Posted by
Gary Gross on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 1:57:38 PM
Most people know Nihad Awad only as the CAIR director who contributed $2,000 to the Keith Ellison campaign but he's much more than that. According to
this article, he's got quite the 'colorful' history.
Nihad Awad got involved with the Islamic Association for Palestine [IAP], or in Awad’s words: "After the Gulf War was over, I was offered a job with the Islamic Association for Palestine as their public relations director." He took the job, and soon after that, he accepted a position as a contributing editor for one of the organization’s publications, the Muslim World Monitor, as well.
This begs the question "What is the IAP about"? Here's that answer:
The IAP was founded by Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a "senior political leader" of Hamas, and the organization is credited with publishing the actual Hamas charter. In a prepared statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Steven Emerson stated, "internal Hamas documents strongly suggest that parts of the Hamas charter… were first written by members of the IAP in the United States in the early to mid-1980's."
The next logical question is what role did Mr. Awad play at IAP. Here's that answer:
The IAP publication that Awad became an editor for, according to Steven Emerson in his book American Jihad, "celebrates successful Hamas terrorist attacks."
That's pretty interesting stuff for a man who practices a so-called "religion of peace." It gets more interesting after that:
...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."
When Awad talks about the UN Charter allowing "people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation", Awad is specifically talking about Hamas "defending itself" against the sovereign nation of Israel. What Mr. Awad omits from his thinking is that the UN sanctioned the creation of Israel. In international law, that means that Israel isn't an illegal occupier of Palestinian land. It's a sovereign nation.
If you're finding this information on Awad disturbing, you'd best take a deep breath because I'm just at the tip of this iceberg.
At the behest of then-IAP President Omar Ahmad, Awad met with him (Ahmad) and Rafeeq Jaber (Ahmad’s successor and current IAP President) to discuss the IAP branching out in another direction. That direction was CAIR.
Just three months after the infamous "I support Hamas" statement, in June of 1994, the ‘IAP three’ incorporated the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), in Awad’s words, "to bridge the chasm of ignorance between Muslims in America and their neighbors." Nihad Awad became the group’s Executive Director, Omar Ahmad took on the title of Chairman of the Board, and Awad solicited his friend and colleague from the Bosnian Relief Committee, Ibrahim Hooper, as CAIR’s Communications Director.
Let's recap what we've found thus far:
- Nihad Awad is a supporter of Keith Ellison;
- Nihad Awad was the PR director of IAP, a Hamas front group here in the US;
- The IAP wrote Hamas' charter in the early 1980's while based here in the US;
- Nihad Awad told Mike Wallace that the UN Charter allowed people to defend themselves "against illegal occupation," in this instance against Israel;
- Nihad Awad said he "supports Hamas", going so far as to become an unofficial PR director for them here in the US.
Someone's sure to say that I'm bringing all this up to either (a) defeat Keith Ellison or (b) to sow fear in people so that terrorism is the dominant issue this campaign season rather than Iraq. I admit that I'd love seeing
Alan Fine defeat Mr. Ellison this November. As a conservative, I'll proudly 'admit' that I want to limit the number of extreme left wing moonbats in the House or Senate.
As for the part about sowing fear, I'd characterize it a bit differently. I'd like to think that I'm making people aware of the threat that militant Islam poses to the US and the world. If people find this information scary, that's fine because it's scary information. When a so-called Muslim civil rights group like CAIR hires a man who was the PR director for 'Hamas in America' to lead their organization, when this man was the editor of a magazine that "celebrates successful Hamas terrorist attacks", when this man says that Israel illegally occupies Palestinian territory, why shouldn't we worry what else he believes?
Is my sole intention in doing this to get Republicans elected? Definitely not. Will this help get Republicans elected? Quite possibly, most likely because Democratic Party havs't shown the collective will to even fight terrorist groups, much less defeat them. Would I welcome more Democrats to take up the fight against terrorist-supporting Islamic groups? Defintely. We can never have too many people willing to stand up against terrorists. It isn't possible to have too many people who preach, practice and appreciate liberty and all its blessings.
Earlier I wrote that CAIR asked for donations to a charity named
the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund. I also told you that the 'charity' that was collecting the donations was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a group that was later shut down because the donations were going to Hamas. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that someone doesn't believe that Mr. Awad knew of HLF's intentions. That's easily refuted in
this article by Joe Kaufman. Here's what Mr. Kaufman wrote:
However, when one finds out that the head of the Holy Land Foundation, Ghassan Elashi, was none other than one of the founding board members of CAIR’s Texas chapter, when one finds out that the head of the Holy Land Foundation was a leader in CAIR who now sits in a United States prison, that paints an entirely different picture altogether.
And as stated previously, the Holy Land Foundation was founded by the same individual who founded CAIR’s parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine.
Furthermore, around the same time that CAIR asked for donations for the Holy Land Foundation, they asked people to donate money to another pseudo-charity that was shut down by the U.S. Government for raising funds for HAMAS, Al Qaeda and other terrorist entities, the Global Relief Foundation… and its leader, Rabih Haddad, was deported by the United States.
If, after reading this information, you can tell me that Nihad Awad didn't know what HLF was about with a straight face, then you've got a poker face that the professionals would be jealous of. Simply put, it isn't credible to think that Mr. Awad didn't understand all these connections. I've done alot of digging into these types of organizations and one thing I've found is that their statements aren't guarded about what they're about. Quite the opposite actually. Their statements are only guarded in public.It's even less credible when you consider that Mr. Awad wasn't some low-level nobody in CAIR or in IAP. He was a major player in both organizations who knew alot about the operations and purpose of these organizations.It's your right if you want to continue thinking of CAIR as a Muslim civil rights group. People can stick their head in the sand and pretend that the facts I've laid out don't paint an accurate picture of CAIR but it doesn't make those facts less trustworthy. Ignore this information at your own risk.Technorati: Nihad Awad, CAIR, Holy Land Foundation, Hamas, Keith Ellison, Election 2006