This was reported in Arab media, including Al Jazeera. There is no way to verify whether his report on what happened at the White House is accurate without the administration verifying or denying it.Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States bans him from entering the country.Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews and Americans.That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah all the more inexplicable. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded by and headed by Qaradawi. The IUMS has a long history of supporting Hamas –a top Hamas leader is an IUMS member – and of calling for Israel's destruction.Bin Bayyah's website claims that he met June 13 with senior Obama administration officials at the White House.Nonetheless, it was the Obama administration which sought the meeting with Bin Bayyah, his website's account said."We asked for this meeting to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars (another name used for the IUMS)," Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, reportedly said.Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including:Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and White House spokeswomanJennifer Palmieri. But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting.Smith also thanked Bin Bayyah for "his efforts to bring more understanding amongst humanity" during the meeting, the Bin Bayyah account said.The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments between June 14 and Tuesday.
Here's the largest photo I could find so people can identify who was there (click to enlarge):
While the major topic seems to have been Syria, Bin Bayyah is simply not someone the White House should be speaking with.
Interestingly, on his website Bin Bayyah seems to be a big advocate of Muslim dialogue with Western non-Muslims, as long as it can bring advantage to Muslims. He doesn't say that Muslims can learn anything from this dialogue; but rather they can speak to Westerners using the language of human rights and diversity to help the Islamic agenda, as well as to teach Westerners that issues like human rights and equality are Muslim values as well - but not absolute values, rather they must be interpreted within Islamic ideas of "justice."
(h/t Dennis)