CAIR-Fuqra Official Announces Intention to Run for Governor

Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, an official with both the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Massachusetts chapter and the Muslims of the Americas (a rebranding of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra terrorist group), has announced her intention to run for governor.

She currently lives in Massachusetts, where Republican Governor Charlie Baker will be running for re-election in 2018. It is unclear if Wadud meant that that she’d run in the next cycle.

Amatul-Wadud is currently the general counsel for the Muslims of the Americas, whose spiritual leader is a radical cleric named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gillani in Pakistan. The organization was previously known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, when it carried out terrorist attacks in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The group is best known for its “Islamberg” headquarters in New York where guerilla training of women has occurred, as seen in this undated footage obtained by the Clarion Project from a law enforcement source. It claims to have 22 “Islamic villages” in 12 states. The Clarion Project identified one such "village" in Texas in 2014. We recently published the heartbreaking testimony of a woman who grew up in these villages in the 1980s.

A 2007 FBI report  obtained by the Clarion Project states "the documented propensity for violence by this organization supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government."

It says "members of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and military/terrorist training from Gillani." It warns that MOA "possess an infrastructure capable of planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas and within the U.S." MOA has a history of terrorist and criminal activity.

Amatul-Wadud previously posted an article on her Facebook page by Gillani that touts 9/11 conspiracy theories and claims that ISIS is a front for British intelligence. It also claims that the U.S. was brought into World War Two by a Jewish conspiracy.

“There was no need for America to go to war against Hitler. Hitler was not the enemy of America or the American people. There was a mutual animosity between Hitler and the Jews. So, the American people paid a very heavy price for fighting someone else’s war,” Gillani wrote.

When Amatul-Wadud made her announcement, she immediately tweeted to Syeda Zainab Gillani, who praised her for the decision. Gillani’s twitter displays a photo of Sheikh Gillani and Hussain Adams, chief executive officer of MOA and son of convicted Fuqra terrorist, Barry Adams.

Amatul-Wadud is also a board member for the Massachusetts branch of CAIR, which the Justice Department has labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial. CAIR is also identified by the Justice Department as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization when it cracked down on Islamist extremism and banned the Muslim Brotherhood.

A 2007 court filing by federal prosecutors in another terrorism case reads:

“From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists … the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”  

Amatul-Wadud’s status as a joint CAIR/Fuqra official reflects growing ties between the two organizations.

Shockingly, Amatul-Wadud was invited to a White House event celebrating activists for religious pluralism in December. She is also on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, which interestingly doesn’t mention her connection to MOA/Fuqra (but does mention her status as a CAIR official).

The CAIR-MA website also doesn't mention the connection, only saying that she is “general counsel for a New York Muslim congregation.” When I confronted a CAIR official on Newsmax TV about this link and Fuqra’s history (which includes showing pictures of the weapons found during a raid on a Fuqra camp in Colorado in 1992), his rebuttal was that terrorist networks haven’t existed in America since the 9/11 attacks.

Whenever Amatul-Wadud does run for governor, MOA/Fuqra, CAIR and their allies will try to drown out voices mentioning this information with shouts of "Islamophobia," as those with Islamist extremist backgrounds always do. But, with this volume of incriminating information, no megaphone will be loud enough to stop the facts from being heard. 

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.