by Sperry, Paul
—Former CAIR Civil-Rights Manager Joshua Salaam1
CAIR PROMOTES ITSELF as “the most influential Muslim organization in America, with more than thirty chapters and offices nationwide and in Canada.” It claims to be the official representative of all Muslim Americans. And it has carefully crafted an image of itself as professional, authoritative, credible, and most of all, powerful.
So powerful, in fact, that it can, at a moment’s notice, marshal millions of angry Muslim voters or boycotters against Washington politicians or Fortune 500 companies who balk at its demands.
At least that’s the image that CAIR projects.
But it’s all blu?. Pull back the curtain on its internal operations and one discovers a largely hollow organization running a skeletal staff with high turnover and poor worker morale.
Internal communications and financial statements also reveal an organization struggling to stay afloat. CAIR is suffering from steadily shrinking membership dues and fundraising revenues, and has been operating at a loss for years.
Like the Wizard of Oz who used smoke and mirrors to transform his modest stature into something larger than life, CAIR furiously works its own levers and buttons to create an illusion of size and power. From behind the curtain, it thunders warnings not to arouse the wrath of the great and powerful CAIR; but without the veil, it stands exposed as a fraud.
Only through sheer chutzpah has CAIR been able to convince the Washington punditry it’s a force to be reckoned with. Only through threats and intimidation has it been able to extract the concessions it has from corporate America, which often cowers before it, oblivious to its wile and deception.
From behind its loud speakers and smoke machine in Washington, CAIR has created a mythical status that’s allowed it to impose itself on the national scene. But data from CAIR’s own files expose the baling wire and duct tape holding the myth together.
MYTH: CAIR has a large, loyal, and dedicated work force.
FACT: The organization suffers from high employee turnover, with churn rates running as high as 50 percent, and operates with barebones staff and field offices that in some cases are nothing more than mail drops.
Witness this 2004 warning to CAIR’s board from then-CAIR Director of Operations Khalid Iqbal: “I am very concerned about the employee turnover at CAIR National. Last year alone fourteen people left CAIR. That is more than 50 percent of our workforce.”
In the memo, Iqbal added that he was worried about “low employee moral [sic]” and “loss of thousands of dollars to CAIR.”2
Negative comments made by exiting staffers included too much “micromanagement” by CAIR executives, he noted.
Iqbal himself left CAIR last year. And several other high-ups over the past two years have joined him, including:
Parvez Ahmed, CAIR’s national board chairman;
Ahmed Bedier, communications director for CAIR’s Florida operations and executive director of its Tampa chapter;
Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR’s national legal director;
Omer Subhani, communications director for CAIR’s Miami chapter; and
Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s co-founder and chairman emeritus, who retired from CAIR’s board earlier this year after serving almost fifteen years as a director.
In a separate report to the board, the former head of CAIR’s civil rights office complained that his department had “recently lost several experienced staff members.” In his two-page memo, civil rights manager Joshua Salaam added that “we began to take steps backwards.”3
CAIR is also having a tough time recruiting new talent after prosecutors linked it to a conspiracy to raise funds for the terrorist group Hamas.
Not a few young activists have left CAIR fearing they’d be blackballed by government or corporate America for working for a terrorist-supporting group.
The negative publicity is taking its toll on CAIR’s internship program as well. Some interns last summer refused to have their photographs taken with CAIR, because they were afraid the images would come back to haunt them.
In fact, last year’s Washington interns are conspicuously absent from CAIR’s Web site. Despite coaxing from CAIR officials, interns broke with tradition and declined to be individually profiled on the group’s Web site.
CAIR’s national outreach coordinator, Raabia Wazir, expressed her disappointment last July in an email to the class of interns. She blamed “right-wing” detractors for the revolt.
Here is her message, written under the subject line: “Regarding the Online Intern Profiles,” which she copied to CAIR executive director Awad and other headquarters officials:
We will not be posting intern profiles on the Web site as we had previously planned. A number of individuals voiced concerns regarding being publically [sic] associated with CAIR. While we certainly respect your right to privacy, we are disappointed that any intern would act out of fear of prejudice from a few right-wing fringe groups. Activism is rarely popular and never easy. It is an uphill struggle that we must face every day with passion and dedication. I thank all of you for your commitment to CAIR’s mission of advocating for justice and mutual understanding. I pray that you will always have the courage to openly defend and support our mission and goals.4
Whistleblower intern Chris Gaubatz says CAIR had planned to use the profiles as part of a campaign to create a younger, edgier image to help in recruiting.
“This is why [Yaser] Tabbara [executive director of CAIR’s chapter in President Obama’s hometown of Chicago] and Raabia were so upset when the interns didn’t want their pictures on the Web site,” he says. “They were very stereotypical college students who looked and dressed the part of America’s youth, and CAIR wanted them to be front and center on the Web site.”
Several interns told Gaubatz they did not plan to list their CAIR experience on their resumés.
They are not alone. Even some former high-level CAIR officials have scrubbed their association with the group.
Subhani, for one, recently removed references to CAIR from his blog. And Iftikhar, despite working for several years at CAIR’s headquarters, chose not to list his position there in his extensive bio posted on his personal Web site. There is not even an allusion to his work at CAIR in a curriculum vitae that runs almost five hundred words.5
CAIR’S ‘CIVIL WAR’
What’s more, tension has been growing between CAIR’s board and Awad and spokesman Hooper, who have become mired in controversy and bad press.
In fact, some members of the board recently wanted to push out the two founding executives, but reconsidered out of fear the organization would flounder absent their experience and institutional knowledge.
Insiders say former chairman Parvez Ahmed, who chafed at CAIR’s “old guard mentality,” resigned after directors voted to keep Awad and Hooper on board. Ahmed argued for “new blood at the executive levels” and greater transparency at the organization.6
The high-level dissension has become so intense that insiders refer to it as CAIR’s “civil war.” Bad blood even developed between old friends Awad and co-founder and former chairman Omar Ahmad, who retired from CAIR’s board earlier this year.
Things got so rough for Hooper that at one point he was told by a director to stop talking to the media and consider working from his home. There was a time when he thought the board was monitoring his emails.7
Hooper couldn’t understand why the board turned against him and Awad, and openly speculated that someone on the board had been “blackmailed,” according to a transcription of a conversation with Hooper that Gaubatz videotaped at last year’s ISNA convention. CAIR’s spokesman is convinced of an outside “conspiracy” to divide CAIR.8
MYTH: CAIR represents all Muslims.
FACT: CAIR discriminates against Shiite Muslims—including its own employees who identify with that minority sect of Islam—and doesn’t really represent all Muslims, even as it sues other employers for discriminating against Muslims.
“CAIR’s constitu
ency represents an even broader base” than Arab, South Asian, or African-American Muslims, Awad claims. “Many Muslims turn to it for help when facing job or religious discrimination.”
But where do CAIR employees turn when they’ve been discriminated against by CAIR? Tannaz Haddadi found out the hard way.
A Shiite Muslim, Haddadi says she was “completely dishonored and mistreated” by senior CAIR managers because of her religious background while working in the membership department at CAIR’s national office in Washington.
“I have been a victim of both gender and religious discrimination,” she wrote in a blistering four-page letter to Awad and then-CAIR chairman Ahmad.9
“At first glance,” she added, “it may appear unusual to claim discrimination while working for a civil rights organization. It may seem even more unusual that I am a Muslim claiming religious discrimination while working for a Muslim organization.”
But, Haddadi continued, “I have struggled for two years—along with others—with frustration and acts of discrimination.”
She says the discrimination against her started several years ago when CAIR operations director Iqbal tasked her to update CAIR’s internship application form by adding a section asking applicants to identify which sect of Islam they belong to. Haddadi told Iqbal, a Sunni Muslim, that she felt uncomfortable making such a change. That upset him, she says, and led him to quiz her about her own beliefs.
“This is where he discovered that my background is Shia,” she said, “and from that point his attitude changed towards me.”
The leadership of CAIR is dominated by Sunni Muslims, who account for about 90 percent of the world Muslim population.
Soon, Haddadi says she was demoted to part-time receptionist. She spent the next couple of years answering phones. “I have been frustrated with discrimination at CAIR for two years,” she complained to CAIR’s front office.
“SECRET HISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION”
Tannaz Haddadi says hers was not an isolated case. CAIR has engaged in a pattern of gender and religious bias against employees.
“CAIR has it’s [sic] own secret history of discrimination before Mr. Iqbal came, that has caused many employees to quit and very few to come back,” Haddadi wrote.10
When she threatened to file a formal complaint of discrimination with the EEOC, she says she was told not to complain, because her mistreatment was “for the sake of Allah.”
With that, Haddadi decided to resign.
CAIR declined comment. But at least three other office workers allegedly witnessed acts of discrimination against Haddadi, including CAIR’s office manager, a civil rights coordinator, and an executive assistant.
CAIR has also discriminated against non-Muslim employees and volunteers.
CAIR intern Corina Chang, for one, confided to Gaubatz that she and two other non-Muslim interns—both of whom also happen to be women—had been discriminated against because they were not Muslim. She said CAIR excluded them from participation in its nationwide Mosque Census Project, a comprehensive survey of Islamic centers in America.
Indeed, CAIR invited only Muslims to meetings on the project and notified only Muslims about the conference calls to discuss project details. Upset, Chang complained to her boss and was allowed to sit in on a call.
Civil rights activists often volunteer at CAIR even though they are not Muslim.
MYTH: CAIR’s membership is steadily increasing with the size of the Muslim population in America.
FACT: CAIR’s growth is moving in the opposite direction. The Muslim group is rapidly losing members, even as the overall Muslim population rises from immigration, high birth rates, and religious conversions.
CAIR publicly claims to have fifty thousand members, but according to internal memos, its real number of paid members is a paltry 5,133—far short of CAIR’s post-9/11 target of one hundred thousand.11
At a 2002 board meeting, CAIR set a goal to “increase CAIR membership” to one hundred thousand by the end of the year, in part by expanding the definition of “member” to include foreign Muslim donors living overseas and anyone whom CAIR registered to vote in the U.S., including non-Muslims.
“New definition is: Anyone who fill [sic] out a membership form ($10 fee) or donate to CAIR both on an annual basis or register to vote will be considered as a CAIR member, unless someone specifically decline [sic] to be a CAIR member,” minutes of the high-level meeting state.12
“Membership will be open to all either American or international donor [sic], Muslim or non-Muslim,” the meeting notes add.
CAIR also converted family and organization memberships to individual memberships to increase its totals.
The board advised staff involved in the new membership drive to use the slogan: “We need you to become a CAIR member.”
Despite the ambitious campaign and sympathetic post-9/11 media coverage, CAIR didn’t come close to meeting its goal. Lowering its expectations, it subsequently came up with a long-term goal of sixty thousand members by 2011.13
But if current trends continue, it will miss that mark as well.
In a court brief, CAIR’s attorneys blamed slumping membership and donations on bad publicity from the Holy Land Foundation trial.14
While certainly a factor, membership began falling long before the trial began in 2007. Internal notes from CAIR’s meetings predating the trial complain of “weak membership drives.” In fact, internal records show that CAIR’s membership hit a high of only 9,211 after its big post-9/11 push for new members.15
Using Pew Research’s survey estimate of 2.5 million American Muslims, CAIR’s current five thousand members represent just two-tenths of one percent of the U.S. Muslim population. Using CAIR’s inflated guesstimate of seven million American Muslims, CAIR represents an even smaller fraction of the Muslim community.
CAIR’s total membership in the nation’s largest Muslim state of California is just 903—barely enough to fill one city mosque.16
Bottom line is, CAIR is unsupported by the broader Muslim population, which finds it more a liability than an asset.
And given the anemic size of its member database, CAIR cannot possibly deliver on its threats to bring the weight of the Muslim community to bear against national politicians, CEOs, or advertisers for media personalities it doesn’t like.
The actual size of CAIR’s political clout and boycotting potential is quite puny, which might come as a shock to weak-kneed advertisers who have caved in to CAIR’s demands in the past. It turns out that the handful of vociferous Muslims whom CAIR activated into emailing or calling to protest ad sponsors never represented the millions of consumers CAIR suggested. They’re merely CAIR’s loyal henchmen who receive their marching orders through the group’s “action alert” email list, which also is relatively anemic in size.
ALL BARK, NO BITE
So fear not, corporate America: CAIR has no real boycotting power in your state. And fear not, Washington: CAIR has no real voter leverage in your district. The only thing it has is a few loud mouths.
“This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population,” says Zuhdi Jasser, director of the Phoenix-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. “They only represent their membership and donors,” whose interests often diverge from the greater Muslim community.17
Even former CAIR officials, such as ex-chairman Ahmed, agree that CAIR too often neglects Muslim constituents’ needs to focus on political and foreign policy matters.
They say the perception of CAIR among the general Muslim public is that it concentrates too much on the Palestinian issue, as well as other foreign matters such as the alleged abuse of terrorist detainees at Gitmo.
Also, former CAIR civil rights manager Salaam says that Muslim constituents complain that CAIR “does not return phone calls” from them when they seek CAIR’s help. Headquarters has also improperly handled cases, he says, while showing reluctance to refer cases to other organizations with more expertis
e or better resources.
“CAIR is very concerned about its reputation in the community,” Salaam cautioned CAIR executives in one internal report. “Without the community (and Allah’s help), CAIR would fail.”18
Of course, its reputation hit a new low last year with the Jamil Morris Days fraud case. The scandal and coverup culminated in a lawsuit filed by Muslim constituents against CAIR, as discussed at length in an earlier chapter.
All of this is converging to depress CAIR’s membership numbers.
MYTH: CAIR is financially sound.
FACT: CAIR’s national headquarters is operating in the red, with losses mounting each year, and it’s struggling to keep its doors open.
Income from membership dues slowed to a trickle in 2006, the latest available IRS tax filing, and CAIR operated at a loss of more than $160,000 in that calendar year, following a deficit of nearly $50,000 in 2005. In 2004, in contrast, CAIR reported a surplus of more than $338,000.19
During the hemorrhaging, though, its top executives still raked in six-figure incomes, including $121,760 in total compensation for CAIR chief Awad. In fact, headquarters still supports an eye-popping $1 million payroll.20
Dues plummeted from more than $700,000 in 2000, when CAIR charged $25 per member, to slightly more than $40,000 in 2006, when dues cost $35, according to IRS statements.21
“Membership dues measures the organization’s success and base of support,” CAIR states in the section of its report to the IRS explaining why it collects dues. Well, CAIR fails to measure up in both areas.
Revenues from CAIR’s annual fundraising dinner are also drying up. Tax records show CAIR hauled in just under $90,000 in 2006, compared with a little more than $170,000 in 2004—a drop of nearly 50 percent.22
Again, CAIR blames the government for the shortfall, arguing it has scared off donors by linking CAIR to terrorist fundraising.
“The public naming of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has impeded its ability to collect donations, as possible donors either do not want to give to them because they think they are a ‘terrorist’ organization or are too scared to give to them because of the possible legal ramifications of donating money to a ‘terrorist’ organization,” CAIR lawyers complained in the court brief cited earlier.