CAIR Official Becomes Advisor to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release on June 29 announcing that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, has announced an Office of New Americans Advisory Committee that includes the Executive-Director of CAIR-Chicago, Ahmed Rehab.

The committee’s goal is to “generate recommendations, develop strategies, and present an overall vision to promote the City’s economic vitality and ensure global competiveness, by becoming the most immigrant friendly city in the world.”

The Office consists of 50 advisors, divided into four subgroups. Rehab belongs to the subgroup, “Civic engagement, Diversity welcomed and celebrated.”

In 2007, the federal government labeled CAIR an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. The Holy Land Foundation was shut down and five of its officials were convicted for covertly funding Hamas. In 2009, a federal judge upheld CAIR’s designation, ruling that “ample evidence” tied the organization to Hamas. Evidence introduced during the trial showed that CAIR was birthed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s American branch. The Brotherhood listed as one of its “working organizations” in a 1994 document.

CAIR is especially influential politically in the state of Illinois. On August 30, 2011, Governor Pat Quinn released the make-up of his new Muslim American Advisory Council. Rehab was one of those chosen, as was Safaa Zarzour, the secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North American, another designated “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land trial. Internal Muslim Brotherhood documents identify ISNA as one of its fronts. Zarzour also is on the board of CAIR-Chicago.

After RadicalIslam.org’s National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro wrote about Quinn’s new council in FrontPage Magazine, CAIR-Chicago and Rehab attacked him as a “third-rate propagandist,” (and twice managed to misspell his name as “Ray!”) It also called FrontPage Magazine an “echo chamber for bitter, old, extremist conservatives who hate anything that does not look or think like they do.”

Click here to read the rest of my RadicalIslam.org story.