Same forum the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qardawi addressed in 2004.

(CNS News) — At a time of dramatic change in the Arab world, senior figures from more than 30 Arab and other Muslim-majority countries will be in Washington, D.C., this week for the annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, the first to be held in the United States.

For the second consecutive year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will play a prominent role at the forum. On Tuesday evening, she will be the guest speaker at the highlight of the three-day event, an invitation-only gala dinner.

Earlier in the day, the forum will be opened by Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turk who heads the Saudi-based bloc of 56 Islamic states. An OIC statement said Ihsanoglu would use the occasion to review relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world.

Clinton’s participation last year was the first time a senior member of a U.S. administration had taken part. It was at that Feb. 2010 event that President Obama, in a video message to the forum, named Rashad Hussain, a former White House deputy associate counsel, as special envoy to the OIC — an appointment marked by some controversy.

President Clinton took part in the inaugural event, in 2004, as did Yusuf Qaradawi, an influential Egyptian Sunni scholar who is regarded as the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has drawn criticism for having called Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis justifiable “martyrdom operations.”

Other noteworthy past attendees include the then commander of U.S. Central Command commander, Admiral William Fallon; Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, who was denied a visa to the U.S. for years until the Obama administration lifted the ban in early 2010; the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke; and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam whose plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero triggered a storm last year.