Maggie, I am googling everyone on this list and comng up with some interesting links and relationships.
This may be where the info is that is surprising.
EXCERPT
Many Muslims feel that much of the platform document is contrary to significant parts of the Koran and fundamentally undermines the best interest of women, according to Dr. Saleha Mahmood, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in London and representative of the Muslim World League, which has observer status at the United Nations.
“The document is flawed. The language it does contain is largely anti-male, anti-religion and anti-family. It omits language honoring women’s nurturing role or promoting the desirability of stable families,” she said.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22saleha+Mahmood%22++%22united+nations%22&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=Cxa&start=10&sa=N2. www.isdb.org
www.isdb.org/english_docs/idb_ - [Cached]
Published on: 6/8/2006 Last Visited: 3/16/2007
Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin
...
DR. SALEHA MAHMOOD ABEDIN is the Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at Dar Al-Hekma College, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She holds a PhD in Sociology and an M.A. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., USA. She served as Associate Professor of Sociology and Supervisor of the Graduate Studies Program at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah for several years and previously taught at colleges in the United States. She was part of the Project Management team for the founding of Dar Al-Hekma College and represented Texas International Education Consortium in the Project. She has been part of the senior management team at the College ever since its launch in 1999. Dr. Abedin has served as consultant to IDB since 1997 and has worked closely with Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali during the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, in 1995, when he was serving as the Secretary General of Muslim World League. Dr. Abedin has been involved in women’s issues as chairperson of a women’s NGO for several years and convener of the Muslim women’s caucus at the Beijing conference and beyond. She is the Co-Chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders, New York, and organized major international women’s conferences in Geneva, Oslo and Jordan in the past three years. She is a member of the Peace Council based in Madison, Wisconsin, USA; a member of the Vienna Roundtable for Christian-Muslim Dialogue; and serves on the International Advisory Panel for the Parliament of World Religions, Chicago, USA, among others. Dr. Abedin has also served as senior education advisor and consultant to the Education for Employment Foundation based in Washington, D.C., which is committed to promoting education and employment in the Islamic world. Dr. Abedin is the chief editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a leading scholarly journal published thrice a year by Routledge/Taylor & Francis from Oxford, UK.
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http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:-9KZkfaf2dEJ:www.sankt-georgen.de/leseraum/troll14.html+Muslim+Minority+Affairs+Syed+Z.+Abedin&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=firefox-a
The voice of the Muslims living as minorities: missionary instead of political Islam
Here we shall draw attention to the voices of two Muslim Indians - Syed Zainul Abedīn (1928-1993) and Maulāna Wahīduddīn Khān (b.1925) - whose thought was first shaped in the Republic of India, the home to the numerically largest Muslim minority in the world, a minority however, which comprises not more than 12 percent of the overall Indian population.
Both, the all too early deceased Dr. Syed Z. Abedin as well as Maulana Wahiduddin Khan grew up in undivided India. In their college and university days they experienced the passionate ideological and political disputes of the fight for independence of India and for, respectively against, the creation of a decidedly Muslim, and later Islamic, state of Pakistan. The development of the thinking of these two scholars was shaped by such far-reaching and decisive questions as e.g. the relationship of Islam to the modern - from the point of view of culture and of religion plurally composed and secularly constituted - national state; how Muslim could thrive as a minority within a democracy that, by definition, is largely ruled by majorities; how Muslims would relate to the caste system (perceived as structurally-cemented and religiously-justified injustice).
After studies at Aligarh Muslim University Zaiunul Abedin was close to the "Jamā´at-i Islami-i Hind" and later in the United States, which he took during his student years in Philadelphia as his country of adoption, he became in the early 1980's councilor of the "Rābitat al-'Alam al-Islāmī" (Mecca). He established the "Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs" in Jeddah with a branch in London and founded and directed for many year its important organ, the "Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs". Abedin´s thought merits to be kept alive, because he emphasized in prophetical foresight the fundamental fact that today at least every fifth citizen of the world is Muslim and a third of the total number of Muslims live in non-Muslim states. Abedin was concerned with bringing the problems of this growing third of the Muslims that by now lives world-wide in minority situations, into the forefront of the consciousness not only of the Muslims but of all those who today and in future reflect about Islam.
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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3736/is_200201/ai_n9063482/pg_5
Trained in social science and being of Indian origin, Professor Abedin was the founder of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, an institution that had the quiet but active support of the then General Secretary of the Muslim World League, Dr. Umar Abdallah Nasif.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB108422799531607397.html?mod=politics_primary_hs
U.S. Treasury Ties Bosnian Arm
Of Saudi Charity to Terror Funds
By GLENN R. SIMPSON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 11, 2004
The Treasury Department has designated an Islamic charity that is a subsidiary of the Muslim World League, a Saudi religious organization, as a terrorist entity.
(snip)
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http://www.nixoncenter.org/publications/Program%20Briefs/PBrief%202003/Islamist%20Networks.htm
“Islamist Networks in the United States”
A Luncheon with Rita Katz, Director of the SITE Institute
November 19, 2003
EXCERPT
Ms. Katz also highlighted the linkages between Saudi Arabia and terrorist groups. A Saudi governmental charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), widely believed to be used by al-Qaeda, is a subsidiary of the Muslim World League, the Kingdom’s umbrella relief group. The Muslim World League is an organization controlled and funded by the Saudi government and provides employees with Saudi diplomatic passports, making it extremely easy to travel internationally. Several individuals who have been convicted of terrorism around the world worked as employees of the Muslim World League.
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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58449
ELECTION 2008
Hillary takes cash from terror suspects
Muslim donors targets of federal investigation
Posted: November 4, 2007
Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has taken thousands of dollars in cash donations from Islamists under federal investigation for terror-financing, money laundering and tax fraud, WND has learned.
The Democrat senator over the past seven months has received $1,000 from M. Yaqub Mirza and another $500 from M. Omar Ashraf, federal campaign records show. Federal agents raided the Virginia homes and offices of the Muslim donors after 9/11 for ties to terrorism.
Others tied to the still-active probe also have contributed money to Clinton, including one Muslim man who after 9/11 complained the U.S. government should focus on changing its Mideast policies instead of killing Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists.
Mirza, who also has given to other candidates, including Republicans, is said to act on behalf of Saudi millionaire Yassin al-Qadi, who the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2001 blacklisted as an al-Qaida financier.
More recently, Wachovia Bank closed the accounts of a shadowy Muslim charity supported by Mirza after an entity controlled by the Pakistani immigrant donated $150,000 to the charitable front, known as FAITH. The bank in 2005 cited suspicious activity in its accounts related to possible money laundering.
Mirza and Ashraf, who have not been charged with a crime in the ongoing probe, control with several other Islamists some 40 Muslim businesses, charities and think tanks known collectively by law enforcement as the Saudi-backed “Safa group.” Their offices are located primarily at 555 Grove St. in Herndon, Va., a suburb of Washington. The Muslim World League, a Saudi-based charity linked to al-Qaida, originally set up its U.S. branch at that address with the help of Mirza.
(snip)