From 'Civilization-Jihad' to Security Trainings: NAIT's New Waqf Hands Mosque Security Trainings to CAIR
NAIT holds deeds to a quarter of U.S. mosques. CAIR was just designated a terrorist group by Texas and Florida. A new perpetual endowment & agreement formalizes their operational coordination network.
On June 1, 2026, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) jointly announced the “Resilience and Protection Waqf,” a multi-million-dollar irrevocable endowment paired with a $1 million matching campaign to fund mosque security trainings, build a national “peer group” of mosque staff, and pursue federal and state security grants. T
he partnership formalizes operational coordination between the two largest Muslim Brotherhood-linked institutions in the United States: NAIT, which holds title to deeds for hundreds of American mosques, and CAIR, which will conduct the trainings. The launch comes just months after Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued a parallel designation, and President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14362 initiating Foreign Terrorist Organization designations for Muslim Brotherhood chapters abroad. The structure of the new endowment — a waqf, legally irrevocable in perpetuity — appears designed to insulate the arrangement from any future enforcement action against either entity.
A Brotherhood Blueprint Names Both Organizations
The 1991 Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, authored by Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram and seized by the FBI in a Virginia raid, described the Brotherhood’s mission in the United States as “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house.”
The document identified NAIT as organization number eight on its roster of Brotherhood entities and “friends” in North America. CAIR did not yet exist when the memorandum was written — it was founded in 1994 by the Palestine Committee, which DeSantis’s executive order identifies as “an organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and created to support Hamas in the United States.”
Unindicted Co-Conspirators in the HLF Trial
In 2007, federal prosecutors filed a list of unindicted co-conspirators in United States v. Holy Land Foundation — the largest terror-finance prosecution in American history, which ended in 2008 with convictions for funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.
The filing identified NAIT and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) as members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, and CAIR as a member of “the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” When CAIR and NAIT moved to strike their names, the district court refused, ruling that the government had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR [and others] with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” The Fifth Circuit later found only a procedural error in how the list was filed; it did not disturb the underlying evidentiary finding.
The Real-Estate Choke Point
NAIT was established in 1973 in Indiana by the Muslim Students Association — Wikipedia notes it was founded “by some of the same Muslim Brotherhood members who started the MSA.” The trust holds title to more than 300 Islamic centers across 42 states, an arrangement that represents roughly 27 percent of all American mosques by CAIR’s own historical estimate.
Senate testimony cited by Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch places NAIT’s deed share at between 50 and 79 percent. The Philanthropy Roundtable documents that “some of the founders of the trust were members of the Muslim Brotherhood” and that NAIT has operated with “extensive funding from Saudi Arabia.” Former FBI special agent Robert Stauffer, who investigated Brotherhood finances in the 1980s, described NAIT as serving “as a financial holding company for Muslim Brotherhood-related groups,” with wire transfers received from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and other states.
What the Partnership Actually Does
Under the new waqf, CAIR will update its “Best Practices for Mosque and Community Safety manual,” conduct regional security seminars for mosque and Islamic school staff, and build “a continuous peer group” receiving “real-time security alerts” across NAIT’s mosque network. The endowment also commits to helping institutions apply for and obtain federal, state, and local government grants.
In effect, the arrangement gives a state-designated terrorist organization an operational training footprint, a personnel directory, and a real-time communications channel inside the largest network of mosque properties in America — while routing taxpayer-funded security grants through that same infrastructure.
A Designation Cascade
The federal posture shifted dramatically in late 2025. Trump’s Executive Order 14362 directed the State and Treasury Departments to designate Brotherhood chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations; Treasury subsequently sanctioned the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Lebanese branches.
Abbott’s November 18 proclamation prohibited the Brotherhood and CAIR from acquiring real property in Texas. DeSantis’s December 8 order directed Florida agencies to deny contracts, funds, or benefits to either group. In Washington, Representative Randy Fine has introduced H.R. 4097, the “Designate CAIR as a Terrorist Organization Act.”
The Significance
The waqf structure is not incidental. A waqf is, by Islamic legal definition, perpetual and irrevocable — the principal cannot be liquidated, and the arrangement is meant to outlive its founders. Launched within months of three separate terrorist designations targeting its co-sponsors, the Resilience and Protection Waqf institutionalizes a coordination channel that would be difficult to dismantle even if CAIR were ultimately designated at the federal level.
For policymakers focused on the Brotherhood’s American infrastructure, the question is no longer whether NAIT and CAIR coordinate. It is whether the partnership they just announced — in writing, on the record — falls within the conduct the federal government, Texas, and Florida have already moved to restrict.