By: Khaled Beydoun
The United Arab Emirates designated two Muslim-American civil rights groups – the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society – among the 83 institutions included in its new terrorist group list. The designations were announced on the state’s official news agency on November 15, marking a nefarious precedent where a government of a Muslim-majority state has designated a Muslim-American institution as a “terrorist organisation”.
While the classification of both organisations as terrorist groups is alarming, the allegation against CAIR is particularly concerning. The advocacy organisation based out of Washington, DC, which encompasses 28 chapters across the United States, has stood as a vital and vocal opponent of state-sponsored discrimination against Muslim-Americans. In addition, CAIR – principally through its chapters – has carried forward unapologetic initiatives aimed at eroding Islamophobia and defending Muslim-American individuals and institutions during the post-9/11 era.
Regional politics, not CAIR’s work stateside, moved the UAE to designate the civil rights organisation a terrorist group. More specifically, hearsay tying CAIR with the Muslim Brotherhood, a political nemesis of the UAE, is believed to be the principal catalyst behind the designation.
Although distant geopolitical concerns are behind the UAE designating CAIR as a terrorist organisation, what impact will the classification have on the advocacy group, its civil rights mission, and collaterally, Muslim-Americans at large? The ramifications are not only acute, but also extensive.
A widening ‘gulf’
Centuries old stereotypes, still embedded in the American imagination, conflate Muslims – regardless of their nationality or locale – as one and the same. Therefore, Muslim Americans – the overwhelming majority of whom have no connection to the UAE – are consistently lumped up with the prevailing stereotypes attributed to the people of the oil-rich state: endless wealth, modern slavery, and conspicuous expression of religious conservativism cloaking commercial insatiability.
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