CAIR has been asking the State Department to designate India as a country of particular concern for ‘violating religious freedom of minorities’
NEW DELHI
The Joe Biden administration, last week, ended its work with the long-standing anti-India body, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), after one of CAIR’s top executives declared he was “happy” to witness Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on 7 October.
CAIR claims to be the United States’ largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, in which capacity it has been in the forefront of lobbying against India. It has been frequently asking the State Department to designate India as a country of particular concern. Country of particular concern (CPC) is a designation by the US Secretary of State (under authority delegated by the President) of a country responsible for particularly severe violations of religious freedom under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Countries such as China and Russia have been designated as CPC.
Earlier in June this year, CAIR had urged the US Congress to cancel Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the Congress, because of, according to CAIR, the anti-minority stance of the Indian government. Repeated charges of being anti-minority made by CAIR and like-minded organisations have always been rubbished by the Indian government as without any substance and as a political attack on India.
Chicago-based columnist and the San Francisco Press Club’s Journalism Award recipient Avatans Kumar told The Sunday Guardian, “They (CAIR) have a lot of money and a lot of influence in the Democratic party and moreover in the Joe Biden administration. Since the Biden administration ended the collaboration with CAIR, it means they were doing something that they shouldn’t have.”
Kumar further suggested the kind of influence such organisations have percolates down to their associated councils, organisations and also among government functionaries in different ways. He added, “They also have a lot of members in Congress who are basically funded by them. CAIR has a long lasting connection with the Islamic Brotherhood. They also have Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) that works with them.”
IAMC is an advocacy organization for Indian American Muslims and was established on 15 August 2002, in response to the 2002 Gujarat riots. As a member of the Coalition Against Genocide, IAMC has campaigned in collaboration with other organisations in the coalition. It is also the same organisation which led the lobbying for Narendra Modi’s visa ban in the United States in 2005.
In its May fact sheet, according to an archived webpage, the White House included CAIR as one of the many solidarity groups with which it had “announced commitments to counter antisemitism”. CAIR was tapped by the White House on 25 May to launch a tour to educate religious communities about steps they could take to protect their houses of worship from hate incidents, such as instituting appropriate security measures, developing strong relationships with other faith communities, and maintaining open lines of communication with local law enforcement.
However, that affiliation ended after CAIR co-founder and national executive director Nihad Awad’s remarks surfaced and were condemned as anti-Semitic. He had said, “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege—the walls of the concentration camp—on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense—have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”