Today from 4:00 - 5:30 pm at Georgetown University’s Copley Hall Formal Lounge, the Washington Post and the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding are sponsoring a propaganda exercise to divert our attention from the Saudi and other extremists’ actual work against US interests abroad and at home. As Caroline Glick noted April 12 in The Long Road to Victory:

The fruits of America’s disorientation were revealed in last month’s three Saudi summits: the Hamas-Fatah summit, the King Abdullah-Ahmadinejad summit and the Arab League-Iranian summit…First there was the Hamas-Fatah summit in Mecca where Abdullah undermined the US by promising to pay Hamas terrorists a billion dollars in exchange for their agreement to let Fatah terrorists be their junior partners in government.

If that wasn’t sufficient proof that Abdullah is not a friend, there was his warm and fuzzy love-fest with Ahmadinejad.

Their meeting shocked Israeli, American and British intelligence services, who perceived it as the culmination of a progressive Saudi estrangement from the US. It was preceded by a massive expansion of Saudi ties with China and Russia.

So who is speaking at this Symposium? Representatives of the Islamist ideology of imposing sharia law in the US, as a separate but unequal system of Islamist supremacy first, and then as the constitutional system for all. I don’t doubt the seriousness or scholarly background of any participants; but I seriously doubt that they want to use that background to protect the US constitution. Instead, these folks are all committed in either their publications, associations or funding to the spread of sharia law over constitutional law:

1. Imam Yahya Hendi, the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University, the Imam of the Islamic Society of Frederick, and the Muslim Chaplain at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. From his official biography at a U.S. Embassy website:

Imam Hendi serves as a member and the Spokesman of the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of North America. He also directs the PEACE office of the Muslim American Society [generally thought to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood]. PEACE is the Public Education and Assistance Conference….

2. Sherman A. Jackson, professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and a professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dr. Sherman Jackson is a cofounder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM). He used to be a member of the Fiqh Council of North America.

[Jackson] is extensively published within the academia. He is a noted expert of the constitutional jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din-al-Qarafi, whose works revolve around the concepts of constitution, tyranny, and power within Islamic law - topics very relevant today as Muslim countries strive to follow the classical Islamic legal traditions. He has written a book centered around this figure, entitled Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (1996). Recent published articles center around Mutazilite objectivism, Islamic Law and the sociopolitical reality in the United States, among others. He is a sought after speaker at various law schools throughout the country, and is well-known for his oratory skills. He has been teaching the Seerah, Usul al-Fiqh, and ‘History of Islamic Law’ courses within American Learning Institute for Muslims since its inception.

3. Ingrid Mattson, President of Islamic Society of North America, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations and, Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut . As Stephen Brown at Frontpage Magazine notes:

ISNA’s status as a charity itself caused it to be investigated by the Senate Committee on Finance in 2003 for terrorism links along with 24 other Islamic organizations. As well, the WTHR report stated ISNA has also allowed Islamic charities, later found connected with terrorism, to set up booths at its conventions and has even helped raise money for them, including for the now prohibited Holy Land Foundation. Moreover, the same report also said Hamas leader, Mousa Marzook, deported form America in 1997, also thanked ISNA in a letter for supporting his defense fund. Marzook’s name can be found on the State Department’s terrorist list, a distinction ISNA can certainly take pride in.

4. Hadia Mubarak, a senior researcher at Georgetown’s Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and the first woman and first native-born American to be elected to lead the National Muslim Student Association since the 500-chapter organization was established in 1963. Far from being mainstream, the MSA has long been associated as an organization, and through individual leaders, with extremist ideologies and groups:

An influential member of International ANSWER’s steering committee, MSA maintains a large presence at ANSWER-sponsored demonstrations. By supporting ANSWER, MSA tacitly endorses the agendas of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party which dominates ANSWER. At a March 15, 2003 anti-war rally in San Francisco, MSA representatives manned several booths where they displayed and distributed anti-Israel publications, banners, and placards. Many of these items contained the word “Israel” with the “s” replaced by a swastika; others likened a swastika to the Star of David.

Here’s the bottom line: these groups, selected by John Esposito’s Saudi-funded, Wahhabist center at Georgetown University, have NOTHING to do with “What is means to be Muslim in America.” But they have everything to do with forcing an extreme ideology pf Islamist Imperialism on Muslims and non-Muslims, through disinformation campaigns worthy of the worst years of the old Soviet propaganda mills.

Hat Tip to Ann Corcoran, Sylvia Pryor and other Vigilant Freedom/910 group members who contributed research!