Presidential contender Donald Trump is now the latest Republican presidential candidate to receive negative publicity from The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization in the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation’s Hamas-funding operation.
Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive-director (and a supporter of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas), said Trump is pushing “inflammatory rhetoric” after the GOP candidate told a story during a rally about Muslims being executed with bullets “dipped in pig’s blood.”
Trump reportedly told a story at a rally in South Carolina on Friday about General John Pershing’s operations during the Philippine-American War.
Trump said:
He took 50 bullets and he dipped them in pig’s blood, and he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, “You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.” And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem.
Awad, the Hamas supporter, responded to Trump’s remarks:
Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has crossed the line from spreading hatred to inciting violence… By directly stating that the only way to stop terrorism is to murder Muslims in graphic and religiously-offensive ways, he places the millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens in the American Muslim community at risk from rogue vigilantes.
CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, a Hamas financing case that would result in the FBI ending relations working with CAIR. The HLF trial was the largest terror-financing case in American history.
In 2008, during a retrial of the HLF case, an FBI Special Agent labeled CAIR as “a front group for Hamas” during her trial testimony.
In 2010, a federal judge said his court had “ample evidence” that CAIR was involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas.” CAIR, which has relied upon millions of dollars in Saudi funds to spread its message, was recently listed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a terrorist organization.
CAIR, though a 501c3 organization, has continued to lobby against Republican candidates for president, which Dr. Ben Carson — another GOP presidential candidate who has faced CAIR’s negativity — has argued should result in the revocation of their tax-exempt status.
CAIR has also targeted Republican nominee Sen. Ted Cruz. The Texas Senator has called for CAIR, and the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole, to be labeled a terrorist organization.