An article posted on Islam Online entitled “Is There a Muslim Lobby in the US?” makes the rather extraordinary claim that there is no organized Islamic lobby operating in the United States. After opening with a discussion about the controversial John Mearsheimer paper on the “Israel Lobby”, the article says:
Although there is no national consensus data on the number of Muslims in the United States, estimates put the figure between six and seven million, equal to the number of Jews in the country. Each religious group accounts for two percent of the US population. While the global population of Jews is some 15 million, there are nearly 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. If the logic of strength in numbers is applied, why then is there no Muslim lobby to balance the strong influence of other lobby groups?
After vastly overstating overstating the U.S. Muslim population, estimated by a Pew study at at 2.35 million, the statement ignores the existence of groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the defunct American Muslim Council (AMC) who appear to be directly modeled upon the corresponding Jewish organizations and who frequently act in concert though coalitions, support of the same causes, and other joint actions In contrast to their counterparts in the Jewish world, these organizations, which are all tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood network, appear to receive substantial funding from outside the United States, chiefly from sources in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The reason and timing of this article and claim is unknown but it may have some connection to the recent naming of many of the Brotherhood-Linked organizations as unindicted co-conspirators in the terrorism financing case against the Holy Land Foundation which was supported by these same organizations. The claim that there is no organized Islamic lobby may be an attempt to deflect attention from this development or perhaps even to serve as a basis for a new set of organization should developments further weaken or even destroy the existing Brotherhood organizations.