| Backgrounder: Muslim American Society
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Posted: January 5, 2009
The Muslim American Society (MAS), based in Falls Church, Virginia, claims to be “America’s largest grassroots Muslim organization with over 50 chapters nationwide.” While MAS portrays itself as a mainstream organization that attempts to serve the social, educational and religious needs of American Muslims, the organization has a troubling history of associations with radical organizations and individuals that promote terrorism and anti-Semitism, and reject Israel's right to exist.
In response to Israel's military action in Gaza to staunch the barrage of Hamas rockets hurled at Israeli towns and cities, MAS helped organized a “National Day of Action” on December 30, 2008, in more than 30 locations around the country. Many of the demonstrations, which were held in front of Israeli embassies and consulates, U.S. Federal buildings and elsewhere, were marked by offensive Holocaust imagery likening Jews and Israelis to Nazis, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, as well as expressions in support of terror.
The organization’s ties to extremism are apparent in several ways:
- One MAS leader said that the group was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic extremist movement founded in Egypt that has spawned and inspired global terrorist groups, including the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
- MAS-affiliated Web sites have featured articles advocating Jihad and suicide martyrdom.
- The chairman of the Islamic American University, a Michigan-based subsidiary of MAS, is a leading Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood ideologue known for his support of terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah.
- MAS leaders and advisors have held positions in the Islamic Association for Palestine, described by the U.S. as part of a “propaganda apparatus” for the terrorist group Hamas.
- MAS sponsored anti-Israel rallies in the U.S. in response to Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza in summer 2006. The rallies featured virulently anti-Jewish rhetoric and expressions of support for terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, an Iranian- and Syrian-backed terrorist group whose main goal is the destruction of Israel.
- MAS’s magazine, The American Muslims, has published anti-Semitic articles.
Ties to Muslim Brotherhood
Leaders of the Muslim American Society remain vague about their formal relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic extremist movement founded in Egypt that has spawned and inspired several terrorist groups, including the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas. However, MAS members openly acknowledge the Brotherhood’s ideological influence on their organization, and at least one member of the MAS, former Secretary General Shaker Elsayed, said in an interview that MAS was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a leading Muslim Brotherhood ideologue based in Qatar, is the chairman (in absentia) of the Islamic American University (IAU), a Michigan-based MAS subsidiary, according to information on the MAS Website. He is also listed by IAU as a faculty. Qaradawi, barred from entering the U.S., is known for his support for terrorism, most notably in his edicts condoning suicide bombings. He openly supports such groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and others that target U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
MAS Web sites have included the works of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al Banna, and the group’s leading intellectual, Syed Qutb. These writings advocate for Jihad and martyrdom, for total obedience to “the Islamic Movement” and for supporting a global multi-front war against non-Muslims.
Support for Terrorism
Several members of the MAS have had prior relationships with groups supporting terrorism against the state of Israel. MAS founder Salah Sultan, consultant Raed Tayeh, and religious advisor Sheik Mohamad al-Hanooti previously held positions in the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a group that has been described by the U.S. government as part of “Hamas’ propaganda apparatus.” Al-Hanooti raised money for Hamas and helped coordinate its activities in the U.S., according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
MAS joined with the antiwar ANSWER Coalition and the National Council of Arab Americans, an organization that opposes any peace with Israel, to organize several anti-Israel rallies across the U.S. in response to Israel’s summer 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Many of the rallies were marked by expressions of support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, and a proliferation of anti-Jewish messages. Speaking during the central event, which took place on August 12, 2006 in Washington D.C., MAS President Esam Omeish said that Israel controlled the U.S. Congress. He also called for Israel to release terrorists held in Israeli prisons.
Mahdi Bray, head of the MAS Freedom Foundation, which is based in Washington, D.C. and serves as the group’s “public affairs arm” in charge of advocacy, has taken part in several rallies over the years featuring support for terrorism and anti-Semitism.
MAS’s magazine, the American Muslim, featured in a 2002 online edition, a fatwa justifying suicide bombings by Fawsal Mawlawi, the radical Lebanese associate of Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi.
Other Alliances
MAS is closely allied with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a religious community organization based in Jamaica, New York. Its annual conventions, which it holds together with MAS, draw thousands of participants.
At an MAS-ICNA meeting in Chicago in June 2001, Zulfiqar Ali Shah, ICNA’s president at the time, stated: “If we are unable to stop the Jews now, their next stop is Yathrib [Saudi Arabia], where the Jews used to live until their expulsion by Prophet Muhammad. That’s the pinnacle of their motives,” according to Islam Online, a Web-based publication connected to Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi.
During MAS-ICNA’s first joint convention in Baltimore in 2002, Shaker Elsayed, then the MAS Secretary General, said about suicide bombing: “The Islamic scholars said whenever there is an attack on an Islamic state or occupation, or the honor of the Muslims has been violated, the Jihad is a must for everyone, a child, a lady and a man. They have to make Jihad with every tool that they can get in their hand.” Elsayed’s statement echoes a fatwa published by The American Muslim online edition in March 2002. In the fatwa, Fawsal Mawlawi, a close associate of Qaradawi, explained that “in martyr operations, the Muslim sacrifices his own life for the sake of performing a religious duty, which is Jihad against the enemy.”
MAS and ICNA have also drawn closer to the North American branch of a radical anti-Semitic and anti-American Pakistani organization, Tanzeem-e-Islami, which operates in the U.S. under the name Islamic Organization of North America (IONA). MAS and ICNA leaders have attended IONA events and IONA endorsed an MAS event in California in February 2007. At IONA’s official launching event in June 2004, Dr. Souheil Ghannouchi, MAS executive director and former president, said “I don’t think there is any difference” between IONA and MAS ideology.
The Islamic Organization of North America has also distributed anti-Semitic literature, including a book that blames the Jews for spreading usury in order to advance various conspiracies against humanity. The book, The Prohibition of Riba, reads: “Allah revealed the wickedness of those Jews who changed the Torah to modify the prohibition against usury.”
Promoting Anti-Semitic Literature
MAS publishes The American Muslims, a magazine that has featured anti-Semitic articles. For example, the cover story in the January 2004 issue featured an article arguing that “the bible is a distorted document” and that “Zionism began with the Old Testament…Unknown authors willingly distorted the word of God to suit their own self-interest…The Middle East conflict today still harkens back to Jews’ erroneous claim that God…gave the ‘Promised Land’ exclusively to Jews…,” the article stated.
The May 2003 issue featured a fictional story depicting Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian civilians, describing the soldiers laughing, their hands covered with blood, as they eat their victims’ bread - evoking the anti-Semitic canard of a blood-libel. |
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