Rashad Hussain, President Obama's special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), will join representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations at a Chicago conference next week. Hussain will join Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on a panel discussing OIC relations with American Muslims.
Rehab is not the only conference speaker associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Others scheduled to address the conference include John Esposito, an academic sympathetic with the Brotherhood, and Safaa Zarzour, Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
ISNA was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. And CAIR was linked in court papers to a Brotherhood-organized Hamas-support effort.
According to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, the conference, which begins Tuesday and ends on Thursday, will take place at the American Islamic College (AIC) in Chicago. A Hudson Institute report last year identified the AIC as "the first Islamic university in the U.S.," one that was planned by the Muslim Students Association (MSA). The AIC was once headed by MSA founder Ahmed Sakr.
The Chicago appearance is just the latest controversy during Hussain's brief tenure as special envoy to the OIC. In February, Hussain initially claimed he could not remember blasting the Justice Department for "politically motivated prosecutions" of terrorist suspects, including the case against Sami Al-Arian, who pled guilty to providing support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and served on its governing board.
After Politico provided quotes from a recording of the event to the White House documenting that he had made the speech in question, Hussain reversed himself and admitted making the comments.
In July, Hussain addressed ISNA's annual conference in Chicago.