Valerie Jarrett, Ingrid Mattson: White House Opens Wider to Islam

Just one week ago President Obama shut-out key Jewish leaders from a long-awaited meeting in the White House. In June, the other half of Barack Obama's brain, Valerie Jarrett, met with members of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at the organization's 46th national convention.

What do the two have to do with each other? Jewish leaders and the ISNA? The first is a group of American's with family and friends living under seige in Israel from the terrorist organization, Hamas. The second group, the ISNA, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the War on Terror and a part of the original founding of Hamas, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Do you see something wrong with this picture?

Valerie Jarrett is the Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs for the Obama administration. She is joined at the hip with Barack and Michelle Obama. They have a long, long friendship. Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) out. ISNA in.

Ingrid Mattson is the president of the ISNA. She is Canadian Catholic convert to Islam and a long-time critic of American foreign policy. She blames Palestinian aggression on the U.S. support of Israel.

Jarrett invited Ingrid Mattson to join the White House Council on Women and Girls, a leadership group committed to:

"empowering...advancing women's leadership in all communities and sectors - up to the U.S. presidency - by filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women."

Also known as White House Project (WHP), this is a group of some of the nation's most powerful and most liberal women. In September 2008 I tried to find donations to a Republican candidate by the WHP's board of directors, but could not find a single one. So much for diversity, especially diversity of thought.

While taxpayer's empower liberal women through an organization run directly out of the White House, the administration has now invited a female, Muslim radical to join the effort. Ironic, huh? If Mattson were not Western, few would argue that she would not be in her position of power today.

Ingrid Mattson is a very smooth operator. She assures young Muslims that Wahhabism is not an extreme right-wing sect of Islam; she believes that Muslim women are not oppressed by Shariah law:

But in fact we know that Muslim women have the same rights as Muslim men and virtually all the same duties and obligations.

One of the popular misconceptions about Islam is that women are seen as lesser figures, that they don't have rights.
"This perception that women in Islam are oppressed is based both on misinformation as well as am amplification of certain unfortunate tendencies in some parts of the Muslim world. It's true that people have seen some Muslim authorities using Islam as a justification for the oppression or suppression of women. That's a reality, we can't deny it. But we have to balance those incidents with what's going on in the rest of the Muslim world, in which most women are participating in their societies. We've seen that within recent times four Muslim-majority nations have had female heads of state. In most countries that I've traveled to, Muslim women are involved in all aspects of society."

Muslim women have the same legal rights as Muslim men. The Prophet Mohammed's wife was a businesswoman. In fact, he met her working for her as her agent. The legal rights of women were enshrined in Islamic law. However, cultural practices in many societies have prevented those rights from being enforced."

The above are Mattson's own words.

Oops! Did she forget: Muslim men are not forced into arranged marriages in Muslim countries, but Muslim women are. Muslim men are not stoned for committing adultery or being seen in the company of a non-male relative, but Muslim women are. Muslim sons are not beheaded for "dishonoring" the patriarch, but Muslim daughters are. Muslim women cannot have multiple husbands, but Muslim men can. Muslim men needn't conceal their identity or their masculinity, but many Muslim women must. Muslim men do not belong to Muslim women, but Muslim women DO belong to Muslim men. The court testimony of a Muslim woman carries half the weight of a Muslim man, by law and she is entitled to only half the inheritance of a Muslim man.

From Nonie Darwish:

A Muslim man in the wedding ceremony does not pledge loyalty to his wife, and the wife cannot expect it. A man's loyalty to his wife is optional, and a Muslim woman who has it must thank her lucky stars.

In contrast, the penalty for a woman's extramarital sexual indiscretion is death by stoning or beheading. And rape is a crime under Sharia law, but the criminal and guilty party is always the female, regardless of age and circumstances.

Is Ingrid Mattson someone we want shaping women and girls today?

Background on the Islamic Society of America:

Established in 1981 by the by the Saudi-funded Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) calls itself the largest Muslim organization on the continent. ISNA was created by MSA with the help of one of Palestinian Islamic Jihad's founding students, Sami Al-Arian.

ISNA focuses heavily on providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. Many of these mosques were recently built with Saudi money and are required, by their Saudi benefactors, to strictly follow the dictates of Wahhabi imams -- an edict that affects the tone and content of the sermons given in the mosques, the selection of books and periodicals that may be read in mosque libraries or sold in mosque bookshops, and the policies governing the exclusion or suppression of dissenters from the congregations.

Writes Kaukab Siddique, the editor of New Trend, an Islamic periodical of extremist views that is nonetheless opposed to Wahhabi domination of American Islam: "ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus also controls who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there."

Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as "one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States." Adds Schwartz: "Our view is that the number of mosques under Wahhabi control actually totals at least 600 out of the official total of 1,200, while, as noted, Shia community leaders endorse the figure of 80 percent Wahhabi control. But we also offer a number of 4-6,000 mosques overall, including small and diverse congregations of many kinds."

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA "is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation"; "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred" (for instance, al Qaeda supporter and PLO officialYusuf Al-Qaradhawi was invited to speak at an ISNA conference); has held fundraisers for terrorists (after Hamasleader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense); has condemned the U.S. government's post-9/11 seizure of Hamas' and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial assets; and publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that "often champions militant Islamist doctrine."

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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Valerie Jarrett, Ingrid Mattson: White House Opens Wider to Islam

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