The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced its support for the decision by the U.S. State Department to lifts its ban on the entry of Tariq Ramadan into the U.S. According to the CAIR announcement:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today welcomed a decision by the U.S. Department of State to lift a ban that prevented Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States for the past five years.An order signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reverses a July 2004 decision by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to revoke the visa of Ramadan, a respected scholar and author who was due to begin teaching at the University of Notre Dame that fall. Although the DHS cited security concerns as its reason for the visa revocation, CAIR and other civil liberties organizations saw it as a form of censorship that fit a pattern of denying visas to foreign nationals whose political views were not in favor with the U.S. government. In 2006, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the “ideological exclusion” of Dr. Ramadan on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and the PEN American Center. “We welcome this move by the Obama administration to permit a respected scholar and voice for religious moderation to enter our country,” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. “This is a step toward beginning to repair the damage to our image among Muslims worldwide.”
A previous post discussed the decision and provided background on the role of Tariq Ramadan as a leader in the global Muslim Brotherhood.
Documents released in the Holy Land Trial have revealed that the founders and current leaders of CAIR were part of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as identifying the organization itself as being part of the U.S. Brotherhood. A recent post discussed an interview with the Deputy leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in which he confirms a relationship between his organization and CAIR. Investigative research posted on GMBDW had determined that CAIR had it origins in the U.S. Hamas infrastructure and CAIR and its leaders have a long history of defending almost all individuals accused of terrorism by the U.S. government, frequently calling such prosecutions a “war on Islam.”