Obama's Envoy to the Muslim World: A Soros Tie?

By Ed Lasky

The naming of Rashad Hussain as President Obama's new special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference has sparked criticism. Hussain has been close to the President and was recruited to help draft Barack Obama's Cairo address (hat tip: Joel Sprayragen), widely criticized as whitewashing and distorting Islamic history to bolster Barack Obama's standing in the Muslim world. The address also was criticized for slighting Israel and for depicting its founding as a consequence of Western guilt over the Holocaust -- giving short shrift to the Jewish people's long tie to the Holy Land (pre-dating the rise of Islam).

Hussain also was caught fabricating his own personal history. When he was accused of having made statements critical of the American prosecution against Sami Al-Arian a few years ago at a Muslim conference, he denied having made the statements attributed to him . When an audiotape surfaced revealing that he did make these statements, he was forced to backtrack. He had also arranged for the magazine that had covered the event to scrub the record of his having made them. In other words, he whitewashed his own history.

Now it appears things grow a bit murkier.

The Washington Post published an article on his ascent that charts how he came to the White House in the first place. He was recruited to the White house counsel's office by Cassandra Butts -- a classmate of Barack Obama's at Harvard Law School.

Who is Cassandra Butts?

She as an alumna for the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress (one of many staffing the Obama administration). This organization is an ideas factory for the Obama administration and its hiring hall. It just took on Van Jones, for example. The Center for American Progress was created and funded by George Soros.

Soros has long been highly critical of Israel and has worked over the years to disrupt the ties between America and Israel. His overseas-domiciled hedge fund may have Arab oil petrocats as investors. Now it appears that one of his former employees paved the way for Hussain to become America's envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The man's empire grows.