If the Council American-Islamic Relations was a genuine civil rights institution, Nihad Awad, the group’s national director, would have objected to the crimes perpetrated by Hamas during the October 7 massacre when he spoke at an event organized by American Muslims for Palestine in late November 2023. He would have acknowledged that what Hamas did on October 7 was an abomination, a war crime. Instead, Awad portrayed the massacre as a legitimate act of self-defense. In so doing, he demonstrated CAIR is not a civil rights organization but a pro-Hamas institution.
That’s the message Dexter Van Zile, managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism and the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, offered on a January 11 interview with Ryan Mauro and Michael Watson from the Capital Research Center.