CAIR Sues Texas Over Terrorist Organization Designation

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott after he designated the controversial Muslim advocacy group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Transnational Criminal Organization.

CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement that the group filed the lawsuit on Nov. 20 to defend itself.

“No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure,” she said.

In a Nov. 18 proclamation, Abbott also assigned the same designations to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization created almost a century ago.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood, which has branches all over the world, says it has renounced violence and now aims to establish Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means, the proclamation said the Muslim Brotherhood “provides support to localized branches in countries and territories throughout the world, including groups that conduct terrorism internationally.”

The proclamation describes CAIR as a Muslim Brotherhood “successor organization,” and notes that the FBI has described CAIR as a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network” in the United States.

The new state-level designations empower the Texas attorney general, currently Ken Paxton, to sue to shutter both groups and block them, as well as their affiliates, from acquiring land in Texas, the Republican governor said. The organizations were designated under the Texas Penal and Property Codes, according to the proclamation.

“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement.

“The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable,” he said.

After the lawsuit was filed, President Donald Trump said on Nov. 23 that he was planning to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a move that he has considered since his first term.

On Nov. 24, Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of designating “certain chapters or other subdivisions” of the Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities under federal law.

Although neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood had to date been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the president, the State Department has designated specific branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities, according to the proclamation.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned or labeled a Foreign Terrorist Organization in several countries, among them Austria, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.

Under U.S. law, a Foreign Terrorist Organization is a foreign organization that the federal government recognizes as engaging in or having the capability of engaging in terrorism that threatens U.S. national security. U.S. law forbids persons in the United States from providing material support to such a designated organization and requires U.S. financial institutions to report funds in the organization’s possession to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department.

A Specially Designated Global Terrorist is a person or entity that the State Department or the Treasury Department has designated as a terrorist. The person or entity has been deemed to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism “that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” The designation allows the federal government to direct U.S. financial institutions to block the assets of the person or entity.

The Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR filed the new lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, calling Abbott’s proclamation “defamatory.”

The group alleged in its complaint that the governor is attempting “to punish the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization simply because [he] disagrees with its views.”

Abbott allegedly violated the First Amendment by issuing the proclamation, which “chills Plaintiffs’ freedom of speech and freedom of association, and retaliates against Plaintiffs for their exercise of their rights,” the complaint stated.

The group also stated that Abbott’s statement that it functions as a “front group” for Hamas is “inflammatory” and has no basis in fact.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the governor’s office and the Muslim Brotherhood. No replies were received by publication time.

Aldgra Fredly and Jacob Burg contributed to this report.