CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). It holds itself out as a civil rights group. Yesterday it held a panel discussion on "Islamophobia" at the National Press Conference. At the event, CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed denounced the Bush administration as a fount of "Islamophobia." Audrey Hudson and Sara Carter report on Ahmed's comments in today's Washington Times.

By apearing on the panel with Ahmed, in my view, David Keene unfortunately dignified CAIR by treating it as the civil rights organization it pretends to be (even if he only appeared to express his disagreement with the theme of the event). For those with eyes to see, the mask has long since fallen from CAIR. Even such stalwart Democrats as Senators Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer have come to recognize CAIR's "association with groups that are suspect," its "ties to terrorism" and its "intimate links with Hamas." Most recently, Aaron Mannes elaborated on CAIR's Hamas connection in "CAIR and Hamas: Implications and an illustration."

In fact, in the words of Anti-CAIR, since its founding in 1994, CAIR, its employees and its officials have worked with third parties including the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Holy Land Foundation, and the Global Relief Foundation to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda and to propagate radical Islam. See generally "CAIR: Islamists fooling the establishment" by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha and "CAIR backs down from Anti-CAIR" by Daniel Pipes.

Is CAIR still fooling the establishment? For a while after 9/11, it certainly did so. The subsequent convictions of CAIR officials and employees for terror-related activities have made it increasingly difficult for CAIR to continue its charade with the same high level of success.

Nihad Awad is the executive director of CAIR (and a key friend of Keith Ellison). Meet Nihad Awad:

• Awad publicly declared his enthusiasm for Hamas at Barry University in Florida in 1994: "I'm in support of Hamas movement more than the PLO." (This was of course at the time the PLO had entered into the Oslo Accords with Israel.)

• The same year, according to the Weekly Standard, when Mike Wallace of CBS's "60 Minutes" asked Awad if he supports the "military undertakings of Hamas," Awad stood up for the terrorist group and told him, "The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation."

• In an August 19, 2006 interview on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Awad rationalized suicide terrorism by suggesting it's really about fighting injustice. He referred to the writing of author Robert Pape on the subject: "He found out that it [suicide terrorism] has more to do with occupations and fighting injustice than religion. It really responds to the myth and the known notion now that has been used by several commentators and some politicians as a cliché because it sounds maybe dramatically well but factually it is not."

• Shortly after September 11, 2001, Awad and CAIR placed on their site a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and under it a call for donations. It read, "What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks," and by clicking on "Donate to the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund" one was unsuspectingly sent directly to the website of the Holy Land Foundation. A week later, the wording of the site was changed, as visitors to the site were directly told to "Donate through the Holy Land Foundation." The link was on CAIR's website until early December 2001, when the information mysteriously disappeared.

• On December 4, 2001, the reason for the disappearance was apparent, as the Holy Land Foundation's assets were blocked by the United States government for funneling money to Hamas. According to the White House site, "The U.S.-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development [provided] millions of dollars each year that [was] used by HAMAS."

• On Sept. 16, 2000, at a Washington rally sponsored by CAIR, AMC, and MPAC, Awad declared: "They [the Jews] have been saying 'next year to Jerusalem,' we say 'next year to all of Palestine!'"

Awad is a former official of the Islamic Association of Palestine, which was a front group for Hamas. As one can infer from the items above, Awad and CAIR appear to act as voices of the "Wahhabi lobby" and as a front for supporters of Islamist terrorism. Below is a photo of Awad speaking on April 20, 2002 in Washington, D.C. on a stage bearing the flag of Hezbollah.

And who is Parvez Ahmed? Ahmed is a prominent supporter of Sami Al-Arian, the convicted terrorist financier and head of the North American branch of the terrorist Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

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