California’s state government has funneled at least $41 million in combined state and federal grants to the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ California affiliate over the last five years, according to a new investigation, despite the group’s documented ties to Hamas financing networks and incendiary rhetoric from its own leadership.
The findings were published Wednesday by the New York Post, based on documents obtained by the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based nonprofit.
CAIR was founded in 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, both former members of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. A George Washington University Program on Extremism report found that the committee “effectively became the US-based Hamas infrastructure” for media, money, and political support. During the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, in which five charity leaders were convicted of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas, the court found “ample evidence to establish” that CAIR was associated with the terrorist organization. An FBI special agent testified at trial that CAIR was a “front group for Hamas.”
Neither Ahmad nor Awad faced prosecution. Awad remains CAIR’s national executive director.
Despite that history, the California Department of Social Services awarded CAIR-CA $7.2 million in federal funds in 2022 for immigration-related legal assistance. In September 2025, the department approved an additional $23 million. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review confirmed last year it was investigating whether CAIR-CA should remain eligible for federal funding.
The investigation also reveals that CAIR-CA distributed more than $4 million in subgrants in 2024 to 39 organizations, some with their own Islamist connections. Among the recipients: $185,000 to California chapters of the Muslim American Society, identified by GWU as a “Brotherhood legacy group”; $30,000 to the Islamic Society of Orange County, which in 1992 hosted a lecture by “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, later convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and $117,000 to chapters of the Islamic Circle of North America, originally established as a U.S. affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami movement.
CAIR-CA director Hussam Ayloush claimed in a January 2026 letter to Congress that his organization had “no input or role” in selecting subgrantees and that CDSS made those determinations. IAN disputes that account, saying Ayloush personally signed grant agreements.
Ayloush has also made his views on Israel clear. On November 12, 2023, five weeks after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, he said publicly that Israel should be “attacked” given its “occupation” of Palestine. Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, posted to social media on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas attack: “We are witnessing decolonization.”
