N.C. State Sen. Larry Shaw has been elected chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (or CAIR), reports the Fayetteville Observer:
The eight-term legislator, whose District 21 covers Fort Bragg and much of Fayetteville, generally is a low-key politician. But assuming a top leadership post with CAIR could thrust Shaw into a controversial national spotlight.
The organization has been the target of critics, including some in Congress, who say there are indications it has ties to terrorists.
The 15-year-old group advocates on behalf of Muslims in the United States. It says it has 32 chapters in 20 states, though none in North Carolina, plus a chapter in Canada. But CAIR has been a lightning rod, especially since the 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York.
Before taking over as chairman last week, Shaw served on CAIR?s board.
?I just felt it was time for me to do more? to help the Muslim community, he said. ?To step up, I needed to be more active, more involved to help tell the story.?
Critics on various Web sites and online forums accuse CAIR of being a propaganda front for Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic political and militia group listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization.
It doesn?t help that the U.S. Department of Justice described CAIR in court papers in 2007 as one of 246 ?unindicted co-conspirators? or ?joint venturers? with The Holy Land Foundation, a shuttered Muslim charity. The Holy Land Foundation?s leadership was convicted in federal court in November of illegally giving money to Hamas.
The government wrongly and unfairly lumped CAIR and the other groups in with the Holy Land Foundation, Shaw said.
?They indicted, with a secret grand jury, every Islamic organization in America, and then individuals. That?s the abuse here,? the state senator said.
Shaw accused the government?s lawyers of laziness, likening the co-conspirator charge to the government?s surveillance of civil rights advocates in the 1960s.
?Nothing we do is illegal,? Shaw said.
