Rashad Hussain

Rashad Hussain (1978-) is the United States special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Background

Born in Wyoming, Hussain is the son of Indian-born US citizens, and was raised in Plano, Texas, where his parents still live. His father, Mohammad Hussain, is a retired mining engineer from Bihar, while his mother Ruqaya is a medical doctor. His older sister, Lubna, is also a physician, while his younger brother, Saad, is a medical student.

Hussain is a graduate of Greenhill School in Dallas, Texas. While at Greenhill, Hussain was a member of the school's nationally recognized policy-debate team,partnering with Josh Goldberg to win the Texas state debate championship, as well as major national tournaments hosted by Harvard University and Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, TN.

Hussain completed a bachelor’s degree in two years, in both philosophy and political science, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His philosophy thesis was titled, Assessing the Theistic Implications of Big Bang Cosmological Theory." He holds a Masters degree in Arabic & Islamic Studies from Harvard University, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. At Yale, he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Between Harvard and Yale, he worked as a legislative aide on the House Judiciary Committee , where he reviewed the USA Patriot Act and other bills. He was a 2003 Fellow of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

While law clerk for Damon J. Keith on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in August 2008, Hussain co-authored "Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy" for the Brookings Institution.

Deputy Associate Counsel

In January of 2009, Hussain was named deputy associate counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously, he has served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference

On February 13, 2010, President Obama appointed Hussain, an Indian-American Muslim, as the United States special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. After the appointment, President Obama stated, "Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo. And as a Hafiz_(Qur'an) of the Quran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work."

The first official US envoy to the OIC, Sada Cumber, was appointed by President George W. Bush in February, 2008.[1] Cumber has stated that Hussain, "will face the twin challenges of showing the Muslims that Obama’s Cairo speech was more than flowery rhetoric while also demonstrating to the American public that the current administration’s emphasis on soft power is paying concrete dividends.”"[2]

Comments on Sami Al-Arian

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report first reported on February 14, 2010 that, "Rashad Hussein, White House official and President Obama’s newly appointed Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, has a history of participation in events connected with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as well as support for Brotherhood causes, once having called prosecution of the U.S. leader of a Palestinian terrorist organization one of many “politically motivated persecutions.” The GMBDR went on to identify the remarks, made at a 2004 Muslim Student Association conference while Hussain was a Yale law student, as pertaining to convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian. The GMBDR also noted that the publication that had reported Mr. Hussain's remarks, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), had deleted the remarks from its article sometime after 2007."

On February 16, 2010, CNSNews reported that the WRMEA News Editor and Executive Director Delinda Hanley had responded to their inquiries by initially saying that the comments attributed to Mr. Hussain had actually been made by Sami al-Arian’s daughter, Laila al-Arian and that an intern” who attended the event and wrote the story had made an “error.” When this was discovered, the quotes were deleted, she said. Shereen Kandil, the author of the original article, was contacted by CNS News and denied that she had made any error stating "“I have never mixed my sources and wouldn’t have quoted Rashad Hussain if it came from Laila al-Arian.” “If the editors from WRMEA felt they wanted to remove Rashad Hussain from the article, my assumption is that they did it for reasons other than what you’re saying,” she said. “They never once contacted me about an ‘error’ they claim I made." After being contacted by CNSNews about Ms. Kandil's reply, Ms. Hanley said that she may have made a mistake, but denied that there was a cover-up although she ocntinued to insist she had contacted Ms. Kandil about the alleged error. Ms. Hanley told CNSNews a few hours later that the WRMEA Web master thought the archived story had been altered on Feb. 5, 2009, although it was also possible that the change had been made “when our Web site began an ongoing redesign.” Asked whether either Hussain, or anyone else, had approached the WRMEA to ask for the story to be altered – and if so, when this had occurred – Hanley told CNSNews she could not remember the circumstances. Ms. Hanley continued to maintain that Mr. Kandil had made an error in her reporting stating "I would guess it’s a writer’s simple error and not a big cover-up...I’d be very curious to find out if I had said this or another non-Muslim speaker or commentator, would this be such an issue?” Hanley said. “Seems like this article is evidence that Muslim Americans are facing serious discrimination in our post 9/11 country.”

On February 19, 2010 The Politico reported that when confronted with a tape recording of his remarks at the conference, "Rashad Hussain, changed course Friday — admitting that he made sharply critical statements about a U.S. terror prosecution against a Muslim professor after initially saying he had no recollection of making such comments." Politico also reported that it was Hussain himself who contacted the publication to complain about the story stating “When I saw the article that attributed comments to me without context, leaving a misimpression, I contacted the publication to raise concerns about it. Eventually, of their own accord, they modified the article,” Hussain said of the article in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs. Politico reported that in the recording, "Hussain’s indictment of the government’s legal practices toward Muslims goes further than Al-Arian’s case, leveling a detailed critique of more than a half-dozen prominent anti-terrorism cases and several key provisions of the Patriot Act." Hussain said in a statement: “As a law student six years ago, I spoke on the topic of civil liberties on a panel during which I responded to comments made about the Sami Al-Arian case by Laila Al-Arian who was visibly saddened by charges against her father. I made clear at the time that I was not commenting on the allegations themselves. The judicial process has now concluded, and I have full faith in its outcome.”

On February 22, 2010, The Politico reported that, "The White House is expressing its confidence in a White House counsel’s office attorney President Barack Obama recently named as U.S. envoy to the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, despite his concession last week that he made ill-considered statements in 2004 about Bush-era terrorism prosecutions."

See also

• United States Ambassador to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference

External links

• Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
• A defense of Rashad Hussain
• The case against Rashad Hussian, a closer look
• The Truth About Rashad Hussain