Two officials from a group designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to fund the terrorist group Hamas will attend President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday as guests of Democratic lawmakers.
The invitations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations leaders came after the nation's first Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to bring a Muslim American as one of his guests to the speech, The Hill reported.
Ellison called it "an opportunity to really drive the point home that there are no Americans who are suspect just based on their religious identity, that all Americans are welcome in the people’s house."
CAIR, however, according to evidence entered in the terror-financing case, was founded by figures associated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the worldwide movement that has stated its intent to transform the U.S. into an Islamic state.
In 2014, the United Arab Emirates put CAIR on its list of designated terrorist organizations, along with groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida. More than a dozen CAIR leaders have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has invited Sameena Usman, a government relations coordinator in CAIR's San Francisco office, to join her, the Hill reported. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., will host Nezar Hamze, the chief operating officer of CAIR's Florida branch.
The Hill said Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida has also urged Democratic lawmakers to bring Muslims to the speech as a rebuke to what she sees is anti-Islamic language from the right.
"The rhetoric and vitriol that has been targeted at this community has been absolutely outrageous and unacceptable," Wasserman Schultz said at a news conference, according to the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida.
Islamic law in America
FBI wiretap evidence from the terror-funding Holy Land Foundation case in Texas showed CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad was at an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in Philadelphia. CAIR's parent organization, according to the evidence, was born out of a need to give a "media twinkle" to the Muslim leaders' agenda of supporting violent jihad abroad while slowly institutionalizing Islamic law in the U.S.
CAIR has complained of the unindicted co-conspirator designation, but as WND reported in 2010, a federal judge later determined that the Justice Department provided “ample evidence” to designate CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator, affirming the Muslim group has been involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas."
In a lawsuit CAIR filed in 2009 against an undercover investigative team that published evidence of CAIR's ties to Islamic jihad, the group alleged its reputation was harmed, and it sought damages in court.
But a federal court in Washington determined CAIR failed to present a single fact showing it had been harmed, and the organization gave up that specific claim against former federal investigator Dave Gaubatz and his son, Chris Gaubatz, whose findings were published in the WND Books expose, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America.
In a May 27, 2014, ruling, the U.S. District Court in Washington observed that CAIR had been "frustratingly unclear as to the injuries at issue for each of the claims." The court found CAIR speaks "in broad generalizations, asserting injuries and damages and proximate cause across multiple counts and multiple Plaintiffs."
CAIR leaders have made statements affirming the aim of establishing Islamic rule in the United States.
The Islamic organization long had accused WND and others of "smearing" the Muslim group by citing a newspaper account of CAIR founder Omar Ahmad telling Muslims in Northern California in 1998 that they were in America not to assimilate but to help assert Islam's rule over the country.
But WND caught CAIR falsely claiming that it had contacted the paper and had "sought a retraction," insisting Ahmad never made the statement.
In a telephone conversation with WND in 2003, CAIR's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, insisted someone from CAIR’s California affiliate made the contact with the paper.
When confronted with the fact that the newspaper’s editors had told WND that CAIR had not contacted them and that the reporter stood by the story, Hooper abruptly ended the call, saying: “If you are going to use distortions, I can’t stop you; it’s a free country. Have a nice day.”
Minutes later, however, Hooper called back and said he wanted to change his statement to say, “We will seek a retraction, and we have spoken to the reporter about it in the past.”
But three years later, the issue arose again, and WND found CAIR still had not contacted the paper.
Hooper, himself, also has expressed a desire to overturn the U.S. system of government in favor of an Islamic state.
"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," Hooper said in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."