(The Center Square) – Three months after Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist organizations, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued them on Thursday.
The lawsuit was filed in district court in Collin County and names the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR and its Texas chapters, based in Houston, Austin and Fort Worth, as defendants. It refers to each CAIR entity as a “chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The lawsuit asks the court to enter a judgment stating the organizations are an FTO and transnational criminal organization in accordance with Abbott’s order, prohibit them from operating, raising money and soliciting membership in Texas.
The lawsuit was filed one week after Abbott called on Paxton to act. “The Texas Attorney General is the only elected official charged with regulating nonprofits that may be violating the law, like CAIR,” Abbott wrote Paxton, who hadn’t taken any action after he issued his order last November, The Center Square reported. “The Texas Constitution authorizes you to investigate and seek judicial forfeiture of CAIR’s nonprofit charter.
When announcing the lawsuit, Paxton said, “I am in full support of Governor Abbott’s lawful declaration that CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are foreign terrorist organizations, and it’s imperative that they are stopped from operating in Texas. Radical Islamic terrorists are antithetical to law and order, endanger the people of Texas, and are an existential threat to our values.”
The lawsuit also states that the governor issued a proclamation and the attorney general has the authority to enforce it.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is a radical terrorist organization that exists to usurp governmental power and establish dominion through sharia law. For three decades, it has covertly operated in the United States under the name ‘CAIR’ … as its American chapter,” Paxton said. “The terrorist ties are unquestionable. For example, CAIR-Texas’s founding board member was convicted in 2008 of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation, and CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. As the lawsuit notes, CAIR is undeniably the American face of an international terrorist organization.”
The lawsuit details Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR history, alleges they are involved in organized criminal activity, “including but not limited to coercing, inducing or soliciting membership in a foreign terrorist organizations” and are involved in “gang activities” defined under Texas penal code. It also details terrorist activity connected to Hamas and former CAIR founders who were sentenced to decades in prison for financing the terrorist organization.
The groups are “in violation of a number of state laws, including Texas’s ban on any entity engaging in terrorism, Texas’s prohibition of transnational criminal organizations owning property, and public nuisance statutes barring radical groups from engaging in gang activities,” Paxton added.
He says his lawsuit seeks “to end the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood and its American chapter, CAIR, in Texas,” including prohibiting them from owning property in Texas or soliciting or recruiting members.
Abbott’s FTO order cites former CAIR board members, speakers and staff who were sentenced to prison for financing terrorism, conspiring to aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban, bank and visa fraud, financing terrorist causes overseas, violating U.S. sanctions and other charges in the Holy Land Foundation case. It was one of the largest terrorism financing cases in U.S. history.
Abbott has taken other actions, including calling for investigations into CAIR and requesting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to suspend CAIR’s tax-exempt status due to its alleged terrorist ties. Abbott requested that CAIR be investigated for its “longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and its ongoing support for terrorism.”
CAIR denies the accusations and has sued Abbott.
In response to Paxton’s lawsuit, CAIR and CAIR-Texas said it was “another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt that wastes more taxpayer dollars. CAIR has already filed a federal lawsuit to block enforcement of Governor Abbott’s unconstitutional proclamation. … The people of Texas elected Mr. Paxton to serve them, not to silence them for daring to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza. CAIR-Texas plans to continue serving and protecting the people of Texas long after Ken Paxton leaves office.”
