The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) joins other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations in exploiting the tragedy in Norway to try and separate Islam from terrorism. According to the MPAC statement:
The Muslim Public Affairs Council strongly condemns the acts of violence in Utoya and Oslo, Norway, where 92 lives were lost. Our condolences go to the victims’ families loved ones as they pick up the pieces after Friday’s tragedy. Yesterday, Norwegian police charged Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, in connection with the bombing in central Oslo and a shooting attack in the nearby island of Utoya. “We are horrified by this senseless act of violence and, as expressed by President Barack Obama, we stand in solidarity with the poeple of Norway,” said MPAC President Salam Al-Marayati. “Terrorism has no religion, and we should fight this disease.” Initial articles and blogs drew the immediate conclusion the attacks were the work of Muslims, labeling it an act of terrorism. Counterterrorism “experts” were brought in to speak about the attack, the deadliest in the country since World War II. “It was soon learned the main suspect in the case as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration,” said the New York Times. It is during tragic times like these that we must ensure that responsibility and conscious reporting and analysis is used by pundits and politicians. Ensuring that accuracy is part of our discourse will allow for respect for the victims and their families who are suffering tremendously.”
Previous posts have discussed similar statements from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). An earlier post presented the four principles on which the Global Muslim Brotherhood bases its positions on terrorism, the first of which is Denial:
1. DENIAL- Since the Brotherhood is pursuing Islamization and eventually Shariah (Islamic Law), it is necessary at all costs to deny that Islam as a religion has any connection to violence or terrorism. Of course, the Brotherhood represents Islamism as opposed to Islam in this regard but since the general audience does not understand that distinction, it is Islam which is the Brotherhood reference. They cannot afford to fail in this denial and the denial strategy is usually pursued through sophistry. That is, the Brotherhood claims that Islam is unfairly associated with terrorism while Christianity, Judaism, and other religions are not (e.g. Abortion bombers are not called Christian Terrorists) and/or that other religious terrorism is just as dangerous as Islamic terrorism. The Brotherhood may be winning this battle (see here.)
MPAC, headquartered in Southern California, 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.