Dec 9 (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed an executive order designating one of the country\u2019s most prominent \u200bMuslim civil rights groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, \u200cas a \u201cforeign terrorist organization,\u201d becoming the second high-profile Republican governor to do so in \u200crecent weeks.<\/p>\n
Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott took a similar step against CAIR, which has challenged the move in federal court as an unconstitutional effort to punish the organization simply because of its views. \u2060CAIR was expected to \u200cannounce a separate lawsuit against Florida later on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Florida order alleged that CAIR has ties to \u200dHamas, the militant Palestinian group that attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people. Israel\u2019s response on Hamas-governed Gaza has killed more than \u200b70,000 people, according to the Gazan health ministry, and left \u200cmuch of the enclave in ruins.<\/p>\n
CAIR has denied any ties to Hamas. In a joint statement on Monday, CAIR and its Florida chapter called DeSantis\u2019 order \u201cunconstitutional and defamatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with Abbott\u2019s order, DeSantis\u2019 order also named the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt, as a foreign \u2060terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government has not \u200bdesignated CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood as \u200bforeign terrorist organizations, but President Donald Trump last month began the process of doing so for certain Muslim \u200dBrotherhood chapters, such \u2060as those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.<\/p>\n
The Florida order instructs agencies to take action to prevent CAIR from receiving any \u2060state contracts, employment or funding.<\/p>\n
CAIR was founded in 1994 and has chapters in \u200cnearly two dozen U.S. states.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing \u200cby Frank McGurty and Bill Berkrot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 9 (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed an executive order designating one of the country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43267,43233,17435,28,3291,30,29,43446,43268,43173,43448,412,43447],"class_list":["post-77193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-cair","tag-council-on-american-islamic-relations","tag-executive-order","tag-florida","tag-florida-governor","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-foreign-terrorist-organization","tag-foreign-terrorist-organizations","tag-muslim-brotherhood","tag-muslim-civil-rights-groups","tag-ron-desantis","tag-texas-governor-greg-abbott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}