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Part VII: CAIR Seeks To Define Away Threat Posed by Radical Islamists

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

Jihad? Fatwa? Wahhabism? Islamist terrorism? All terms distorted or created by the U.S. government and media to stigmatize the Muslim religion and scare the public -- or so CAIR officials would have you believe.

But their protestations ignore much evidence to the contrary available in radical Islamist writings, as well as statements by CAIR officials themselves intended for internal consumption.

IPT's detailed examination of CAIR focuses today on its leaders' reassuring words, and places them in the context of reality.

  • CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad sought to define away Islamic fundamentalism in an August 1998 interview on NPR's "Weekend Sunday." Said Awad, "You know, holy war is like fatwa, it's become a buzz word. And I think they're severely misunderstood. I don't see holy war as a concept in Islam, it is not, it does not exist …. Jihad means legitimate struggle." He listed what he termed "noble meanings" of jihad in Islam: A mother's effort to raise her children, a struggle against injustice, "an honest person who wants to get good life."
  • Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR-Southern California, agreed in an April 2005 lecture at Chaffey College. "Jihad is the Arabic word for strive. Any struggle in a person's life, not just a Muslim's, is a jihad," Ayloush said. "Being a student is a jihad because you are striving to learn."
But those, and other, reassuring definitions appeared to be aimed for public consumption. In contrast, when CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad spoke at the 1999 IAP convention, he defined "jihad" as, in part, "to fight in the Way of Allah. To make war."

Part VII of our series is here, click here for the summary.

For the 6 previous installments on CAIR, click here.

Installments include:

Part I: CAIR's Origins
Part II: CAIR's Funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
Part VI: CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"


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