Huma Abedin's fellow Board Member at MSA defended TLC's All American Muslim

Recently, we wrote about Huma Abedin's time on the Board of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at George Washington University. A woman she served alongside with on that Board is Souheila Al-Jadda, who is currently a member of the Board of Contributors for USA Today. Al-Jadda has also served as a legislative assistant for Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

Nearly one year ago, a program on The Learning Channel (TLC) was the source of controversy when Lowe's decided to pull its advertising from TLC's All American Muslim (AAM), a show that followed the lives of five Muslim families in Dearborn, MI. Concerns raised initially by the Florida Family Association (FFA) were validated when we examined the background of the Imam featured in the show. His name is Husham Al-Husainy. In the show, he was highly respected and presided over the wedding of a Muslim girl and her fiance, who converted so they could marry.

Here is what we wrote at the time, thanks to Walid's translation of the Jerusalem Document, via Human Events:

Al-Husainy is a signatory to the Jerusalem Document of 2009, which reads more like Mein Kampf. It refers to the war on Zionism as a war between “good and evil.”   Zionism is considered an “aggression” that is infecting “the entire human race.” Muslims are told to “get ready for the Holy Jihad.”

If one is inclined to believe this is the “struggle within” version of jihad, the reading of the following phrase after translation should prompt a reevaluation:

“We remind our sons to get ready to carry out their duty in Holy Jihad and continue the path which our young valiant men in Hezbollah began in Southern Lebanon.”

Here is a radio interview from 2007 between Sean Hannity and Husham Al-Husainy who would not denounce Hezbollah and ultimately cut the interview short when he hung up on Hannity:



With this as a backdrop, let's look at the words of Souheila Al-Jadda. During the AAM controversy, she wrote an article for the USA Today, which said, in part, the following:

To me, and many other Muslim Americans, this is the strength of the TV show — demystifying a community that has long been misunderstood. With an opening night audience of 1.7 million, according to Broadcasting & Cable, All-American Muslim will hopefully change the national discourse about Muslims from that of suspicion and exclusion to one of greater trust and inclusion. 

Propaganda charges

But a number of critics and activists are unfairly attacking the program, claiming the show is Muslim propaganda that hides the extremist agenda. Some are even pressuring companies, in addition to Lowe's, to pull their advertising to force the show off the air. These attacks are not only short on substance but also wrong on principle and bad for America. They undermine ever-evolving American values of pluralism and tolerance.

A little bit later, Al-Jadda invoked the Ground Zero mosque controversy as another case in point (yes, it seems that Al-Jadda supported construction of the mosque, despite Feisal Abdul Rauf's ties to extremists):

It's no secret that anti-Muslim rhetoric continues to plague public discussions about this community. From New York Rep. Pete King's Muslim radicalization hearings in Congress this year to the anti-sharia movement to the debate surrounding an Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York, Muslims hear this drumbeat of suspicion even a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Additional irony is provided by Al-Jadda when she terms the problems people had with AAM as being "bigotry and stereotyping". Al-Husainy wouldn't denounce the virulently racist / anti-Semitic Hezbollah. Giving the USA Today contributor the benefit of the doubt would require an assumption that she doesn't know the views of Al-Husainy and would denounce them if she did. It's been nearly a year since the All American Muslim controversy and about five years since Al-Husainy hung-up on Hannity. Isn't it about time for Al-Jadda to denounce him (and Hezbollah / Hamas / MSA)?



Uh, that poses a bit of a problem, however.

Al-Jadda served on the Board of the Muslim Students Association at George Washington University with... Huma Abedin. She would have to denounce a Muslim Brotherhood organization with which she is inextricably tied.

Moreover, thanks to the Florida Family Association, it was learned that an All American Muslim styled program was broadcast to six million high school students in America in which two MSA Presidents were profiled.

Incidentally, in a New York Times article that mentions GWU by name, the following is said about the MSA:

Donations from Saudi Arabia largely financed the group, and its leaders pushed the kingdom’s puritan, Wahhabi strain of Islam. Prof. Hamid Algar of the University of California, Berkeley, said that in the 1960s and 1970s, chapters advocated theological and political positions derived from radical Islamist organizations and would brook no criticism of Saudi Arabia.

That would be the same Saudi Arabia that commissioned Abdullah Omar Naseef to found the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) and put Huma Abedin's parents in charge of it.

After twelve years at the IMMA as an Assistant Editor, Huma went to work for Hillary Clinton as her closest advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff (after having already served the First Lady as an aide since 1996, one year before she was listed as being on the MSA Board).

Here again is the screen shot of that 1997 MSA Board at GWU:



Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the book, Unsung Davids