http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/01/17/america/Inauguration-Prayer.

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Obama prayer leader from group US

linked to Hamas
WASHINGTON: A Muslim scholar chosen to speak at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural
prayer service Wednesday is the leader of a group that federal prosecutors say has ties
to terrorists.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is one of many religious leaders
scheduled to speak at the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.

Mattson has been the guest of honor at State Department dinners and has met with senior
Pentagon officials during the Bush administration. She also spoke at a prayer service at the
Democratic National Convention in Denver.

But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents
linking the Hartford, Conn.-based Islamic society to the group Hamas, which the U.S. considers a
terrorist organization.

Neither Mattson nor her organization have been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they
had "a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking" the group to
Hamas and other radical groups.

Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Obama's inaugural committee, would not discuss the case
or say whether the committee knew about it.

"She has a stellar reputation in the faith community," Douglass said Saturday night.

The existence of the court documents was first reported by Politico.

The Islamic Society of North America, which describes itself as "the nation's largest mainstream
Muslim community-based organization," is fighting its inclusion on a list of coconspirators in the
Dallas terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation. In court documents, the group says it
does not condone terrorism

Meet Ingrid Mattson

Islam professor mixes Islamism, academics, and politics.
By Jonathan Schanzer

Ingrid Mattson, a 45-year-old Canadian-born convert to Islam, caused an uproar in the

blogosphere after she was invited by the Democratic party to a gathering of religious leaders in
Denver on the eve of the convention. Other notable participants included Bishop Charles E.
Blake, (Church of God In Christ) and Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb (Orthodox Union).

The commotion stemmed from the fact that Mattson is the president of the Islamic Society of
North America (ISNA), an organization with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was
labeled last year by the U.S. Justice Department as an un-indicted co-conspirator
in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas terrorism financing case.

Mattson’s overt affiliation with ISNA created only a fleeting political liability in Denver, but
she may pose a longer-term danger to the wider American public.

Mattson is a professor at the Hartford Seminary, where she teaches Islamic law and Islamic
history. Through this position of authority, Mattson has obfuscated the threat of radical Islam,
numbing her students and the American public to a dangerous ideology.

For example, it is no secret that Wahhabism is a radical Islamist ideology responsible for a
great deal of the anti-Western violence produced in the Muslim world. Yet, in a CNN chatroom
interview in 2001, Mattson stated that Wahhabism is “a reform movement” that “really was
analogous to the European protestant reformation.” Inaccurately, she claimed that “the Saudi
scholars who are Wahhabi have denounced terrorism,” despite the fact that many continue to
teach its virtues.

Islamic-terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. carried out al-Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001.
Last year, the director of national intelligence explicitly expressed “worry that there are sleeper
cells in the U.S.,” and cited specific concerns about increased al-Qaeda capabilities on
American soil. Yet, only two months earlier, Mattson insistently told the Baltimore Sun that the
supposition that terrorist sleeper cells exist in this country, “is not true. There aren’t any
sleeper cells.”

#ad#Despite the fact that radical Muslims have been responsible for the lion’s share of terrorist
attacks against Western interests for decades, Mattson questions why the label “Islamic” is
includedwhen President George W. Bush and other leaders talk about terrorism.

Unfortunately for her students, Mattson’s teachings appear to be similarly problematic.

Whereas policy analysts and intelligence programs focus on the writings of Muslim
fundamentalist thinkers, such as Sayyid Qutb and Abul ‘Ala Mawdudi, to learn the dangers of
radical Islam, Mattson teaches their writings as examples of “ways in which the Quran
functions as sacred scripture in Muslim history and contemporary life.” By way of
background, Qutb’s writings inspired many of today’s radical Islamist groups, including al
Qaeda, while Mawdudi inspired other Islamist leaders, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
the father of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Mattson’s apologia may seem egregious, but it is fairly standard stuff in her
profession. Americans have become increasingly aware of the way in which professors of
Middle Eastern studies whitewash the dangers of radical Islam.

What might be more surprising is the extent to which Mattson publicly and proudly
associates with a notoriously Islamist cause like ISNA. This makes it more difficult for
her to portray her Islamist leanings as “scholarship.” As Mattson wrote in a book she
published in 2002, “People of faith have a certain kind of solidarity with others of their
faith community that transcends the basic rights and duties of citizenship.” In other
words, Mattson implies that the Muslim identity transcends the American identity.

In the same book, she also questions the very character of America. “There is no
guarantee,” she writes, “that Americans will rise to the challenge of defining themselves
as an ethical nation.”

It is this cynical approach to America, along with her Islamist ideals and associations, that
made Mattson a political liability in Denver.

Sadly, she is just one example of the way in which Islamism has penetrated American
universities, and even U.S. politics.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDUyYTRhMmE5ZmQxYzU1NjM0MDBjMDM4
MjM0ZWZhYmQ=&w=MQ==