AUSTIN, Texas (RNS) — It was just past 9 p.m. on June 22, during the Texas State Board of Education meeting, when Shaimaa Zayan, operations manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Austin chapter, was called up to testify. She braced herself, knowing what was coming.
“Can we have a leader of a foreign terrorist organization testify for the state board of education?” Brandon Hall, a Republican board member, asked the chairman, just as Zayan rose to the podium.
Hall was referring to an order by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designating CAIR a terrorist group last November. The group, one of the country’s largest Muslim advocacy organizations, however, is not listed on the U.S. Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations, which is officially responsible for such designations.
The chairman said Zayan had a First Amendment right to speak.
“OK, I won’t listen to it,” Hall said, before walking out of the room.
CAIR has spent decades positioning itself as the country’s leading Muslim civil rights organization. But state and federal Republican leaders’ attempts to brand it as a terrorist front in recent months has tested CAIR’s legal standing and cast suspicion on the group or anyone who associates with it. The organization, which has chapters around the country, is now also fighting fraying trust inside some Muslim communities as mosque and nonprofit leaders decide whether standing by CAIR is worth potential risks — notably, in Texas.
Since Abbott’s foreign terrorist designation, Imran Ghani, operations manager for CAIR’s Houston chapter, said his office has dealt with stigma in some Muslim communities. While some Texas mosques and other groups have continued to invite CAIR speakers and collaborate on events, as they have regularly in the past, Ghani said at least a dozen Muslim groups in Houston have privately made it clear they are no longer willing to host the civil rights group.
“That’s exactly what the governor …