Nihad Awad

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Nihad Awad (second from right) stands to President Bush's left, when Bush said "Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks [on Sept. 11, 2001]."
Nihad Awad (second from right) stands to President Bush's left, when Bush said "Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks [on Sept. 11, 2001]."[1]

Nihad Awad is the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington D.C.-based American Muslim political and civil rights group.

After studying civil engineering at the University of Minnesota in the 1990s,[2][3] he worked at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.[4]

After the Gulf war, he was Public Relations Director for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), described by U.S. government officials as a Hamas front organization.[5] In 1994 IAP president Omar Ahmad and others founded CAIR.

In a March 1994 speech at Barry University, future CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said in response to an audience question about the various humanitarian efforts in the Occupied Territories, "...after I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO...there are some [Hamas] radicals, we are not interested in those people.”[2]

A few days after September 11, 2001, Awad was one of a select group American Muslim leaders invited by the White House to join President Bush in a press conference condemning the attacks and acts anti-Muslim intolerance that followed. [6]

Awad attracted criticism when he allegedly wrote in the IAP's Muslim World Monitor that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial was "a travesty of justice," and suggested that "there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the explosion.'" [7] However, during a 2002 interview with an Australian news radio reporter, Awad denied those reports, calling them a "total fabrication" and saying he had been misquoted. A hard copy of the relevant edition of the Muslim World Monitor shows that Awad never wrote or made those remarks.[3].[4]

He is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by islamic scholars to christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding.

[edit] Sources

  1. ^ "Islam is Peace" Says President. Office of the Press Secretary (September 17, 2001). Retrieved on Jan. 27, 2007
  2. ^ Statement by Nihad Awad at a panel discussion, “The Road to Peace: the Challenge of the Middle East,” Barry University, March 22, 1994.[1]
  3. ^ abc.net
  4. ^ Microsoft Word - Letter on cover of Myths and Fact Doc.doc
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