Local media is reporting that the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has held a 2010 National Muslim American Youth Summit. According to a public radio report:
For many, this first annual National Muslim American Youth Summit was their first exposure to the world “inside the Beltway.” That wasn’t the case for Salaha Khan, a Georgetown student from Van Nuys. Khan says she’s heard it all before: Washington could be doing a better job. She says there’s a negative connotation to government. “When you say government, people are like, ‘Aargh!’ And they just think that it’s, like, this massive body of like people who are kind of, like, abstract, out there, who are not really human, they’re kind of like, just machines, politicians, liars, you know, all that stuff.” Khan says her opinion about public servants changed when she and fellow Georgetown students lobbied Congress about Vietnamese Internet freedom and immigration reform. She says she discovered that civil servants, “more often or not.,.. are sincere, hardworking people who really care about what they’re doing.” She calls that “inspiring.” Khan joined Muslim students from around the country making the rounds of Capitol Hill as part of a youth summit organized by the Muslim Public Affairs Council……The trip was inspirational for Marjon Momand of Rancho Palos Verdes. The UC Berkeley student says the light went on for her when she visited the people who conduct the Gallup poll and learned about a survey of American perceptions of Muslims……During their D.C., visit, the Muslim students made the rounds of Congressional offices — and met with policy makers at the State, Justice, and Homeland Security departments.
Although the summit was described as the first of its kind, a post from 2007 reported on a similar event held by MPAC in July 2007. It should be noted that the Gallup Muslim polling unit is operated by Obama faith advisor Dahlia Mogahed and Georgetown academic John Esposito, both with ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood.
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. A previous post reported that MPAC recently participated in a White House meeting with President Obama and cabinet officials to announce the President’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
(Note; GMBDW apologizes for any confusion over this event; there had been an earlier post but it was sourced incorrectly and then deleted)