Do you like this story?
TweetIs this a little tease of what’s to come with this administration?
Democratic President elect Barack Hussein Obama is reaching out to Hamas by inviting an ‘Islamic scholar’ who is linked to the terror organization to speak at his inauguration this coming Tuesday.
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. Mattson, who was elected president of the society in 2006, is a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut.
But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Plainfield, Indiana-based Islamic society to Hamas, which the US 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 co-conspirators in the Dallas terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation. In court documents, Mattson’s group says it does not condone terrorism.
via Israel Matzav
Related posts:
