To hear the folks at the Council on American-Islamic Relations tell it, the organization has just won a landmark legal victory, one that constitutes a slap in the face to “anti-Muslim bigots” and “denies [them] one of their favorite, yet phony, talking points.”
Actually, not by a long shot.
At issue is the public release in 2008 of a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal case involving the Holy Land Foundation, five of whose leaders were eventually convicted of providing material support to the terrorists of Hamas.
Among those on the list: CAIR, along with such groups as the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust.
By all accounts, this highly embarrassing revelation has hurt the group’s fund-raising, even though it was never criminally charged.
So CAIR and other groups filed suit to get their names expunged from the list.
What it got was a ruling from a federal judge, backed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, that making the list public violated CAIR’s Fifth Amendment rights, which even federal prosecutors concede.
But when it came to removing CAIR from the list, both courts turned a decided thumbs-down.
Indeed, District Court Judge Jorge Solis, in a 2009 ruling that was unsealed only last week, declared that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR” and other groups “with Hamas.”
In light of that evidence, said Solis, “maintaining the names of the entities on the list [of unindicted co-conspirators] is appropriate.” And, he added, “the public may make its own judgment from evidence presented at trial.”
The Court of Appeals agreed: “The district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to expunge” the groups.
Among the evidence presented by the government, as described by Judge Solis, was a document identifying CAIR as a working organization of the Palestine Committee, which was created by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood’s objective, according to its own document, is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within . . . so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all religions.”
Of course, that wouldn’t be particularly helpful for fund-raising, now — would it?