"How in the world could anyone write a lengthy article about the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), without mentioning once that the group has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the nation’s largest terrorism trial?"
That's what Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is wondering about USA Today's gauzy August 21 profile of Islamic convert and ISNA president Ingrid Mattson.
In June, Johnson picked up on ISNA's brush with federal prosecutors in a blog post entitled "A Really Bad CAIR Day." You can also read more reporting on the matter in Josh Gerstein's June 4 New York Sun article, "Islamic Groups Named in Hamas Funding Case."
Indeed, while reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman failed to mention ISNA's ties to Hamas, the USA Today writer focused on how sick and tired Mattson is of persistently denouncing radical Islam:
HARTFORD, Conn. — Ingrid Mattson knows the media drill well.
She has done the "We condemn … (fill in the terrorism incident)" speeches — as if, she says, that's all anyone needs to hear from the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
She has done the profiles of her as first woman/first convert/first North American-born head of the continent's largest Muslim group.
She has done the talk shows retelling how 20 years ago, she left the Catholicism of her Canadian childhood and her college focus on philosophy and fine arts to find her spiritual home in Islam.
"It's time now to move the focus back off me and back on the issues," says Mattson, a professor at Hartford Seminary, where she directs the first U.S.-accredited Muslim chaplaincy program at the Macdonald Center.
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters. You can follow him on Twitter here






















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this is
Wed, 08/22/2007 - 13:41 ET by smitty031a ostrich.
...(ostrich stuffs its own head in a large pile of sand)
NOW, this is a liberal MSM newsreporter...
Any questions?
Yada Yada
Wed, 08/22/2007 - 14:30 ET by BeanManWe've done the "Suicide bomber blows up (fill in the number) of innocent civilians in the town of (fill in the town name)" speeches too.
I agree, it does get old.
Since government is coercion, politics is largely the exercise of deception regarding the intended use of coercion - George Orwell
"how sick and tired Mattson
Thu, 08/23/2007 - 14:32 ET by Khyris"how sick and tired Mattson is of persistently denouncing radical Islam"
too bad.
I will continue to denounce radical Islam and illegal immigration, and continue to NOT denounce Islam and immigration, despite how the media portrays us as doing both.
I'm sitting 5 feet from a Muslim man at work, who's easily the nicest guy in the office. He has no problem denouncing terrorists like Hamas, unlike the CAIR's and ISNA's of the world who will hem and haw rather than call a terrorist a terrorist.