What many Americans don’t realize is that there are American Muslims who oppose Jihad, and who want to reform Islam and are taking action to do so. I have always maintained that the reformation of Islam has to come from within, not from without. One of the people at the forefront of a group of Muslim reformers is my friend, Shireen Qudosi. Read her recent article about CAIR’s complaints about a security expert, Ryan Mauro,who lectured hundreds of law enforcement personnel in New York about CAIR, and its links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
How CAIR’s Tirade Against Ryan Mauro Exposes the Hamas-linked Group
Rather than deflecting and hurling accusations to cloud the truth, and taking advantage of a liberal culture to create confusion, CAIR should be making it a top priority to take on extremism.
BY Shireen Qudosi | April 28, 2016
Yesterday, national security analyst Ryan Mauro delivered a lecture to hundreds of law enforcement personnel in New York. It represented an embarrassing failure for the Muslim Brotherhood- and Hamas- linked lobby group CAIR, which called on law enforcement agencies to investigate whether any officers planned on attending the training conference.
Islamism is the political branch of radical Islam that thrives domestically, often going undetected because of a hyper-focus on foreign threats. Islamism is extremism in a suit and tie, where war is waged in a sociopolitical sphere using democracy and culture – making this form of extremism more difficult to identify and engage. Both radical Islam and Islamism are extensions of the same beast. While ISIS is a threat half a world away garnering the attention of a world audience, Islamism has seen steady growth and record wins within the U.S. over the last half a century – at least, until now.
Mauro is affiliated with Clarion Project, a non-profit organization educating the public on the threat of Islamic extremism. Clarion is also the first global platform to bring together a large number of Muslim voices for human rights. Clarion works incredibly hard to host meaningful conferences with Muslim reformers and recently launched an initiative featuring a series of inclusive dialogues on Islamism. In this capacity, Mauro and Clarion go above and beyond CAIR by actively seeking to amplify secular Muslim voices and fold them into a larger conversation that pushes the demographic beyond a victimization narrative – something CAIR totally fails to do.
There is no question about Mauro’s capacity as a speaker on Islamic extremism. He has led speaking engagements at the International Intelligence Summit – the world’s most prestigious summit in the intelligence sector. In addition to a Master’s in Political Science, and a Graduate Certificate in Middle East Studies, Mauro is currently completing his Ph.D. He’s more qualified than the handful of Islamic leaders CAIR routinely praises, some of whom I personally know to have been taxi cab drivers before they were propelled to leadership positions within Islamic organizations, while others work as salesmen during the day and as ‘experts’ in the evening.
Meanwhile, Mauro has published numerous articles that identify and assess legitimate security threats. In 2012, Mauro captured the attention of the Muslim Brotherhood, which chose to label him as “delusional” rather than engage him on the issues. Now he has the attention of CAIR, a group the federal government listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation Trial. CAIR’s own co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, is known to be “intimately” connected to senior Hamas leadership.
Both the United States and the European Union have branded Hamas as a terrorist organization that works aggressively to undermine regional peace and stability and openly calls for the destruction of Israel. However, by loosely catering to the needs of the community, these politically charged groups are able to masquerade as community-driven organizations. That CAIR’s number one official and co-founder is openly soft on Hamas, shows us the hypocrisy of CAIR as a “civil rights group.” Internationally, these Islamists quietly advocate for the total annihilation of the Jewish state, while domestically they work to oppress freedom of speech, assembly and association. Today their target is New York’s finest.
About the Author
Shireen Qudosi
Shireen Qudosi is a Muslim writer based in California.
BEAR TO THE RIGHT 