U.S. Muslims urged: Don't cooperate at border

The stated objective of the Trump immigration pause that has stirred so much controversy is to review the nation's system of vetting to prevent terrorist attacks.

Now, one of the leading critics of Trump's executive order is effectively weakening the system already in place, calling on Muslim American citizens re-entering the United States to refuse to answer the questions of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers if they are taken aside for secondary screening.

CAIR Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly (Twitter photo)

The Florida chapter of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations – a terrorist organization, according to the United Arab Emirates – said Tuesday it is responding "to overwhelming evidence that CBP continues to disproportionately target American Muslim citizens for enhanced scrutiny at ports of entry and ask intrusive questions about religious and political beliefs and practices."

Earlier this month, CAIR Florida joined CAIR's national office and two other branches in filing 10 complaints with CBP, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department "reporting the systematic targeting of American-Muslim citizens for enhanced screening by CBP."

CAIR Florida complains that while only 1 percent of travelers to the U.S. are selected for secondary inspection, and American Muslims are 1 percent of the population, some 50 to 75 percent of travelers detained in secondary inspection "have often been documented to be Muslim."

Counter-terrorism analysts argue, however, that individuals and groups that cite Islam as their motivation are by far the biggest terror threats, having carried out more than 30,000 attacks worldwide since 9/11.

CAIR's true objective are unveiled in "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," by former DHS officer Philip Haney and WND Editor Art Moore. Get it now at the WND Superstore!

CAIR Florida further complains that CBP has asked American Muslims "inappropriate and intrusive questions" at secondary inspection and has "passed that information on to the FBI to maintain a registry of information on American Muslims."

Among the questions the group finds objectionable are:

Are you a devout Muslim?
How many times a day do you pray?
What school of thought do you follow?
What Muslim scholars do you listen to?
What do they preach in your mosque?"

What should they be asked?

The purpose of questions of this kind, however, CBP officers explain, is to discern whether or not the traveler might be linked to movements, organizations or belief systems that have a track record of carrying out violent attacks.

Philip Haney, a former CBP officer who conducted secondary inspections at the nation's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson, told WND that loyal citizens don't have anything to worry about.

"If you say that you're an American citizen and you want to help protect America from the threat of terrorism, then these kinds of questions would be the perfect opportunity for you to show your fellow citizens that Islam is a religion of peace by simply answering them," Haney said.

He pointed out that CAIR and others who raise such concerns never offer alternative questions that would meet their approval.

Included in CAIR-Florida's complaints to the CBP were questions asked of a Canadian Muslim citizen who was denied entry to the U.S.

Among them was, "Why did you shave your beard?"

Haney has said that if he had been given the opportunity to question San Bernardino killer Syed Farook upon his return to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 2014, he would have asked Farook about the fact that he had grown a Shariah-compliant beard and was wearing an Islamic headdress while his passport photo showed him bareheaded and clean-shaven.

Haney explained that while a person's appearance certainly isn't itself a sign of a threat, when combined with other information, a profile could emerge of a young man who recently had undergone a conversion to a dangerous movement.

Haney believes the current effort to curb the ability of CBP officers to inspect travelers to the U.S. is related to an ongoing lawsuit against CBP brought by CAIR's Michigan chapter filed in April 2012. The suit was filed on behalf of American citizens who claimed their First Amendment rights were violated when CBP and FBI agents "detained and handcuffed them without evidence of wrongdoing and questioned them about their religious beliefs and worship habits."

Last week, CAIR accused the Trump administration of racism and religious bigotry for its plan to temporarily stop receiving immigrants and travelers from countries known to produce Islamic jihadists.

CAIR was named by the Justice Department an unindicted terror-funding co-conspirator in the largest terror-funding case in U.S. history, and more than a dozen of its leaders charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.

If you support WND’s fight to expose CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, please consider a donation to the WND Legal Defense Fund for court fights like this one – which must be one if America is to remain free – and safe.

The Muslim Arab Gulf state United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR as a terrorist organization along with groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida. In 2008, the FBI cut off official contact with CAIR, citing evidence from the Holy Land Foundation terror-funding trial that documented the connections between CAIR and its founders to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Muslim Brotherhood front

CAIR's parent organization, according to FBI wiretap evidence from the terror-funding Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, was founded at an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in Philadelphia that included CAIR Executive Director Awad. The 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 Executive Director Nihad Awad speaks at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, 2017. From the left are CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper and Rabbi Joseph Berman. From the right are Steven Martin, communications director for the National Council of Churches and Rabiah Ahmed of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

While CAIR has complained of the unindicted co-conspirator designation, 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."

Get the new paperback edition of "Muslim Mafia."

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."