Emgage, CAIR and the Muslim Political Morality Clause

Towards bringing more ethics in Muslim political organizing

Part of understanding how Muslim engagement with American politics works is understanding strategic collaboration among Muslim and non-Muslim nonprofits.   This includes joint events, standing together at lecterns announcing or protesting things, funding, or strategizing toward common aims. Muslim leaders and organizations do this all the time. It’s also the case that some Muslim organizations will never collaborate with groups that support apartheid or genocide. Some pro-apartheid organizations will not work with CAIR-National, for example, as a matter of principle, even if the same anti-Muslim organizations are happy to place some Muslim leaders under their wing.   

It’s nice to assume all Muslim organizations are good and that we should be united because we all want the same things. Then we grow up a little bit and realize not all Muslim organizations want the same things. Not all Muslim leaders are interested in better results for the Muslim community, either here or overseas. This is just as true in Bangladesh, the UAE, and Nigeria (to pick three places at random) as it is among Muslims in the United States.  

For example, in 2020, the US Council of Muslim Organizations a coalition of Muslim groups primarily organized by CAIR) removed Emgage from membership because of its leadership and founders' close association with Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian groups.  

Emgage’s reply at the time claimed USCMO made a false allegation that it “harms the Muslim community.” Emgage did not, however, deny the factual record that could reasonably lead a person to that conclusion. They also changed the accusations against them to make denial easier by throwing out red herrings, but they never denied the allegations credibly made. Indeed, Emgage bragged about not “ceding space” with these groups. At this point, Emgage’s record has been well-documented. It does not take much time to learn that: 

• A current board member (of the 501(c)(3) according to the website) and Emgage founder is now the Director of Small Business Programs at the Department of Defense. His job includes opening up various contracting opportunities for small businesses, including (just a sample):

  • An opportunity with the US Army Corps of Engineers and a military occupying Palestine with construction and infrastructure projects that an apartheid and genocidal government wants. 

  • A small business that can provide tailpipe assembly for aircraft to be delivered to an apartheid government’s military.   

  • Building a “bed-down site” to assist with the occupation of Palestinians.  

• According to reporting from Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, this same board member had attended events of America’s preeminent anti-Palestinian lobby group.

• Another Emgage founder, who was a long-time board member at an anti-Palestinian group, bragged about being a military contractor on YouTube, particularly helping military aircraft see through clouds. 

• The current CEO of Emgage has currently lends out his name and likeness to an Anti-Palestinian group as a kind of Muslim mascot (several Muslim leaders do this kind of thing). This is one of the significant organizations actively working to increase political support for the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children in Palestine. Emgage supports a ceasefire in the ongoing genocide but collaborates with this group for the organization has not bothered adequately explaining.

• Over 90% of Emgage Action’s reported donors (the 501 (c)(4)) come from outside the Muslim community, primarily large foundations allied with Democratic party politics. Emgage’s mission is not to be of benefit to the Muslim community; it’s to use Muslims to help Democrats be elected.   

• I can go on about Emgage (several articles have covered this over the years). That it is based on the non-Muslim founder’s motel in Lakeland, Florida, directly across the street from a Hooter’s restaurant may be the least damaging fact here. However it gives us an idea of Muslim leadership’s vetting process for purported Muslim organizations. Sometimes, they don’t care if the people who started the thing are Muslim at all.

Emgage and CAIR-National Collaborate now. Why? 

From the time of the USCMO action to about a year ago, Emgage and CAIR-National would not collaborate (some local chapters continued). They started collaborating again about a year ago. There is no evidence that Emgage changed in any meaningful way. 

The main reason for CAIR-National’s shift, from what I gathered, is that Emgage co-signed a letter opposing one of the well-known and well-funded anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian groups an Emgage founder was previously known to work with. The other reason is that someone in the leadership of American Muslims for Palestine (not the organization itself) blessed the collaboration between Emgage and CAIR.   American Muslims for Palestine will still not publicly collaborate with Emgage. 

This was enough. 

My purpose here is not to pick on CAIR and its leadership (though I suppose by necessity to illustrate a more significant point, I will); however, for donors and ordinary Muslims, it is essential to understand how such decisions are made and how we can make better decisions. CAIR has a fraught decision tree here:

Donor Demands

CAIR is not in the business of attacking or criticizing other Muslim organizations. That would distract from their mission, and people who support CAIR would not want that. Donors often want Muslim organizations they like to work with each other. Of course, most donors need to be educated on the distinctions between organizations, their missions, and the people involved in them (that is what this newsletter is intended to help with). A Muslim organization is a Muslim organization. All Muslim organizations are good, and they should all work together. This is a mistaken perception, but it’s fixable. 

There is a distinction, however, between not attacking another organization and actively working with them. The latter brings an implicit and sometimes explicit endorsement where one is not justified.  

Access 

CAIR and other organizations have a history of being blackballed in Washington, D.C., by successive Democratic and Republican administrations for unjustified reasons. At the same time, this blackballing of community organizations is reflective of how powerless the Muslim community had been. The Obama-Biden Administration created an official definition for what “well-behaved” meant if Muslims were to engage with it. Some Muslim organizations have been more than eager to be solicitous towards those only willing to work with “good Muslims”- as defined by those who don’t care about the Muslim community. Some Muslim leaders have more dignity than that.

Emgage has distinguished itself by having access to the Biden campaign and administration, though because it is primarily founded and funded by non-Muslims, this is not a mark of accomplishment for the Muslim community or represents any measure of power or respect. Emgage, as described by Nadia Ahmad in her recent article, acts as a “gatekeeper”to the Biden Administration. Those nonprofits that play nice with Emgage can claim to donors that they are in meetings doing “policy work” or playing the “inside game” and claim to donors and the media they are somehow “relevant” on Palestine and Islamophobia. At the same time, Emgage can launder its reputation in the Muslim community, using CAIR and other organizations that choose to work with Emgage. 

This consideration cannot be easily dismissed since a nonprofit dealing with government relations needs a way to “relate” to the government, but it is also ethically fraught to compromise this way.  

Call your Palestinian Activist Friend to bless your shenanigans.

The other part of the justification I was given by an executive inside CAIR, which is common in Muslim spaces when you are going to do or say something that seems like it may be offensive because of Palestine, is to find a prominent Palestinian activist to bless a decision. I have seen non-Palestinian nonprofit leaders do this kind of thing whenever collaboration with anti-Palestinian groups has come up, particularly in interfaith and political spaces. 

It may look like a terrible decision that activists will question, which is why you ask your Palestinian activist friend, who will make you feel better about the decision and give you political cover. Of course, many organizations (including CAIR and Emgage) have Palestinian-Americans in leadership, or titles that suggest this, (and not necessarily all CAIR staff or Executive Directors agree on how to deal with Emgage). However, because of its sensitivity to the Palestinian issue, CAIR-National seems to need a permission slip from someone from American Muslims for Palestine before they work with Emgage.  This is a standard way Muslim nonprofits operate (I have seen it at ISNA in another context). This does not make any sense, but identity politics in the Muslim community is like that.  

He’s a “good brother” (or “good sister”) rationalization.

Nonprofit leaders, like donors, are similar in that they operate in similar circles. Knowing and liking someone is often enough to develop relationships, collaborate with them, donate to and promote them, and often enable their friends' worst instincts or corruption. Muslim leaders form their own “elite circles” of friends, and if you are in this circle, even vile behavior will be tolerated and even defended against people in the “out-group” that may call out such things. It is irrelevant that the “out-group” is in the right and your “in-group” is in the wrong. This is known in social psychology as “in-group bias” or “familiarity bias.” Many Palestinians and non-Palestinians in the Muslim community are in such circles, which exist among donors, nonprofit leaders, and even Islamic scholars. Indeed, we all (hopefully) know and like people, and that affection will naturally create a bias. While some bias is not always bad, it is often antithetical to justice.  

This kind of bias is well understood in the Islamic tradition and addressed in the Quran:

O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allāh, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allāh is more worthy of both.So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allāh is ever, of what you do, Aware.

Mutual Defense Pact

Emgage has been a beneficiary of this dynamic in Muslim leadership before. Before USCMO removed Emgage from membership in 2020, after mysteriously gaining membership, and was under harsh criticism inside the Muslim community because of its association with anti-Muslim groups and candidates, a CAIR Director who participated with Emgage and other Muslim political nonprofits in a group called “Muslim Civic Engagement Table” declared there was a “mutual defense pact” where the organizations would defend each other. This eventually did fall apart, as other Muslim leaders figured Emgage’s problems were their own; not everyone in Muslim political nonprofits needs to wear Emgage like an albatross, though if CAIR wants to do that, more power to them.  

CAIR, in apparent service of this “mutual defense pact,” engaged in a hamhanded effort to censor a prominent Palestinian activist who criticized Emgage on one of its platforms. CAIR National later dropped Emgage, like all the other members of the USCMO, until they changed their minds more recently.  

It’s puzzling, then, why CAIR would want to associate its name with Emgage within the Muslim community under any circumstances, given that doing so comes with long-term reputational risks to the organization and dangers to the Muslim community as a whole. CAIR’s mission is to “promote justice” and “empower Muslims”- getting mixed up with a petit military-industrial complex racket like Emgage appears to frustrate if not actively work against both goals.       

A Question of Justice 

The “he’s a good brother” and “she’s a good sister” kind of justification for enabling sell-outs, social climbers, careerists, or other corrupt behavior within the Muslim community is irritatingly ingrained within Muslim circles. I wrote about this in my first newsletter article (which was about Emgage).   This is toxic to the Muslim community, even if the impulse is somewhat understandable, and Muslim leaders and donors need a dispassionate and objective vetting process. This idea that we should trust someone because they are charming, charismatic, and a good conversationalist is not just a flawed process; it harms the Ummah, particularly the most vulnerable people in it.  

In 2020, Palestinian-American leader Hatem Bazian wrote during the 2020 Emgage controversy:

I am aware of people's concern that Emgage's leadership wants this criticism to go away, and after the elections, they will forget or ignore all those who raised the issues at hand, and Palestine will be harmed.

Well, the criticism did go away after the elections, and as you may have read about, Palestine was harmed. And here we are, the Muslim community leadership (specifically CAIR) in the United States, working with Emgage. All Muslim organizations are on the same page regarding a ceasefire. We all want that as a community. But when that ceasefire happens, there is a massive risk that we will return to the status quo before October 7. We will trust people we know because we know them, not because they are just or unjust, right or wrong. It may be so far gone to Muslim nonprofit leadership that some in the Muslim political engagement in-group are not Muslim at all and are involved with dolling out military contracts to benefit an apartheid regime to oppress and kill Palestinians.  

As with Emgage and another political operation I wrote about in this newsletter, Muslim leadership and nonprofits are experiencing an ethical crisis. This crisis is bad enough that it is helping cause harm to Muslims in the United States and overseas because our lack of meaningful principles and ethics makes us weak and ineffective as a community. A politically relevant Muslim community would be an impediment to genocide that does not presently exist in the United States.

Well-meaning Muslims are becoming complicit because there is no objective process for vetting in the viperous space of political engagement beyond a snap decision on whether the person is likable.  

We need a better way.

The Morality Clause

Imagine, if you will, a TV star who uses a racial slur, a Hip Hop artist who designs shoes but also supports Nazis, or someone who has consensual extramarital relationships with female employees. These are public examples that involve using “morality clauses” in contracts.  

Muslim organizations and leaders who collaborate on things have reasons to demand both a memorandum of understanding (MOU) defining the scope of their collaboration with morality clauses from each other because they are engaged in a joint enterprise and absorb risks, not just to themselves or the organization, but to the entire Muslim community by associating with each other.  

A typical “morality clause” for an institution like a corporation typically has vague terms. It’s easier to come up with the language for this now, at least when it has to do with Palestine since it is hard to justify collaboration with organizations that support genocide. Somehow, it’s been easier to justify collaborating with groups that advocate apartheid. But maybe it won’t be anymore. 

What a Morality Clause should contain

Typical morality clauses have language that would include officers, senior employees, and board members and would regulate:

• Doing or saying things that would harm, reputationally or otherwise, the other party.

• Doing or saying shocking things brings them to public hatred and contempt.  

• Crimes of “moral turpitude” - this is understood as being related to fraud, dishonesty, and the like.  

Muslim political and advocacy organizations should add provisions that are focused on the needs of the  Muslim community. For example:

• Not collaborating with leaders or organizations, or supporting candidates that support genocide, apartheid, dispossession of land, or attacks or destruction of Islamic Awqaf or Muslim communities or any other religious, racial, or ethnic minority population.  

• Doing anything that is a conflict of interest with the mission of protecting Muslim populations, including participation in the military-industrial complex or law enforcement agencies known to have religious or racially biased policies.  

These should not be unreasonable asks. If you think they are, I would love to know why in the comments. If you think they are reasonable, perhaps encourage Muslim advocacy organizations to adopt them.  

Organizations can enforce these agreements by cutting ties with offending organizations, not offering a platform at conferences, sharing data, and not allowing the organizations to sign joint letters or amicus briefs. For associations of Muslim organizations and within organizations themselves, there should be formal procedures for expelling an organization or leader.  

Organizations Change

I am open to the possibility that an organization can improve and it may be safe for CAIR-National and other Muslim organizations to work with. Emgage may shore up its ethics, disassociate from its troubled founders, and move away from Emgage’s military-industrial complex and apartheid-friendly roots. They are not there yet, and merely signing a letter condemning a single Islamophobic organization while the CEO is actively collaborating with another does not get them there. A memorandum of understanding with other Muslim organizations with a robust morality clause may not solve everything. Still, it could go a long way toward bringing more accountability and ethics in organizations that sorely need both.  

Sample Clause

In my law practice, I don’t represent nonprofits in this area, and nothing in this newsletter is legal advice for anyone. However, for those Muslim organizations interested in getting some language for their lawyers and board members to consider, I have sample language I can share for your MOUs and contracts—just email ehsan@substack.com, make sure you are a subscriber (it’s free) and tell me what organization you are with. When nonprofits adopt such language, I hope such a clause becomes a requirement for collaboration and that the agreements are public.  

Ethical boundaries are not merely for leaders, the organizations or even their donors (who this newsletter is for). It’s for the protection of the Ummah worldwide. This is something all Muslim leaders and donors should want.