ati, is a practicing physician and founder of the
Muslim Women’s League. Both are active MPAC
leaders, American citizens, and spokespersons
on Muslim affairs in the United States. They
have each testified before Congress and, in 1998,
at the request of Hillary Rodham Clinton, they
organized a White House celebration of id al-
Fitr (the Fast-Breaking Feast).
Citing the qUran, MPAC identifies its vision
in terms of what it considers to be the Islamic
values of mercy, justice, peace, human dignity,
freedom, and equality. Its mission is to work
in cooperation with public institutions in the
United States and to prepare American Muslims
for leadership in the public sphere. In addition
to promoting the interests of American Muslims
and involvement in civil liberties education and
advocacy, MPAC has also been engaged in com-
bating anti-Islamic sentiments (Islamophobia) in
the United States, working with public officials
and the law in helping to secure the country from
terrorism, and strengthening ties to Muslims in
other parts of the world. It has offices in Wash-
ington, D.C., and Los Angeles, as well as chapters
in New York, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona.
Its organization includes departments assigned
to build relations with Congress, the media, the
community, and to combat hate crimes. MPAC
has issued several books and policy papers deal-
ing with human rights, Muslim identity, ter-
rorism, and counterterrorism. Every year since
2001 it has convened a national conference for
discussion of these and related issues, and it has
welcomed nationally recognized politicians and
media commentators as guest speakers. MPAC
issues press releases regularly that address cur-
rent events, including condemnations of acts of
Islamic terrorism as well as calls for an equitable
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for
interfaith harmony. The organization has been
attacked by some groups and individuals because
of its promotion of Muslim issues in the Ameri-
can public sphere, but these attacks have been
offset by the organization’s interfaith activities
and by the bridges it has built to a wide variety
of community agencies and minority groups,
including African Americans, Japanese Ameri-
cans, and Korean Americans.
See also coUncil on american-islamic
relations.Further reading: Aslam Abdullah and Ghasser Hathout,
American Muslim Identity: Speaking for Ourselves (Los
Angeles: Multimedia Vera International, 2003); Zahid
H. Bukhari, Sulayman S. Nyang, et al., Muslim’s Place
in the American Public Square (Lanham, Md.: Altamira
Press, 2004).Muslim Students Association
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) was
founded by 75 foreign students studying in the
United states and canada, at a conference con-
vened in January 1963 at the University of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana. It has since become the
largest Muslim organization in North America,
with chapters at many if not most North American
colleges and universities. These chapters are com-
posed of undergraduate and graduate students,
domestic and foreign, enrolled at the host institu-
tions. Depending on how student organizations
are instituted at each school, they typically have
faculty advisers and build cooperative relation-
ships with other campus groups. MSA chapter
funding comes from local fund-raising activities,
and chapters often qualify for partial funding
by campus student associations. The national
organization’s policy on funding states that the
MSA rejects donations from foreign sources; it
also opposes funding from any one donor who
may therefore seek to gain undue influence on a
chapter. Because the MSA emphasizes the ideal
of achieving Muslim unity, it accepts members
without regard to nationality, ethnicity, or Islamic
religious affiliation. Nevertheless, it bears a strong
Sunni reformist stamp in its portrayal of Islam and
its membership, with many of its leaders being
from South Asia. This has led to the creation ofMuslim Students Association 509 J