For Memorial Day, CAIR Official Avoids Honoring U.S. Fallen

A high-ranking official of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) spent her 2016 Memorial Day weekend attacking the character of U.S. service men and women.

CAIR claims to be a leading civil rights group, but as CAMERA’s 2009 Special Report “CAIR: Civil Rights or Extremism” has noted, the council is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation retrial—the largest terrorism financing case in the country’s history. At least five former CAIR staff members and co-founders have been imprisoned, indicted, arrested and/or deported on weapons or terrorism-related charges.

Ryan Mauro, an analyst with the Clarion Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization that monitors Islamic extremism, reported that the executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, Zahra Billoo, “took time out of her Memorial Day weekend to stand by her opposition to honoring fallen U.S. soldiers on the holiday…” When asked this year if she stood by her previous bashing of American service members Billoo affirmed that she did. The CAIR official was questioned on Twitter social media if any U.S. soldiers, including Muslim Americans, were worth honoring. Billoo replied, “If they killed innocent people? Uncritically participated in an unjust war(s)? No.”

Mauro noted that in 2014 Billoo criticized U.S. soldiers on Memorial Day weekend. The CAIR official said she “struggles with Memorial Day each year” and wondered whether she should honor American service members who died. Then Billoo justified her stance by using Twitter to quote another CAIR official, Dawud Walid, executive-director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter. Perhaps referring to U.S. and coalition partners’ actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Walid questioned whether American soldiers who died in “unjust” wars and “occupations” should be honored. Islamic terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, frequently use the term “occupation” to describe the presence of non-Muslims in lands that are currently or were at one point ruled by Muslims.

Although Billoo later deleted that tweet, her views emerged again on Memorial Day 2015. On that occasion, Billoo claimed that U.S. soldiers frequently “murder” innocent civilians. Afterwards, Mauro noted, she “equated Israel with ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a U.S.-designated terrorist group].”

Billoo’s remarks were criticized by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, the leader of the American-Islamic Forum on Democracy, a Muslim group opposed to Islamic extremism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy doctor, said Billoo’s statements shows “that they [CAIR officials] have nothing but disdain for our armed forces.”

CAIR officials’ frequent extremist statements and ties to Islamic terrorist groups have not stopped many U.S. news media outlets from treating the council as a credible source.

Billoo herself was recently quoted in a Dec. 24, 2015 Los Angeles Times article (“Threat to harm Muslims is alleged”). Yet, her history of Israel-bashing and equating U.S. troops with murderers was omitted by The Times. Billoo also was treated as a credible source in a New York Times report (“College Student is Removed from Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane,” April 18, 2016) and by the Associated Press (“Stowaway on jetliner has left Hawaii,” May 4, 2014).

CAIR has sought to intimidate those who point out the council’s history. Writer Shireen Qudosi reported in the Counter Jihad Report, an online-publication that highlights Islamic extremism, that CAIR has “worked to discredit Mauro by questioning his ability as an expert, tarnishing him as an ‘anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist’”—although Mauro has worked with Muslim reformers. In April 2016, CAIR tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent Mauro from delivering a lecture on Islamic terrorism to law enforcement personnel in New York.

As CAMERA has noted, (see, for example “CAMERA Letter in Washington Times Educates on CAIR,” Nov. 1, 2007), in 2004 CAIR sued the Web site www.anticair.com for libel. The site had claimed, among other things, that the council had been founded by Islamic terrorists, started by Hamas members and functioned as a terrorist-supporting front group that sought to overthrow the U.S. government.

CAIR and www.anticair.com reached a confidential, mutually agreed settlement that appeared to leave intact the latter’s charges that the council was founded and funded by Hamas members. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance movement, has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. CAIR may have settled to avoid further disclosure of its finances, ideology and relationships, the lawyer for anti-cair-net.org surmised.

News media would do well to note that CAIR not only attacks it’s critics, but some of its officials can’t bring themselves to honor members of the U.S. military who have died serving their country.