Research

Overview of Prior Research

Since CAIR’s inception, American investigative journalists such as Steven Emerson (Investigative Project on Terrorism) and scholars such as Daniel Pipes (Middle East Forum) have followed CAIR’s activities and attempted to expose them to the public, media and policymakers.

After 9/11 this group of investigative reporters grew to include numerous online journalists.  Leading investigators were Joe Kaufman (CAIR Watch), Andrew Whitehead (Anti-CAIR), Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch), and the team of experts at the NEFA Foundation.

By 2007 this growing group of researchers expanded to include the Department of Justice prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.  Adding their voices were radio journalists such as Michael Savage and a growing group of lawyers including Daniel Horowitz, David Yerushalmi, the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, the Thomas More Law Center and Reed Rubinstein, whose 2006 victory against CAIR in the Andrew Whitehead case set the stage for further legal investigation.

  • Research Studies: The CAIR Observatory is a research center building upon the work of earlier authors.  Three major studies have been done.  The most recent is Muslim Mafia, a groundbreaking 2009 book by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry based on insider documents obtained by David’s son Chris Gaubatz when he worked undercover for months as an intern at CAIR’s headquarters.  A comprehensive and deeply researched 10-part study, “CAIR Exposed,” was published in 2008 by the Investigative Project on Terrorism under the direction of Steven Emerson.  This is the foundational work on CAIR based on his important collection of documents spanning the 1990’s and the 2000’s.  We provide another significant study entitled “Extremism and the Council on American-Islamic Relations” which was released in 2007 by an anonymous author.  If any reader can assist us in identifying the origins of this study we would very much like to give them credit for a useful piece of work.
  • Research Resources: Since CAIR’s inception, American investigative journalists such as Steven Emerson (Investigative Project on Terrorism) and scholars such as Daniel Pipes (Middle East Forum) have followed CAIR’s activities and attempted to expose them to the public, media and policymakers. This section displays websites devoted to exposing CAIR or containing volumes of relevant CAIR content.  These sites were selected because they: (1) Are specifically dedicated to CAIR, (2) have unique reports about CAIR, and/or (3) have archives of comprehensive coverage on CAIR.

Opportunities for Continuing Research

  • Open Research Topics: The CAIR Observatory has obtained and posted publicly available CAIR real estate records from the Washington, DC Recorder of Deeds.  In most areas of the United States the Recorder of Deeds (or Clerk-Recorder) keeps property records at a county level.  For example, we have also collected documents from the “Grantor/Grantee Search” at the Orange County, CA Clerk-Recorders office and posted them to this website.
  • Guide to CAIR’s Online Presence: CAIR has a considerable online presence, from it’s national website CAIR.com, to chapter websites and blogs, to the Twitter pages and blogs of individual CAIR leaders.  We also include links to the official sites of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan).
  • Action Alerts: CAIR continuously publishes action alerts, in the form of news items, press releases and calls to activism that were sent out via email to the CAIR listserv. The CAIR Observatory maintains an archive of 2,284 CAIR Action Alerts dated from September 6, 2001 to February 13, 2007.
  • Annual Reports: The national CAIR office and some chapters release annual reports which usually include a page or two on financial activity.  These are useful to use as a baseline in comparison to the financial information CAIR reports to the IRS.
  • Real Estate: This site gives an overview of CAIR’s properties which are located throughout the United States.
  • IRS Documents: This site provides information on CAIR’s financial activities vis a vis the IRS.