Awad’s Multiple Names
Nihad Awad is known to use multiple spellings of his name. In Arabic his name is: نهاد عوض حماد — Nihad is his first name, Awad is his father’s name, and Hammad [Not Hamad] is his clan’s name. Given that there is not one convention to transliterate Arabic names, each one of these names can be spelled in multitude of ways in English.
Awad, per the publicly-available records, has used different ways to spell his names. There is always the possibility that this could be an innocent mistake — it can happen to any new immigrant whose command of the English language is not yet strong. However, the record shows that Awad signed an affidavit certifying that he signed his name in English in two different ways. Then a few years later he spelled his name on official documents in multiple ways. This pattern repeats consistently ever since 1996 in the multiple entities Awad is involved with. It will be hard to argue this pattern is not deliberate or deceptive. Otherwise, how can it be explained an that individual has not figured out the correct spelling of their name over 25 years?
In the annual tax filing for CAIR Foundation for 2019 we read that board member Nihad Awad received 0 dollars that year. In the same place, we see another board member, Nehad A Hammad receiving $212,724.
But these are not two different individuals. In a name affidavit filed in 1996, Nihad Awad testified that he is “one and the same person as Nehad Hamad and Nehad Hammad.”
Although one could dismiss it as simply an accounting mistake, the evidence shows that Awad constantly switches between using a dizzying number of spellings (and signatures).
