Why Hamas-Linked CAIR Has a Problem with Memorial Day

Memorial Day, a federal holiday held the last Monday in May, is the nation’s foremost annual day to mourn and honor its deceased service men and women.[1]

The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIRR) has a problem with Memorial Day. There are instances of inattention to the actual date of Memorial Day, unopposed criticism of the U.S. military on Memorial Day by some CAIR officials, and years of apparent indifference to the Day itself. Consider the following:

When is Memorial Day?

On November 9, 2006, CAIR issued the following press release:

DC: MUSLIM VETERANS TO LAY MEMORIAL DAY WREATH. The Muslim American Veterans Association (MAVA) will conduct a wreath-laying ceremony at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, Area 5 in Washington, D.C., on 11 November at 0700 A.M.[2]

November 11, 2006, was Veterans Day, honoring all U.S. military veterans, especially those still alive. CAIR apparently did not know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

I could not find another mention of CAIR and Memorial Day until 2014.

Memorial Day 2014

On May 22, 2014, CAIR issued the following press release:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today marked the upcoming Memorial Day holiday with the release of a video featuring American Muslim veterans expressing pride in serving their nation through military service and sacrifice. In the 44-second video, three CAIR representatives describe their service in the Army and Navy:

“My name is Dawud Walid. I’m executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and I served honorably in the Navy. “My name is Sakinah Mujahid. I’m on CAIR’s Minnesota board of advisors and I served 13 years in the Army. “My name is Wilfredo Ruiz. I am an attorney with CAIR’s Florida office and I am a former officer in the U.S. Navy. “American Muslims serve our nation’s military and have died for our freedoms.”

The video ends with the tag line: “On this Memorial Day, CAIR honors all who served our country.”[3] So far so good.

However, on May 23, Zahra Billoo, the Executive Director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter, tweeted that she:

“struggles with Memorial Day each year. How does one balance being pretty staunchly anti-war while honoring those who died in the military”

She also quoted Dawud Walid, who said:

If one dies in an unjust war in which we illegally invaded and occupied a sovereign nation, should that person be honored?[4]

Billoo also retweeted “hateful anti-American comments” by Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian poet, writer, and political organizer.[5]

It was reported that:

CAIR-St. Louis Executive Director Faizan Syed came to her [Billoo’s] defense, retweeting a message claiming that the U.S. army “often murders innocent women and children.”[6]

Other CAIR officials had no criticism of any of these comments.

Memorial Day 2015

Billoo “again slandered the U.S. military and said servicemen often ‘murder’ innocent civilians.”[7] CAIR officials had no criticism of this.

Memorial Day 2016

Billoo stated “that she is ‘proud’ to stand by her inflammatory comments.”[8] Later that year Billoo equated the U.S. military with ISIS.[9] CAIR officials had no criticism of this.

Memorial Day 2017

This year CAIR took a different approach to Memorial Day. On May 26, 2017, CAIR

…released a video message marking Memorial Day from Gold Star father Khizr Khan in which he urges all Americans to “recommit ourselves to unity, liberty, justice, and finally – to an end to all wars.[10]

CAIR must have considered this video as compensation for previous Memorial Day issues placing CAIR in a poor light, and as a years-long pay-it-forward, because in an internet search I was unable to find any mention of CAIR and Memorial Day until 2025.

Memorial Day 2025

On May 27, 2025, one day after Memorial Day, CAIR posted an article titled, “Honoring Muslim American Veterans on Memorial Day.”[11] CAIR was reaching back into the archives, because this article had been written by Craig Considine for the Huffington Post on May 27, 2013.[12] Why would CAIR post a Memorial Day article one day after Memorial Day? Perhaps because Considine’s article started out, “On May 27th, Americans will celebrate Memorial Day…” and whoever posted the article didn’t realize that it had been written in 2013, when Memorial Day was on May 27^th.

Memorial Day 2026

Instead of trying again in 2026, CAIR apparently decided to lay low and ignore Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, May 25, I went to the websites of the following CAIR organizations: CAIR (National), CAIR California, CAIR Chicago, CAIR Michigan, CAIR Minnesota, CAIR New York, and CAIR Texas. At each website I took screen shots of the various webpages, allowing some overlap to show continuity, to see if there was any mention of Memorial Day on any of these websites. There was no mention of Memorial Day on any of these websites. Those screen shots, listed by CAIR organization, are found in Appendix 1.[13]

I also checked the Facebook page posts for these CAIR organizations on and around May 25. There was no mention of Memorial Day.

Conclusion

Is Memorial Day important to CAIR? Is it even relevant to CAIR? From what we have seen, the answer to both questions is “No.” So, here are some things to think about.

In 1919, Theodore Roosevelt stated:

We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people. .[14]

CAIR touts itself as an organization representing Muslims in America. So, who are the Muslims CAIR is representing? Here are some considerations.

The majority of Muslims in the United States are not native-born Americans. A survey was taken between July 17, 2023, and March 4, 2024, and found that 59% of adult Muslims in the United States had been born outside the United States.[15]

Muslims in the United States are generally considered to be devout in their adherence to Islam, and the mosque is where they learn about their faith from imams. A 2020 study found some interesting facts about imams in the United States:

Over half (55%) of imams had a BA, MA, or PhD in Islamic studies from an overseas university. Only approximately 6% of all imams had a degree in Islamic studies from an American university or institution.
68% of the imams were born abroad and 32% were born in the US. 78% of full-time paid imams were foreign born.
Of those imams born abroad, almost half were from Arab countries, with Egypt being the origin of most Arab imams.[16]

So Muslims in the United States are going to mosques and learning their religion mostly from imams born outside the United States. And as I wrote about in an earlier article, there are some common themes being taught in those mosques:

Hostility toward Israel and calls for its destruction;
Hostility toward Jews and Christians and calls for their death;
Great antipathy toward the United States;
The lauding of designated foreign terrorist organizations and individual terrorists;
Praise for the October 7, 2023, attack on Israeli civilians and the subsequent fighting by Hamas.[17]

And the doctrines of Islam are not compatible with the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States. I wrote about this in a brochure titled Islamic Doctrine and Muslim Immigration to the United States.[18] I concluded:

How can Muslim immigrants assimilate into a society of non-Muslims toward which their religion teaches such hatred and violence, and the intent to destroy? The reality is that they can’t. That is why Muslims already in the United States seem to stay mainly socially separated from non-Muslim Americans. So, where does their “one sole loyalty” truly lay? As we can see above, it is not with Jewish and Christian Americans.

This is why CAIR has a problem with our Memorial Day.

AUTHOR

Stephen M. Kirby

Dr. Stephen M. Kirby is the author of six books and numerous articles about Islam. His latest book is Islamic Doctrine versus the U.S. Constitution: The Dilemma for Muslim Public Officials.

REFERENCES

[1] https://www.cem.va.gov/history/Memorial-Day-history.asp

[2] https://www.cair.com/press_releases/dc-muslim-veterans-to-lay-memorial-day-wreath/

[3] https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-marks-memorial-day-with-video-featuring-muslim-veterans/

[4] Ryan Mauro, “CAIR Officials on Memorial Day: Do U.S. Troops Merit Honor?” Clarion Project, May 26, 2014, https://clarionproject.org/2014/05/26/cair-officials-memorial-day-do-us-troops-merit-honor/. Also see Fox News video, “Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Officials Question Honoring U.S. Troops,” May 26, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Xcvdx59dE.

[5] Jim Hoft, “CAIR Officials on Memorial Day: Do Fallen Troops Really Merit Honoring?”, Gateway Pundit, May 27, 2014, https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/05/cair-officials-on-memorial-day-do-fallen-troops-really-merit-honoring/.

[6] Ryan Mauro, “CAIR Denounces US Military on Memorial Day,” Islamist Watch, May 27, 2015, https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/cair-denounces-us-military-on-memorial-day.

[7] Ryan Mauro, “CAIR Official Stands By Memorial Day Criticism of US Troops,” Islamist Watch, May 29, 2016, https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/cair-official-stands-by-memorial-day-criticism.

[8] Ibid.

[9] https://canarymission.org/individual/Zahra_Billoo

[10] https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-releases-memorial-day-video-from-gold-star-father-khizr-khan-urging-end-to-all-wars/

[11] https://www.cair.com/american_muslim_news/honoring-muslim-american-veterans-on-memorial-day/

[12] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lets-honor-muslim-america_b_3339838

[13] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1usnFzL7lYZ9LckA9ShELWNJB-yV-LcQU/view?usp=sharing

[14] Immigrants – Assimilation of, https://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=991271&module_id=339518

[15] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1493666/religious-background-of-us-immigrants/

[16] Dr. Ihsan Bagby, The American Mosque 2020: Growing and Evolving, Report 1 of the US Mosque Survey 2020, June 2, 2020, https://ispu.org/report-1-mosque-survey-2020/.

[17] Stephen M. Kirby, “What is Going On at Muslim American Mosques and Events?” Jihad Watch, March 10, 2025, https://jihadwatch.org/2025/03/what-is-going-on-at-muslim-american-mosques-and-events. I also wrote about what to do with the green card-holding imams preaching these themes: “Time for Some Green Card-Holding Muslim Leaders to be Deported,” Jihad Watch, March 19, 2025, https://jihadwatch.org/2025/03/time-for-some-green-card-holding-muslim-leaders-to-be-deported.

[18] https://islamseries.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/islamic-doctrine-amd-muslim-immigration-to-the-united-states.pdf