The United Arab Emirates' cabinet has "bizarrely" included the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S.-based pro-Muslim group known to have close associations with the Obama administration, in its comprehensive list of 83 designated terrorist organizations around the world, the WAM Emirates News Agency reported on Saturday.
The Arab nation's list, which also listed various al-Qaeda affiliates and the Islamic State, follows Saudi Arabia's decision in March to label the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, which has often been linked to CAIR and the Muslim American Society (MAS) as being its global affiliates, Breitbart reported.
"We call on the United Arab Emirates cabinet to review this list and remove organizations such as CAIR, the Muslim American Society (MAS) and other civil society organizations that peacefully promote civil and democratic rights and that oppose terrorism whenever it occurs, wherever it occurs and whoever carries it out," CAIR wrote in a statement on its Facebook page, which also called its inclusion on the UAE list a "bizarre move."
CAIR, which presents itself as a mainstream Muslim organization and is known to hold hundreds of meetings with White House officials on a wide range of community issues, has had its share of controversies, specifically for its alleged connection with Hamas, according to Fox News.
In 2007, the organization was named along with 300 others as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case regarding funding to extremist group Hamas. But an FBI policy had prohibited any communication with CAIR outside of criminal investigations after a terror- financing prosecution in Dallas placed the organization's founders in a Muslim Brotherhood Hamas support network called the Palestine Committee.
"[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner," Assistant FBI Director Richard Powers wrote in 2009.
While the UAE's list certainly calls CAIR's relationship with Washington into question, several terrorism experts claimed the organization's inclusion to be appropriate, especially given its alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
"The United Arab Emirates could have banned the Muslim Brotherhood and left it at that," Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for the Clarion Project, told FoxNews.com. "Instead, they went the extra mile to call out major Brotherhood affiliates in Europe and the U.S. The point that the UAE is making is that the Brotherhood operates in the West and it is worried about these affiliates' influence on Western policy."
"Federal prosecutors have explicitly named CAIR and MAS as Muslim Brotherhood entities, yet the UAE is expressing more public concern about this than the U.S. does," Mauro added. "Whereas they appear in our media and meet with our officials, the UAE views them as extremists unworthy of being treated as representatives of Muslims."
However, CAIR has requested the UAE to reconsider the list, stating that its "advocacy model is the antithesis of the narrative of violent extremists and that it peacefully promotes civil and democratic rights and ... oppose terrorism whenever it occurs, wherever it occurs and whoever carries it out," Buzzfeed reported.
Additionally, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said his organization, as well as other Muslims who are against terrorism, are often unfairly portrayed
"Obama provided examples of religious leaders engaged in the ideological fight against extremism, quoting a Muslim sheikh who said, 'We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace,'" Hooper said. "That sheikh is Abdullah bin Bayyah, a 79-year-old cleric who, even though lauded on the world stage for his recent efforts at peacemaking, is dogged by controversy over connections to the Muslim Brotherhood."
Meanwhile, U.S. State Department officials did not immediately return comments on CAIR's inclusion on UAE's terror list, according to the Associated Press.
