Excerpt:
Huron University College (HUC) in Ontario announced Friday morning the appointment of Ingrid Mattson, a professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), as the first London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at its Faculty of Theology.
The move validates widespread concern, as revealed in this Campus Watch article by Canadian journalist Barbara Kay and a letter from concerned faculty and friends at HUC, both published in May, that the support of several Islamist groups in funding the chair would lead to the appointment of a radical Islamist as the first holder. In Ingrid Mattson, the funders' wishes have been fulfilled.
Mattson, an Ontario native and convert to Islam whom the New York Times called, "perhaps the most noticed figure among American Muslim women," has a long history of defending, denying, and obfuscating the true nature of radical Islam in settings both academic and political. She was the first woman and convert to lead ISNA, which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, a terrorism financing case that tracked monies funneled to Hamas. Daniel Pipes has written that, under Mattson's leadership, ISNA was "a key component of the Wahhabi lobby." Journalist Stephen Schwartz noted earlier this year that, her tenure at ISNA complete, Mattson was "still advancing radical Islam," as she did in an October, 2001, CNN chat room when she claimed that Wahhabi Islam "really was analogous to the European protestant reformation."