US media has reported on a dispute at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference regarding the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US. According to a POLITICO report:
While a gay rights controversy drew headlines at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, another — and even more bitter — dispute rippled as views varied widely on how to reconcile the conservative movement with Islam in the United States. At the 38th annual conservative gathering, there was no shortage of accusations of Islamist sympathies, Muslim Brotherhood infiltration and charges of fear-mongering. Republican presidential hopefuls, including Newt Gingrich and John Thune, also drew applause with suggestions that the Obama administration has taken a politically correct blind eye to the connection between radical Islam and terrorism. Freshman Rep. Allen West also drew thunderous applause in his keynote speech about the threat to America posed by Islam and other security threats. And as Republican candidates define their national security stands in the 2012 elections, conservative discomfort with Islam in America will be a feature of the debate…..CPAC organizers held an official panel on the threat of sharia law, with several other affiliated, but unofficial, events on inclusion, religious liberty and the so-called ground zero mosque controversy, featuring the controversial blogger Pam Geller and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer….Bush’s outreach to the Muslim community netted him the single largest share of the Muslim vote in 2000, but nearly all Muslim voters drifted back toward Obama in 2008. Relations between the GOP and the Muslim community reached an all-time low when many prominent members of the GOP took public stands against the building of a mosque in Lower Manhattan. The tensions broke most clearly to the surface in a small panel on religious freedom sponsored by the group Muslims for America and moderated by the American Conservative Union’s only Muslim board member. The discussion was interrupted several times by attendees questioning the moderator, Suhail Khan, about radical ties and sympathies. Khan faced repeated and hostile questions about his ties and his parents ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as a handful attendees with video cameras and recording devices crowded the rear of the room to pressed him on the terror issues. “These are smear tactics that have circulated against me for the last 10 years,” said Khan, responding to audience questions by a participant about alleged ties to radical organizations — ties that Khan has ferociously denied, pointing to his service in the Bush administration and his security background vetting by the Department of Justice and the Secret Service for those sensitive political positions…..At a well-attended Friday event paid for and sponsored by Geller and Spencer, accusations that the conservative conference has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood were tossed around with abandon — and concerns about Islam itself as a faith were openly voiced by both audience members and panelists.
It should be noted that Suhail Khan is the son of leaders at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a one-time ISNA Committee member. Both ISNA and CAIR are identified by a Hudson Institute report as part of the US Muslim Brotherhood.