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CAIR's Amicus Brief and Due Dilligence
No one likes to see their dirty laundry and inner workings laundered in public. Which may at least partially explain CAIR's somewhat heated amicus brief in the Holy Land trial.

So CAIR alleges that the Justice Department is part of a "trend of the demonization of all things Muslim," among many other charges, and that its reputation has been damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

CAIR writes that its inclusion as an unindicted co-conspirator is "particularly insidious and ironic as CAIR is an organization dedicated to fostering acceptance of Muslims in American society and protecting the civil liberties of all Muslim-Americans.
The result of the public labeling of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator has resulted in significant inflammatory retorts from the American media, significantly impairing the main mission of CAIR to foster understanding and acceptance of Muslims in American society."

Such mudslinging from an organization that claims that its primary purpose is to foster understanding might raise some eyebrows.

But the amicus brief fails to address one of the underlying premises of the case, in my non-lawyerly opinion: that while those individuals on trial are directly charged with aiding the financing of terrorism, they are part of a much larger, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated structure of organizations with overlapping memberships, acknowledged front groups and specific tasks. A fundamental task of this structure, according to the exhibits filed by the prosecution, is to help Hamas, an acknowledged, organic part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Article Two of the Hamas Charter states the following:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement of modern times. It is characterized by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement ,the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam."

A fairly straightforward statement, one has to admit. Yet it is not illegal to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, which also makes it challenging to understand why these groups have long tried to keep that affiliation out of the public eye.

Perhaps it is because if they defined their mission publicly as one of their leaders does privately in an assessment of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, the doors to the Pentagon, White House, State Department, Justice Department etc. would not swing open in quite the same way. Here is the Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America it is again, in case you missed it:

"The Ikhwan (Muslim Brothers) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions."

A little tough to spin in the PR machine, that one.

The underlying premise here is what, I believe, moved the DOJ to name the unindicted co-conspirators. It is not the smear campaign CAIR alleges, but rather the most expedient and possibly sole way to get evidence introduced from other members of the Muslim Brotherhood network, into the trial.

Some final thoughts:

Muslim charities are constantly trying to outsource their due diligence back to the government, asking the government to give them a list of good charities where donations are no problem. The government does this in reverse, by providing a list of bad charities in the designation process – and telling them that this is unquestionably more efficient because surely there are more good charities than bad.

However, when a charity is designated, CAIR generally jumps into the public arena with a claims it is a misuse of power. The charity sues, DOJ wins- a 100 percent success rate so far.

Despite this history, the Islamic charities continue to push for a list of good charities. Treasury decided to issue a document called "Voluntary Best Practices for Charities." Some in DOJ fought this, feeling it would result in the claim that a mechanical application of the practices implies immunity, and will therefore frustrate efforts to promote more due diligence rather than less. Then it was universally panned by the charities as unhelpful.

Here, the government files something in court that is customary, and generally required when a criminal defendants obtains a bills of particulars in a federal case. CAIR then files a brief, claiming it is "unprecedented." But we should be used to CAIR's claims by now.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
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