Muslim American Society

The Muslim American Society (MAS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. MAS describes itself as a grassroots Islamic movement. It has over 50 chapters across the United States.
Aims.
According to its website, the society is a “dynamic charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational, organization” aiming for a virtuous and just American society. Its mission is to "move people to strive for God consciousness, liberty, and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity." It describes its core values as godliness, just balance, comprehensiveness, positive citizenship, justice, development, cooperation, diversity, and commitment.
History.
MAS was founded by a small group of American Muslims who wanted to have a Muslim organization in the United States that would allow them to "organize and integrate Muslims to be a contributing part of American society, to see themselves as Muslim Americans."
MAS has grown into one of the largest Muslim organizations in America and offers a range of programs and services ranging from youth programs to a yearly convention held in Chicago.
Towards this end, and often in cooperation with other organizations, MAS provides opportunities to engage U.S. Muslims to participate into a variety of social experiences including community service, interfaith and youth programs, civic and political activism.
Publications and projects.
The Muslim American Society advertises on its website a number of publications produced by MAS’ prominent members and affiliates or deemed essential for the educational purposes.
Among the publications currently sponsored by MAS are:
MAS also promotes several projects:
MAS helps students to read, understand, and memorize the Quran through its Quran Institute.
Affiliations.
MAS also has an affiliate, the MAS Freedom Foundation, whose executive director is Mahdi Bray. For a number of years, Esam Omeish was its President.
MAS has participated in interfaith dialogue with the U.S. Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.
Controversy.
In 2016, at a point when representative Keith Ellison was the leading contender to become Chair of the Democratic National Committee, it was discovered that in a speech at a 2010 Muslim American Society fundraiser, Ellison had asserted that United States foreign policy is "governed by" Israel.
In 2019, the Middle East Media Research Institute unveiled a video of children in a Philadelphia MAS center singing about the "blood of martyrs", "We will defend Palestine with our bodies. We will chop off their heads", and "We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling his promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture". The Anti-Defamation League said that portrayed events were "extremely disturbing" and that "Children should not be indoctrinated to hate". The national MAS organization said in response that "This was an unintended mistake and an oversight in which the center and the students are remorseful. MAS will conduct an internal investigation to ensure this does not occur again". It also said that the organizer of the program at which the event occurred had no affiliation with the organization, and was only renting the space from MAS.
Alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Legal proceedings related to the trials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), eventually designated by the U.S. authorities as a terrorist front providing material support to Hamas included some people allegedly connected to MAS. FBI agent Laura Burns, who was involved in the HLF investigation, testified that a phonebook found at the home of an unindicted co-conspirator and former assistant to Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook, Ismail Elbarrasse, included the names of the three founding incorporators of the Muslim American Society, Ahmed Elkadi, Jamal Badawi, and Omar Soubani, among the contact information of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the United States. Ahmed-Ullah, Roe and Cohen also claimed that Muslim Brotherhood leaders both in the U.S. and in Egypt campaigned for the founding of the Muslim American Society in the early 1990s. The authors claimed that the goal of the organization was to promote the same ideological goals as the Muslim Brotherhood, namely the reformation of American society through the spread of Islam towards the final establishment of Islamic rule on American soil. Abdurrahman Alamoudi, an influential lobbyist and fundraiser and once advisor to Bill Clinton’s administration who pleaded guilty in 2004 to charges including engaging in illegal financial transactions with the Libyan government and facilitating a Libyan plot to assassinate then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, testified in court in 2012 that MAS was a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In an article published by the controversial "Counterterrorism Blog" in 2007, Mohamed Habib, a Cairo-based senior Muslim Brotherhood official, reportedly ascribed the reasons for MAS’ simultaneously espousing the Muslim Brotherhood ideology and distancing itself from the global movement to “security inconveniences” experienced by the organization after 9/11 in the U.S.
MAS has responded to the accusations by saying that although some people involved in the founding of the organization were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, it does not have any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or any international organization.
Alleged Terrorism ties.
In November 2014 MAS was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, with 84 other organizations which included Al Qaida, Daesh, the Muslim Brotherhood and its regional and local affiliates, and other regional and international groups. MAS, CAIR and similar European groups were listed due to their alleged Muslim Brotherhood ties.
Jamal Balawi, one of the three MAS founders, is listed among the “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity for which he allegedly fundraised. Balawi also notoriously endorsed “combative jihad” and suicide bombings, and publicly celebrated Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.” A former MAS Communications Director, Randall Royer, was arrested in 2003 by federal agents and charged of conspiring with Lashkar-i-Taibi (Army of the Righteous), a Pakistani Wahhabi terrorist group to engage in terrorist operations in Chechnya, Kashmir and elsewhere. Royer was a member of the “Virginia Jihad Network,” a network of jihadists centered in North Virginia, and he acknowledged supporting several members of that circle to access Lashkar-i-Taibi training camps.
Finally, a significant number of advertisers in MAS publication The American Muslim, which often contain references to suicide bombings as martyr operations, were later uncovered by the U.S. authorities to be involved in terror financing. It is worth mentioning in particular: