When It Comes to Islamism, the DNC Still Doesn’t Get It

Last week’s opening festivities at the Democrat National Convention in
Denver began with an interfaith prayer. As the Democrat Party searches
for its newfound interest in faith, it quickly called upon one of the
lowest hanging fruit in the American Muslim community - the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA). Ingrid Mattson, the President of ISNA
gave a speech along with Adbur-Rahim Ali of the Northeast Denver
Islamic Center. Some may dismiss the selection of nine speakers of
faith at the political shindig as irrelevant and simply part of the
pomp and circumstance of the DNC Convention.

But propping up ISNA in today’s environment is akin to propping up the
Legal Guild (a ‘60s Communist front group) to address the convention
during the Cold War. Our civil servants will verify that they have
prevented over 30 attacks by militant Islamists upon our nation and
our citizens since 9/11. The only ideology that unites the groups set
upon our destruction is not violence. It is political Islam - their
Islamism. Unless we identify both violent and non-violent political
Islam as a root cause of terrorism we will never win this conflict.
Militant Islamists, much as non-militant Islamists, seek some form of
a transnational Muslim, political movement. They both seek various
forms of the ascendancy of Islam with respect to other religions
culminating in the establishment of Islamic states.

It is not enough to condemn terrorism for politically active Muslims
to be “friends of American security interests” or pillars of the
representation of ‘spiritual’ Islam. If Muslim organizations are to be
lifted up as ‘friends of government,’ they, at the minimum, need to
share a common vision of ideal governance - that of a secular liberal
democracy. It is against American interests and certainly an obstacle
in the work of all anti-Islamist Muslims for the American
establishment to lift up Islamists, manifestations of political Islam,
as representatives of Muslims and especially as representatives of
“non-political” Islam. ISNA is without question patently political. I
would defy anyone to find evidence of its rejection of the ideology of
Islamism and similarly its defense of the ideology of the secular
liberal democracy in the writings and public work of any of its
leaders. To do this ISNA would have to sponsor and distribute
intellectual work against the foundations of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Al-Mawdudi, and Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Not only do
they not do this, the vast majority of the other imams, books, and
tapes they promote all derive their ideology from the same Salafist
political mindset.

If anyone had done their homework at the DNC they would have realized
that the primary origin of political Islam in the early twentieth
century is the Muslim Brotherhood - arguably the central nervous
system of political Islam globally. Its imams and spiritual leaders
over the past century from Sayyid Qutb, Hassan al-Banna, to the
current Godfather, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi are ultimately the seeds of
thought which have sprouted the vast majority of Islamist movements in
the world whether militant or not. The means employed by Islamists may
vary from nation to nation but in the end their goals of establishing
an Islamic state are almost universally the same.

ISNA has demonstrated repeatedly that its goals in the United States
are no different from the Muslim Brotherhood’s goals in Jordan, Egypt,
Syria, or England for that matter. Its leadership is generally either
an outgrowth of the MB salafist ideology in the Middle East or an
outgrowth of the similar Deobandi ideology of the Indo-Pakistani
region.

As others have also noted, the Department of Justice did not
coincidentally list ISNA as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the
federal Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas. All of the associated
documentation and links to the MB’s Project in the west and the
implicated individuals who share the ideology of political Islam
should cause great concern.

Ingrid Mattson, an articulate Canadian convert to Islam, comes across
superficially as a benign figure for the purposes of a DNC prayer
gathering. But if her years of presidency of ISNA thus far have
demonstrated anything, it has shown publicly that her role is nothing
more than window dressing for a political organization whose mission
of political Islam remains quite unchanged. Note ISNA’s continued
participation in the intensely political American Muslim Political
Coordination Committee. If she is as “modernized” and apolitical a
Muslim leader as her public pronouncements and packaging would
purport, I would have expected to see major work from this Hartford
Seminary professor marginalizing political Islam and the transnational
goal of Islamists. If ISNA is truly not Islamist or the same ISNA as
the Wahhabis who formed it out of the MSA in the ‘60s and ‘70s, its
ideology against Islamism would be at the forefront - it is not. As
the first woman and first convert of an organization with deep Wahhabi
and salafist origins, I would have expected Dr. Mattson to have
provided major testimony to the necessary reform and the long overdue
sea change against salafism necessary in her organization. Without
this and with all the evidence linking them to the Muslim Brotherhood,
ISNA clearly remains wedded to the Islamist and Wahhabi origins of its
founders and its directors. As many have already done, a review of her
public commentary demonstrates no such sea change. In fact a review of
her public pronouncements seems to basically verify that she tows the
Islamist line.

From Mattson there has been no condemnation of the Islamic state or
central tenets of Islamism. No public defense of women’s rights
against the medieval laws enacted by Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia or
taught by many of the texts distributed by her own ISNA (i.e. of
Mawdudi or Qaradawi) and its affiliated bookstores and bizarres. No
condemnation of the OIC and its promotion of blasphemy laws and its
blind promotion of authoritarian regimes including any criticism of
the 57 so-called Muslim nations nearly all of which are some form of
despotic dictatorships and monarchies which oppress their minorities.
Her commentaries have repeatedly rather been apologetics wrapped in
victimology and false moral equivalency between terrorism and American
security efforts.

If you don’t believe this commentary here, just check into the ISNA
convention this past weekend in Columbus, Ohio. Their bazaars,
attended by thousands, will be full of political Islamist literature.
Rest assured, anti-Islamist literature against the formation of the
Islamic state or public implementation of sharia will be nonexistent.
The DNC and so many in the media continue to sadly miss how Mattson is
simply window dressing to an organization whose mission remains at
serious odds with the core values of liberty and our secular liberal
democracy which are classically American.

My own experience with ISNA solidified in my mind long ago that it was
a political and an Islamist organization which covered itself in the
spiritual language of Islam for the political promotion of its
leadership. For example, in 1994 when I was on leave from the U.S.
Navy, I naively attended an Islamic Medical Association (IMA) event
with a U.S. Navy professor and mentor in order to present some
research. We happened to attend the first day of the ISNA meeting
which ran in succession with the IMA that September of 1994. The
keynote address to open the ISNA meeting was given by none other than,
Siraj Wahhaj, a long time ISNA and CAIR leader until today. Wahhaj
most recently gained notoriety for his subway advertisements about
Islam in New York City and was himself an unindicted coconspirator in
the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center who provided testimony in
court defending the character of the blind sheikh- Omar Abdel-Rahman.

During his speech that year in ISNA, Siraj Wahhaj held up a Koran and
stated clearly that it is his goal as it should be for every Muslim to
replace the Constitution with the Koran and bring Islamic governance
to the West. During question and answer I stood up and reminded the
entire audience of thousands of Muslims of the seditious nature of his
comments and admonished all military members to dissociate from ISNA
immediately as I did. Until this day there is no ideological evidence
whatsoever that ISNA does not remain on track with that mission vis-à-
vis the Islamic state and a “soft Jihad.”

Groups like the DNC can choose all they want to ignore the political
mission of ISNA and all of its associated Islamist organizations. But
at the end of the day ISNA is not simply a ‘faith-based’ organization.
It is an obvious manifestation of Islamism - political Islam.

Make no mistake. ISNA has a large membership and is linked to the
funding of over half of the mosques in the United States through their
North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). Their annual convention this
weekend in Columbus will bring in tens of thousands of Muslims. Many
Muslim members of these organizations get swept in by various
publications, meetings, verbiage, and tribal techniques which take on
a very Islamic and seemingly spiritual tone. But in reality, the core
mission beneath the false veneer is political. This false veneer
changes only based upon the particular setting. Mattson serves her
purpose well for the Salafists running the organization as long as
their core Islamist ideologies remain unwavering and her public
projection gives the image of women’s rights and modernity when in
fact virtually no work is being done by ISNA to promote such needed
changes toward modernity in the Muslim community. Attendees at ISNA’s
national convention last September noted that the panels on women’s
rights and domestic abuse were poorly attended while the panels on
Islamophobia and victimization were standing room only. Look at
Mattson’s writings - slim pickings on anti-Islamist reform and strong
suggestions of Islamism. Again, more window dressing with no real
leadership.

Is it enough for the American establishment to engage Muslims who
simply condemn the act of terror? Not only is the answer a resounding,
“no,” but it is actually dangerous and gives a false sense of security
against the ideologies we are countering. The elevation of ISNA by the
DNC is a clear demonstration that they really have no idea whatsoever
about the political ideology which that organization represents.

It’s time to afford leaders of the Muslim community the same scrutiny
we give any other political organization in the United States. Look at
Dr. Mattson’s own words and that of ISNA’s and make an assessment for
yourself about where she falls in the continuum between Islamism and
liberty. What did Dr. Mattson for example mean when she said, “People
of faith have a certain kind of solidarity with others of their faith
community that transcends the basic rights and duties of citizenship.”
Sounds like a central tenet of political Islam to me.

As our nation faces a continued threat of radical Islamists, where is
the wisdom in the elevation of Islamist organizations? In a written
statement Fox News reported that the DNCC said,

“She (Mattson) is part of an organization that has met with leaders
like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and key Bush Administration adviser Karen Hughes. Under her
tenure, ISNA has worked to build understanding and has been supported
by the National Council of Churches and the Union for Reform Judaism
which hosted Mattson at its biennial conference last year.”

One can begin to see how ISNA gains its legitimacy not from any review
of its core ideologies which remain wholly unchecked, but rather from
the misguided associations of other parts of the American
governmental, religious, and media establishment. One endorsement
leads to another, leads to another and they all become mutually
dependent on the endorsement of the other with no one doing any
homework on ISNA’s real core ideologies.

It may be the easiest short cut to placate the loudest arm of Islamism
in the United States, but it does our efforts against the dangerous
ideology of political Islam and the stranglehold of Islamists over the
Muslim community no good whatsoever. Our own leading politicians are
unable to clearly articulate and understand the central ideologies at
stake in this global battle of ideas between political Islam and the
West. So, it should not be a surprise when Islamist organizations
continue to gain influence and legitimacy.

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