The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is applauding a visit to Cairo by a leader of the Muslim Society of America, part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. According to the Egyptian Brotherhood website:
Mahdi Bray is a prominent US human rights activist and Executive Director of MAS Freedom, the civic and human rights advocacy entity of the Muslim American Society. He has assumed several top human rights posts. He is also a top and an advisory member in the US Islamic Council and an advisor to Interfaith Coalition. Bray led several anti-war marches in front of the White House. He is also a civil rights activist inside and outside the United States . Bray was also a charter-member of the National Coalition for the protection of political liberties. He is also .[sentence ends]In the 1960s, Bray was a member in the International Action Centre which was headed by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Bray”s current visit to Cairo is the second. He came to Egypt several months ago to underscore his stance of rejecting referring Muslim Brotherhood leaders to the military tribunal and to monitor this military tribunal. He comes again to reiterate the same attitude while the trial is coming to a close.
As a previous post discussed, Bray was indeed in Cairo last August “to express solidarity with Muslim Brotherhood detainees on trial before a military court and to call for an end to the crackdown on the Egyptian opposition.” Ramsey Clark, Mr. Bray’s former colleague at the International Action Center, was also in Egypt last July where he was prevented from attending the trial of Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
The Muslim American Society is a less well-known part of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. that first came to national attention when the Chicago Tribune did a feature story on the group in September 2004. As the earlier post stated, in that story, the head of the MAS denied any connection with the Muslim Brotherhood saying:
Ikhwan [Brotherhood] members founded MAS, but MAS went way beyond that point of conception…Now, he says, his group has no connection with the Brotherhood and disagrees with the international organization on many issues.
An MAS leader appears to be expending a great deal of time and effort on a group with which his organization says it has no connection.