The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Georgetown University have established a very tight relationship. This raises serious moral issues for Georgetown, a school that identifies as a Catholic institution committed to human rights.
CAIR reportedly has connections with the Holy Land Foundation, an entity that has seen several of its leaders convicted of raising money for Hamas. Nihad Awad, the head of CAIR, said he was “happy” about the slaughter of 1,200 innocent Jews on October 7, 2023. He interpreted the massacre as an example of Palestinians fighting for their rights.
A new investigation of the events of that day reveals that Hamas terrorists raped women repeatedly, all the while laughing out loud. What happened was evil. “Female bodies were found naked or partially naked, in some cases with aluminum cans, grenades, nails, blunt objects, rods, household tools and spike-like instruments, inserted into genitals and other parts of the body, as well as multiple gun-shot wounds, cutting injuries and targeted burning in genitals and breasts, or the face.”
CAIR’s co-founders, Awad and Omar Ahmad, were leading members of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, which became the base of the Hamas infrastructure. Today, CAIR receives millions of dollars from the far-left Tides Foundation, using some of this money to fund anti-Israel “protesters” on American campuses.
CAIR has been accused of being a terrorist organization by several states, prominent members of Congress, and the United Arab Emirates; the FBI named it as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation trial. In fairness, the U.S. Department of State does not list it as such.
Georgetown and CAIR are joined at the hips. The former supplies the intellectual cover for the latter’s activities, and in this regard no one has done more to soften the public’s view of CAIR, and for that matter Hamas, than John L. Esposito, the founding director of The Bridge Institute at Georgetown; it focuses on what it calls “Islamophobia.”
Esposito is the darling of CAIR. He has spoken at their conferences on many occasions, often as the keynote speaker. More important, he calls CAIR a “mainstream organization” that fights for human rights. His goal is to polish CAIR’s public image as a responsible American Muslim group, though this is an uphill battle: CAIR is widely seen as a Hamas front group.
Esposito is not deterred by such accusations. His defense of Hamas is so strong that he deliberately dumbs down the way jihad is interpreted by these terrorists. “To some,” he says, “Jihad is the struggle to remain devout and obedient to Islamic ethics. To others, it is a validation for warfare and to struggle against an oppressive force.” This is a classic way to normalize genocidal maniacs—treat them as if they are good Muslim boys.
Hamas, Esposito tells us, is “a social and political movement” that unfortunately has received a lot of bad publicity.” Small wonder. He blames the bad image on “the Israeli occupation” and on a “sense of oppression and victimhood.”
Truth be told, the investigative report said it was Hamas men who sexually tortured Jewish women on October 7, 2023. Not surprisingly, Esposito blames “Israel’s war on Gaza” for the atrocities.
What about 9/11? Esposito decries it, but not for the actions of Muslim radicals who bombed the U.S., but because so many Americans concluded that “Islam and Muslims” are “a global threat.” In other words, stereotyping is the problem, not Muslim barbarism. Indeed, he even goes so far as to condemn those who compare Hamas to ISIS!
Georgetown is second only to Cornell in being bankrolled by Muslim-majority nations. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are its biggest donors, nations that violate the rights of women and gays with abandon. But don’t look for this Jesuit institution to raise this issue in public. It is too busy apologizing for slavery hundreds of years ago.
The CAIR-Georgetown nexus is obscene. The media could report on this link but they are too busy writing about unfounded fears of “Christian nationalism” to pay much attention.
