President Barack Obama’s deputies are holding “hundreds” of closed-door meetings with a jihad-linked lobbying group that is widely derided by critics as a U.S. arm of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood.
The admission of meetings with the Council on American-Islamic Relations came from George Selim, the White House’s new director for community partnerships, which was formed in January to ensure cooperation by law enforcement and social service agencies with Muslim identity groups in the United States.
“There is hundreds of examples of departments and agencies that meet with CAIR on a range of issues,” he told The Daily Caller, after being asked if his office refuses to meet with any Muslim groups.
CAIR is “the group with the worst record of deception and the deepest ties to terrorists,” said Steven Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which tracks the public activities of Islamist lobbying groups.
“The White House is so clueless and/or compromised” when dealing with the brotherhood, said Robert Spencer, the author of several books about Islam and jihad. CAIR, he said, is “the political front of a radically repressive, Jew-hating, woman-hating organization.”
The House of Representatives last month prodded the Department of Justice to end all contacts with CAIR.
“The [appropriations] committee understands that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has an existing policy prohibiting its employees from engaging in any formal non-investigative cooperation with CAIR [and] the committee encourages the attorney general to adopt a similar policy for all department officials,” said the committee report accompanying the 2013 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, passed in mid-May by the House.
TheDC interviewed Selim during a June 7 State Department conference on diversity that was hosted by the Office of the Special Representative to Muslim Communities.
After he admitted the extensive ties, Selim declined to explain further. He walked away, but returned to insist to TheDC that it cannot record his comments.
The office’s deputy director, Adnan Kifayat, also berated TheDC for taping the interview with Selim. “That was wrong… it is really bad form,” he said.
“You’re putting a career at risk by asking [questions] without telling him… you cannot ambush people and expect them to actually cooperate,” Kifayet said, adding that TheDC could have committed a felony by recording Selim when he was using a cellphone shortly before the interview.
Kifayat’s boss is Farah Pandith. She is a Muslim born in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan. Jihad groups from Pakistan have attacked Indian civilians and soldiers in the province since 1949 when India and Pakistan split amid a bloody war.
Selim’s outreach office is controversial because critics say its cooperation policy accepts the separatist demand by CAIR and other Muslim advocacy groups that they — not elected politicians — represent the nation’s 2 million-plus Muslim residents and citizens.
“It’s an outrage that the administration empowers such bad actors and ignores the courageous moderate Muslims who stand up to these self-anointed hucksters,” said Emerson.
Those excluded American-style Muslims include Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
However, the White House’s cooperation with Muslim groups complements the Democratic Party’s diversity strategy.
That strategy seeks to accumulate votes from a discordant variety of minority groups, including Muslims and feminists, Jews, gays, Latinos and African-Americans. The party’s Muslim outreach is focused on Michigan and Illinois, which are home to significant numbers of Muslim immigrants.
CAIR is especially controversial because of its many links to the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood, whose political wing is set to dominate Egyptian politics since the 2011 departure of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.
In 2009, a judge confirmed the Justice Department’s decision to name CAIR as an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation conspiracy to smuggle funds to HAMAS, which is a jihadi affiliate of the Egypt-based brotherhood. Five men in the smuggling ring were sentenced to jail in 2009, including two who were given 65-year sentences.
HAMAS controls the Gaza Strip between Egypt and Israel. It has launched thousands of missile attacks against Jewish residents in Israel, because it believes Israel’s territory should be ruled by Muslims.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper refused to comment when called by TheDC.
CAIR promotes itself as a civil rights organization, and frequently protests and sues groups that refuse to accept Islamist practices, such the the use of social pressure on Muslim women to make them wear hoods.
The hoods create a social barrier between Muslim women and non-Muslims in the United States.
Even progressive groups — including the Center for American Progress — are leery of CAIR, partly because of its link to jihadi groups, but also because of its derogatory attitudes towards women and Jewish people.
CAIR’s website, for example, showcases a nine-year old girl wearing a tight Islamist-style hood, who is said to have been “bullied.” in school. The video also shows her twin brother, who is not wearing the hood.
The anti-Semitic views of CAIR’s leaders were recently highlighted by Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, who tweeted a message in January approving the execution of 800 Jewish captives in 627, almost 1,400 years ago, by jihadis in the army created by the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.
The murders took place in the Saudi city of Medina, and the Jewish women and children were enslaved.
The killings were proper because the Jewish community broke a deal with Muhammad, Walid claimed in his tweet.
Questioned June 7 by TheDC, Walid cited an explanation on his blog, and declined further comment.
The explanation links to a report about an April 2006 meeting in Dearborn, Mich., where Muslim leaders, including Walid, endorsed the murders.
“The Jews who were executed committed treason by breaking their covenant with the nation-state of Medina, siding during hostilities with Medina’s enemies,” said the leaders’ statement.
The judge was a Jewish convert to the Islam, said the statement. “Sa`d bin Mu`aadh (RA), who was raised as a Jew, was chosen by the Jews to judge in their matter with the Muslims, and Sa’d … sentenced them according to rules from the Torah.”
Walid reiterated the claim in his January tweet, saying, “Sa’ad ibn Mu’aadh ordered… that punishment, bro. It was a correct one.”
“I really don’t have any thing else to say about that,” Walid told TheDC June 7.
