• Former North American spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun, a group known to support al Qaeda
• Fellow at the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy
• General Secretary of the Board for the Association of Muslim Social Scientists

Kamran Bokhari is former North American spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun, described by Islam scholar Daniel Pipes as “perhaps the most extreme Islamist group operating in the West.” He is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID) in Washington, D.C., which in 2004 prompted Dr. Pipes to write about Bokhari as a prime example of Islamists associated with CSID. “Most of CSID’s Muslim personnel are radicals,” wrote Pipes.  One such person identified by Dr. Pipes is Kamran Bokhari, “a fellow at CSID; as such, he is someone CSID’s board of directors deems an expert ‘with high integrity and a good reputation.’ As a fellow, Bokhari may participate in the election of CSID’s board of directors. He is, in short, integral to the CSID.” But Bokhari, continued Pipes, “also happens to have served for years as the North American spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun….that celebrated the first anniversary of 9/11 with a conference titled ‘A Towering Day in History.’ It celebrated the second anniversary by hailing ‘The Magnificent 19’-- a reference to the 19 hijackers. Its website currently features a picture of the U.S. Capitol building exploding.” Al-Muhajiroun’s London-based leader, Omar bin Bakri Muhammad, noted Pipes, “has acknowledged recruiting jihadists to fight in such hotspots as Kashmir, Afghanistan and Chechnya. At least one Al-Muhajiroun member went to Israel to engage in suicide terrorism. Al-Muhajiroun appears to be connected to one of the 9/11 hijackers, Hani Hanjour.” Dr. Pipes criticized CSID, and he criticized the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) for co-hosting a conference with CSID, because of this Al Muhajiroun link. Perhaps the most pernicious consequence of this, he wrote, “is the legimacy USIP inadvertently confers on Bokhari and CSID, permitting radicals to pass themselves off as moderates.” [Kay King of the U.S. Institute of Peace responded in a March 31, 2004 letter to Dr. Pipes that “Kamran Bokhari…was not involved in the March 19 workshop in any way. He severed his ties to the al-Muhajiroun organization five years ago, prior to joining CSID, and has publicly denounced terrorism and political violence…. Advocates of violence are among those we would refuse to provide a platform.”] In fact, Bokhari’s involvement with Al Muhajiroun had not yet ended five years prior to this letter. Born in Pakistan, Bokhari came to the United States to attend Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU).   As head of the campus Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapter, Bokhari used an $800 grant  from the SMSU Public Affairs Program to invite Anjem Choudary, the spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun in Great Britain, to speak at an April 12, 2000 symposium at the university.  Choudary in 1999 had also been the chief recruiter of jihad fighters for the British IIF “political wing” of Osama bin Laden’s International (or World) Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. In October 2000 Choudary joined his boss, the “spiritual leader” of Al Muhajiroun in issuing a public “warning” to British Jews that they could face violence if they openly supported Israel. This is the man Bokhari used taxpayer money to invite to speak freely at his state university campus in the heart of America. Bokhari, who also was head of the Islamic Center of Southwest Missouri, was also one of the top leaders of a mosque in Springfield, Missouri. This mosque received significant amounts of money from the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity based in Saudi Arabia.  In February 2004, acting on evidence that large amounts of al-Haramain money passing through Muslim facilities in Oregon and Missouri might have been re-routed to Al Qaeda and used in the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa, the U.S. Treasury Department ordered banks to freeze the accounts of the charity in those two states.  The Washington Post, in its February 20, 2004 report of this story, specifically mentioned Bokhari’s links to this mosque and to Al Muhajiroun, a group it identified as supporting Al Qaeda. Since then, Bokhari has done graduate studies in Asian cultures and languages at the University of Texas Austin.  He began working as a Middle East and South & Central Asia analyst for Austin-based Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor.com), through which he came to be interviewed as an expert by such outlets as the Voice of America. He has written articles for the British Muslim magazine Q-News, e.g., a piece about moderate Muslims in its March 2004 issue. 

Presently a doctoral student in political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Bokhari is also General Secretary of the Board of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) in Herndon, Virginia.