Well, President Obama sure knows how to pick ‘em. His latest appointee miscue – if you exclude recent news of White House communications director, Anita Dunn, explaining why she admires Chairman Mao – came from his adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed.

As reported in an article by Andrew Gilligan and Alex Spillius of the Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Mogahed appeared on a British TV program “hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.” For more details, go to the article itself, but here are some key paragraphs:

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified” and the majority of women around the world associate it with “gender justice.”

The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.

The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.

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She said: “I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.

“The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.”

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The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir’s website. [See the interview from the group’s Australian website.]

For a liberal Yemeni woman’s critique of Mogahed’s assessment of worldwide Muslim opinion, go to this link. Dr. Elham Mane’a wrote this piece on July 1, 2009.

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