• President of the Islamic Society of North America

Ingrid Mattson is the President of the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) United States office. She is also a professor at the MacDonald Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, where she serves as Director of Islamic Chaplaincy.

Mattson was born in 1963 in Ontario, Canada, to Roman Catholic parents. She abandoned her Christian faith as a teenager. In the 1980s she attended the University of Waterloo, Ontario, where she studied philosophy. There she befriended a group of Muslims and converted to Islam.

“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it … Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.”

“No, it’s not true to characterize Wahhabism that way. This is not a sect. It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European Protestant Reformation…. [T]he Saudi scholars who are Wahhabi have denounced terrorism and denounced in particular the acts of September 11.”

“… Muslims perceive that Israeli aggression against Palestinians continues without American sanction; indeed, enormous financial and military support for Israel has continued. It seems that any Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is termed ‘terrorism,’ and is responded to with overwhelming force. The result is the Palestinians themselves are increasingly showing less restraint in the force they employ to defend their families and lands.”   

Mattson went on to condemn American foreign policy as a force of evil not only in the Middle East, but all over the world:

“The American government has not criticized sufficiently the brutality of the Israeli government, believing that it needs to be ‘supportive’ of the Jewish state. The result is that oppression, left unchecked, can increase to immense proportions, until the oppressed are smothered with hopelessness and rage…. So often we have to tell other Muslims throughout the world, that America is not as bad as it appears. We tell them, ‘These policies (support for oppressive governments, enforcement of sanctions against Iraq, lack of support for Palestinians) contradict the true values of America’ … The critical situation we find ourselves living in today is the result, to a great extent, of allowing injustice and oppression to continue unchecked.” 

In a September 2002 interview with PBS, Mattson stated that she did not see “any difference” between Christian leaders criticizing Islam or al Qaeda on the one hand, and Osama bin Laden citing “Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans” on the other. That is, she believed that the Christians were inciting terrorism in a manner not unlike bin Laden.

At the opening of ISNA’s 43rd annual convention in 2006, Mattson expressed her dismay that the phrase “Islamic terrorism” had gained such wide popular currency. “I’m convinced that it is not only inaccurate, but unhelpful,” Mattson said, suggesting that U.S. officials should simply refer to “terrorism, crime, [or] violence,” with no mention of any religious connection.

Mattson was an Advisory Board member for a 2006-2007 Pew Research Center public opinion survey on the demographics, attitudes, and experiences of Muslim Americans. Among her fellow Board members were: (a) Ihsan Bagby, who is affiliated with the Muslim Alliance of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Islamic Society of North America; and (b) Zahid H. Bukhari, Project Director for the Islamic Circle of North America.

In a 2007 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Mattson complained that Americans were unduly judgmental of Muslims generally, and that their fear of Islamic terrorism had been blown out of all proportion: “There’s a prejudgment, a collective judgment of Muslims, and a suspicion that, well, ‘you may appear nice, but we know there are sleeper cells of Americans,’ which of course is not true. There aren’t any sleeper cells.”

Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in March 2007, Mattson stated: “Right-wing Christians are very risky allies for American Jews, because they [the Christians] are really anti-Semitic. They do not like Jews and [they harbor the] fundamentalist belie[f] that it would be desirable for all Jews to return to Israel.”

Not limiting herself to speaking out exclusively on matters related to religion and international relations, Mattson on occasion has taken up the cause of environmental activism. In 2003, for instance, she was a signatory to a letter titled “Global Warming: An Interfaith Call for Repentance and Renewal,” which specifically blamed the U.S. for the proliferation of global greenhouse emissions and advocated the creation of “a sustainable economy” that might help to heal “earth’s wounds.” Other signers included William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Robert Edgar, and Cora Weiss.

In August 2008 Mattson was a keynote speaker at an interfaith gathering held at the Democratic National Convention.

In addition to her role with ISNA, Mattson serves on the Board of Directors of the Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois, an institution that has received generous funding from the SAAR Foundation.

In January 2009, Mattson delivered a prayer at the National Prayer Service, one of the events associated with the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

In June 2009, Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett invited Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls, which Jarrett leads.

Mattson formerly served, along with ISNA’s past President Muzammil Siddiqi, on the Board of Trustees of the North American Islamic Trust, which has had close ties to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.