President Biden Vows Continued Cooperation with US Muslim Brotherhood Organization; Top Democrats Address Annual Gathering

US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden recent­ly sent a let­ter vow­ing con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion with the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca (ISNA) on the occa­sion of its 59^th annu­al con­ven­tion. Held from 2–5 Sep­tem­ber 2022 in Rose­mont, Illi­nois, the event fea­tured appear­ances by sev­er­al high-lev­el Biden appointees and lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians, includ­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of Con­gress. Accord­ing to the Biden let­ter:

Sep­tem­ber 3, 2022 I would like to thank you and the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Americ’s (ISNA) lead­er­ship for invit­ing me to par­tic­i­pate in ISNA’s 59^th annu­al con­ven­tion. This organization’s ded­i­ca­tion to sup­port­ing and engag­ing Mus­lim Amer­i­cans is invalu­able in strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ties and empow­er­ing Mus­lim voic­es across our nation. (…) I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with ISNA Mus­lim Amer­i­cans across our coun­try to build bridges and under­score our com­mon humanity.

Read the rest here.

This year’s edi­tion of the annu­al con­ven­tion was described by local media as the “largest net­work­ing event for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in the coun­try” and was attend­ed by sev­er­al thou­sand guests, a sub­stan­tial­ly low­er num­ber than in pre-pan­dem­ic years. Titled “Resilience, Hope, and Faith: With Hard­ship, Comes Ease,” it took place in per­son for the first time in three years and fea­tured many exhi­bi­tions and edu­ca­tion­al and speak­ing events. Mir­ror­ing past ISNA con­ven­tions, speak­ers at the event includ­ed ISNA lead­er­ship and mul­ti­ple oth­er lead­ers of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in the US, including:

• Sir­aj Wah­haj, an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing who has held var­i­ous posi­tions in ISNA, the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil, and the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Relations

• Dalia Moga­hed, the Direc­tor of Research at the US Insti­tute for Social Pol­i­cy and Under­stand­ing, a group whose Board of Advi­sors and staff includes promi­nent fig­ures in the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In 2009, Moga­hed was appoint­ed to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil on Faith-Based and Neigh­bor­hood Partnerships.

• Mohamed Magid, for­mer ISNA pres­i­dent and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the All Dulles Area Mus­lim Society

• Muza­m­mil Sid­diqi, Fiqh Coun­cil of North America

• Abdul Malik Mujahid, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Islam­ic Cir­cle of North America

US diplo­mat Rashad Hus­sain, who in 2021 was appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Biden to the post of Unit­ed States Ambas­sador-at-Large for Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom at the State Depart­ment, gave a keynote speech at a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice recog­ni­tion lun­cheon. In 2010, the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch, was the first to report on Hussain’s long his­to­ry of engage­ment with the GMB in the US as well as sup­port for Broth­er­hood caus­es, once hav­ing called the pros­e­cu­tion of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Ari­an, one of many “polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tions.” Oth­er con­ven­tion speak­ers includ­ed high-lev­el politi­cians of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, such as Indi­ana Sen­a­tor Fady Qad­doura, Indi­ana Rep. André Car­son, and Rep. Marie New­man (D‑IL), who addressed guests at the event’s inter­faith ban­quet. White House Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Miguel Car­dona deliv­ered a vir­tu­al greet­ing mes­sage to the audience.

ISNA is a Plain­field, Illi­nois-based umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion that describes its vision as “an exem­plary and uni­fy­ing Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tion in North Amer­i­ca that con­tributes to the bet­ter­ment of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and soci­ety at large.” ISNA emerged out of the ear­ly US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood infra­struc­ture and was named as an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor in the Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism tri­al as a result of what the US Jus­tice Depart­ment called the orga­ni­za­tion’s “inti­mate rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee, and the defen­dants in this case.” Recent evi­dence of the influ­ence of ISNA on US pol­i­tics includes an ISNA leader par­tic­i­pat­ing at a Trump admin­is­tra­tion secu­ri­ty con­fer­ence and Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Bernie Sanders’ and Julian Cas­tro’s speak­ing appear­ance at ISNA’s annu­al con­fer­ence. In 2013 the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Watch pub­lished an arti­cle on the ques­tion “The Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Of ISNA; Have They Real­ly Changed?”, concluding:

In addi­tion to the pres­ence with­in ISNA of US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers and its ongo­ing and close ties to both the US and Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, ISNA has failed to date to acknowl­edge any aspect of its actu­al ori­gins or its his­to­ry of fun­da­men­tal­ism, anti-semi­tism, and sup­port for ter­ror­ism. For these rea­sons, the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch con­cludes that ISNA remains, as it always has been, an inte­gral part of the US Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Nine years lat­er, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) con­cludes there is no evi­dence to sug­gest this con­clu­sion needs to be amended.

In 2016, the GMBDW report­ed on what was described as the ongo­ing “mad­ness” in the US over any­thing con­cern­ing the Mus­lim Brotherhood.