The Muslim Public Affair Council (MPAC) has announced further interactions with the U.S. government, announcing that it presented an educational briefing at the State Department this week. According to the announcement:
Yesterday, MPAC presented an educational briefing at the State Department based on our paper “Abusing Women, Abusing Islam: Re-Examining Sharia Court Rulings in Contemporary Times.” The forum was co-sponsored by the Religion & Gobal Affairs Working Group and the Office of Global Women’s Issues in the State Department. Over 40 individuals from multiple offices within the State Department and other government agencies joined the one-and-a-half-hour discussion….After our presentations, the MPAC panel opened up for a roundtable of questions concerning the research and recommendations. Many attendees expressed gratitude and continued interest in MPAC’s work. Aziza Hasan and Alejandro Beutel, MPAC Government Liaison, will be meeting with individual legislative offices to present the findings of the paper so that it can serve as a resource to other Congressional committees.
MPAC also recently announced that a Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General would be a featured speaker at its 9th annual convention in November.
MPAC was established initially in 1986 as the Political Action Committee of the Islamic Center of Southern California whose key leaders likely had their origins in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Since that time, MPAC has functioned as the political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood. MPAC has opposed virtually every count-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government. At times this opposition was said to be on civil-rights grounds but, just as often, MPAC claimed that U.S. counter-terror efforts were aimed at the U.S. Muslim community itself. MPAC has consistently supported and facilitated terrorism by supporting terrorist organizations and, more broadly, constructing an elaborate ideology defending the use of violence by Islamists and Islamist organizations. More than any other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization, MPAC has developed extensive relationships with the U.S. government which have included numerous meetings with the Department of Justice and the FBI.