The lawsuit comes after Gov. Greg Abbott also said the Council on American-Islamic Relations was a ‘front group’ for Hamas.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott after he designated the controversial Muslim advocacy group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Transnational Criminal Organization.
CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement that the group filed the lawsuit on Nov. 20 to defend itself.
“No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure,” she said.
In a Nov. 18 proclamation, Abbott also assigned the same designations to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization created almost a century ago.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood, which has branches all over the world, says it has renounced violence and now aims to establish Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means, the proclamation said the Muslim Brotherhood “provides support to localized branches in countries and territories throughout the world, including groups that conduct terrorism internationally.”
The proclamation describes CAIR as a Muslim Brotherhood “successor organization,” and notes that the FBI has described CAIR as a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network” in the United States.
The new state-level designations empower the Texas attorney general, currently Ken Paxton, to sue to shutter both groups and block them, as well as their affiliates, from acquiring land in Texas, the Republican governor said. The organizations were designated under the Texas Penal and Property Codes, according to the proclamation.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement.
“The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable,” he said.
After the lawsuit was filed, President Donald Trump said on Nov. 23 that he was planning to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a move that he has considered since his first term.
