CAIR Leader: Texas Governor Followed Israeli Agenda in Designating Organization

Nihad Awad, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR), has strong­ly reject­ed Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott’s recent des­ig­na­tion of CAIR as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, stat­ing that that he oper­at­ed accord­ing to an “Israeli agen­da par excel­lence.” On 19 Novem­ber 2025, MEMRI report­ed that Awad had called Abbott’s procla­ma­tion an “anti-Mus­lim approach,” alleg­ing he used tac­tics of stereo­typ­ing and dis­tor­tion. The arti­cle begins:

In a Novem­ber 19, 2025 Ara­bic-lan­guage inter­view on Al Jazeera Net­work (Qatar), Nihad Awad, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR), respond­ed to Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott’s des­ig­na­tion of CAIR as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. He said that Abbott is an Amer­i­can politi­cian but is oper­at­ing accord­ing to an Israeli agen­da. Awad said that CAIR enjoys legal and pop­u­lar trust, not­ing that 30% of CAIR’s dona­tions come from non-Mus­lim Amer­i­cans because they believe in its ser­vice to the Amer­i­can fab­ric and con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues. He said that Gov­er­nor Abbott is using tac­tics of stereo­typ­ing and dis­tor­tion that were used dur­ing the Cru­sades and in colo­nial wars that led to the inva­sion of the Islam­ic world, claim­ing that Mus­lims in Texas want to impose sharia law.

Read more: https://www.memri.org/tv/nihad-awad-cair-responds-texas-ban-governor-abbott

Key Points

• Texas Gov­er­nor Abbott des­ig­nat­ed CAIR and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, ban­ning land ownership.

• Nihad Awad reject­ed the ban as defam­a­to­ry and law­less, cit­ing CAIR’s civ­il rights record.

• Awad empha­sized CAIR’s rejec­tion of ter­ror­ism and com­mit­ment to Amer­i­can values.

• Awad said that CAIR enjoyed legal and pop­u­lar trust, not­ing that 30% of CAIR’s dona­tions come from non-Mus­lim Americans.

In an unprece­dent­ed state-lev­el des­ig­na­tion, Abbott recent­ly des­ig­nat­ed CAIR and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as for­eign ter­ror­ist and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions, autho­riz­ing height­ened law enforce­ment mea­sures and block­ing prop­er­ty acqui­si­tion in Texas, mark­ing an esca­la­tion in polic­ing Islamist advo­ca­cy activities.

Awad’s Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas Connections

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, an enti­ty iden­ti­fied as part of the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture, with doc­u­ments from the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al estab­lish­ing that CAIR’s founders and cur­rent lead­ers were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood cre­at­ed to sup­port Hamas. In May 2022, Nihad Awad par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Doha meet­ing of Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers host­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars (IUMS). The gath­er­ing brought togeth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ures from mul­ti­ple coun­tries, includ­ing Alge­ri­a’s Abu Jar­ra Sul­tani, Aus­trali­a’s for­mer Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohammed (known for misog­y­nist views and fail­ing to con­demn the 2015 Paris ter­ror­ist attacks), and Den­mark’s Abdel-Hamid Al-Ham­di, whose orga­ni­za­tion receives Qatari fund­ing. Awad sparked con­tro­ver­sy in Novem­ber 2023 when he stat­ed he “was hap­py to see” Pales­tini­ans break out of Gaza on Octo­ber 7—the day Hamas killed approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages. The Biden White House sub­se­quent­ly dis­avowed CAIR. More recent­ly, CAIR set­tled a law­suit in Feb­ru­ary 2025 to avoid dis­clos­ing for­eign fund­ing sources, and a watch­dog group accused the Cal­i­for­nia chap­ter of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing $7.2 mil­lion in tax­pay­er funds intend­ed for refugee resettlement.

Exter­nal references:

• Fed­er­al Judge Hands Down Sen­tences in Holy Land Foun­da­tion Case — U.S. Depart­ment of Justice
• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed States — Steven Mer­ley, Hud­son Institute
• The Hamas Net­works in Amer­i­ca — George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­gram on Extremism

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.