President Trump is considering designating the global Muslim Brotherhood organization as terrorist. It’s about time.
Two days before he signed the Executive Order on “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) began organizing nationwide protests against the anticipated order, which the mischaracterized the suspension of U.S. visas to Muslim refugees and travelers from only seven out of fifty Muslim-majority countries, as a “ban.” CAIR was immediately joined by progressive Left organizations that protested the election of Donald Trump as President. Thus Left-leaning ill-informed organizations, CEOs of tech companies (How many of their employees are immigrants, or Work-Visa holders from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen?) and Democratic-run-States joined forces with MB-affiliated groups to undermine the power of the President and the security of the nation.
On October 28, 2005, President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion, and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.” The Muslim Brotherhood was not on his list.
On June 6, 2006, this author proposed, in FrontOageMag to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood. The article concluded: “In the interest of preserving freedom in the U.S. while advancing it globally, it is time for our government to thoroughly investigate the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and consider designating it as a terrorist organization.
In the same vein, the U.S should not allow foreign donations to U.S. educational, and public organizations and institutions from Islamic countries that prohibit religious freedom.”
These suggestions, however, were dismissed on the grounds that the MB is a “reformist” organization. It took years for many in the West to realize the MB has fooled them into endorsing the oxymoron of “Political Islam.” It took the Muslim Brotherhood, first in Tunisia and Egypt, and with other radical Islamist groups in Syria, Libya, and Iraq to destabilize the Middle East. Only after the MB globalized their murderous ideology and threatened Muslim nations in the Middle East, several Arab countries banned the organization. More recently concerned groups in the West have been considering banning the MB and its affiliates
Below is a version of the June 6, 2006, FrontPageMag article:
The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun)[2] also known as the Ikhwan is a good example of what resident Bush described on October 28, 2005, and what we must protect the U.S. against.
The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for the return to original Islam.[3]
The Brotherhood is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would isolate women and punish nonbelievers. Its members and supporters founded al Qaeda, as well as one “of the largest college student groups in the United States.”[4]
The Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism, Juan Zarate, stated recently, “the Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us not because it deals with philosophical or ideological ideas but because it defends the use of violence against civilians.”[5] In fact, The MB 1982 secret plan, (the Project) recently exposed, instructs all members locally and globally “To channel thought, education and action to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” [6]
The Muslim Brotherhood has historically and continues to actively pursue the establishment of a Muslim regime that will serve as the basis to re-establish the Caliphate, not only by defending violence against civilians, The current leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Mahdi Akef,[7] “recently issued a new strategy calling on all its member organizations to serve its global agenda of defeating the West. He called on individual members of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide to not only join the “resistance” to the U.S. financially but also through active participation.”[8] In the MB Project (1982), Point of Departure[9] instructs members,” To use diverse and varied surveillance systems, in several places, to gather information and adopt a single effective warning system serving the worldwide Islamic movement. In fact, surveillance, policy decisions and effective communications complement each other.”
In an interview to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat,[10] an international Arab newspaper on December 11, 2005, Akef stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview – the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.”
To that end, Akef said, “the Muslim Brotherhood… are an all-encompassing Islamic organization, calling for the adoption of the great religion that Allah gave in his mercy to humanity.” Meanwhile, according to its leader, the MB is busily cementing its ties: “We are in the global arena, and we preach for Allah according to the guidelines of the Muslim Brotherhood. All the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the international arena operate according to the written charter that states that Jihad is the only way to achieve these goals[11]. “Ours is the largest organization in the world,” he said.
Akef emphasized, “A Muslim in the international arena, who believes in the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood is considered part of us, and we are considered part of him[12].”
In earlier interviews, ‘Akef called the U.S. “a Satan that abuses the religion.” He said: “I expect America to collapse soon,” declaring, “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America[13].” Although U.S. observers often view the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Hamas as less violent than al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood has long been actively supporting global jihadi efforts. “Prior to the U.S.-led attack on the Taliban regime, the Muslim Brotherhood actually had training camps in Afghanistan where it worked with Kashmiri militants and sought to expand its influence in Central Asian states, especially Tajikistan.”[14]
The Muslim Brotherhood reacted to Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory as not merely as a local achievement, but “a victory of the Islamic nation in its entirety,[15]” and as an expression of the concept that “the path of Islam is the true solution.”
As the parent of all Sunni and many other Islamist terrorist groups, the MB, to deflect attention, uses its long-term strategy, known as “flexibility”[16] (muruna[17] in Arabic). This chameleon-like adaptation is tactical moderation with the ultimate objective of complete Islamization of society.[18] Indeed, the MB’s 1982 project calls on members “To reconcile international engagement with flexibility at a local level.”[19]
Today, as the West focuses on Islamist terrorism, the MB usually refrains from publicly advocating violence. The MB’s 1982 Project, calls on its members “To master the art of the possible on a temporary basis without abusing the basic [Islamic] principles… we should not look for confrontation with our adversaries, at the local or the global scale, which would be disproportionate and could lead to attacks against the Daw’a or its disciples.”[20]
As stated in its charter and on its website, the MB seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire, a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize [21] targeted nations by whatever means available.
A principal danger of MB activities is that they are hidden behind “religious” ideology. Moreover, this ideology dictates concealment (Kitman).[22] In fact saying, “we should keep hush-hush on things that are still in preparation.” This ideology controls every aspect of life and seeks to impose that control on everyone.
In the end, the MB intends to overthrow all secular governments and impose Islamic law (Shari’a) worldwide, and it is diligently pursuing this goal. In July 2005, former Kuwaiti minister of education Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab’i,[23] wrote in the Arabic London daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: “The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology.” Thus, on its website,[24] the MB advocates, “Establishing the Islamic government.”
“Building the Muslim state…Building the Khilafa…Mastering the world with Islam,”[25]; however, would necessarily deprive Americans of their First Amendment, rights.[26] The first clause in the Amendment states there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The First Amendment also upholds an individuals’ right to religious freedom. But as determined by its doctrine, the MB would exploit that right—along with First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly—to actively seek the imposition of laws that would deny religious freedom to everyone else.
Moreover, the MB guiding principles celebrate its major [and continuing] role in the struggle to liberate Muslims lands. The Ikhwan’s bravery in the 1948 Palestine war has been recorded by all sides. The total number of volunteers from the Ikhwan in 1948 numbered 10,000 from Egypt, Syria and other countries. In addition to participating in the battle to liberate Palestine, they served to raise the consciousness of Muslims all over the Islamic World and restore to them the spirit of struggle and dignity. The Ikhwan have played a role in liberating Muslim lands from colonialist powers in almost every Muslim country. The Ikhwan were active amongst Muslims in Central Asian Muslim republics since the ’70s, and their involvement can be seen recently in such republics as Tajikistan. More recently they had a major role in the struggle for Afghanistan and Kashmir[27].
There should be no doubt that all MB teachings and activities including organized violence, are aimed at achieving global Muslim supremacy.
The MB’s readiness to use violence was demonstrated in the U.S., in 1993 with the bombing the World Trade Center in NYC. Exiled MB leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in U.S. prison for plotting this attack, also planned to blow up bridges and tunnels in Manhattan.[28] Since then, the MB affiliated groups in the U.S., focused their activities and agenda to condition American minds and behavior to create an Islamic foundation from which violence can spring when the time is right.
And future violence is all but guaranteed: In 2004, MB leader Mohammad Mahdi Akef publicly promoted “Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.”[29]
Actively promoting its radical religious ideology, the MB may well meet the definition of a “terrorist organization,” under the Patriot Act, even though it has not been so designated by the U.S. government. The law stipulates “terrorist organizations to potentially include terrorist organizations not designated by the Secretary of State …A group that is engaged in terrorist activities might not be designated as a terrorist organization because, inter alia, the group’s activities escape the notice of U.S. officials responsible for designated organizations as terrorist; the group has shifting alliances or designating the group as a terrorist organization would jeopardize ongoing U.S. criminal or military operations”.[30]
Terrorist organizations are legally defined as groups of two or more individuals that have “committed, incited, planned, prepared, gathered information or provided material support for terrorist activities.” However, terrorist activity can in some instances include even “indirect” actions such as group membership and advocacy. [31]
In addition, the REAL ID Act of 2005 significantly expanded the legal definition “terrorist organization” as it pertains to U.S. immigration law. “Terrorist organizations” now include any group that solicits funds or memberships for either terrorist organizations or activities, or otherwise provide them material support. The definition now covers groups with subgroups engaged in terrorist activities, too. [32]As we discuss below, the MB has many such subgroups and has spawned many offspring— thus the MB and all its offspring now seem to fit these legal criteria.
The definition of “engaged in terrorist activity” was also broadened under the Real ID Act, to include belonging to, associating with, soliciting or recruiting for, or giving material support to a terrorist organization or even a single member, including non-designated terrorist organizations. Furthermore, if they so claim, the burden is now on aliens to prove that they could not reasonably have known that their actions supported a terrorist group. [33]
The Caricatures Riots
The riots following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in the then obscure Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, [34] in September 2005, should have surprised no one. In fact, the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe, in line with the MB agenda, were planted long before the cartoons were published.
In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and leader of Hizb ut Tahrir (a radical group that works to establish the Caliphate), Sheikh Issam Amayra, from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, called upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war, according to his sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.
Amayra’s sermon warned that: “…the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. They managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”
Amayra continued, “Afterwards the citizens of the Caliphate (which will be raised in Denmark) will wage war on Oslo, and after they change that city’s name to Medina [for the Arabian holy city] they will fight their neighboring Scandinavian countries in order to join their lands to the territory of the Caliphate. In the next stage, they will wage a holy war and spread the message of Islam to the rest of Europe, until they reach the original city of Medina. Then they will join both cities under the banner of Islam.”
The riots in Denmark and throughout the world were not spontaneous but planned and organized well in advance[35] by Islamist organizations that support the MB, and with funding mostly from Saudi Arabia.[36]
The MB in the U.S.
Different Muslim groups existed in the U.S. and Canda before 1952. But the first joint meeting of North America’s Muslim groups in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has established the International Islamic Associations (FIA). The 1954 annual meeting of the groups changed the name of the organization to Federation of Islamic Associations and requested “the recognition of Islam as a religion by the U.S. armed forces.” The FIA set out to spread the Da’wa throughout the U.S. and Canda and especially in institutions of higher education. Thus, the date most often used as the seminal moment in the history of the Ikhwan in the U.S. was the founding the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in January 1963.
The MSA is the oldest of the American Islamist organizations dominated by Ikhwan members. From its inception, the MSA was the beneficiary of Muslim World League (Rabita al-Alam al-Islami) largess. The MWL had been founded only the year before in Saudi Arabia, and it is not surprising that from its founding, no criticism of Saudi Arabia would be tolerated either in MSA publications or at their annual conventions. The first convention held in 1963 at the University of Illinois, was “a collaborative effort of Ikhwan members from Egypt, Iraq, Syria and the Sudan” with 70 members in attendance. In the years to follow the conventions would be a popular meeting ground for students as hundreds of MSA chapters were opened in the United States and Canada.
In the years to follow the conventions would be a popular meeting ground for students as hundreds of MSA chapters were opened in the United States and Canada. Then as now, the “main goal” of the institution was “always da’wa.”(6) And continuing the traditional Ikhwan focus on means of communication, the MSA founded its International Graphics publishing company and issued newsletters and magazines including Islamic Horizons and Al-Ittihad.
In its formative years there existed no particular Sunni-Shi’a divide, and in its early years, four MSA presidents were Shi’i. However, when the war between Iran and Iraq exploded in 1980 differences became so severe that an MSA-Persian Speaking Group (MSA-PSG) split off from the parent group. The split was exacerbated by the activity of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) action in the United States. Established in 1972 and directed from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the WAMY developed a close relationship with the MSA, and the latter did not protest events occurring in the nineteen eighties when WAMY began a frontal attack on Shi’a Muslims, Israel, and the Jews. Among the most notorious of the booklets, WAMY distributed, The Difference Between The Shiites and the Majority of Muslim Scholars. It claims “that a fictional Yemeni Jew, Abdullah Ibn Sabaa, conspired with other Jews to create a division in Islam, and planted Jewish ideas which became Shi’a Islam.” The author concludes by saying, “The cornerstone of the Shi’a faith, as well as its dimensions and evidence, are false and baseless.” These were astringent words from an organization ostensibly devoted to instructing of “Muslim Youth.”(16)
Stephen Schwartz, an analyst and a blunt critic of Islamist activity in the United States, has written that when MSA leadership’s addresses the mainstream media, “MSA presents itself as a campus service organization not much different from other collegiate faith groups. But the reality is very different and deeply sinister.” Schwartz argues that the MSA has been a key element in supporting an extremist and Wahhabi conspiracy to control American Islam, as well to distort the public discourse about Islam in America.(9) Aspects of the MSA’s early history has been provided by Hamid Algar, a Muslim scholar at the University of California‑Berkeley. A “ferocious critic” of the United States-Israel relationship, Algar’s Wahhabism: A Critical Essay portrays the MSA with the accuracy of inside knowledge.(7) Algar links the MSA to the Saudi MWL and argues the latter is, “as an extremist Islamic equivalent of the old Communist International or Comintern, and that its cadres included numerous Islamist revolutionaries from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and from Pakistan.”(8)
Algar reiterated that at annual MSA conventions “no criticism of Saudi Arabia would be tolerated,” and at MSA chapters the Friday prayers would be augmented by stacks of inflammatory MWL publications. And for those that needed instruction, Algar found that in 1980 the MWL, “published a translation, which was actually a text puffed up to give it more substance, of writings by Ibn Abd al‑Wahhab.” The MWL also served as a home for Ikhwan transiting the West; one of its most famous alumni was Qutbi al-Mahdi, a Muslim Brother and Sudanese doctoral student at McGill University, Montreal. In the late nineteen-eighties Qutbi served as the Director of the MWL New York office, and following the 30 June 1989 Islamist revolution in Sudan, the friend of Hasan al-Turabi returned to Khartoum and was named Sudan Ambassador to Iran (and later Minister of Foreign Affairs) in the Islamist government.
The MB and its offspring organizations employ the Flexibility strategy in the U.S. and wherever they operate. This strategy calls for a minority group of Muslims to use all “legal” means to infiltrate majority-dominated, non-Muslim secular and religious institutions, starting with its universities. As a result, “Islamized” Muslim and non-Muslim university graduates enter the nation’s workforce, including its government and civil service sectors, where they are poised to subvert U.S. law enforcement agencies, intelligence communities, military branches, foreign services, and financial institutions.
The MB planted its roots in the United States with its 1963 [37] establishment of the Muslim Student Association (MSA).[38] Since then, it has used political developments, especially in the Middle East, to advance its strategic agenda and recruit more like-minded people to the cause of Islamizing the U.S., which, being non-Muslim, constitutes a part of the Dar al Harb – the “Land of Warfare.” [39] In other words, it “is a country belonging to infidels which have not been subdued by Islam.”
This dogma, to which Muslims have adhered since at least the 9th Century, is based on the classical Islamic definition of non-Muslim territory. Egyptian MB spiritual leader Sayyed Qutb [40]expounded further on this ideology. Although he studied in the U.S. from 1948 to 1950 on a U.S.-funded scholarship, Qutb hated America and Western values. Upon his return to Egypt, he joined the MB and became its most influential ideologist and writer after MB founder Hassan al-Banna. [41] The Egyptian government executed Qutb in 1966.
Following Qutb’s vitriolic criticism of the U.S., the MB made the U.S. a target for sedition. In the U.S. (as elsewhere), the MB utilizes its “concealment” strategy through “Political Activism”[42] and exploits U.S. “weaknesses” (i’tikaf)[43] at opportune moments. The organization also helped to establish mosques, Islamic schools, summer youth camps and prominent Muslim organizations, often with Saudi funds. According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune [44] investigative report, the MB has been “a major factor…in why many Muslim institutions in the nation have become more conservative in recent decades.”
Indeed, according to Lebanese-American Sufi leader Hisham Kabbani and Italian Muslim leader Sheik Abdul Hadi Palazzi, chief among the extremists controlling at least 80 percent of the more than 3,000 U.S. mosques is the Muslim Brotherhood, [45]or Ikhwan. According to the Tribune, the group even established a correspondence school called the Islamic American University (IAU), based in suburban Detroit, to train teachers and preachers. The IAU chairman and head of their board of trustees, according to MAS’ press release in May 2005, is well-known Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi an Egyptian graduate of Al-Azhar Theological Seminary [46] and the rumored MB international chief, who resides in Qatar and was banned from the U.S. in 1999. Sheikh Qaradawi proclaimed in 1995, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not by the sword but by our Dawa [proselytizing].”[47]
MB Network’s “Flexibility” in the U.S.
On its website, the MB states its goals under the heading “Establishing the Islamic government.” The MB notes that: “Preparing the society is achieved through plans for spreading the Islamic culture, the possible media means, mosques, and Da’awa [inviting others to Islam, an obligatory duty for Muslims], [48]work in public organizations such as syndicates, parliaments, student unions.” In stands to reason that the Brotherhood secretly cultivates new members at the mosques, madrassas, and Islamic “Cultural Centers” it has helped to create, providing these recruits with moral and financial support.
Today, the MSA advocates, in a Young Muslims of North America newsletter,[49] the collective obligations (fard) of all Muslims. “These include the spreading of the message of Islam (Da’wa), the establishment of the Islamic State (Khilafah) and the defense of Muslim lands (jihad).” The Young Muslims of North America and the Alexandria, Virginia-based Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Department note that these are required by the Shari’a and in “some of the Islamic Movement’s texts on these subjects,” including “the key books of any of the following: [MB founder] Hasan al-Banna, [Pakistani MB role model] Abul A’la Mawdudi, [50] Ahmad ar-Rashid, Assam al-Bashir and [Al-Qaeda co-founder] Abdullah Azzam).”[51]
Brotherhood members rarely announce their affiliation, since they are sworn to secrecy when they join. But operating under the seemingly benign name of the “Cultural Society” to avoid detection, the American Muslim Brotherhood also created organizations such as the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA),[52] the North American Islamic Trust [53] (NAIT), the Islamic Medical Association [54] (IMA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) [55], and The Muslim American Society [56] (MAS) according to the Tribune, the Washington Post, [57] and the MAS website. [58]
With help from the late MB member, Isma`il al-Faruqi, the group also established the International Institute of Islamic Thought [59] (IIIT) based in Herndon, Va., which publishes books and pamphlets resting on MB educational theory. This thesis is a plan advocating the Islamization of virtually all fields—from Economics [60] and Science and Technology [61] to The Islamization of Knowledge. [62] In Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects, [63] the group describes the hurdles it faces in its planned takeover of the U.S. and Canada. IIIT even envisions historical revisionism to erase non-Muslim scholarly documentation of the past and replace it with an Islamist perspective. The Treasury Department’s Operation Green Quest [64] investigation also identified methods by which IIIT may have funded suspected terrorists. Furthermore, on the 2004 Form 990 filed with the IRS, the IIIT reported that it sent $17,849 to Rahim Ghouse, an Australian/Malay business associate of Yassin al-Qadi, an al-Qaeda financier, and a U.S. designated terrorist. The family refused to answer any questions about these and other funds regularly received from the IIIT. Moreover, the IIIT directors plead the Fifth Amendment on page 26 of Form 990.
Other organizations that openly support the MB dogma include The American Muslim Council (AMC),[65] the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),[66] the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)[67], Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC),[68] Islamic Society of Orange County, (ISOC) and many others.
Many of these groups deny connections to or influence from the Muslim Brotherhood, but all of them mouth the same ideological goals, most often with the same words that appear on the MB’s websites. The MAS website, for example, describes itself as “a charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational, not-for-profit organization” that seeks “an Islamic revival and reform movement that uplifts the individual, family, and society.” Moreover, the official MAS publication, the American Muslim, [69] posts on its website the biography and “appreciation” of MB founder Hasan al-Banna. The American Muslim noted in its first issue: “Created in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood became the first mass-based, overtly political movement to oppose the ascendancy of secular and Western ideas in the Middle East. The Brotherhood saw in these ideas the root of the decay of Islamic societies in the modern world, and advocated a return to Islam as a solution to the ills that had befallen Muslim societies.”
Furthermore, former MAS Communications Director Ismail (Randall) Royer [70], who also worked for AMC and CAIR[71], pleaded guilty [72] to helping other Muslims reach a Pakistani training camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and an MB offshoot.
The AMC, established in 1990, similarly advertises itself [73] as a “movement for political and civil rights” and “justice for all Americans.” The group also wants to increase “effective participation of American Muslims in the U.S. political and public policy arenas,”—but only to promote the ultimate MB goal of establishing an Islamic state. Former AMC founder and director Abdurrahman Alamoudi, [74] now imprisoned for 23 years [75] for his role in a 2003 Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi (then Crown Prince) King Abdullah, demonstrated in January 2001 [76] just how strongly he and his group felt about U.S. democracy when he served as the AMC delegate to a terrorists’ “Jerusalem” Conference in Beirut, where he (and at least four other American Muslims) met with leaders from Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hizballah and Islamic Jihad [77] as well as such state sponsors of terror as Syria, Sudan, and Iran. The conference drew up a statement advocating “Jihad (holy war) in all its forms.” It also stated: “America today is a second Israel.” Indeed, these Islamist terrorists have for years advertised that the war against Israel and the war on America are one and the same. In January 2001,[78] when these terrorist chieftains met at the Beirut conference[79], they issued a communiqu￩ saying: “Destroy Israel … Boycott America.” It also called for “Jihad in all its forms and resistance” against Israel and urged a boycott of American goods, since “American products are exactly like the Israeli products.” [80]
Despite all this, the AMC has had considerable access to U.S. leadership, thereby lending the group a facade of legitimacy. In 1991 and 1992, respectively, Imam Siraj Wahhaj [81] and Imam Warith D. Mohammed, made the first Islamic invocations at the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, according to the AMC website. Alamoudi’s visits to both the Bill Clinton [82] and George W. Bush [83] White House received wide media coverage.
The Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia., is the major MB mosque for the Washington DC area. Its former chief cleric, Anwar Aulaqi, called [84] on the faithful “to become ‘shaheeds,” or martyrs, and “die for the sake of Allah.” The U.S.-born Aulaqi was educated in Yemen, and according to the 9/11 Commission report [85], he met on several occasions with two of the 9/11 attackers in San Diego.
MPAC openly supports MB progeny in its obituary for HAMAS founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin,[86] whom Israel eliminated in March 2004. The article, still posted on the MPAC website, bemoans the loss of this terrorist leader, who is described as a harmless invalid. Furthermore, as Steven Emerson reported in American Jihad, the MPAC cosponsored an October 28, 2000, rally in Washington DC to support the “Al-Aqsa intifada.” While AMC leader Alamoudi exhorted the crowd to cheer for HAMAS and Hizballah, MPAC political adviser Mahdi Bray “was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations.” MPAC senior adviser Dr. Maher Hathout, who also participated, later heralded the rally in an American Muslim article “as a marker of a ‘new era.” And in a 2003 position paper concerning counter-terrorism, the MPAC questioned [87] whether “alleged terror plots, such as those in Seattle, Buffalo, Portland, and Detroit, actually posed threats as serious as the government initially claimed them to be.” In two of those cases, the suspects had gone to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and train in their terrorist camps.
MB Infiltration into U.S. Academia
Even a random examination of political positions on U.S. university campuses reveals the very same ideology dominated by anti-American attitudes, often directed by MSA chapters or Middle East Centers and departments.
In February 2004, at an MSA West [88] conference at the University of California (Berkeley), Amir Abdel Malik Ali, the Oakland mosque imam, called for the establishment of an Islamic dictatorship [89] in the U.S., which would eliminate the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.
On September 7, 2005, Carnegie Endowment [90] for International Peace awarded Mustafa Khalfi a three-month fellowship, as part of his yearlong Fulbright/American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship. He is now in Washington DC, where he is “studying U.S. policy in the Middle East, with a focus on democracy promotion efforts.” Khalfi is the editor-in-chief of the Moroccan Islamist newspaper, at-Tajdid, [91] which in addition to printing pro-Islamist terrorist propaganda and anti-American articles, is raising money for HAMAS, and many other outlawed Islamist organizations, most of which are also offshoots of the MB, and are united under the umbrella organization “The Union of Good,”[92] which is represented by the London-based Islamist organization Interpal. At-Tajdid, until February 2006, had a link directing its readers to the donation page of Interpal, which the U.S. Treasury Department had identified in 2003 [93] as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for supporting HAMAS.
Khalfi was not the first Islamist with an avowedly anti-western agenda to study at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Earlier, in March 2005, SAIS appointed Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister, as a visiting scholar at its Foreign Policy Institute. Ibrahim co-founded the Herndon, Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which according to the Washington Post, “was set up in the 1980s largely by onetime Brotherhood sympathizers with money from wealthy Saudis.” [94]
Ibrahim also strongly supports al-Qaradawi’s pro-Jihad doctrines. SAIS, however, recently lost Ibrahim to the newly renamed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal [95] Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, at Georgetown University, where he lectures “on several topics. [96]“ It is ironic that this trustee of the World Association of Muslim Youth, which supports HAMAS and has been implicated [97] in funding al Qaeda and other Islamist organizations, has been assigned to teach Georgetown students “modernity in Islam, [and] interfaith understanding.” [98]
There are hundreds of similar examples of “Islamist thought at work” on U.S. campuses.
MB “Flexibility” Exposed
For its part, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has repeatedly been linked to the MB-spawned HAMAS. According to investigative reporter Joe Kaufman[99] and counterterrorism expert Matthew Epstein[100], CAIR was founded in 1994 by former Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) officials Omar Ahmad[101] and Nihad Awad[102]. The IAP is “a front organization for HAMAS,”[103] says former FBI counterterrorism chief Oliver “Buck” Revell. In 2004, a federal court found the IAP jointly liable (with an alleged HAMAS fund-raiser and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development) for $156 million in damages [104] for helping HAMAS to murder a 17-year-old U.S. citizen in the West Bank. After 9/11, CAIR was caught [105] raising funds for two HAMAS-linked fund-raising “charities,” the Holy Land Foundation (HLF)[106] and the Global Relief Foundation.[107] In 2003, CAIR also received funds from the Brotherhood-linked IIIT, according to Daniel Pipes.[108]
CAIR’s former communications director and civil-rights coordinator was sentenced to twenty years in prison, on April 9, 2004, for “using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony,”[109] and attempting to join Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani offshoot of the MB and an al Qaeda- linked organization. In addition, he pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting three Jihadists to obtain training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan, to fight American troops in Afghanistan. All of Royer’s activities occurred while working for CAIR.
Bassam Khafagi who was a founding member and President of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) was also community affairs director for CAIR when arrested in 2003, for founding and funding the Ypsilanti-based Islamic Assembly of North America, which the FBI suspected of financing terrorism. [110] According to a September 2003 testimony before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Khafagi headed IANA during the time senior al-Qaeda recruiter Abdelrahman Al-Dosari spoke at IANA’s 1993, 1994 and 1995 conferences.[111]
Finally, according to the Justice Department, Ghassan Elashi [112], who founded the Texas Chapter of CAIR and served as chairman of the Holy Land Foundation, a specially designated terrorist organization, was convicted [113] in April 2005, of knowingly dealing with HAMAS leader and designated terrorist Mousa Abu Marzook.
In light of the fact that many senior officials in the above-mentioned organizations have been convicted of a variety of terrorists’ related offenses, one would expect that the organizations would be held responsible as well.
Several key CAIR affiliates have also made comments mimicking MB ideology. CAIR board member [114] Ihsan Bagby stated [115] in the late 1980s that Muslims “can never be full citizens of [the U.S.]… because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.” CAIR spokesman [116] Ibrahim Hooper told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4, 1993: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.” And CAIR chairman Omar Ahmad [117], said in July 1998, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”
MB Success in Europe as a Model for the U.S.
While pursuing its goals in the U.S., the MB has conducted the same subversive program in Europe. In “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe,” in the Winter 2005, issue of the Middle East Quarterly, researcher Lorenzo Vidino [118] documented:
“Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. [Its] ultimate goal [is] to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States. [119]
“Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe’s political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.
“These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood’s radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.
“When speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, however, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for HAMAS and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. The case is particularly visible in Germany, which retains a place of key importance in Europe, not only because of its location at the heart of Europe but also because it played host to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood immigrants [to Europe] and is host to the best-organized Brotherhood presence. “
Munich’s Islamic Center
“The Ministry of Interior of Nordrhein-Westfalen states that the Islamic Center of Munich has been one of the European headquarters of the Brotherhood since its foundation. [120]The center publishes a magazine, Al-Islam, whose efforts (according to an Italian intelligence dossier), [121] are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa. According to the interior minister of Baden-Wrttemberg, Al-Islam shows explicitly how the German Brothers reject the concept of a secular state.[122] Its February 2002 issue, for example, states, “‘In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law. … Muslims should aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a separate jurisdiction for Muslims….. With ample Saudi financing, the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to become the voice of the Muslims in Germany.’
“In parallel to European Union integration efforts, the Muslim Brotherhood is also seeking to integrate its various European proxies. Over the past fifteen years, the Muslim Brotherhood has created a series of pan-European organizations such as the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, in which representatives from national organizations can meet and plan initiatives. [123] Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest pan-European impact has, as with the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland, been with its youth organization. In June 1996, Muslim youth organizations from Sweden, France, and England joined forces with the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth to create a European Islamic youth organization. [124] Three months later, thirty-five delegates from eleven countries met in Leicester and formally launched the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which maintains its headquarters in Brussels. [125]
“According to its official publications, FEMYSO is “a network of 42 national and international organizations bringing together youth from over 26 different countries.” FEMYSO proudly stated in 2003 that over the preceding four years it had become the de facto voice of the Muslim youth in Europe. It is regularly consulted on issues pertaining to Muslims in Europe. It has also developed useful links with the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, the European Youth Forum, and numerous relevant NGOs at the European level.” [126]
MB Globalization
Aside from working through proxies noted above, the MB uses various global communications outlets to spread its ideology. Their website, “Muslim Brotherhood Movement Page (Hizb Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon),” boasts that it has established branches in “over 70 countries all over the world,” including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Britain, Switzerland, Lebanon, Pakistan, Morocco, France, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Bangladesh.
Wherever the MB operates, its program calls for active subversion and proselytizing. In the U.S., its message is heralded through many additional websites carried by American Internet hosts. For example, ummah.net [127] carries Sheikh Al Qaradawi’s fatwa for boycotting Israeli and U.S. products. In the name of ‘resistance,’ Qaradawi has issued fatwas calling for the systematic killing of American servicemen in Iraq. The website Jannah.org, hosted by ENoor Creations, [128] in Lombard, Il., also carries Qaradawi’s book: The Status Of Women In Islam, in which he recommends, among other domineering practices, how to beat your wife – “lightly.” Qaradawi,[129] who publicly supports suicide bombing, and was the first to issue a fatwa allowing female bombers, also heads the London-based International Union [130] for Muslim Scholars, which on January 21, 2006, threatened to boycott Norwegian and Danish products due to the publication of caricatures of Mohammed. Qaradawi is also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research.[131]
On August 23, 2004, [132] the London Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi published an MB ad calling on all Muslims to resist the U.S. Coalition’s occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ad denounced the “the savage and destructive attacks of occupation, lead by the United States on Islam in general, and on Iraq especially… Spreading death, destruction, and fear among its people in all its cities and villages.” The ad went on to say that “In view of these savage crimes implemented in Iraq and Palestine by the Zionist-American pact not only against the Arabs and Islam but also against humanity in general, these events are also forthcoming in Darfur Sudan.”
For this reason, Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar, Leader–General of the Muslim Brotherhood League, the Egyptian, Muhammad Mahdi Akef—and ninety-one other leaders of MB from countries such as Germany, India, Morocco, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Yemen and others—signed a petition calling “upon our Islamic and Arab nations along with all the religious authorities and the liberation powers, wherever they may be, to resist the occupation and its savage crimes in Iraq and Palestine; to offer our moral and material support to the honorable resistance, its prisoners and their families; to be patient, strong and steadfast until Allah is victorious, and the land of Islam cleansed from the filth of occupation. And this is drawing near by the grace of Allah.”
MB Utilizing Democracy in the Middle East
The recent electoral victory of the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which won 88[133] seats, up from 15 in the 454-member Parliament, should not be celebrated as an indication of liberalization, democracy, and freedom. Neither should the 80 seats [134] of the 132-seat Palestinian parliament won by HAMAS (“The Islamic Resistance Movement”)[135] – the MB’s Palestinian branch [136]. Both the MB and HAMAS are exploiting the U.S. call for democratization in the Middle East, using free elections to gain legitimate political power. Indeed, neither [137] organization has changed its charter; both [138] seek to create a global Islamic state, where life would be dictated by the Shari’a. In December 2005 [139], in a series of statements, MB leader Mahdi Akef [140], not only denied the Holocaust [141] and called for the demise of Israel (a “cancer”) from the Middle East, but also condemned the U.S. for forcing its will “with tanks and Hummer vehicles on the Iraqi people.” And like his Palestinian constituency the HAMAS, he reiterated: “we will not recognize Israel which is an alien entity in the region. And we expect the demise of this cancer soon…”
Although Article Two of the 1988 HAMAS Covenant reads: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” [142] until recently, HAMAS portrayed itself as a nationalist organization, especially in the West. Its Charter has always announced its global agenda. In pursuit of that goal, HAMAS publishes its website in many languages including, English, Urdu, Farsi, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, French, and Russian.[143] A HAMAS website for children even calls for the “return” to Islam of Seville.[144]
To Mousa Abu Marzuk, Deputy Chief of HAMAS’ Political Bureau in Damascus, HAMAS’ triumph is an important springboard towards the establishment of the Caliphate. In a January 26 statement, following HAMAS’ victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, Abu Marzuk said that HAMAS, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is reaping the fruits of its efforts over the last six decades.[145] HAMAS was established in Palestine in 1936 (not in 1987, as many mistakenly think.)[146] Since then, the movement has carried out its political and social agenda, including Da’awa (“Proselytization”) and Jihad.
Support of the Muslim/Arab World to the MB
A United Arab Emirates government-operated “charitable” organization (whose board includes the UAE president), Human Appeal International (HAI),[147] Funds HAMAS and its “martyrs,” HAMAS terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families. The HAI’s modus operandi is to transfer money to the Palestinian Red Crescent Organization whose West Bank and Gaza branches are operated by HAMAS. They, in turn, distribute the money to HAMAS “charities.”
According to a detailed report on March 25, 2005, in the Palestinian daily Al Hayat al-Jadeeda, the UAE Friends Society transferred $475,000, through the UAE Red Crescent, to West Bank “charitable” organizations in Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem to distribute to the families of “martyrs,” orphans, imprisoned Palestinians and others.
The Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam [148] reported on March 22, 2005, that in 2004 the UAE Red Crescent donated $2 million to HAMAS “charities” to be distributed to 3,158 terrorists’ orphans.
On February 15, 2005, the HAMAS website [149] reported on funds transferred from HAI to two HAMAS front organizations in the West Bank, IQRA, and Rifdah, which Israel had outlawed. And last July, Osama Zaki Muhammad Bashiti [150] of Khan Younis in Gaza was arrested as he returned from the UAE, for transferring funds of as much as $200,000 at a time to the Gaza HAMAS branch. The suicide bombing and attacks, including one mortar attack on Gush Katif, caused the death of 44 Israeli civilians [151] and dozens of injuries.
The UAE support of HAMAS is in line with the agenda promoted by the late Sheikh Zayed. His Zayed Center for International Coordination and Followup [152], founded in 1999 as the official Arab League think-tank, was shuttered under international pressure in 2003. It championed such Holocaust deniers as Thierry Meyssan and Roger Garaudy [153] and provided a platform for Muslim Brotherhood-inspired ideology, and anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish extremists such as Saudi economist Dr. Yussuf Abdallah Al Zamel, who blamed the war in Iraq on “radical Zionist and right-wing Christian” influence. Like HAMAS, and its parent organization, the MB, the Zayed Center also promoted the many versions of Jihad.
MB and Terrorist Groups
Among the many permanent, negative features of Shari’a is a system that subjugates and oppresses non-Muslims. It requires non-Muslims to convert to Islam or pay the jizya [154] tax, a form of extortion, creating a “contract” (dhimma) that “guarantees” the infidels’ lives and possessions. In a recent essay [155] Dr. Andrew Bostom quotes the Arabic scholar, E.W. Lane, who bluntly calls the tax on “free non-Muslim subjects …compensation for not being slain.”
The system’s “obligations” institutionalize discrimination (dhimmitude) that targets Jews and Christians. Others, like such Hindus, and Buddhists ostensibly have a choice to convert or to be slaughtered, although historically, they were often offered an even more degrading dhimma than the “People of the Book.” [156] These regulations prohibit dhimmis from possessing arms, ringing church bells, testifying in courts, building and restoring houses of worship while restricting many other civil rights as well. Like Nazi regulations, the Islamic rules also require non-Muslims to wear special, identifying clothes. These key features of the Shari’a and Islamic ideology are political, not merely religious.
Given that political subjugation of non-Muslims is built into Islamic law, and that the MB desires to return to “classical Islam,” it is not surprising that the organization was the fountainhead from which all Sunni terrorist organizations have flowed. Its offspring include Al-Qaeda,[157] HAMAS, [158] Palestinian Islamic Jihad, [159] Jamaat Islamiyah, [160] the Philippine Abu Sayyaf group,[161] and the Algerian Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) [162]and Armed Islamic Group (GIA) [163]. Between 1992-1998, the Algerian terrorists murdered an estimated 200,000 people. [164] Today, according to Italian security agencies, and as reported by Kathryn Haahr-Escolano [165] of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, GSPC cells in Italy not only target Italy but “employ a dual-track approach to planning terrorist attacks and provide support infrastructure—safe houses, communications, weapons procurement and documentation—to GSPC networks in other European countries.”
The ties of all these terrorist groups to the MB are evident from their identical strategies and overall Islamist agenda, and they often carry out joint operations. The MB even influenced Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [166] who developed the Iranian version of their ideology in the 1970s. Indeed, Khomeini adhered to the teaching of Egyptian MB leader Qutb [167]and followed the lead of Muhammad Navab-Safavi, [168] who was a guest of the MB in Egypt in 1953. [169] Navab-Safavi later formed the dreaded Iranian death squad, the Fedaiyon-e-Islam, or the ‘Soldiers of Islam.’
In Egypt, where the group was founded in 1928 and later banned, the Brotherhood worked under the Islamic doctrine of “concealment” (kitman) [170] to “Islamize” the country. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the MB collaborated with the Nazis. Hajj Amin al-Husseini,[171] the MB chief in British Mandate Palestine, strongly supported Arab links with the Nazis, particularly in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, where he backed the short-lived pro-Nazi regime of Rashid Ali al-Gailani [172] in 1941. In Egypt too, the MB orchestrated riots, occupied police stations and attempted coups d’etat. Following their failed 1954 attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser, [173] MB loyalists fled Egypt to the universities[174] of Saudi Arabia, where they were granted business monopolies to finance their future reemergence; in 1961 the sympathetic King Sa’ud [175] even funded their establishment of the Islamic University in Medina. In October 1981, an MB offshoot group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In the last decade alone, MB offspring including Gama’a al-Islamiya and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades repeatedly attacked Western tourists, killing hundreds and wounding many more.
Since the history of the MB is full of instigating civil wars and committing atrocities in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Sudan, and Algeria, their expansion and success elsewhere are destined to wreak more havoc and destabilize every nation in which they are allowed to operate freely.
Conclusion
The MB is a dangerous organization that spreads its tentacles throughout the world. Its goal is the establishment of the Caliphate ruled by Islamic law. Mostly Saudi and Gulf sources have been funding its activities.
The Muslim Brotherhood spawned and encouraged many Islamist proxies dedicated to the spread of Shari’a law around the world and the establishment of the Caliphate. In many countries, it has also been linked to terrorist groups and activities. In others, its members support terrorist organizations verbally and financially. Moreover, in the U.S. as elsewhere it calls on its supporters “To channel thought, education and action to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” Such form of government would deprive Americans of their rights as granted by the Constitution.
Recommendation:
In the interest of preserving freedom in the U.S. while advancing it globally, it is time for our government to thoroughly investigate the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and consider designating it as a terrorist organization.
In the same vein, the U.S should not allow foreign donations to U.S. educational, and public organizations and institutions from Islamic countries that prohibit religious freedom.
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* A version of this article was published as, The Truth About The Muslim Brotherhood, in FRONTPAGEMAG.on June 16, 2006
* Rachel Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., is the lead author of this paper. She is a member of the board of directors of the Committee on the Present Danger and Director of the American Center for Democracy. She is also the author of “Funding Evil.”
*ACD Senior Fellow Alyssa A. Lappen assisted with the paper.