Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, has come under scrutiny, for suspected ties to Muslim Brotherhood. “Why aren’t we talking about Huma [Abedin] and her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? Why aren’t we talking about the fact that she was an editor for a Sharia newspaper?” Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), asked in an interview on CNN, on August 23, 2016.
Abedin had worked for her when Clinton was first lady, a senator and secretary of state. Abedin is now vice chair of the Clinton campaign. She is married to former representative Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who had resigned in disgrace over sex-tinged social media posts.
According to a report in Washington Post, Abedin has been the subject of suspicion on the right, given that she grew up in Saudi Arabia (after being born in Kalamazoo, Mich.) before attending George Washington University. Roger Stone, a top adviser to GOP nominee Donald Trump, described Abedin on Aug. 23 as a “Saudi asset.” Her name popped in the news again after the New York Post published an article on Aug. 21 titled, “Huma Abedin worked at a radical Muslim journal for a dozen years” – what Duffy was referring to when he said she was “an editor for a Sharia newspaper.” The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni Islamic movement that is a force in Middle Eastern politics – and labeled by some countries as a terrorist organization.
However, Washington Post has reported that “Abedin was not associated with a newspaper but a staid academic journal called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. The journal is edited by Abedin’s mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, who is a dean of a Saudi woman’s college in Jiddah that Clinton visited when she was secretary of state.”
The Post clarified that the fact that “Huma Abedin was listed as an assistant editor between 1996 and 2008 is not news, as that had previously been reported in 2012. The Clinton campaign says Abedin played no role in editing articles; her brother and sister are also listed as staff members.”
Washington Post wrote: “The New York Post described the journal as “a radical Muslim publication” but that’s ridiculous, according to experts on Islam and members of the advisory board. The New York Post report cherry-picked quotes and mischaracterized articles published over the years, including by Saleha Abedin, according to a review of the articles by the Fact Checker.
“I wouldn’t consider it ‘radical.’ Quite the contrary,” said Noah Feldman, director of the Julius-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of articles expressing conservative viewpoints, of course. But I’ve never seen anything in any way radical.”
Regarding Huma Abedin’s supposed “ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington Post reported that Abedin’s mother founded an aid organization in the 1990s called the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, which at one point was said to be affiliated with International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief. IICDR was banned in Israel years later for allegedly supporting Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, under the auspices of yet another group, the Union of Good. The Union of Good was designated by Treasury in 2008 for aiding a terrorist organization.
According to Washington Post, Duffy asked why the alleged Muslim Brotherhood connections to Huma Abedin are not being talked about. “Perhaps it’s because they are bogus. Abedin has lived in the United States for nearly a quarter-century, working in the White House, the Senate and the State Department. Vague suggestions of suspicious-sounding connections to her parents don’t pass the laugh test, even at the flimsiest standard of guilt by association. The journal edited by her mother, meanwhile, is not “sharia newspaper” but a sober academic journal with a range of viewpoints on Muslim life around the world.”.
