Could This Finally Be the Downfall of Hamas-Linked CAIR?

New in PJ Media:

For years, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been the nation’s most effective Islamic group, and its list of accomplishments is long: it has normalized the term “Islamophobia” and the stigmatization and silencing of honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence. It has helped solidify an alliance between the left and Muslim Brotherhood groups in the U.S. and has been instrumental in turning the left against Israel to the extent that leftists will demonstrate for a bloodthirsty jihad terror group. Recently, however, CAIR has hit an unprecedented bad patch that could even mean its downfall. What a shame.

First, CAIR top dog Nihad Awad, apparently feeling (with good reason) untouchable, declared that Hamas’ Oct. 7 jihad massacres in Israel made him “happy.” That was too much even for the Biden regime, which summarily dropped CAIR from the groups that were helping it craft “a national antisemitism strategy.”

It was absurd that CAIR was part of a group supposedly dedicated to combating antisemitism in the first place, but it was downright shocking that the Biden regime, which is worried about the breakdown of its coalition with far-left groups over its show of support for Israel, would risk increasing the ire of those groups by doing something so “Islamophobic” as severing ties with CAIR.

And now CAIR is facing other troubles as well: it is being sued by one of its own former employees, and in the course of a bitter, protracted dispute, its toxic institutional subculture has been revealed. The Star Tribune reported Friday that CAIR and Lori Saroya, who was the head of its Minnesota chapter for nine years and is now a city council member in Blaine, Minn., are “locked in an ongoing, bitter legal dispute that has seen accusations lobbed ranging from defamation to cyberstalking and Islamophobic extremism.”

“Islamophobic extremism” from the former head of a CAIR chapter? It seems unbelievable, and that’s only because it is. But CAIR went all in on accusing the hijab-wearing Saroya of being “Islamophobic.” The Star Tribune adds that CAIR issued a press release in Jan. 2022 in which they “accused Saroya of using anonymous email and social media accounts to harass CAIR employees and spread ‘Islamophobic tropes and conspiracy theories’ about the organization.”

Countering all this in her civil complaint, Saroya maintains that CAIR’s accusations are “outrageously false,” and that certainly seems to be the case. The “Islamophobia” accusations against a Sharia-adherent Muslim woman appear to be a smokescreen for what Saroya called CAIR’s “unfortunate record of sanctioning and indulging serious allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination within its organization, retaliating against women who raise these issues and engaging in profoundly dishonest conduct vis a vis the public, the Muslim-American Community and even its own Board.” She added, “CAIR’s defamatory statements about me were intended to intimidate not just me but others like me.”

There is more. Read the rest here.