engage in political activism in America and started to be concerned with Congress and public relations we will have an entry point to use them to pressure Congress and the decision-makers in America.
In 1995, not even two years later, Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and a third man founded the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The elements laid out at the 1993 meeting in Philadelphia have since been capably advanced by the hundreds-strong CAIR team. And Awad still serves as CAIR’s national executive director.
CAIR is today one of the largest Muslim organizations in the United States, with offices in at least 32 states, 500 employees and board members, and reported revenues of just over $9 million in 2024. CAIR officials regularly appear in national media and testify before Congress. CAIR played an instrumental role not just in supporting campus pro-Hamas activities post–October 7, 2023, but in backfilling funding to students who lost scholarships, supporting so-called teach-ins, and financing lawsuits and lawfare in areas such as immigration and protest.
CAIR refers to itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization,” but it has also dived aggressively into politics, registering Muslims to vote and facilitating “American Muslims stepping into their rightful roles of civic leaders, transforming our democracy through active participation,” per CAIR’s annual report. After October 7, CAIR leaders promised a major expansion in political action and lobbying. And at least some of those efforts appear to be paying off, with anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour boasting that she encouraged CAIR and CAIR-supported PACs to pour almost $150,000 into Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign for the mayoralty of New York City.
In November 2025, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to sanction certain arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, and in early January, the Treasury and State Department acted against three chapters of the Brotherhood, labeling the Jordanian and Egyptian branches as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), and the Lebanese branch as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)—both legal terms that encompass individuals and groups under their rubric. After Trump’s initial order, the states of Florida and Texas formally designated both the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR foreign terrorist organizations.
Were these steps legally and constitutionally legitimate? We are about to go through an extensive legal process that will determine whether CAIR survives and thrives—or whether it goes the way of the Holy Land Foundation.
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The criteria for designating an individual or organization as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist are spelled out in an executive order originally issued by President George W. Bush and were subsequently amended in the first Trump administration. The designation criteria potentially relevant to the activities of CAIR and its officials define such actors as:
persons determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General: to be owned, controlled, or directed by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any [designated terrorist organization or person];…(C) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of…any [designated terrorist organization or person];…(E) to be a leader or official of [a designated terrorist organization or person].
It is easy to see how the Holy Land Foundation and its five senior-most operatives ended up falling afoul of the original Bush order. They were, without question, raising money intended for Hamas, a formally designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. The federal government had the foundation and its leaders dead to rights, with reams of wiretap transcripts confirming the accusations. So is that what CAIR has been doing?
Most of the accusations against CAIR over the years have related to its rhetorical support for terrorist organizations, its anti-Semitism, and its support for far-left (and occasionally far-right) anti-Semitic and anti-Israel extremists in American politics. CAIR officials may disagree on certain matters, but in every instance, they come down on the side of Hamas, or blame support for Israel and hostility to terror on the sinister manipulations of American Jews. The examples are legion.
ITEM: Executive director Awad characterized the rampage of October 7 as “the people of Gaza only de-cid[ing] to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp…. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land.”
ITEM: Awad’s deputy, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, claimed that Texas Governor Greg “Abbott is upset with CAIR because our civil rights group filed the lawsuits that defeated his last three attempts to shred the First Amendment for the benefit of the Israeli government.”
ITEM: Zahra Billoo, the executive director of CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area, believes that “we need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federations. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel Chapters on our campuses.… They are your enemies.”
CAIR’s spokesman, Hussam Ayloush, echoes his colleagues, recently decrying the U.S. government’s attempt to deport a pro-Hamas UK-based journalist, Sami Hamdi, who had overstayed his visa: “Sami’s case shows how quickly our government officials are willing to sacrifice our First Amendment and free press when a journalist uses his platform to dare put America first be-
fore Israel.”
Then there are the CAIR-associated individuals who have been convicted or accused of supporting terrorism.
- Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR-Texas, was convicted in 2008 of providing material support to Hamas via the Holy Land Foundation.
- Randall “Ismail” Royer, a CAIR communications specialist, pled guilty in 2004 to weapons and explosives charges that helped the Taliban and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba fight U.S. troops.
- Bassem Khafagi, a CAIR community-affairs director, pled guilty in 2003 to bank and visa fraud, funneling money to a group supporting suicide attacks.
- Muthanna al-Hanooti, executive director of CAIR-Michigan, was sentenced in 2011 for violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq by coordinating with the Saddam Hussein regime.
- Mohammad El-Mezain, CAIR’s endowments chairman, was convicted in 2008 of conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas.
- Rabih Haddad, CAIR-Ann Arbor fundraiser, was deported in 2002. His organization, the Global Relief Foundation, was designated as a front for al-Qaeda by the U.S. Treasury.
- Nabil Sadoun, a CAIR national board member, was deported in 2010 after an immigration judge found that he failed to disclose past ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Abdurahman Alamoudi, a CAIR talking head, was sentenced in 2004 for a Libyan-funded plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince.
So yes, there seems to be a pattern of key CAIR officials supporting terrorism and terrorists. On the other hand, the question at hand is whether CAIR as an organization has been engaging in support for terrorism that falls outside the scope of First Amendment protections. Remember, saying “I love Hamas and totally support October 7” is neither terrorist incitement nor material support under U.S. law. It is simply an expression of objectionable views.
The operative parts of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s executive order state that “the Palestine Committee founded the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)” and “CAIR was founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and was created, in the words of persons affiliated with CAIR, as ‘an official U.S. cover representing the Islamic community’ to conceal ties to Islamic extremist groups.” More still: “CAIR was designated as an unindicted co-conspirator by the United States Government in the largest terrorism-financing case in American history, and the court found ‘ample evidence to establish the association’ of CAIR with terrorist organizations; and ‘individuals associated with CAIR have been convicted of providing, and conspiring to provide, material support to designated terrorist organizations.’” Abbott’s proclamation in Texas follows similar lines and lists individuals associated with CAIR who have been convicted for support for terrorism in one form or another.
In both cases, CAIR has filed suit to overturn the designations, arguing, among other things, that terrorism designations are the purview of the federal government, not state governments, that both governors are engaging in guilt by association based on evidence that is decades old (because they cite the Holy Land Foundation, in part, which has not been in existence for 19 years), and that neither has provided proof of CAIR as an organization supporting terrorism.
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What will it take to ban CAIR and its Islamist-glorifying activists?
Much of the evidence does rely on CAIR’s associations. The Philadelphia meeting that conceived of CAIR and a bifurcated financial/PR effort for Hamas took place in 1993. Among the people involved (other than those already cited) were Mousa Abu Marzook, now a senior Hamas official and, when he lived on a green card in the United States, a founder of the Islamic Association for Palestine. Holy Land fundraiser Mufid Abdulqader was the half-brother of Khaled Mashal, who runs Hamas’s political bureau. In other words, by law or blood, IAP and HLF officials represented, at least unofficially, nothing less than the U.S. branch of Hamas. Even so, it took 15 years and untold hours of wiretapping for the FBI to find evidence sufficient to shut down the Holy Land Foundation.
Both state proclamations cite CAIR’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case, noting a ruling from Judge Jorge Solis that stated the government provided “ample evidence” to establish an association between CAIR and HLF/Hamas. But “unindicted co-conspirator” is not a charge, let alone a legally binding verdict, and the federal government has never pursued the “ample evidence” case.
Simply put, shutting down CAIR for good and preventing its spawn from simply renaming themselves and restarting operations requires two things: evidence that it is indeed providing material support for terrorism (à la Holy Land), or changes in the law, or both.
A key element for those targeting CAIR is money. Where does the organization’s money come from? Where does the money it raises end up? Form 990s, the IRS’s required public disclosure for nonprofits (such as COMMENTARY), are shockingly opaque. CAIR publicly insists that only 1 percent of its operating budget comes from foreign donors. But there is no requirement that nonprofits disclose their donors, foreign or domestic. Could cash be coming from Qatar, a known backer of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas? Sure. Could it be coming from Iran? Ditto.
CAIR recently settled a lawsuit with a longtime former employee who had alleged both a pattern of pervasive sexual harassment and questionable foreign funding. After vigorously defending itself at the outset, CAIR precipitously settled after the presiding judge in the case ruled that the case could move forward to the discovery phase. Clearly, CAIR wasn’t prepared to open its books to a hostile litigant.
It is in this light that both the Texas and Florida bans must be viewed. CAIR promptly filed suit against both states. The legalities in both cases are complex, and in fighting them, CAIR has once again opened itself to the possibility of discovery, with banking records, employee files, donations, and more on the table. Unless the organization wins a summary judgment dismissing the designations and bans as illegal, the door will be open to option one, potentially revealing evidence that CAIR is part and parcel of a broader Brotherhood/Hamas support network.
Even if that happens, however, there is nothing in existing law to stop CAIR from morphing into CAIR II, the same organization with another name. This is what Holy Land did, more than once; its first new iteration—“Kindhearts”—was shut down by the Feds, but its subsequent iterations are still in operation today. So the law also has to change.
Members of Congress have their eyes on CAIR, and Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Elise Stefanik recently wrote to the Department of the Treasury requesting an investigation into the group’s ties to terrorism, citing many of the same elements mentioned in the proclamations of both Texas and Florida. Texas Representative Chip Roy went a step further, introducing legislation to ban CAIR for its links to terror. It is highly doubtful that anything permanent or binding will come of these moves.
Rather, the proper first step is to put in place new rules for organizations that avail themselves of nonprofit status.
First, require 501(c)3s to disclose foreign-government and nongovernmental donors. Congress is already seeking to enhance existing laws on foreign donations with respect to American universities; it makes perfect sense to extend this to other nonprofit organizations operating in the United States. This will add an element of transparency that may not shut down Hamas/Brotherhood/Iran supporters, but it will certainly reveal that he who pays the proverbial piper is calling the tune.
Second, end the game of Whac-A-Mole that terrorism supporters have played for years. Congress should establish a process for stripping the nonprofit status of any organization founded by, or with a documented pattern of employing, convicted terrorism supporters. This should be coupled with establishing rigorous monitoring and disclosure requirements with a view to shutting down the organization if it fails to comply. What should that monitoring and disclosure require? Transparency regarding all donors, transparency regarding all grants, documentation of all employee foreign travel (with a view to nipping in the bud overseas meetings with terrorists), and perhaps even a government-appointed monitor to track incitement and civil rights violations.
Third, consider broadening the legal definition of “material support for terrorism.” Right now, a conviction for material support is defined as “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.” But this does not address propaganda or platforming.
Fourth, Congress should strengthen the ability of victims of terrorism to hold accountable U.S. organizations and individuals who provide funding or other forms of support to terrorist organizations. Part of the reason the Holy Land Foundation closed its doors was that a judgment was entered against it for support it had provided to Hamas. But the Foundation evaded responsibility by pleading it was bankrupt while simultaneously rebranding itself, and the plaintiffs in that case have struggled to hold accountable the successor organization or any officials associated with it or the predecessor foundation. Congress should revise U.S. law to prevent such evasions by organizations and officials who provide material support to terrorism.
Finally, a few words of caution. The First Amendment is a powerful shelter to good and evil alike. In countries that fail to provide such protections—think the United Kingdom or Australia—government is now in the business of harassing citizens for their views on everything from religion to gender to terrorism. A narrowing of these rights in America to capture, say, supporters of Hamas, could well be turned against supporters of Israel in an Ocasio-Cortez administration.
And another point. CAIR styles itself a spokesman for all of America’s Muslims, but that is far from true. With the complicity of the left-wing establishment, it has sucked an enormous amount of oxygen away from other Muslim American groups that abhor terrorism, revile the Brotherhood, and support the rights of Jews (and Muslims) everywhere to live in peace and security. The task at hand cannot be negative alone: It is time to elevate American Muslims who have embraced our founding values. That, too, must be an element in a strategy to defeat the likes of the Brotherhood and its fellow travelers in the West.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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