Illustrating interesting relationships within the global Muslim Brotherhood, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) has announced that the Association of Muslim Social Scientists UK (AMSSUK) has presented an award to the “Common Word Project.” According to the announcement :
The AMSS UK is pleased to announce that its prestigious Building Bridges Award for 2008 has been given to ‘A CommonWord’ project. The announcement was made in a message by Dr. Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali, Chair of AMSS UK, and conveyed by his eminence Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia and member of the AMSS UK Advisory Board, at the Opening Lectures of ‘A Common Word and Future Muslim-Christian Engagement’ conference convened by the Rt. Hon. Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, arranged in collaboration with Cambridge University Interfaith Programme and hosted by the University of Cambridge on 12-15 October 2008.
Previous posts have discussed the background to the Common Word group which came about in connection with a letter to the Pope drafted by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan. Last year, the Institute also sponsored the so-called “Amman Message” that was signed by many Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute is headed by Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal who, according to a blog covering Christian affairs, asserted at a recent Yale conference that Western societies are in a “pre-genocidal” phase with respect to their Muslim populations.
AMSSUK, in turn, is the U.K. branch of the American organization by the same name which is headquartered at IIIT, a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. It was not previously known that Mustafa Ceric was part of AMSSUK as he is not currently listed as such on the AMSS UK webpage. Other well-known AMSSUK individuals associated in various ways with the global Brotherhood include
- Dr. Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali (IIT London)
- Khurshid Ahmed (Islamic Foundation)
- Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)
- Charles Butterworth (University of Maryland)
- Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Cardiff University)
The AMSSUK announcement also provided further details about the Building Bridges Award and its past recipients:
The Building Bridges Award was inaugurated in 2002 by AMSS (UK), a non-profit organization based in London and committed to the development of perspectives on contemporary local and global issues through research, scholarship, conferences and publications. The award is given for outstanding accomplishment by individuals, groups and organizations. Previous distinguished recipients have been, in date order, Charles Le Gai Eaton (2003), Karen Armstrong (2004), the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams (2005), Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero of Spain and Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan of Turkey (2006), and Professor Ekmeledin Ihsnaoglu, Secretary General of the OIC (2007)
Archbishop Williams attracted global attention in February when he suggested that adoption of certain parts of Shariah Law (Islamic Law) seemed inevitable in Britain.