It’s a sign of what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the rest of us are up against that the Miami area’s PBS station, WLRN, headlined its story about Florida’s new designation of Antifa and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist groups this way: “DeSantis: Florida set to label Muslim civil rights nonprofit a terrorist group under new law.”
The obvious intent of that headline is to give WLRN’s remaining handful of readers, who are no doubt all already hardcore leftists, the impression that DeSantis, drunk on “Islamophobia” and right-wing “hate,” is gratuitously naming an innocent, and indeed, noble, civil rights organization a terrorist group just because it’s non-Christian and presumably full of “brown” people.
In reality, however, CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.)
CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented, and the United Arab Emirates has declared it a terror organization. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager in 2019 was an open supporter of Hamas. CAIR top dog Nihad Awad said the October 7 jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis made him “happy.”
Awad and Omar Ahmad, two officials of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), founded this Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood group in 1994. The federal government shut down the IAP in 2005 as a Hamas front. Over the years, several CAIR officials have been convicted of participating in violent jihad activities.
Meanwhile, CAIR has exhorted Muslims in the U.S. to refuse to cooperate with law enforcement. In Jan. 2011, it came to light that a CAIR chapter in California had circulated a poster reading “Build a Wall of Resistance” and “Don’t Talk to the FBI.” Cyrus McGoldrick, a former official of CAIR’s New York chapter, even threatened informants, tweeting with brutal succinctness: “Snitches get stitches.” Zahra Billoo of CAIR-San Francisco has declared that Muslims have no obligation to talk to the FBI and should contact CAIR if the FBI asks to talk to them.
Yet despite its connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the terror convictions of several of its former officials, and its virtually unanimous opposition to counter-terror laws, investigations, and other initiatives, CAIR remains widely respected. Nearly everyone (particularly in Washington) assumes that it is exactly what it says it is: a Muslim civil rights organization, working for the rights of Muslims in the U.S. and deeply loyal to Constitutional principles and freedoms. The organization’s website features testimonials from congressmen and senators of both parties, as well as security and military officials, testifying to how the organization has perfected the art of deception.
So great is CAIR’s influence, and presumably Antifa’s as well, that WLRN’s report warned darkly that DeSantis’ move could blow up on the Republicans. Former Florida Panhandle state House Republican Joel Rudman said: “I think that when you give that much authority to an elected, or, in the case of this bill, sometimes non-elected officials, I think that’s very dangerous.”
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Rudman explained: “Now, my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, I’m sure they’re looking at this bill, saying, ‘These statutes. They can’t be warped. They can’t be abused. We have no intention of abusing them.’ But you have to understand that every bill you pass into law, there’s going to have some unintended consequences, and you have to be prepared for how those statutes are going to be interpreted when you’re not the majority party.… I think any constitutional conservative Republicans should have a problem with that bill.”
No one should ever allow himself to be intimidated into refraining from doing something right for fear that someone else will do something wrong in response. Nevertheless, Rudman was essentially predicting that Florida Democrats will, if they gain power, start declaring groups they dislike to be terrorist organizations, and indeed, the left is so morally bankrupt and power-mad at this point that this is a very real possibility.
Nevertheless, regarding CAIR and Antifa, DeSantis is absolutely correct and should stand his ground.
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