The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has slammed the Trump administration’s decision to expel South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, calling it a “racist” and “Islamophobic” act of retaliation for his country’s stance against Israel.
On Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool “persona non grata” after the ambassador accused President Trump of promoting white supremacy.
The South African official’s remarks came a mere week after Trump said the country “is being terrible” to its farmers and announced that farmers seeking to flee for safety reasons “will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to citizenship.”
Rubio made the announcement in a social media post, which linked to a Breitbart News article reporting on the matter, solidifying the current administration’s hardline stance against South Africa’s expropriation laws and its alliance with hostile regimes such as China and Iran, among other issues.
CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who previously declared he was “happy” with the October 7 terror attack by Hamas, responded on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “Your declaration of Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool as persona non grata is a racist, Islamophobic, transparent act of retaliation for South Africa’s opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
In an extended statement, CAIR, a radical Muslim advocacy group accused of having ties to terror organizations, described Rasool as a “widely respected diplomat” and one of the South African Muslim community’s “most prominent anti-apartheid activists,” while criticizing the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
It is deeply ironic and dishonest for Secretary Rubio to accuse Ambassador Rasool of race baiting because he correctly noted that Trump administration officials have been pushing white supremacist movements globally, like the AfD in Germany. The Trump administration must stop obsessively picking fights with the free, democratically-elected South African government because it successfully held the genocidal Israeli apartheid government to account before the International Court of Justice.
“We applaud the South African people for their courageous, steadfast opposition to racism, apartheid and genocide,” the statement concluded.
CAIR’s continued vocal criticism of President Trump follows its recent condemnation of his use of the term “Palestinian” as a supposed slur.
In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).
On Friday, Breitbart News reported that Rasool told participants in a foreign policy seminar that President Trump is leading a white supremacist movement in America and around the world.
Rasool, who has a public history of supporting the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas, said white supremacism was motivating Trump’s “disrespect” for the “current hegemonic order” of the world, including institutions such as the United Nations and the G-20.
He also said the Make America Great Again movement was a white supremacist response to growing demographic diversity in the United States and suggested South African farmers who had presented Afrikaner grievances within the U.S. were part of that global effort.
These statements have led to growing tensions between the U.S. and South Africa.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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