WASHINGTON – Outrage and puzzlement are mounting over the Bush administration’s participation this weekend in the fifth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, to be headlined by a vociferous administration critic and a former ambassador to Iraq, Joseph Wilson. The convention also will include leaders of MPAC who have made statements considered by many to be anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, and to be supportive of the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

“It’s really regrettable, because it sends the wrong message,” the vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said. “We try to counter the extremism in other countries and seem here to countenance it.”

MPAC is a large and influential national Muslim-American organization with headquarters in Washington and Los Angeles. Its convention, on the theme “Examining Our Role in America,” will be held tomorrow at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, Calif. Among the speakers confirmed for the event are the deputy assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs, Alina Romanowski, and the western regional director of community relations for the Department of Justice, Ron Wakabayashi.

They will be joined by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American Islamic Relations; Britain’s consul general in Los Angeles, Robert Peirce; the former counterterrorism chief at the Washington field office of the FBI, Michael Rolince, and, if he is not detained in Washington by votes in the House, Long Beach’s Republican congressman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

Conference speakers, according to MPAC, are not receiving honoraria, but are having their mid-December travel expenses to Southern California covered by the organization.

Another participant, by video, is Tariq Ramadan, an author and Muslim scholar who had his visa to teach at the University of Notre Dame revoked by the American government in 2004 over concerns about his alleged ties to terrorism.

Also speaking at the MPAC conference are its executive director, Salam Al-Marayati, and its senior adviser, Maher Hathout, both of whom have made remarks considered to be anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and supportive of terrorist organizations.

In 2001, for example, following the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including seven children, MPAC issued a press release stating that the bombing was “the expected bitter result of the reckless policy of Israeli assassination that did not spare children and political figures,” adding that MPAC “holds Israel responsible for this pattern of violence.”

Speaking on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in November 1999, Mr. Al-Marayati said: “If the Lebanese people are resisting Israeli intransigence on Lebanese soil, then that is the right of resistance and they have the right to target Israeli soldiers in this conflict. That is not terrorism. That is a legitimate resistance.” Mr. Al-Marayati’s appointment to a Congressional Commission on Counterterrorism was withdrawn by then House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt in July 1999.

In 2001, at an MPAC symposium on Jerusalem held at Cal-State Fullerton, according to an account from the Investigative Project, Mr. Hathout said: “It is obvious that at least from our perspective that the United States is also under Israeli occupation. So, we have a Congress that beats the Knesset in being pro-Zionist.”

According to materials made available by the Investigative Project, an October 2000 rally organized by the then-political director of MPAC, Mahdi Bray, featured remarks by a prominent Muslim activist now serving 23 years in federal prison, Aburahman Alamoudi. At the rally, Mr. Alamoudi – who pleaded guilty in 2004 to participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate a Saudi prince, and who was recently identified by the Treasury Department as a financier of Al Qaeda in America – said: “We are all supporters of Hamas,” and said, of “the media in New York” that had reported on his alleged ties to terrorism, “I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” An MPAC representative said yesterday that the organization is not responsible for Mr. Alamoudi’s statements.

A spokeswoman for MPAC, Edina Lekovic, said yesterday, in response to repeated allegations that MPAC leaders have made anti-Semitic comments: “They’re clearly taken out of context. We can go through them one by one.”

MPAC, according to many observers, is one of the most moderate Muslim-American groups. Its Web site features a denunciation of recent anti-Israel statements made by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, and the group, unlike other similar organizations, has as its stated policy a refusal to accept any foreign money.

That the State and Justice Departments would participate in an MPAC conference headlined by Messrs. Hathout and Al-Marayati, however, still drew ire from Jewish leaders and others outraged by their statements.

“I think that in general, this is a mistake, because we undermine the true Muslims in the American community by this giving recognition to those who espouse extremist views,” Mr. Hoenlein said of MPAC.

The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, said: “It’s absurd that U.S. officials would attend and give credibility to an organization whose leaders have praised terrorist groups, shown sympathy to Holocaust deniers, and who oppose any concessions with Israel.”

Mr. Rohrabacher said that if he had attended the conference, “I was planning on telling them that I think the Muslim community in the U.S. is being misled by liberal Democrats to conduct themselves in a way that looks disloyal to average Americans.” Representatives of the State and Justice Departments, however, would be “bland government officials there who won’t confront someone on the issues I just talked about.”

The chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Zuhdi Jasser, too, expressed dismay at the government’s participation in the conference. “I’m surprised that the administration has agreed to participate,” Dr. Jasser, a Phoenix-based internist, said. “Especially with the presence of someone like Joe Wilson, where you have basically so much of the taxpayers’ funds being spent on this investigation that has just been going on for years with basically no grounds.” Mr. Wilson, who accused the administration of falsifying intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war, is married to CIA agent Valerie Plame, the central figure in an ongoing investigation into possible White House leaks revealing her identity.

Mr. Wilson is delivering the keynote address at the conference during its fund-raising segment tomorrow night.

A State Department spokesman, Gregory Sullivan, responded that MPAC was a moderate group that on its Web site had explicitly condemned terrorism in Iraq, and said: “This is an influential organization that has publicly preached as a message of tolerance and engagement.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Eric Holland, responded to queries about Justice’s participation in the MPAC conference by saying that the department’s “Community Relations Service serves as a ‘peacemaker’ for community conflicts,” adding: “Part of this mission consists of sending CRS professionals to assist people of different backgrounds to work and live together in harmony.”