Shortly after presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced the 23 members of his National Security Coalition, the Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the national security “dream team.”
In an official statement, CAIR called on Cruz to drop “designated hate group leader” Frank Gaffney Jr., Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin (ret.), and “other Islamophobes” as his foreign policy advisers. The statement included comments from CAIR founder and Chairman Nihad Awad:
“Who a candidate picks for his or her advisers says volumes about that candidate’s worldview. By choosing infamous Islamophobes as foreign policy advisers, Senator Cruz indicates that he subscribes to their conspiratorial worldview and to the anti-Muslim bigotry that would inevitably shape their policy recommendations. We ask Senator Cruz to drop any adviser who has a past history of promoting conspiracy theories or religious bigotry.”
CAIR points to Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, having been designated as a “hate group” by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. Two other members of the Cruz national security team, Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez, are also affiliated with CSP.
CAIR has attacked Boykin, who is executive vice president of the Family Research Council, over comments he has made in the past that Islam shouldn’t have First Amendment protections and that there shouldn’t be any mosques in the U.S. He made the comments four years ago, and they resulted in his being asked not to participate in a prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
However, CAIR has some bones clanking in its closet. According to a report in December, the Investigative Project on Terrorism received documentation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that linked “the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization” with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
IPT’s complete dossier linking CAIR with both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood can be found by clicking here.
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