A U.S. based scholar with many connections to the Muslim Brotherhood has been elected President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS). According to the website of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Dr. Ali A. Mazrui has been elected the new AMSS President at the recent annual conference that also elected eight other officers to the AMSS Executive Board for a two-year term. According to an online biography, Dr. Mazuri has held positions in several organizations with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood including the American Muslim Council, the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (founder/Chair), and the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. In 2001, he was listed as a member of the advisory board of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In addition, he is a faculty member of Binghamton University, State University of New York, a former “special advisor” to the World Bank, and the creator of the television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, which was jointly produced by the BBC and the Public Broadcasting Service in 1986.
The AMSS was founded in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Muslim Student Association by important members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood including Jamal Barzinji, currently a leader of IIIT, and the late Ismail Faruqi, a pivotal figure in the “Islamization of Knowledge” project. AMSS has sponsored annual conferences and publishes a journal entitled American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) in conjunction with IIIT which plays host to the AMSS. AMSS has been especially active in Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan. According to the notice of Dr. Mazuri’s election:
Professor Mazrui takes charge at a crucial juncture in the development of AMSS as a scholarly organization. The AMSS has recently revamped its bylaws and has been reviewing its legal status and strategic direction. It continues to publish its quarter-yearly journal, American Journal of Islamic and Social Sciences (AJISS) in association with International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), with a recently elected new board of editors.