Administration admits to 'hundreds' of meetings with jihad-linked group

by Neil Munro

President Barack Obama?s deputies are holding 'hundreds' of closed-door meetings with a jihad-linked lobbying group that is widely derided by critics as a U.S. arm of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood. The admission of meetings with the Council on American-Islamic Relations came from George Selim, the White House's new director for community partnerships, which was formed in January to ensure cooperation by law enforcement and social service
agencies with Muslim identity groups in the United States.

"There are hundreds of examples of departments and agencies that meet with CAIR on a range of issues", Selim told The Daily Caller, after being asked if his office refuses to meet with any Muslim groups. CAIR is the group with the worst record of deception and the deepest ties to terrorists, said Steven Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which tracks the public activities of Islamist lobbying groups.

The White House is so clueless and/or compromised when dealing with the brotherhood, said Robert Spencer, the author of several books about Islam and jihad. CAIR, he said, is "the political front of a radically repressive, Jew-hating, woman-hating organization."

The House of Representatives last month prodded the Department of Justice to end all contacts with CAIR."The [appropriations] committee understands that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has an existing policy prohibiting its employees from engaging in any formal non-investigative cooperation with CAIR [and] the committee encourages the attorney general to adopt a similar policy for all department officials," said the committee report, accompanying the 2013 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, passed in mid-May by the House. The DC interviewed Selim during a June 7 State Department conference on diversity that was hosted by the Office of the Special Representative to Muslim Communities. After he admitted the extensive ties, Selim declined to explain further. He walked away, but returned to insist to The DC that it cannot record his comments. The office's deputy director, Adnan Kifayat, also berated The DC for taping the interview with Selim. "That was wrong..it is really bad form," he said. "You're putting a career at risk by asking [questions] without telling him..you cannot ambush people and expect them to actually cooperate," Kifayet said, adding that The DC could have committed a felony by recording Selim when he was using a cellphone shortly before the interview."

Kifayat's boss is Farah Pandith. She is a Muslim born in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan. Jihad groups from Pakistan have attacked Indian civilians and soldiers in the province since 1949 when India and Pakistan split amid a bloody war. Selim's outreach office is controversial because critics say its cooperation policy accepts the separatist demand by CAIR and other Muslim advocacy groups that they 'have not elected politicians' represent the nation's 2 million-plus Muslim residents and citizens. "It's an outrage that the administration empowers such bad actors and ignores the courageous moderate Muslims who stand up to these self-anointed hucksters," said Emerson. Those excluded American-style Muslims include Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

However, the White House?s cooperation with Muslim groups complements the Democratic Party's diversity strategy. That strategy seeks to accumulate votes from a discordant variety of minority groups, including Muslims and feminists, Jews, gays, Latinos and African-Americans. The party's Muslim outreach is focused on Michigan and Illinois, which are home to significant numbers of Muslim immigrants. CAIR is especially controversial because of its many links to the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood.