January 18, 2009

Jerry Gordon comment.

Dr. Ingrid Mattson, a Canadian Convert to Islam and member of the faculty at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, is a supporter of Saudi Wahhabism. Note this comment from an NRO article, entitled,“Meet Ingrid Mattson: Islam professor mixes Islamism, academics, and politics,” by Jonathan Schanzer of the Jewish Policy Center last summer after her appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver:

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.

Ask yourself why the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Pentagon use Dr. Mattson and the Hartford Seminary to certify Muslim Chaplains?

By AP, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 18, 2009

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.

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. (Continue Reading this Article)