2011 WorldNetDaily
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad
The same national Muslim leader who's launched an "education campaign" to quell American fears over Shariah law once gave a full-throated speech to Muslims advocating an Islamic rise to power in America.
In a newly surfaced video of a 2000 speech to the Islamic Society of North America, Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad told his Muslim audience: "Muslims in America are in the best position to show Islam and to show action and to show vision – not only for a Muslim school, how it should be run, but for an entire society, how it should be run. Who better can lead America than Muslims?"
The Justice Department named both ISNA and CAIR unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal scheme to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.
In the same speech, "Participating in Public Affairs: Strategies for the Year 2000," Awad encouraged Muslim-Americans to be more assertive with U.S. politicians.
"They should be a servant to our issues," he said. "We should be respected."
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Specifically, Awad advised that Muslim-Americans demand politicians include in their national speeches and party platforms that America is also an "Islamic society."
"This is no longer a Christian-Judeo society," Awad maintained. "It is a Christian-Judeo-and-Islamic society."
At the same time, Awad reminded Muslim-Americans that they are still, first and foremost, citizens of the global Islamic nation and should do everything in their power to help their Muslim brothers fighting in Kashmir against Indian Hindus and in the Palestinian territories against Israelis.
He suggested they demand U.S. leaders in Washington cut aid to both Israel and India.
"We belong to the ummah, and we are an extension of the Muslim world," he said. "We should talk about Kashmir, and we should talk about Palestine."
Islamic law in America
CAIR is suing the state of Oklahoma to block a state constitutional measure banning Shariah law, which was approved by more than 70 percent of Oklahoma voters.
In a press release released last November applauding a Clinton-appointed federal judge's decision to temporarily bar certification of the popular law, Awad announced CAIR was launching an "education campaign" to inform Oklahomans they have nothing to fear from Shariah law.
Awad said voters were confused by "misinformation about Islam" promulgated by "Islamophobes."
He added: "CAIR plans an education campaign in Oklahoma to offer state residents accurate and balanced information about Islamic beliefs and practices and about the American Muslim community."
Critics say CAIR's leaders are worried about the passage of state constitutional bans on Shariah law, because they have a secret agenda to institutionalize Shariah law in America.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper told a Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter in 1993, before CAIR was formed.
CAIR's founding chairman, Omar Ahmad
CAIR's founding chairman, Omar Ahmad, moreover, has flatly argued Shariah law should replace the Constitution.
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant," he told a Muslim audience in Fremont, Calif., in 1998. "The Quran should be the highest authority in America."
FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed in congressional testimony that his agency has cut off ties to Washington-based CAIR, citing terror concerns with its national leaders – including Awad.
"We have no formal relationship with CAIR because of concerns with regard to the national leadership," Mueller testified.
Wiretap evidence from the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance case put Awad at a Philadelpia meeting of Hamas leaders that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charity. Wiretaps also record them stating the need to deceive Americans about their true aims.
The secret meeting, held in the 1990s at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel, was called to order by CAIR founding Chairman Ahmad. Both he and Awad launched CAIR not long after the meeting.
Mueller confirmed the wiretap evidence during a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing.
The Justice Department also designated Ahmad as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history. A federal jury convicted Holy Land's leaders on all 108 counts.
Ahmad stepped down from CAIR's board of directors shortly after his federal designation.
Among other evidence collected by the FBI, the names of both Ahmad and Awad – who remains at CAIR's helm and regularly appears unopposed on Fox News – appear in a secret phone book alongside key Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk, whom the government says directed and coordinated Hamas terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel. Hamas has also murdered 17 Americans and has been listed as a U.S.-designated terror group since the 1990s.
During the Holy Land trial, U.S. prosecutors alleged that CAIR's ties to Hamas are "ongoing." In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, assistant FBI Director Richard Power suggested both Ahmad and Awad remain under federal scrutiny.
