Muslim non-profit with ties to terror settles with former employee rather than reveal funding sources

An embattled Muslim advocacy group, one of the largest non-profits operating in the US, has agreed to settle a case with a former employee rather than open its books to reveal sources of foreign funding. 

According to The New York Post, previous court proceedings have shown links between The Council on American-Islamic Relations Foundation Inc. (CAIR) and terrorist organizations Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. On Thursday, CAIR settled with former board member and employee Lori Saroya, following a ruling by US Magistrate Judge David Schultz that any assets owned by the group are all within the “scope of permissible discovery.”

In January, Saroya, a former Minnesota chapter leader, filed a federal defamation complaint against CAIR after the organization dropped a lawsuit against the former employee, which had accused her of a “defamation campaign” against the group for claiming it is funded by terrorist organizations and foreign governments.

The organization dropped the lawsuit over concerns that Saroya’s lawyers would “demand the names of CAIR supporters who have donated to us.” Saroya’s lawyer, Jeffrey Robbins, called the ruling "the mother of all legal boomerangs,” that would have forced CAIR to “turn over evidence about everything from fundraising practices, such as having raised money from foreign sources and concealed it; whether it deceived donors; whether it mismanaged donor money; whether it retaliated against employees or threatened to retaliate against employees for raising concerns about sexual harassment or the like.” 

CAIR was called out in a 2013 Justice Department Office of Inspector General’s report during the largest terror trial in US history against Muslim charity the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was revealed to have funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. The 2008 case “linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.” 

Last year, the Biden administration scrubbed CAIR from the White House task force on antisemitism after the group’s co-founder, Nihad Awad, celebrated the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians on Oct 7, 2023.

Steve Emerson, founder and director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, previously told the Jewish News Syndicate that “CAIR was created as a Hamas front group and still functions as a propaganda arm of Hamas to this day.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, "Antisemitism is in the DNA of CAIR. It is part of CAIR’s intrinsic fiber. CAIR leaders often traffic in antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric...some of its leaders have cultivated suspicion among the public toward a wide array of American Jewish institutions."