CAIR went to extraordinary lengths to shake down Bank of America in a frivolous claim of discrimination involving a Muslim employee, internal strategy documents reveal.
In spite of claims it represents all Muslims, CAIR routinely discriminates against Shiites and other Muslims—including its own employees—in favor of Sunni Muslims.
CAIR is actively training Homeland Security agents to respect Muslims and Islam, while brainwashing them to think jihad means “internal struggle against sin,” and not holy war, as part of a dangerous disinformation campaign.
CAIR quietly removed from its Web site an “Urban Legends” rebuttal it posted in response to growing criticism and terror charges after its falsehoods became transparently and embarrassingly obvious.
Desperate for revenue, CAIR tasks its interns with researching and writing grant proposals while providing blatantly false information in grant applications.
CAIR privately worries that “major roadblocks” to mainstreaming Islam in America include the religion’s “treatment of women and violence,” but instead of acknowledging misogyny and jihad as problems and disavowing them, CAIR coaches staff to use more effective methods to whitewash over them.
CAIR and the ACLU have formed a strategic partnership to target the FBI with “ethnicity related” civil rights complaints.
During the recent Lebanon crisis, which saw Israel defend itself from Hezbollah rockets, CAIR actually had the temerity to seriously consider suing the U.S. and Israel under RICO racketeering statutes for “conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping, property damage, and acts of terrorism.”
But that’s not all.
Early in the undercover operation, Gaubatz was given permission one day to work on a certain project in his boss’s office at the Herndon chapter, which CAIR was abruptly closing. The atmosphere was tense.
“I just knew there was something going on,” he says. “Nobody was saying anything about why the office was closing.”
His boss at the time, Iqbal, was out and Gaubatz found himself alone in Iqbal’s office. He spied on the desk in front of him a folder that looked suspicious.
“I just started looking at it,” he recalls, “and then I saw some of the handwritten notes where they’d said this guy is threatening to sue, this guy is threatening to go to the media.
“And I knew we were on to something…”
CHAPTER ONE
MUSLIMS VICTIMIZING MUSLIMS
“CAIR is very concerned about its reputation in the community. Without the community (and Allah’s help) CAIR would fail.”
—From internal “status report” by CAIR’s Civil Rights Department 1
THE BOARD MEMBERS of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations were in full panic mode. Usually the group that calls itself the largest Muslim rights organization in America—the “Muslim NAACP”—threatens to sue non-Muslims. But this time, Muslims were threatening to sue CAIR.
And these angry constituents’ timing could not have been worse. It was early 2008, and terrorism charges and bad press were taking their toll on CAIR’s fundraising efforts. Just as the group was preparing to launch a major new money drive in the Muslim community, its operations director, Khalid Iqbal, informed the board that the organization was “inundated with phone calls” from angry Muslim clients complaining they’d been “scammed” by one of CAIR’s attorneys.2
One brother, Issameldin Mohamed, “is verry [sic] upset and wants CAIR to return his money,” according to an office log of complaints.3 He thought CAIR had filed for his immigration papers but now felt that he “was scammed” and threatened to take CAIR to court. A Sister Taqwa called “extremely angry and threatened to sue CAIR” for the money she’d lost.4 And, according to an interoffice memo, “Br. Ahmed Obaid called threatening to sue CAIR” to recover his $9,000.5
And on it went. Some thirty desperate victims and their families flooded CAIR with complaints and Iqbal struggled to field them all.
The situation had reached a “crisis,” Iqbal warned CAIR executive director Nihad Awad and other board members, according to a series of internal email messages they’d hoped would never be disclosed.6 And it was spinning out of his control.
What is the “board recommendation?” Iqbal pleaded. “This case has taken a lot of my time.”7
Indeed it was a full-blown scandal. Dozens of Muslim immigrants seeking CAIR’s help with citizenship delays, many of them indigents, had lost tens of thousands of dollars in legal and other fees and were demanding their money back. They’d been ripped off in a massive criminal fraud orchestrated by CAIR’s “resident attorney” and “civil rights manager” for its Maryland and Virginia chapters. Jamil Morris Days wasn’t even a licensed attorney; he was a con artist with a long rap sheet.8 And not surprisingly, he didn’t provide the services he’d promised. Yet CAIR knew about his malpractice and kept him on board anyway.
Some victims had to sell their cars, their furniture—even their refrigerators—to pay CAIR’s bogus legal bills. The nonprofit group isn’t supposed to accept money for any casework. Some lost their immigration status because their paperwork had been bungled or, in some cases, not even been filed with the proper government agencies.
Now a handful threatened to not only sue but go to the media with their stories, which would take the scandal outside any control of CAIR and into the court of public opinion.
“Three brothers came together,” Iqbal noted in one CAIR document, “threatening to go to the media.”9
With the scandal mushrooming out of control, CAIR’s board decided to shift to “damage control” mode, emails reveal. It was imperative, they asserted, to “safeguard CAIR’s name and reputation,”10 and do whatever necessary to prevent news of the scandal from leaking out to the authorities or to the press.
Forget making whole the aggrieved Muslim clients it deigns to protect. Above all, protect the organization.
So CAIR’s directors ordered actions that effectively swept the scandal under the rug, including:
boxing up and sequestering the incriminating files;
shredding documents;
cleaning and erasing “all electronic data files from server and computers”
shutting down email accounts; and
even closing bank accounts.11
They quietly fired the attorney and closed down his office and the entire Maryland-Virginia chapter. They removed his name from the directory. They scripted a terse message to leave on the office answering machine to screen irate callers, trying to disown their dirty lawyer as only a “contractor” (which was news to his clients):
If you are trying to reach Br. Jamil Morris Days, we wish to advise you that he no longer works as a contractor for CAIR Maryland and Virginia chapters. If you have a case that is time-sensitive, please leave us a message and we will try our best to assist you.12
Then they disconnected the phone lines. They even got rid of Iqbal, who took a job with a Muslim Brotherhood mosque affiliated with CAIR and not far from the CAIR chapter in Herndon, Virginia, where Days worked (and where Iqbal kept an office when he wasn’t working out of CAIR’s headquarters on the other side of the Potomac). Just three years earlier, Iqbal had opened that chapter because, as CAIR said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, “there is a dire need for CAIR’s physical presence in this area.”
Suddenly there was no need and the chapter was shuttered. Today there’s hardly a trace the office ever existed. CAIR did everything to cover Days’s and Iqbal’s tracks short of removing their fingerprints.
They say in Washington that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. And this case is no exception, although both are bad.
Consider client-victim Kadiatu Korama, who paid CAIR “from mortgage money” and was in a “desperate situation.” Or Chokri el-Kotel, who had to “sell [a] car to get the money” to pay CAIR’s fake lawyer.13
HUSH MONEY
Yet there was little sympathy for the victims at CAIR’s headquarters. For those victims
who wouldn’t go away quietly, CAIR’s lawyers played the kind of hardball they usually reserve for kaffirs. They tried to frighten and intimidate them into silence by demanding they sign a secrecy agreement in violation of professional ethics.
The nondisclosure agreement also alleges to release CAIR from any legal claims in the fraud scheme in exchange for paying partial restitution to CAIR’s victims—that is, hush money.
Adding insult to injury, CAIR threatened to turn around and sue its victims each for $25,000 if they talked about the settlement or the “incident” with “any third party,” including the media or the police. According to the release form, the fee would cover “damages in the amount of $25,000 for the purpose of conducting meetings, workshops, press releases, flyers, and the like to reverse or minimize the damage to CAIR’s reputation caused by the recipient’s breach” of the agreement to remain quiet about the “incident.”14
CAIR calls the silence clause and the penalty for breaching it “standard legal practice.”15 But its victims say it feels more like a threat—a thuggish tactic, to be sure.
Legal analysts say the settlement agreement, which several victims signed, contains none of the exceptions typically found in such confidentiality provisions, such as an exception to permit disclosure to government authorities. They also doubt it is binding. Nor does it absolve CAIR of liability, since lawyers cannot escape disciplinary action in malpractice cases by simply reimbursing the client for any loss. And this certainly was a case of “malpractice,” something even CAIR acknowledges in its internal memos.16
Though CAIR is not technically a law firm, its lawyers drafted the release form, and its lawyers covered up for Days’s malpractice, thereby joining the malpractice—and the liability. And it was CAIR’s national legal counsel Nadhira al-Khalili who agreed to drive to the Herndon office and bring the incriminating Days evidence back to CAIR’s headquarters without ever turning it over to police.17 What’s more, CAIR’s legal team at no point informed its client-victims that Days was terminated for fraud and was not, in fact, a lawyer.
When CAIR discovered the fraud, it joined the fraud by covering it up and deliberately set out to conceal the truth about Days, not just from the authorities and the media, but from the clients he defrauded. The only thing CAIR’s headquarters told his defrauded clients when they called was that he no longer worked for CAIR. That’s it.
Why? In a word, money. Immigration cases are big business for CAIR, a hook for bringing in fundraising revenue, which CAIR desperately needs. Immigrants account for a large segment of the Muslim community. If word got out that CAIR mishandles their cases, even steals from them, it would hurt donations from the community at large.
For that matter, CAIR amid the scandal had launched a $250,000 fundraising campaign touting its mission of helping Muslims who confront immigration and citizenship problems.
“Every day, CAIR works hard to defend the rights of American Muslims who encounter a delay in gaining citizenship,” the group said in an advertisement promoting its fundraiser. “Let’s help CAIR reach its goal of $250,000 so that CAIR can continue to defend our rights.”
Its home page featured a button linking visitors to a donation page, along with photos of Muslims receiving certificates of U.S. citizenship. “CAIR helped me,” one Muslim is quoted as saying. (He is identified as Chokri el-Kotel, the same client-victim who had previously complained about CAIR. He agreed to give a testimonial only after CAIR bought him off with partial restitution and stepped in, belatedly, to handle his case.)
Not featured, of course, were the other still angry twenty-nine clients that CAIR had ripped off with fraudulent fees for undelivered immigration and other legal services.
CAIR’s fundraising pitch still centers on the boast that it helps Muslims with citizenship delays. It’s one of the group’s top selling points. Days had fit into that strategy.
Far from just a “contractor,” the fifty-four-year-old Days was brought in as a rainmaker for CAIR, which promoted him with great fanfare. Not long after hiring him in 2006, CAIR put out a slick newsletter trumpeting his arrival and his accomplishments, which included allegedly processing “over one hundred civil rights cases” already at the Maryland/Virginia chapter. CAIR proudly touted him and his alleged legal qualifications in an article titled “Meet Our Resident Attorney!” which included a photo of Days along with a solicitation for donations.18
DRUMMING UP NEW BUSINESS
CAIR also encouraged Muslim immigrants to make appointments to see Days, a black convert to Islam, and avail themselves of his legal services. What’s more, CAIR promoted Days in press releases and on its national Web site, drumming up new business for him—and new fundraising opportunities for CAIR.
In a July 2007 press release, CAIR sang Days’s praises while calling on the Department of Homeland Security to expedite Muslim citizenship cases he was supposedly working on for Muslims in Maryland and Virginia. The press release led to a spate of sob stories in the media.
“Every citizen and permanent resident has a right to expect fundamental fairness,” it quoted Days as saying. He called on immigration authorities to “do the right thing” and rubber stamp U.S. documentation for Muslim foreigners.
All the while, on his end, Days wasn’t doing much of anything. Clients complained he’d routinely stand them and immigration officials up at scheduled meetings and sometimes wouldn’t even show up for court dates. Some clients were strung along for several months after paying him a retainer.
In fact, some of the Muslims he garnered publicity for helping later proved to be the same victims he fraudulently shook down for fees. Consider the case of Issameldin Mohamed. CAIR posted on its main Web site an Associated Press story under the headline: “CAIR-MD/VA: Lawsuits End Citizenship Delays.” It highlighted with boldface type the following section of the December 2007 article:
Morris Days, an attorney with the Maryland-Virginia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has helped Mohamed and fifteen others file similar petitions at federal courthouses in the region in recent months.
If Mohamed was “helped,” he wasn’t helped very much. He’s the same Issameldin Mohamed mentioned at the beginning of this chapter who was so “upset” with Days that he called CAIR demanding a refund of the fees he paid him.
Still, CAIR couldn’t stop promoting their star pseudo-attorney. Days also was featured in an NBC News story that aired around the same time. CAIR promptly posted a link to the video under the headline, “CAIR-MD/VA: Muslims Granted Citizenship,” along with a photo of Days.
The media publicity didn’t end there. ABC News and the Washington Post also picked up on the angle of the “legal director for CAIR’s Maryland and Virginia chapter” heroically rescuing Muslim immigrants from xenophobic government gatekeepers. Days was quoted in the Post story blaming citizenship and visa delays on post-9/11 discrimination. He demanded federal officials expedite the cases he was working on—or not working on, as it turned out.
No matter, what was important to CAIR was that the immigration cases attracted good publicity at the time. And the more media, the more donations. Seeing that Muslims actually get help was secondary.
And Days attracted a lot of media for CAIR. In fact, he got so much ink that he ranked as one of the most visible “lawyers” in the country, according to Martindale-Hubbell, which mistakenly listed Days in its directory of attorneys. In fact, he ranked number one of forty-one lawyers in the Herndon area. Little wonder CAIR looked the other way when it all went bad.
COUNSELING FOR THE CON ARTIST
Iqbal knew Days was fraudulently collecting legal fees from CAIR clients at least by November 2007. And he and the CAIR board took no action against him until February 2008—a delay of a minimum of three months.
And even then, they didn’t fire him. They first gave him a warning and kept him on staff, even after learning of the malpractice he committed against so many CAIR clients while using CAIR offices, CAIR letterhead, and CAIR
equipment. They finally sacked him after the complaints continued unabated. 19
But even then, they didn’t turn him over to the proper authorities or alert the relevant state bar associations about his con. Instead, emails reveal, they sought out a local Muslim cleric to “give him counseling,” because he was “shaken and disturbed” by the news of his termination.20
They tolerated him ripping off clients until those clients threatened to blow the whistle in the media. Only then did they throw Days under the bus, because, as they explained to him in his termination notice, his continued association with CAIR endangered the reputation of “the organization as a whole.” In other words, it was more what he was doing to CAIR than what he was doing to Muslims that was the firing offense. CAIR would look bad if it got out that an advocacy group victimizes the very people it is supposed to represent.
* * *
TIMELINE: ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL
December 2004
CAIR opens CAIR Maryland/Virginia Chapter.
June 2006
CAIR hires Jamil Morris L. Days as its “resident lawyer” and “civil-rights manager” for CAIR MD/VA.
Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America Page 3
