Islamic Speakers Bureau Advised By U.S. Muslim Brotherhood And Supporters

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American Thinker has reported on a California organization teaching about Muslims at U.S. high schools and college campuses whose advisory board has important individuals tied to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. According to the report:

A California nonprofit dedicated to “teaching about Islam & Muslims” at U.S. high schools and college campuses features a board of advisors that is stacked with some of the most controversial activist professors in the field of Middle Eastern studies today. The imprimatur of these scholars may signal a troubling shift toward the support of proselytizing efforts and the further unraveling of Middle East Studies in America. The board of Islamic Networks Group (ING) is a veritable Who’s Who of Islamist apologists and activists. Leading the list is John Esposito, the founding director of the Saudi-funded Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He famously stated that the suicide-bombing Hamas organization engages in “honey, cheese-making, and home-based clothing manufacture.” Joining Esposito on the ING board is Sherman Jackson of the University of Michigan, who was a trustee at the North American Islamic Trust and worked with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both un-indicted co-conspirators in the U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation. There’s also Ingrid Mattson, a convert to Islam, who is a professor at the Hartford Seminary and president of the un-indicted co-conspirator ISNA. While much of her work is controversial, she is famous for a CNN chatroom interview in 2001 in which she stated that the radical Saudi Wahhabi ideology is “a reform movement” that “really was analogous to the European Protestant reformation.”

According to a recent Hudson Institute report, ISNA is one of the major organizations comprising the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

Somewhat curious is the following statement by the author concerning John Esposito:

It is too early to know whether the scholars on the ING board represent an anomaly or a trend. The motivations of Mattson and Sherman – both converts to Islam – are somewhat understandable. Esposito, a non-Muslim, is more of a mystery.

Dr. Esposito has espoused views consistent with Brotherhood doctrine and during the 1990’s was known for his claims that Islamic fundamentalism was, in fact, democratic and posed no threat to the U.S. Dr. Esposito has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations including having served on the advisory board of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in the U.K. headed by Azzam Tamimi, a leader in the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and often described as a Hamas spokesman. Dr. Esposito has also served with global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi on the Steering Committee of the Circle of Tradition and Progress and enjoyed a close relationship with the United Association For Studies and Research (USAR), part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and part of the Hamas support infrastructure. . In 2005, Saudi prince Alaweed bin Talal, a financial supporter of the global Muslim Brotherhood donated $20 million to the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown, headed by Dr. Esposito. Dr. Esposito claimed significant gaps in his knowledge about the Brotherhood while  testifying in the retrial of the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.

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