Dismantling IAMC’s Fabricated Smear Campaign Against VHPA (Part 5 of 8) – Selective Outrage Over Speakers

The next allegation in Rasheed Ahmed’s article pertains to a small number of controversial speakers as purported evidence of VHPA’s alleged extremism. This is a direct quote from Ahmed’s article: “The VHPA does not deny that it invited Yati Narsinghanand, a cleric who has publicly called for the extermination of Muslims, to the U.S. It does not deny that it platformed Kajal Hindustani, an Islamophobic speaker…” 

The allegation rests on a sweeping and inconsistent assumption that merely inviting or hosting a speaker automatically defines an organization’s entire ideology and character. One cited example, involving Yati Narsinghanand, ignores an important fact. He was invited to a local chapter program before his most controversial remarks became public, and the invitation was withdrawn once those statements emerged. [1]

Major U.S.-based Muslim advocacy and community organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), have documented records of inviting, honoring, or sharing platforms with individuals tied to designated terrorist organizations or convicted in terrorism-related cases. The following examples are gleaned from court records, U.S. Treasury designations, and contemporaneous investigative reporting.

• In November 2014, CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter awarded its “Promoting Justice Award” to Sami Al-Arian and his family[2] at its 20th-anniversary banquet. Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, had pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. He was later deported.

• In 2020, CAIR-Florida featured Al-Arian as a guest in its “EXPOSED” livestream interview series[3], presenting him as a “former political prisoner.”
• In October 2025, CAIR-Ohio Executive Director Khalid Turaani moderated a panel at an online conference hosted by the Beirut-based Al-Zaytouna Center[4] (titled with reference to Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation). One of the speakers was Majed al-Zeer, designated by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2024 as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist[5] for his role as a senior Hamas operative involved in European fundraising and coordination.
• Imam Siraj Wahhaj — named an unindicted co-conspirator by federal prosecutors in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case and a character witness for the convicted “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman — has been a repeated invited speaker at ISNA conventions, ICNA-MAS joint conferences, and related events over many years. [6]
• In 1997, at ICNA’s Southeastern Regional Convention in Georgia, organizers presented a commemorative plaque to the family of Abu Adaam Jibreel Al-Amreekee[7] (Lawrence Nicholas Thomas), an American convert who trained with the U.S.-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and was killed in a 1997 armed raid in Kashmir. The plaque praised his “ultimate sacrifice on behalf of his fellow Muslims in Kashmir.”

While the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) continues to fixate on a handful of controversial speakers who have appeared on VHPA platforms, it has not uttered a single word of concern or indignation over U.S.-designated extremists, terrorism-linked figures, or convicted individuals who have appeared at events hosted within its wider advocacy orbit. Not a single statement of outrage. Not a single public denunciation. Moral outrage, it seems, is reserved for cases that do not fit IAMC’s preferred narrative.

Read Part 4: Asymmetrical Accountability Standards

Read Part 6: Using Academic Cover for Advocacy 

Citations

[1] Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) Official Statement on the cancellation (April 2021): https://twitter.com/VHPANews/status/1382207509595877376

[2] Investigative Project on Terrorism, “Days Before UAE Terror Designation, CAIR Awards PIJ Board Member,” November 20, 2014, https://www.investigativeproject.org/4660/days-before-uae-terror-designation-cair-awards

[3] Middle East Forum, “CAIR ‘Exposes’ Itself,” August 26, 2020, https://www.meforum.org/cair-exposes-itself-61434.

[4] Algemeiner, “CAIR-Ohio Director Moderates Event With US-Designated Hamas Terrorist,” October 28, 2025, https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/10/28/cair-ohio-director-moderates-event-us-designated-hamas-terrorist/

[5] Algemeiner, “CAIR-Ohio Director Moderates Event With US-Designated Hamas Terrorist,” October 28, 2025, https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/10/28/cair-ohio-director-moderates-event-us-designated-hamas-terrorist/

[6] Investigative Project on Terrorism, Masjid At-Taqwa profile (citing U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White’s 1995 letter listing unindicted co-conspirators); federal court records from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing prosecution, https://www.investigativeproject.org/mosques/409/masjid-at-taqwa

[7] Investigative Project on Terrorism, “ICNA’s Search for Radicalism Should Start Within,” December 15, 2009, https://www.investigativeproject.org/1577/icnas-search-for-radicalism-should-start-within