OnIslam, the Islamic news portal associated with Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, has posted an interview with Dr. Jasser Auda, a key advisor to Imamn Feisal Rauf, best known for his attempts to build an Islamic center two blocks away from the site of the 911 attacks. In the interview , when Dr. Auda is asked about the main challenges facing American Muslims, Dr. Auda replies replies alleging that racists and bigots, some with “Zionist agendas” are the main challenge facing American Muslims:
I think the challenges are mostly political. Of course there are cultural challenges where they have to kind of develop the initiatives that they took, in mosques being more family-friendly and women-friendly, and I think this is very important to develop. But I think the major challenge is political because there are so many people who have a political agenda against minorities in general, on racial basis or partisan basis or something. And these people are very powerful in the media, some of them have some Zionist agendas, some of them are pro-Israel and they think that the American Muslims are going to be a problem for their political views, and political agendas. So this is the main challenge in America for Muslims from my perspective.
In December 2008, the International Institute of Islamic Thought reported that Dr. Auda accompanied Dr. Rauf on a visit to IIIT in order to explain the Shari’ah Index Project, part of Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative organization. Dr. Auda was member of the Advisory Council of Scholars for the Project.
An online biography reveals that Dr. Auda has ties to a number of Global Muslim Brotherhood organizations including being:
-A founding member of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), headed by Youssef Qaradawi and whose board of directors is comprised of many leaders of the global Brotherhood.
-A member of the Academic Council of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the US Muslim Brotherhood founded 1980 by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leaders who wished to promote the Islamization of Knowledge as conceived by and who were also early leaders of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
-A member of the Executive Board of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists UK, founded in the US in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Muslim Student Association by important members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and part of the Islamization of KNowledge Project. AMSS has close relations with IIIT.
In the OnIslam interview, Dr. Auda also discusses the support provided to the Shari’ah Index Project provided by Dahlia Mogahed and the Gallup organization. Ms. Mogahed is a Faith Advisor to President Obama who is the daughter of an Egyptian immigrant with ties to US Muslim Brotherhood organizations. She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies that also includes Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito, a longtime supporter of the Global Muslim Brotherhood.