A Muslim activist who campaigns against Islamic supremacism and terrorism may have ended up on the "anti-Muslim extremist" list of the Southern Poverty Law Center because of the influence of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been designated a terrorist organization by an Arab Gulf state.

Maajid Nawaz, the founder of the U.K-based Quilliam Foundation, a think tank that counters Islamic radicalism, settled a lawsuit in which SPLC agreed to pay him nearly $3.4 million, apologize and remove him and his organization from its "extremist list."

The Investigative Project on Terrorism noted the SPLC "guide" from which Nawaz was removed was compiled with input from ReThink Media, the Center for New Community and Media Matters.

When the guide was written, ReThink Media employed a former CAIR leader with "a history of radicalism," Zainab Chaudary. And since then, ReThink hired Corey Saylor, CAIR's former national legislative affairs director.

IPT pointed out CAIR and Nawaz hold diametrically opposing viewpoints on a number of key issues.

"While CAIR has tried to minimize the threat of Islamic radicalization, and its officials routinely accuse law enforcement of setting up innocent Muslims, Nawaz presents his own life story as an example of its lure," IPT said.

Support WND's legal fight to expose the Hamas front in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In addition, Nawaz advocates for reform within Islam, while CAIR has largely ignored the Muslim Reform Movement, comprised of North American Muslims who aspire to spur "an Islamic renewal [which] must defeat the ideology of Islamism, or politicized Islam, which seeks to create Islamic states, as well as an Islamic caliphate."

Also, unlike CAIR, which was founded by Hamas operatives, Nawaz does not hate Israel, publicly condemning Hamas and Hezbollah.

CAIR's Florida chapter still has a copy of the SPLC report posted on its website even though SPLC has removed it from its own site, apologized for its content and agreed to pay Nawaz and Quilliam nearly $3.4 million

As part of the settlement of the lawsuit, SPLC President Richard Cohen issued an apology in a video.

"Since we published the Field Guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect. We've found that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism," Cohen said.

In the guide, SPLC attacked Nawaz for saying there was little difference dividing non-violent jihadists from the violent ones ideologically, except that "they disagree only on tactics." Both seek to build a global caliphate, but the non-violent ones want to accomplish it through other means.

CAIR leaders have made statements affirming the aim of establishing Islamic rule in the United States.

CAIR long had accused WND and others of "smearing" the Muslim group by citing a newspaper account of CAIR founder Omar Ahmad telling Muslims in Northern California in 1998 that they were in America not to assimilate but to help assert Islam's rule over the country. But WND caught CAIR falsely claiming it had contacted the paper and had "sought a retraction," insisting Ahmad never made the statement. Three years later, the issue arose again, and WND found CAIR still had not contacted the paper.

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper also has expressed a desire to replace the U.S. system of government with an Islamic state.

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," Hooper said in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."

'Instructive moment'

Accepting SPLC's apology, Nawaz said it "should be an instructive moment for all of us."

"Too much, and for too long, the left – many on the left – have been trying to shut down any debate or critique or criticism around Islam, especially by Muslims within Muslim communities," Nawaz said.

Zainab Chaudary, a former civil rights coordinator for CAIR's New Jersey chapter, was part of ReThink Media's Security and Rights Collaborative in 2016 when Nawaz was added to SPLC's list, IPT said. Chaudary's LinkedIn profile says she consults with SPLC and MediaMatters in her role as a ReThink senior media associate.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Chaudary ran a column in a student newspaper he edited defending the Taliban's decision not to hand over Osama bin Laden.

ReThink Media deepened its CAIR connection in December when it added Saylor as managing director of its Security and Rights Collaborative.

Saylor appeared last month at a "Challenging Islamophobia" conference sponsored by CAIR's Minnesota chapter where he complained that the Justice Department and other federal agencies are more likely to issue a press release about "an incident" when a perpetrator is perceived to be Muslim.

The FBI cut off ties to CAIR in January 2009 after the group was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, the largest terrorism-finance case in U.S. history.

More than a dozen CAIR leaders have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.