Mahdi Bray

Political activism

Bray used to be political director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

Bray has expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah on a number of occasions. A video of a rally in 2000 shows Bray pumping his fist in the air in support of the groups Hamas and Hezbollah. He asserts, however, that he is not a supporter of Hamas.

In 2001 Bray served as a liaison with United States President George W. Bush's White House Faith-Based Initiative Program, which he later opposed. After the September 11 attacks, he and other Muslim leaders met with then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. He also served as a congressional affairs representative on behalf of the Muslim community.

In September 2003 he referred to the arrest of Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, the founder of the American Muslim Council, as a "witch hunt", and said:

"This administration's war on terrorism is actually a war on the Muslim community and the civil liberties of all Americans. Our leadership, organizations, charities, and places of worship are being targeted by the Department of Justice, who scapegoat Muslims by exploiting their political vulnerability. This is political opportunism at its worst, and the Muslim community is paying a horrific price."

Al-Amoudi pleaded guilty to financial and conspiracy charges in 2004, which resulted in a 23-year prison sentence.

In October 2003 in testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, Dr. J. Michael Walker, Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, indicated that Bray was the contact for the National Islamic Prison Foundation, which was "specifically organized to convert inmates to Wahhabism".

In December 2004, Bray said that Sami Amin Al-Arian, a former professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, was innocent of the charges against him, and “Indeed, proving Dr. Al-Arian’s innocence will be a victory for the entire community." In 2006 Al-Arian made a plea agreement, pleading guilty to conspiracy to help a "specially designated terrorist" organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and was sentenced to 57 months in prison.

When Ali al-Timimi was found guilty in April 2005 in U.S. District Court on charges that he incited terrorism in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network by encouraging followers to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops, Bray said the conviction "bodes ill" for the First Amendment. "What he said was perhaps repugnant and inflammatory, but was it really his intent to have people go and take his words and translate that into going and killing other human beings, specifically Americans?" Bray asked. Al-Timimi was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In a May 2005 column in the Weekly Standard, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross wrote about his May 14, 2005, debate with Bray on PAX-TV's Faith Under Fire program. He noted that a Chicago Tribune article had detailed how the fundamentalist Islamist Muslim Brotherhood operates in the US through MAS, and that MAS wants to see the US governed by sharia law. He noted that MAS, "except in its most public of statements", was open about its agenda. He argued that while Bray "tries to portray MAS as an organization that embraces these shared [liberal democratic] values, the group simultaneously teaches its members that all government should become Islamic and that non-Islamic judicial systems should be boycotted."

In July 2005, after the London bombings that killed 52 people, Bray said: "Let me say to the terrorists very clearly, that you will have no comfort in our community. Our community offers you no harbor. Our message is clear, you do no service to Islam, you do a great disservice to Islam and for the love of God, stop this madness."

When the Philadelphia Inquirer published some of the cartoons of Mohammed in the 2005 Mohammed cartoons controversy, Bray said: "This has nothing to do with free speech; its pure sensationalism that reeks of religious disrespect. What the Philadelphia Inquirer has done is irresponsible, provocative, and reckless."

When in November 2006, two imams from Boston-area mosques were arrested and charged with being involved in a scheme that secured religious worker visas for immigrants who instead got secular jobs, Bray said: "If this was [sic] clerics who were anything other than Muslims, would they have had to face this?"

After the September 2007 resignation of Dr. Esam Omeish from a Virginia Commission on Immigration, after it was revealed that he had publicly endorsed "the jihad way" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bray said "What's the big news? Everybody knows Muslims feel passionately about the Palestinian issue. What in the world is wrong about talking about the invasion of Lebanon or the plight of the Palestinian people?"

Bray served on the Board of Directors of the Interfaith Alliance and the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and is a National Co-convener of Religions for Peace-USA. He is a Washington, DC, television and radio talk show host, and has appeared on CBS News, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Aljazeera, and many TV and radio talk shows. Bray also organized protests against the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the Iraq war, and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.