African media is reporting that Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) President Ingrid Mattson attended a meeting of the Islamic Development Bank to select members for the bank’s Women’s Advisory Panel. According to a report by the news portal AllAfrica:
A meeting of the Selection Committee of the Women’s Advisory Panel of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from April 17 to 18, 2011. The Committee was charged with the responsibility of selecting individual women and organisations who are achievers in development for an annual award – the “IDB Annual Prize for Women’s Contribution to Development”. The Women’s Advisory Panel WAP which has 12 members from various countries was established to advise the IDB on mainstreaming women into development. My humble self is privileged to be a member of the Panel which has distinguished women from all walks of life as members. Among them are Dr Saleha Abedin from Pakistan of the Dar Hikma College Jeddah, Mrs. Arwa Yahya Al Deram a development worker from Yemen, Mrs.Sharifa Aminah Al Khared from Malaysia, an accomplished business woman, Dr Raeda Qutob a medical doctor from Jordan, Dr Mudi Bint Mansour Al Saud a university lecturer and member of the royal family from Saudi Arabia. Others are Honourable Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Uganda, Mrs. Syda Bhumba, Mrs. Aicha Bah Diallo, a UNESCO Adviser from Guinea Conakry, Mrs. Abda Yahia El Mahdi from Sudan, the Managing Director of a consultancy firm, Dr Suhaima Hoosen, a development worker from South Africa, Dr Ingrid Mattson from the United States who is a lecturer of Islamic Studies and the President of the Islamic Society of North America and Dr. Sema Ramzanoglu an Adviser to the President of Turkey.
Saleha Abedin is the the Vice Dean of institutional advancement at Dar El-Hekma College in Saudi Arabia and was also one of the founders of the women’s College. Ms. Abedin is also the mother of Huma Abedin, a Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton who, as reported in an earlier post, paid a visit to the college in February. As that post discussed, Dar El-Hekma is known to have been also founded by Yaseen Abdullah Kadi (aka Yassin Abdullah Kadi), designated as a terrorist by the U.S as well as by important Saudi bankers and members of the Bin Laden family. Saleha Abedin, along with her late husband Syed Z. Abedin, were also founders of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a London organization that is known to have been close at one time to the Saudi Muslim World League.
In an article on “financial jihad”, authors Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen provide some useful information about the role of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), known to have funded many global Muslim Brotherhood-related projects:
In 1969, the Saudis convened Arab and Muslim states to unify the “struggle for Islam,” and have ever since been the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC’s) major sponsor. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The Jidda-based, “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” OIC’s charter mandates and coordinates “support [of]the struggle of the Palestinian people, . . . recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories.” The OIC charter includes all the MB principles. Its first international undertaking in 1973 was to establish the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “in accordance with the principles of the shariah,”as prescribed by the MB—and to launch the fast-growing petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. The IDB, more a development than commercial bank, was established largely “to promote Islamic banking worldwide.” “[A]n Islamic organization must serve God… and ultimately sustain …the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” And the IDB has done just that. Between 1975 to 2005, the IDB approved over $50 billion in funding to Muslim countries, ostensibly to develop their economic and educational infrastructures, but effected little regional economic impact. Its educational efforts, however, paid huge yields—via the rapid and significant spread of radical Islam worldwide. Moreover, in 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million23 raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf royal telethons to support the Palestinian intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled UN funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the IDB received UN observer status in 2007. According to a 1991 U.S. Library of Congress report on Sudan, the IDB also supported Faisal Islamic Bank, established in 1977 under Sudan’s Faisal Islamic Bank Act by Saudi prince Muhammad ibn Faisal Al Saud and managed by local Muslim Brotherhood members and their party, the National Islamic Front. Soon other political groups and parties formed their own Islamic banks. Together, Sudanese Islamic banks then acquired 20 percent of the country’s deposits “providing the financial basis to turn Sudan into an Islamic state in 1983, and promoting the Islamic governmental policies to date.” Sudan Islamized its banking in 1989. However, Pakistan was the first country to officially Islamize its banking practices, in 1979.
Previous posts have discussed the role of the IDB in funding a project of a Ukrainian Brotherhood organization and sponsoring a philanthropic conference held by aa organizaton with Brotherhood ties. Another post noted that IDB representatives were in attendance at a Saudi charity seminar attended by Wael Julaidan, possibly the known founder and financier of Al Qaeda.
Ingrid Mattson was elected as President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in 2006 after long service as an ISNA functionary including as ISNA Vice-President. She is also the director of the Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations which appears to be developing growing ties with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), another important part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and Mattson was recently appointed to the newly established IIIT Council of Scholars. As discussed in the post on Hillary Clinton’s visit to Dar El-Hekhma, Yassin Kadi was a major shareholder in Ptech, a company close to the now defunct SAAR Foundation whose leadership was largely the same as that of IIIT.
As documented in a Hudson Institute report, ISNA grew directly out of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The organization has a long history of fundamentalism, anti-semitism, and support for terrorism and during the recent Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, ISNA was named as an unindicted co-conspirator as a result of what the government called “ISNA’s and NAIT’s intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case.” Although it is true that recently ISNA has issued condemnations of terrorism which for the first time identify Hamas and Hezbollah by name, there is no indication that the organization has ever addressed or acknowledged its history of support for terrorism. Also, as the Hudson Institute report observes, almost all of the ISNA founders remain active in the organization and ISNA maintains close relations with all other components of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.