Edward Omar Moad is the spokesman and Projects Officer for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), a humanitarian relief organization based in Columbia, Missouri that was removed from the State Department’s international aid program in November 2000, because the group was deemed “contrary to the national defense and foreign policy interests of the United States.” In November 2001, Moad claimed that reports of the IARA financing Al-Qaeda constituted “an effort by a group of journalists to try to create fear against Muslim Americans.” In May 2002, Moad was a featured speaker at a protest against Attorney General John Ashcroft at the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus.