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A controversial Islamic group — which the White House cut ties with after its director said he was “happy” about Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on Oct. 7 — is facing allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
The suit could see the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) forced to open its books amid claims secret foreign donors are funding its multi-million budget.
Lori Saroya was once, in the words of one person who knows her, the “golden child” of CAIR.
Based in Blaine, Minnesota, where she was a CAIR chapter leader, Saroya became so important to the national leadership that they brought her to the White House and groomed her to become a senior leader because she was the group’s “pride and joy.”
Now Saroya, 42, is shaping up to be CAIR’s worst nightmare as she pushes back in an ugly legal battle with the controversial Muslim civil rights organization that includes charges of sex assault and harassment allegations involving several CAIR leaders.
Saroya, who is now the first Muslim to serve on the Blaine City Council, filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the group last week in federal court in Minnesota.
That suit was in response to a statement put out by CAIR in January 2022, accusing Saroya of “cyberstalking” CAIR staffers by using burner email and social media accounts to spread “Islamophobic tropes and conspiracy theories” about the organization.
In her complaint, Saroya said that the press release led to her being bullied online and made her so afraid that she stopped going to her mosque. She also said the allegations in the press release came up during job interviews and she wasn’t offered jobs by those people.
She has said she left CAIR after she called on the organization to look into sex assault and harassment allegations against several leaders, including one Saroya — who other members praise as “courageous” — said “engaged in a pattern of unwelcome and highly inappropriate conduct” toward her.
Saroya’s filing comes almost two years after CAIR dismissed its own federal defamation suit against Saroya in which leaders accused her of waging “a systemic and continuous internet smear campaign designed to damage [CAIR’s] reputation and to cause it severe economic harm.”
CAIR also charged in that lawsuit that Saroya “voluntarily resigned” from CAIR after a female staffer said Saroya had harassed her to the point that “the female staffer was contemplating seeking a restraining order.”
Saroya calls CAIR’s claims “outrageously false” in her own civil complaint and one of her lawyers wrote in the suit that all the organization’s accusations are “part of a concerted effort to blacken her reputation, destroy her credibility, and silence her and others who have raised serious concerns about CAIR’s abuse of women, dishonest practices, and violations of civil rights, among others.”
“The complaint lays out a record of serious problems within an organization that holds itself out as as civil rights organization but as the complaint makes clear has engaged in a pattern of conduct which is the very opposite,” Saroya’s Boston-based lawyer, Jeff Robbins, told The Post.
Formed in 1994 by a group of young Muslim activists concerned about the rise in anti-Muslim discrimination, CAIR is now the biggest Muslim civil rights group in the US and includes about 33 local chapters across the US.
But there has also been controversy around the group and its uber-powerful co-founder of CAIR, Nihad Awad, who is Palestinian-American.
Last month, the Biden administration said it had ended its work with CAIR on crafting a national antisemitism strategy after Awad said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’ terror attack against Israel on Oct 7.
Awad made the shocking statement at the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in Chicago on Nov. 24, according to video footage circulated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The New Venture Fund — part of a liberal dark-money network — gave $40,000 to the Arizona chapter of the CAIR which shared a template on Instagram to help others denounce school administrators or employers who issue statements “in support of Israel.”
CAIR was also rocked by a lengthy National Public Radio investigation in April 2021 that focused mainly on the then-head of the Florida chapter of CAIR, Hassan Shibly, and allegations involving secret marriages, bullying and sexual harassment.
Shibly has denied the allegations reported by NPR.
The report included claims from numerous women who had issues with Shibly as well as other senior leaders at CAIR.
Aslam Abdullah, a religious scholar based in Southern California, told NPR that a number of women had come to him with what he viewed as credible allegations of harassment, sexual misconduct or unfair treatment against senior men within CAIR or CAIR affiliates. These women don’t believe that CAIR National’s investigation will be fair and have refused to cooperate, he told the outlet.
Saroya, however, according to several people who know her, was unusual in having the courage to stand up to the CAIR leadership. Prior to resigning from CAIR in 2018, she headed CAIR’s Minnesota chapter from 2007 to 2016 and then jumped to the national office as a national chapter development director and board member.
A former volunteer for CAIR, who did not want to be identified publicly, told The Post that she witnessed some of the same abusive behavior on the part of CAIR senior leadership that Saroya claims she did. She blamed Awad for engendering a culture of fear at CAIR which enables senior leaders to target staffers and volunteers, mainly women.
“It’s a power thing and Awad and some of the others see women as easy targets,” she said. “He’s running the organization and he has cult-like status so everyone does everything he wants. CAIR is also a legal organization so it’s full of lawyers. I was threatened. I had their head of litigation threatening me.
“The problem is that this is the only civil rights organization [Muslims] have,” she added. “So people think women like me and Lori should just accept all of this because there’s no one else if we undermine this organization. That’s why Lori is so courageous in pushing back.”
When contacted by The Post for comment for allegations in this story, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper forwarded a January 2022 press release.
Saroya states in her lawsuit that she was owed back wages after her exit but claims that CAIR said they would only pay her if she promised not to make negative comments about the organization.
Saroya told The Post she could not comment while her legal case is pending other than emailing a statement saying her suit outlines CAIR’s “unfortunate record of sanctioning and indulging serious allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination within its organization, retaliating against women who raise these issues and engaging in profoundly dishonest conduct vis a vis the public, the Muslim-American Community and even its own Board.”
“CAIR’s defamatory statements about me were intended to intimidate not just me but others like me,” she stated in the email. “The purpose of this lawsuit is to hold CAIR and its leadership to account — something which has been much too long in coming.”
Saroya’s lawsuit alleges defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She is seeking at least $75,000 in compensation and an injunction forcing CAIR to retract its press release and remove it from any public spaces.