Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney joined the right-wing media's crusade against Labor secretary nominee Thomas Perez by attempting to manufacture outrage over Perez hugging a respected Muslim leader in 2011.

In his March 26 Washington Times column, Gaffney said President Obama's nomination of Perez for Labor secretary “may be his most outrageous yet.” In addition to rehashing right-wing smears, Gaffney attacked Perez for “his enthusiastic embrace of Islamists and their causes.” As evidence, Gaffney highlighted a 2011 event in which Perez “leapt onto a stage at George Washington University in order to hug the leader of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front group in the United States: Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America.”

But Magid is a respected Muslim leader who has worked to combat terrorism and curb extremism, and he has spoken out against domestic violence in the Muslim community.

In addition to serving as the president of ISNA and the executive director of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, Magid served on the Department of Justice's Countering Violent Extremism Working Group, a task force formed in 2010 by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to “work with state and local law enforcement as well as relevant community groups to develop and provide to me recommendations regarding how the Department can better support community-based efforts to combat violent extremism domestically -- focusing in particular on the issues of training, information sharing, and the adoption of community-oriented law enforcement approaches to this issue.”

In January 2011, Magid co-hosted a forum on “Curbing Violent Extremism” in which panelists discussed “ways in which the American Muslim community can curb and prevent violent extremist tendancies [sic] from within its ranks.” A 2005 Time magazine profile of Magid pointed out that he “is fighting his own war against radicals trying to hijack his religion. For Magid that has meant not only condemning terrorism but also working closely with the FBI in battling it. He regularly opens doors for agents trying to cultivate contacts in his Muslim community, and he alerts the bureau when suspicious persons approach his congregation.”

Magid has also been an outspoken critic of domestic violence within the Muslim community. In October 2011, Magid worked with the Rhode Island Council of Muslim Advancement to sponsor a training for imams and chaplains “to discuss, in a private and confidential setting, effective strategies to respond to domestic violence situations within the Muslim community, and learn best practices to foster prevention.” Magid has also endorsed Project Sakinah, an group that attempts to “achieve lasting change in the attitudes and behaviors of Muslims around the issue of violence within families.” He also contributed an essay to the book Change From Within: Diverse Perspectives on Domestic Violence in Muslim Communities.