Radical Muslim Group Exposed by Judicial Watch 18 Yrs. Ago to Help Public Schools be “More Inclusive”

Nearly two decades after a Judicial Watch special report chronicled how radical Muslim nonprofits operate in the United States as mainstream humanitarian charities, one of the groups with roots buried deep in the Islamic jihad movement is partnering with American public schools to help make them “more inclusive.” It is a worrisome alliance between taxpayer-funded learning institutions in at least two states and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a terrorist front group that was named as a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation. CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Despite its documented ties to terrorism, CAIR’s influence has extended into multiple areas of American public life and the group, like many other Islamist organizations, has received taxpayer dollars through various government initiatives, including a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program during Trump’s first term as president. The Obama administration even allowed the radical group to transform the way U.S. law enforcement conducts anti-terrorism training by permitting it to bully agencies at the local, state, and federal level to alter materials determined to be discriminatory against Muslims. This includes getting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to purge anti-terrorism training curricula of material coined “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal, obtained the FBI records and published an in-depth report documenting Islamist measures and influence operations targeting anti-terrorism training in this country. CAIR also got the U.S. military and local police departments to eliminate anti-terrorism training materials and instructors it deemed anti-Muslim.

More recently the pro-Hamas organization that represents itself as a human rights group is going after young minds with a purported plan to bring inclusivity to public schools in Pennsylvania and Delaware. It could be the beginning of a broader effort to sneak its radical teachings into classrooms across the U.S. CAIR will use “An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices” to teach American children that jihad is an internal struggle to become a better person and not violence committed in the name of Islam. The guide also asserts that the oppression of Muslim women “is not related to their adherence to Islam but rather tied to customs and traditions.” Another educational guide that will be utilized is titled “Remembering and Reflecting: Teaching September 11, 2001 in Diverse Classrooms” and directs teachers not to use what it calls “inaccurate and inflammatory” terms like Islamic terrorists, jihadists or radical Islamic terrorists to avoid validating the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their crimes with Islam and Muslims. When covering topics—like Guantanamo Bay, the Iraq war and Afghanistan invasion—related to the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks the guide says to include discussion of the bigotry and hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.

This disturbing encroachment on public education by a known terrorist front group has caught the attention of a U.S. Senator who recently issued a nationwide warning about CAIR’s efforts to influence K-12 schools. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon the veteran lawmaker, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas, writes that it is well documented that CAIR has deep ties to terrorist organizations and publicly supports Hamas’s activities. “Such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children,” Senator Cotton writes, adding that “CAIR’s history makes it clear that its influence will be detrimental and possibly illegal.” The legislator lists examples of the “educational” materials available on CAIR’s website that perpetuate pro-terrorist, anti-Israel rhetoric. He ends the letter by telling the Education Secretary that her agency “must ensure that CAIR is not given an opportunity to push its radical, pro-terrorist, anti-Israel ideology on American schoolchildren.”