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US Muslim group denies decrease in membership

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has rejected a press report which said its membership has declined by more than 90 percent since the 2001 attacks.

The report published by the right-wing Washington Times said, “The number of reported members spiraled down from more than 29,000 in 2000 to fewer than 1,700 in 2006. As a result, the Muslim rights group’s annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000, when yearly dues cost $25, to $58,750 last year, when the group charged $35. The organisation instead is relying on about two dozen donors a year to contribute the majority of the money for CAIR’s budget, which reached nearly $3 million last year.”

The CAIR rebuttal did not dispute the figures cited by the Washington Times, but explained, “Comparing CAIR’s 2000 dues figure to that of 2006 is a misleading and mischievous ‘apples and oranges’ exercise because those figures were calculated based on different criteria. They do not include the thousands of people of all faiths who became CAIR members through several free or low-cost membership drives. For example, between 2002 and 2006, more than 25,000 people became active members for $10 or less during those drives. Our membership is increasing steadily, as is our donor base, annual budget, and attendance at CAIR events around the country promoting interfaith understanding and respect for civil liberties.”

The newspaper, which asked Parvez Ahmed, CAIR board chairman, to comment on the falling membership, replied, “We are proud that our grass-roots support in the American Muslim community has allowed CAIR to grow from having eight chapters and offices in 2001 to having 33 today.”

Zuhdi Jasser, director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told the Washington Times that the sharp decline in membership calls into question whether the organisation speaks for American Muslims, as the group has claimed. “This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population. They only represent their membership and donors,” Jasser said. Post-9/11, they have marginalised themselves by their tired exploitation of media attention for victimisation issues at the expense of representing the priorities of the American Muslim population.”

In its clarification, CAIR also accused the reporter who wrote the story of having a “vendetta” against the group since she was barred from a recent CAIR news conference because of her “history of sloppy and agenda-driven reporting”.