The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is slated to publish its annual report on international religious freedom on 25 April, but some key influential officials of the USCIRF have been seen on the platforms of IAMC, an Islamist group, and Jamaat-linked organizations which have been peddling anti-India narratives in the US, says a report by Disinfo Lab.
USCIRF has in recent years become critical of India and even deems the country as a majoritarian state, with no concern about human rights and the Muslim minority. However, many are not acquainted with the driving forces behind the USCIRF reports. According to a recent report published by Disinfo lab, an independent OSINT based research organization, it was from 2013-14 that USCIRF has been under the targeted lobbying influence of the Islamist group Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), whose founder Shaik Ubaid was once enjoying a leading role at the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which is the off-shoot organization of Jamaat-e-Islami (Pakistan), in the US.
IAMC had been in the Indian news cycle not once but on numerous occasions. In December 2021, it was slapped with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act (UAPA) for spreading fake news and instigating communal disharmony during Tripura violence, and also time and again reinforced the narrative of oppression of minorities in India. IAMC was also in the headlines for inviting the former Vice President of India Hamid Ansari on the occasion of India’s Republic Day which created a lot of buzz in the media. Shaik Ubaid, along with the IAMC has been working with the influential members of USCIRF including its Chair Nadine Maenza to get India listed as a country of Particular Concern (CPC) since 2013-14.
The first effort by IAMC was seen when IAMC had hired a lobbying group Fidelis Government Relations and its President Terry Allen for US$55K for lobbying the USCIRF to get India blacklisted. The lobbying efforts were apparent when the USCIRF started using the Pakistan-approved map of India which excluded Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, and Arunachal Pradesh in 2014. Incidentally, Terry Allen and Nadine Maenza once worked together for the Republican candidate Rick Santorum during the 2016 presidential campaign and even shared an organization “Patriot Voices” with Nadine as its president. Nadine was instated in USCIRF in 2018 as commissioner which the IAMC founder Shaik Ubaid claims were due to his efforts.
Apart from a critical stand on India, Nadine also shares a company “Hardwired Global” with Angana Chatterji, an anthropologist and historian, and a close aide of the ISI-mole Ghulam Nabi Fai. Revelation by Disinfo Lab has unearthed that Chatterji was a frequent participant in Fai’s events held in Washington on Kashmir which were sponsored by the ISI. In 2011, Fai was convicted of concealing the transfer of US$3.5 mn from the ISI to the US via straw donors following the investigations by the FBI.
A key USCIRF member, who drafted the 2020 annual report of the USCIRF that enlisted India as CPC is Harrison Akins, who was the “Senior Policy Analyst for South Asia” in the 2020 Report of USCIRF. Akins was the Ibn Khaldun Chair and a Research Fellow at American University’s School of International Services and is the protege of the Pakistani diplomat and former Pakistani High Commissioner to UK, Akbar Ahmed.
These key influential officials of the USCIRF have been seen on the platforms of the IAMC and Jamaat-linked organizations, “Burma Task Force” and “Justice For All”, which “have not only been peddling the anti-India narratives in the US but also lobbied the USCIRF against India between 2018-2020”.
In 2018, Burma Task Force collected Zakat in the name of helping Rohingyas and subsequently hired the same Fidelis Government Relations to lobby the USCIRF against India by paying US$267K. Burma Task Force is run by Justice for All, which in turn is powered by a Chicago-based Sound Vision founded in 1988 by the Jamaat front ICNA. THe founder Abdul Malik Mujahid was the Ameer (head) of ICNA, while Shaik Ubaid was its secretary-general. To give prominence to ICNA’s connection with Jamaat-e-Islami, Abdul Malik Mujahid was the head of the student wing of JeI, i.e., Jamiat-e-Talaba between 1975-and 77.