NEW YORK (JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League has accused two Muslim groups of using an Islamic summit as a platform for anti-Semitic rhetoric.
After reviewing transcripts of a convocation for a conference in Chicago in late December, the ADL said that the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America "served as a forum for religious scholars and political activists to rail against Jews, call for the eradication of the state of Israel and accuse the United States government as waging a war against Muslims at home and abroad," the Washington Times reported.
The ADL said the conference, which was billed as promoting positive solutions to hate, included several radical Muslim clerics, including Anwar al-Awlaki, who has encouraged jihad against the United States and was tied to Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan. Awlaki also had ties to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day.
Conference officials called the ADL’s claims "totally inaccurate" and said they had disinvited two radical Islamic speakers.
"We brought in 700 youth from across the country to refute the views held by al-Awlaki," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of MAS Freedom. "The ADL didn’t mention our interfaith program either.
"As for the books and materials, we had a bazaar with 300 vendors. There was no way we could police everything that was published there just as the ADL would not be able to stop groups at one of their conferences from posting Islamophobic materials."
