AFDI/SIOA Deplores Hamas-linked Islamic Supremacist Hate Group CAIR's Attempts to Impede New York Counter-Jihad Training

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national human rights and advocacy organization is asking New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city officials to resist efforts by the Hamas-linked Islamic supremacist hate group the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to dictate the nature and content of anti-terror training for New York Police Department personnel

The request by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program comes after Hamas-linked CAIR, one of the nation's most notorious Islamic supremacist hate groups, demanded the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for allowing the counter-jihad film The Third Jihad to be shown to NYPD personnel. AFDI/SIOA respectfully requests that the New York City government repudiate this attempt by Hamas-linked CAIR to interfere with and impede counterterrorism training.

AFDI/SIOA Executive Director Pamela Geller said in a statement: "AFDI/SIOA deplores the attempts by Hamas-linked CAIR and a thoroughly compromised New York Times to undermine the security of New Yorkers by demanding the removal of accurate material about the jihad threat from NYPD training. AFDI/SIOA calls on Mayor Bloomberg to reject the persecution of Police Commissioner Kelly, and to reaffirm him in his position. New York's leaders must not cave in to Hamas-linked CAIR's campaign to outlaw the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism, thereby making us all more vulnerable to them."

Hamas-linked CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department during the trial of the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation.

CAIR has previously attempted to intimidate numerous government agencies and citizens' groups into dropping events featuring foes of international jihad activity, including SIOA's Executive Director Pamela Geller, SIOA's Associate Director Robert Spencer, ACT for America's Brigitte Gabriel, and others. In the summer of 2010 it has embarked upon a concerted campaign of intimidation and defamation to silence public figures who speak out against jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the Rev. Franklin Graham, Florida Congressional candidate Dan Fanelli, and Connecticut Congressional candidate Rick Torres.

CAIR's attempt to intimidate the NYPD and dictate its choice of training materials is consistent with its long record of pro-jihad duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.

Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.

Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:

• Ghassan Elashi, founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, in 2009 received a 65-year prison sentence for funneling over $12 million from the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation to the jihad terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians
• Mousa Abu Marzook, a former CAIR official, was in 1995 designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a "terrorist and Hamas leader." He now is a Hamas leader in Syria.
• Randall Royer, CAIR's former civil rights coordinator, in 2004 began serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding al-Qaida and the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai jihad massacres.
• Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America, which was linked to al-Qaida. After pleading guilty to visa and bank fraud charges, Khafagi was deported.
• Rabih Haddad, a former CAIR fundraiser, was deported for his work with the Global Relief Foundation (which he co-founded), a terror-financing organization.

In 1998 Omar Ahmad, CAIR's co-founder and longtime Board Chairman, said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

After he received unwelcome publicity as a result of this statement, Ahmad denied saying it, several years after the fact. However, the original reporter, Lisa Gardiner of the Fremont Argus, stands by her story.

CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper once said: "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."

SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join SIOA's Facebook page here.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE Stop Islamization of America