© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. State Department official will address a powerful Muslim lobby group linked to several terrorist convictions.

Gerald Michael Feierstein, director of the Office of Regional Affairs, Bureau of Near East Affairs of the U.S. State Department, will be speaking at a three-day conference of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The theme of the conference is "Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies." Feierstein is scheduled to speak on the topic "Anti-Americanism and U.S. Foreign Policy."

Since Sept. 11, 2001, three CAIR figures have been arrested by U.S. federal authorities on terrorist-related charges: Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR-Texas; Bassem K. Khafagi, the community affairs director for CAIR; and Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, former communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator at CAIR.

CAIR also has been criticized for its links to Hamas by various terrorist experts and scholars, including Matthew Levitt, senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

On Sept. 19, Levitt gave testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism titled, "Subversion from Within." Levitt addressed the issue of CAIR:

"For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which says it was 'established to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America,' was co-founded by Omar Ahmed, the same person who co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine – the Hamas front organization which first published the Hamas charter in English – together with Hamas leader and Specially Designated Terrorist Mousa Abu Marzouk. CAIR's pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah positions should not surprise, given that it regularly rises to the defense of terrorism suspects and openly supports designated terrorist groups."

Similar testimony has been given by various experts, including Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, who said the following during a February 2000 address to the International Conference on Countering Suicide Terrorism sponsored by the Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzlyia, Israel:

"The Council for American-Islamic Relations is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamentalist agenda. CAIR opposes diversity in Islam: They are aggressive and closed-minded. Notwithstanding CAIR's evident connection to Hamas, they are regarded by U.S. administrations as legitimate representatives of the Muslim American community."

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