The answer is cronyism. Hooper was a friend of CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad. The two activists met in Minneapolis where they worked in support of Bosnian Muslims in their jihad against the Serbs. At the time, Osama bin Laden was actively recruiting and training jihadists to fight alongside the Bosnians.3
Hooper also worked closely with Awad when he was running propaganda operations for Hamas at the Islamic Association for Palestine, where he published a rag that celebrated Hamas suicide attacks on Israelis and publicized Hamas calls for the death of Israel.
“Ibrahim and I had worked together for years,” Awad told a pro-Palestinian publication.4
In 1993, during their secret Hamas summit in Philadelphia, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood discussed the need to form a new political front for public relations and media spin. Awad gave a report arguing for recruiting qualified English-speaking flacks to interface with the American press and gain their sympathies.
“We need to speak about the necessity of finding reporters to do media work,” he said.
The participants agreed they needed someone who was good at manipulating public opinion and could “camouflage” their true activities and agenda with “a media twinkle.” In short, they needed a slick spin-doctor—because as Awad noted, “media is stronger than politics.”5
Not long after the meeting, Hooper was drafted to run the Brotherhood’s new propaganda wing at CAIR.
“I contacted my friend Ibrahim Hooper, a professional journalist and communications genius,” Awad recalls, “and tried to persuade him to move to Washington.”6
Today, Hooper is a fierce advocate for Hamas and militant Islam, and they pay him well for it—more than $95,000 a year in total compensation (not including the thousands of dollars he has borrowed in personal loans from his nonprofit employer), tax records show. He also commands a six-figure annual budget for conducting opposition research against CAIR’s enemies. 7
A Canadian immigrant, Hooper was known as “Dougie” before he converted to Islam. His birth name is Cary Douglas Hooper, according to government records.
He became a member of the Cairo Foreign Press Association while working for computer periodicals in the Egyptian capital, which happens to be the global headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also worked for local TV stations in Minnesota.8
As CAIR’s national communications director, Hooper a couple of years ago attempted to rebut the groundswell of charges against CAIR. He put out a ten-page document “de-mystifying ‘urban legends’ about CAIR” which only obfuscated the truth about CAIR. It’s riddled with half-truths, deliberate omissions, and outright falsehoods about the size of the group’s membership and the source of its donations, among other things.
CAIR and Hooper have had to climb down from many of the statements contained in the document—statements which are “no longer operative,” as they say in Washington. In fact, it seems the entire document is no longer operative, because it’s vanished from CAIR’s Web site.
“We remain an open and transparent organization,” CAIR says. Really? Then why did it take down the document after it was exposed as a tissue of lies?
Hooper authored another slurry of falsehoods called “A Journalist’s Guide to Understanding Islam and Muslims” after recent polls showed a majority of Americans associating Islam with violence and intolerance. Sent to some forty thousand editors, reporters, and producers across the country, the publication is supposed to “educate” the media about Islam and disabuse journalists about “commonly held misconceptions” about the faith.
According to the fifty-five-page guide, common myths include:
The notion that Islam does not respect women’s rights;
That it’s not compatible with democracy or modern society;
That the Quran teaches violence;
That Muslims around the world hate the U.S.; and
That all Muslims are Arab.
At least it got the last one right—Muslims are also predominantly Asian and African. Four of the other so-called myths are in fact truths (as examined in detail later). Which means CAIR is batting .200 in the accuracy department—in a publication advertised to, ironically enough, “help improve coverage of Islam in the American news media.”
Once again, Hooper is the one spreading misinformation. But it’s all part of the Brotherhood’s strategy to guilt the media into writing glowingly about Islam and defer independent research and analysis that would expose the religion’s dark underbelly and CAIR’s own hidden agenda.
CAIR hopes to train a legion of young Hoopers to infiltrate the nation’s newsrooms and reeducate the public about Islam.
“Whenever I speak to Muslim groups, I urge students to become majors in journalism, law, or political science,” Awad says. “Journalism is especially important, and we urge Muslim adults to establish scholarships in that field. Muslims must become active in the nation’s offices where news reports and headlines are written.”9
Hooper isn’t the only one at CAIR who stretches the truth. It’s the habit of CAIR’s entire leadership. They’ve been caught telling countless whoppers, but we’ve narrowed them down to the top ten. Consider the following tall tales they’ve told, counting down to the most pernicious:
WHOPPER NUMBER 10: In a prepared statement to Congress, Awad in 2003 asserted that it was “an outright lie” to say that CAIR had received any seed money from the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic charity recently convicted of funding terrorism.
He also insisted there was not “a shred of evidence” to support what he called the “ridiculous” charge originally made by terror expert Steve Emerson that CAIR had received thousands of dollars in such funding.10
That same year then-CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad also denied receiving such funds from the Hamas charitable front.11
Subsequent smoking-gun evidence puts the lie to their denials, however. Less than three weeks after CAIR was incorporated, bank records produced by Emerson reveal it had received a check for $5,000 from the “Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.” A copy of the check—No. 1881—shows it was paid to the order of the “Council on American-Islamic Relations” of Washington, and debited from Holy Land’s expense account with Bank One Texas. It’s signed by Holy Land president Shukri Abu Baker, who’s now a convicted terrorist. It was Abu Baker who coordinated the Philly meeting with Ahmad. He also met with CAIR executives in Washington before 9/11, the group’s visitors logs reveal (see Appendix).
No wonder Awad skipped the hearing that senators held in part to afford him the opportunity to answer these and other charges against CAIR. Apparently he felt it was safer to courier over his demonstrably false denial than testify under oath and risk perjuring himself.
WHOPPER NUMBER 9: Dismissing the idea that CAIR or its leaders have had anything to do with Hamas, former CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed claimed: “That’s one of those urban legends about CAIR. It’s fed by the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere.”12
Recent court documents, of course, validate the bloggers—while making a liar of Ahmed and CAIR.
In the Holy Land Foundation case, federal papers officially list CAIR and its founder as important figures in the conspiracy to fund Hamas terrorism.
And declassified transcripts of FBI wiretaps place CAIR executive director Awad, as well as co-founder and former chairman Ahmad, at the notorious Philly meeting with Hamas leaders, where a scheme was hatched to hide payments to Hamas suicide bombers and their families as charity. Both Awad and Ahmad have suffered a convenient bout of amnesia in claiming they cannot remember whether they attended the Hamas summit—even though it lasted three days, and even though Ahmad signed a reservation voucher for a room at the hotel where they met.13
They don’t deny attending though. And both their names 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.14
Moreover, Awad and Ahmad spun off CAIR from a kno
wn Hamas front they previously headed. As president of IAP, Ahmad paid to bring Hamas leaders to speak at annual conferences.15 One IAP confab even featured a veiled Hamas terrorist.16 Awad, for his part, proclaimed his support for Hamas in a speech, while churning out pro-Hamas and anti-Israel propaganda as IAP’s public-relations director.
U.S. prosecutor Jim Jacks reiterated in a separate court filing that CAIR had “conspiratorial involvement with HLF [Holy Land Foundation] and others affiliated with Hamas,” and that its involvement in the conspiracy to support Hamas is “ongoing” and did not end with the Holy Land trial and convictions.
Fearing CAIR remains actively involved with Hamas, the FBI has suspended all formal contacts with it. And the agency suggests CAIR and its leaders—namely “its current president emeritus [Ahmad] and its executive director [Awad]”—are the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation stemming from the Holy Land case. “Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” assistant FBI director Richard C. Powers recently informed the Senate Judiciary Committee.17
CAIR’s insistence that it has no ties to Hamas rings absolutely hollow against these facts.
WHOPPER NUMBER 8: “CAIR has some fifty thousand members,” Hooper contends.18
In fact, the actual figure is one-tenth that size—5,133—according to internal CAIR records.19
After the Washington Times reported in 2007 that CAIR’s membership was rapidly shrinking due to negative publicity over its terror ties, CAIR accused the “right-wing” newspaper of “falsely suggesting there has been a drop.”
“Our membership is increasing steadily,” Awad insisted.
“Support for CAIR has grown,” Hooper added.20
Two months later, CAIR filed a court brief in which it acknowledged membership indeed was down, blaming it on bad publicity from the Holy Land terror trial. It pleaded with the judge hearing the case to strike its name from the list of co-conspirators.
“This negative reaction by the American public can be seen in the decline of membership rates and donations resulting from the government’s publicizing of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator,” CAIR attorney William Moffitt wrote in the brief.21
Among the proof he submitted to the court was the same Washington Times article Hooper just two months earlier had trashed as false and biased. Apparently even CAIR’s lawyers can’t keep up with CAIR’s lies.
WHOPPER NUMBER 7: CAIR calls allegations it receives money from foreign governments “disinformation.” “This is yet another attempt to invent a controversy,” Hooper says.22
There’s no invention. CAIR, for example, has received at least half a million dollars from Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. Hooper argues he’s technically not “an official of any foreign government.”
But such hair-splitting doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Hooper himself admits that officials running the government of the United Arab Emirates have set up an endowment to help CAIR finance a massive $50 million public-relations campaign. And though he claims CAIR has not yet received “a penny” of those funds, CAIR did receive a nearly $1 million investment from the ruler of Dubai through his charitable foundation.23
In fact, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum in the early 2000s owned a controlling stake in CAIR’s three-story headquarters in Washington. Local land records show he held the deed to the building.24
A State Department cable, moreover, directly contradicts CAIR’s denials about foreign governmental support.
The sensitive but unclassified communiqué was written by U.S. Embassy staff in Saudi Arabia, who in June 2006 reported the following after meeting with a CAIR delegation: “One admitted reason for the group’s current visit to the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] was to solicit $50 million in governmental and non-governmental contributions.” The core delegation, according to the cable, consisted of then-CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed, Awad, and Hooper.25
Just three months after the trip, Hooper denied soliciting Saudi government funds. “To my knowledge, we don’t take money from the government of Saudi Arabia,” he said in a September 2006 appearance on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show.26
What’s more, some of CAIR’s biggest private donors are members of the Saudi royal family, according to copies of wire transfers obtained from CAIR’s executive files (see Appendix). The group’s shady financing will be explored in detail in a separate chapter.
WHOPPER NUMBER 6: “Islam and democracy are compatible,” and Islam values Western principles, CAIR maintains in its “Journalist’s Guide to Understanding Islam.”27
Funny, because that’s not what CAIR’s longtime board member Ihsan Bagby thinks.
“Ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country,” Bagby has lectured, “because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”28
As the late Muslim Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb preached, Western-style democracy, as exemplified by the United States of America, is a man-made system of government, and therefore haram, or un-Islamic.
Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the most revered Brotherhood leader in the world today, agrees. Repeatedly championed by CAIR, al-Qaradawi also rejects the call for secularism.
“Acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shariah,” he argues. “The call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shariah is downright apostasy.”29
The Brotherhood views American democracy—with secularism and individualism as its hallmarks—as incompatible with Islam, because Islam does not believe in separation of mosque and state. It also considers Islam a complete system of religion and government, ethics and law, military and jihad, as well as worship. The Quran is the law for state and society, and supersedes even the authority of the U.S. Constitution.
No less than CAIR’s co-founder and former chairman of the board has said as much. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” Ahmad has said. “The Quran should be the highest authority in America.”
U.S. Brotherhood leaders advising CAIR—such as ISNA’s Muzammil Siddiqi—constantly remind Muslims in America that “Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands,” including one day the U.S. Then there’s senior Brotherhood leader Ahmad Totonji, who has stated: “We do not have any separation between religion and state.30
By pretending otherwise, however, CAIR makes Shariah-based Islam appear more palatable and acceptable. And by lowering the guard of skeptics, the Brotherhood gains bigger footholds in American politics and society.
To understand the cynical depths of CAIR’s subterfuge regarding this issue, it’s instructive to review its unusual interference in Egyptian politics in 2007, when the relatively secular Mubarak government amended that country’s constitution to ban religious-based parties. CAIR ostensibly was angry that Egypt was further suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is based there, and lodged a formal protest.
Egypt’s constitutional amendments further restrict the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is trying to turn Egypt away from secularism and toward an Islamic government based on Shariah law—something CAIR’s own leaders say they’d like to see happen in this country.
In 2007, the Brotherhood drafted a party platform, under the banner “Islam is the solution,” which called for establishing an undemocratically selected board of religious scholars with the power to veto any legislation passed by the Egyptian parliament and approved by the president that’s not compatible with Islamic law. It also called for banning women and Christians from high office.
When the anti-theocracy amendments were passed by a majority of Egyptian voters, CAIR went ballistic, firing off a complaint to the U.S. State Department charging the referendum was rigged and “would essentially lock out any meaningful political opposition”—i
.e., the Muslim Brotherhood—to challenge the more secular Mubarak regime. In a critical letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-CAIR chairman Ahmed chided the U.S. for its “tepid” response to what he characterized as the Egyptian government’s “backsliding on promised democratic reforms.”
CAIR is a domestic-based nonprofit organization, not a registered foreign agent. For its chairman to go out of his way to write the secretary of state about a foreign election speaks volumes about CAIR’s vested interest in the Brotherhood.
But here’s the ironic part: the Egyptian embassy got wind of the complaint and rebuked CAIR for its interference, reminding it that democracies are supposed to separate religion and state.
“I find this interference rather hypocritical,” Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy blasted Ahmed in a letter obtained from CAIR’s files, “since I assume you are aware of the notion of separation of church and state as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which governs your own country.”
He closed by advising CAIR to “to focus on its core mission” in America, and butt out of foreign affairs.31
It’s a sad commentary when an Arab nation has to lecture an American “civil rights group” about Western jurisprudence and liberties.
‘MOST MUSLIMS HAVE VERY POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARD AMERICA’
A companion lie CAIR peddles is that Muslims around the world love America and its values.
After 9/11, “some politicians and media commentators argued that there exists a clash of civilizations and values between the Muslim world and the West, claiming that the Muslim world hates ‘Western freedoms’ and the ‘American way of life,’” CAIR intones in its media guide.
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