The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today sent a letter to U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, condemning the anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic bigotry in his “McCarthyist” May 29th letter addressed to American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
CAIR notes that Chair Comer’s McCarthyism-fueled investigatory letter incorrectly stated that AMP is the parent organization of the student-led organization National Students for Justice in Palestine.
CLICK TO READ THE LETTER.
Chair Comer’s May 29th letter to AMP follows the U.S. House Committee on Oversight & Accountability and the Committee on Education & the Workforce joint May 14th letter attempting to smear and silence Americans opposed to the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza by baselessly demanding that the Treasury Department turn over banking information about over a dozen major Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian student groups and advocacy organizations, as well as foundations run by Bill and Melinda Gates and the Soros family.
Based solely on the accusations of far-right pro-Israel conspiracy theorists, these two congressional committees are engaging in a modern form of McCarthyism by investigating the funding sources and ties of over 20 legally operating Muslim, Palestinian, and Jewish nonprofit advocacy organizations thought to be supportive of or participating in anti-genocide protests nationwide, including those on American college campuses. This investigation, criticized as a needless waste of American tax dollars, was rebuked by CAIR in a response letter as McCarthyism 2.0.
“Chairman Comer’s latest political stunt in service of Israel’s genocide in Gaza reveals a disturbing comfort with Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and antisemitism,” said CAIR Government Affairs Department Director Robert S. McCaw. “His baseless attacks on Palestinian-American students, leaders and organizations echoes the McCarthy era, undermines First Amendment protections, and reflect a profound animosity towards Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Jewish Americans demanding justice for all, including the people of Gaza.”
In his follow-up letter sent to Chairman Comer, CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw broke down Comer’s May 29 letter to AMP as being filled with Islamophobic tropes and baseless untested accusations.
CAIR’s latest letter also highlighted an article from the American Jewish community publication The Forward, published on May 7, that exposes Chairman Comer’s troubling history of antisemitic rhetoric, including his refusal to condemn the Great Replacement Theory and his engagement with antisemitic QAnon content. The article also details his use of coded antisemitic language against Jewish representatives.
The letter from CAIR underscores the alarming rise in Islamophobia in the U.S., particularly in the wake of recent violence between Israelis and Palestinians. CAIR documented a record 8,061 complaints of Islamophobia in 2023, highlighting heinous incidents such as the murder of six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume and numerous instances of violence, harassment, and civil rights violations against students advocating for Palestinian rights, including violent assaults at the University of California, Los Angeles, the use of hazardous chemicals against protesters at Columbia University, and stalking and doxxing at Harvard University.
CAIR’s letter concludes by calling on Chairman Comer to abandon his McCarthyistic tactics and uphold the constitutional rights of all Americans. It also denounces his reliance on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a source of information, which has a history of intimidating minorities and others who speak out for Palestinian human rights.
CAIR asserts that Chairman Comer’s recent actions and declared Republican congressional committee-led investigations are clumsy attempts to suppress free speech and advocacy through fear and intimidation, smearing and will not succeed in intimidating Muslim, Palestinian, Arab, and Jewish organizations advocating for justice and human rights for Palestinians.
The full text of the letter can be found below:
June 13, 2024
The Honorable James Comer
Chairman
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
RE: Your Unconstitutional, Islamophobic, Anti-Palestinian Letter Sent to American Muslims for Palestine
Dear Chairman Comer:
On behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, we write to raise several civil rights and bias concerns emerging from your recent attempts to smear and intimidate institutions advocating for an end to apartheid, occupation, and genocide. In particular, your May 29, 2024, letter to American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) Executive Director Dr. Osama Abuirshaid is constructed using several common Islamophobic tropes and unsubstantiated allegations.
CAIR’s Research and Advocacy Department’s routine research to assist in preparing this letter turned up the following quote from an article published on May 7, 2024, in the Forward, which describes itself as the “most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet today:”
[Rep. James Comer] has “refused requests to condemn the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory and retweeted content from antisemitic QAnon accounts. In an interview on a right-wing radio show last month, Comer singled out three Democratic Jewish representatives — Raskin, Dan Goldman of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida — for being highly educated and wealthy. He also compared them to little dogs. Such smears have historically been used to target Jews and are considered a common form of coded antisemitism by the American Jewish Committee.”[1]
Taken together, your comfort with both Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian, and antisemitic rhetoric, and McCarthyistic investigation into American Muslim, Palestinian, and Jewish organizations raises serious concerns about your understanding and commitment to upholding the First Amendment protections of free exercise of religion, the free exercise of speech, the freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government, in addition to your ability to protecting minority faiths in the United States.
Your letter to AMP ignores recent and decades-long harassment and civil rights violations of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and other students protesting in support of Palestinian human rights.
Since the onset of the latest round in decades of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the U.S. has experienced a shocking wave of Islamophobia. CAIR received 8,061 complaints nationwide in 2023, marking the highest number of complaints CAIR has ever recorded in its 30-year history. Nearly half of all complaints received in 2023 were reported in the final three months of the year.
Behind these numbers are human tragedies. In October, six-year-old Palestinian-American boy Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed and murdered by his family’s landlord in Chicago. According to his mother, who was also attacked, the landlord yelled “You Muslims must die!” before attempting to choke and stab her. In another incident of a child being targeted, a teacher threatened to beat and behead a seventh-grade Muslim student in Warner Robins, Georgia, in December. After the student asked about the teacher’s Israeli flag, the teacher was overheard, in part, threatening to “slit [the student’s] god***n throat” and “cut her head off” by several students and witnesses.
Harassment and civil rights violations of students protesting Israel’s apartheid, occupation, and genocide have been widespread and well-documented, for example:
- On May 1, outside pro-Israel agitator groups had reportedly come to the University of California, Los Angeles campus and violently attacked students at a pro-Palestine encampment.[2] These pro-Israel counter-protesters attempting to dismantle the encampment could reportedly be seen on video spraying chemicals at the encampment and, at times, “descending on a single person” where they could be seen “punching, kicking, and attacking people with makeshift weapons.”[3] Even after police officers began to arrive more than two hours later, pro-Israel counter-protesters continued to attack the encampment, as law enforcement officers reportedly stood several hundred feet away without stepping in. Pro-Palestinian students were reportedly left to fend for themselves for three hours before law enforcement took any action.
- In January 2024, the Muslim Legal Fund of America filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of students at Harvard University, who “have been targeted with rampant harassment and racist attacks including doxxing, stalking, and assault simply for being Palestinian, Muslim, and supporters of Palestinian rights.”[4] The students report having objects thrown at them and poured on them for wearing the keffiyeh. Students have also reported being spat at, stalked, and chased. The increase in verbal and physical attacks has caused students to feel unsafe on campus and they report that they are “living in fear of being attacked while walking to class.”
- In January 2024, students at Columbia University were reportedly sprayed with a hazardous, foul-smelling chemical agent by two individuals while at a protest in support of Palestine. At least 10 students reportedly sought medical care. Dozens of students reported symptoms such as burning eyes, nausea, headaches, abdominal and chest pain, and vomiting.[5] A university spokesman reportedly made an initial statement seemingly blaming students for the attack, claiming that their protest was “unsanctioned and violated university policies and procedures.”[6]
Like the historic student protests against segregation, the Vietnam War, and South African apartheid, the recent sit-ins, and other protests launched by college students across America have been overwhelmingly peaceful, respectful, and diverse–often led by Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students engaged in the long American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reported in early May that, “between 7 October and 3 May, the overwhelming majority of student demonstrations — 97% — have remained peaceful.”[7]
Countering real antisemitism is important, but it is also critically important for you to reject pressure from the Israeli government and its supporters to suppress American Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and others’ First Amendment protected free speech and advocacy for Palestinian human rights based on false allegations of antisemitism.
Your letter to AMP also indulges in common Islamophobic stereotypes and cites groups that treat American Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and others protesting in support of Palestinian human rights as political enemies. Your targeting of these classes of people for McCarthyistic-styled congressional investigations is sadly reminiscent of the rightfully disbanded House Committee on Un-American Activities.
An organization or individual is deploying Islamophobia if it does any of the following or if it funds, partners with, or presents individuals or groups that:
- Allege that Islam and Muslims are inherently or uniquely violent or that Islam is the antithesis of civilization.
- Allege that Islam is an existential threat to the U.S. and/or the “West” and that Muslims, or their representative institutions, are part of a plot to overthrow the “West” or America.
- Support unequal treatment under the law for Islam or Muslims.
- Allege that violent groups which falsely and perversely claim a religious cover possess the correct understanding of Islam.
In your letter, you advance the longstanding trope that American Muslims are a fifth column who support nefarious groups while ignoring that under the Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, every American Muslim organization in the country was wrongly subjected to extensive federal law enforcement investigations. Much of your letter also relies on a lawsuit that was only filed on May 1, 2024. Any objective observer of U.S. courts knows that the initial lawsuit is the opinion of those who filed it and not yet the result of the defendant getting a day in court. These allegations are just simply untested allegations, yet in your letter, you seem to attempt to mislead your audience into believing that they are proven facts.
You also cite the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has a decades-long history of aggressively intimidating Arabs, Muslims, and others who speak out in favor of Palestinian human rights, most recently targeting “the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace Action’s affiliated political action committee (JVP-PAC).”[8]
Interviews with eight former ADL employees found that ADL Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Greenblatt has repeatedly chosen to support crackdowns on criticism of Israel over protecting civil liberties, putting him in conflict with his own civil rights office.[9] In a recent attempt to target critics of the Israeli government in October, the ADL, in collaboration with the Brandeis Center, released a letter to the presidents of nearly 200 colleges and universities calling on them to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups for “providing material support to Hamas.”[10] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) quickly blasted the move, arguing that the accusations were made “without citing any evidence” and that “calls to investigate, disband, or penalize student groups on the basis of their exercise of free speech rights” should be rejected.[11]
The ADL’s call not only threatened students’ free speech but also relied on an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian trope that supporters of Palestinian human rights are by nature violent and would therefore fund violent activities abroad. Relying on the ADL implies that you endorse their unconstitutional calls for investigations of groups based on students exercising their free speech rights. It also implies that you may be undertaking your investigations to smear critics of Israel’s unjust and ongoing policies of apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
When people go unheard they protest. President Biden and many elected officials have ignored public opinion and continued to provide U.S. arms to Israel as it continues to use those weapons to kill Palestinian civilians. We urge you to abandon tactics set forth by form U.S. Senator Joeseph McCarthy and in programs such as the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO) and NSA’s Project MINARET, and instead work to protect the rights of all Americans who seek to express their political opinions and uphold American values of opposing apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
Sincerely,
Robert S. McCaw
Government Affairs Department Director
Council on American-Islamic Relations
cc: The Honorable Jamie B. Raskin, Ranking Member
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Members and Staff of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and
U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce
[1] Jacob Kornbluh. “Ahead of hearing on DC’s response to campus protests, questions arise about GOP chair’s role in enabling antisemitism.” Forward, May 7, 2024. Accessed June 12, 2024. Link: https://forward.com/fast-forward/610546/gop-james-comer-hearing-campus-antisemitism
[2] Alison, Ismail. “CAIR-LA and MSA West Condemn Militarized Police Response to UCLA Anti-Genocide Student Encampment.” CAIR.com, May 3, 2024. Accessed June 6, 2024. Link: https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-la-and-msa-west-condemn-militarized-police-response-to-ucla-anti-genocide-student-encampment/#:~:text=The%20Greater%20Los%20Angeles%20Area,the%20arrest%20of%20around%20200.
[3] Bedi, Neil, Bora Erden, Marco Hernandez, Ishaan Jhaveri, Arijeta Lajka, Natalie Reneau, Helmuth Rosales, and Aric Toler. “How Counterprotesters at U.C.L.A. Provoked Violence, Unchecked for Hours.” The New York Times, May 6, 2024. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/us/ucla-protests-encampment-violence.html.
[4] “MLFA Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint With Department of Education on Behalf of Harvard Palestinian and Muslim Students – MLFA,” n.d. Link: https://mlfa.org/mlfa-files-federal-civil-rights-complaint-with-department-of-education-on-behalf-of-harvard-palestinian-and-muslim-students/.
[5] Thakker, Prem, and Prem Thakker. “Columbia Scolds Students for ‘Unsanctioned’ Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals.” The Intercept, January 23, 2024. Link: https://theintercept.com/2024/01/22/columbia-university-palestine-protest-skunk/.
[6] Mendell, Chris. “New Al Jazeera Documentary on Alleged Chemical Spraying Reports Two Columbia Students ‘Infiltrated’ Protest.” Columbia Daily Spectator, April 12, 2024. Link: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/12/new-al-jazeera-documentary-on-alleged-chemical-spraying-reports-two-columbia-students-infiltrated-protest/#:~:text=Two%20Columbia%20students%20and%20former,Jazeera%20documentary%20published%20on%20Friday.
[7] Ho, Bianca, and Kieran Doyle. “US Student Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Remain Overwhelmingly Peaceful | ACLED Brief.” ACLED, May 10, 2024. Link: https://acleddata.com/2024/05/10/us-student-pro-palestine-demonstrations-remain-overwhelmingly-peaceful-acled-brief/.
[8] Staff, Mee. “US: ADL Files Federal Complaint Against pro-Palestinian Jewish Group.” Middle East Eye, June 3, 2024. Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/adl-files-us-federal-elections-complaint-against-pro-palestinian-jewish-group.
[9] “How the ADL’s Israel Advocacy Undermines Its Civil Rights Work,” Jewish Currents, October 13, 2021, Link: https://jewishcurrents.org/how-the-adls-israel-advocacy-undermines-its-civil-rights-work.
[10] Anthony Romero et al.,“Open Letter to Colleges and University Leaders: Reject Efforts to Restrict Constitutionally Protected Speech on Campuses,” American Civil Liberties Union, November 1, 2023. Link: https://www.aclu.org/documents/open-letter-to-colleges-and-university-leaders-reject-efforts-to-restrict-constitutionally-protected-speech-on-campuses.
[11] Romero et al., “Open Letter to Colleges and University Leaders.” November 1, 2023. Link: https://www.aclu.org/documents/open-letter-to-colleges-and-university-leaders-reject-efforts-to-restrict-constitutionally-protected-speech-on-campuses.
END
CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com, CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com