Why is USCMO Banquet Featuring Congressional Members Still Secret?

As the United States commemorates the 13th anniversary of 11 September 2001 and President Barack Obama deliberates a strategy to manage terror threats from the Islamic State (IS), the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) and its Secretary General Ousama Jammal still have not published any video, audio, or transcripts from their inaugural banquet held at the Hilton Crystal City Hotel in June 2014. Two current members of Congress, U.S. Representatives Keith Ellison (Democrat, Minnesota’s 5th District) and André Carson (Democrat, Indiana’s 7th District), were invited by Jammal to speak at the Washington, DC area event which launched the first ever Muslim Brotherhood political party in the U.S. Not even the respective congressional offices have made available publicly the remarks delivered by Ellison and Carson at this high level Muslim Brotherhood function at a time when the Obama administration’s foreign policy involving Muslim Brotherhood power-grabs in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere has been marked by repeated fiascos.

USCMO Secretary General Jammal plays a key leadership role for the Muslim Brotherhood’s flagship U.S. political party and handles the position of primary spokesman as well. He’s well-suited to the Brotherhood messaging agenda: Jammal is president of Fine Media Group, the distribution company for the film Mohammed: The Last Prophet, which was completed just months before the 11 September 2001 attacks. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised the film as an opportunity for individuals and families from all faith backgrounds “to learn more about an historic figure like Prophet Mohammed and events that shaped today’s world.”

In February 2004, Ousama Jammal, then president of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois characterized the U.S. government counterterrorism program as a “witch hunt.” He declared that it was a “Zionist agenda” that prompted federal officials to close three Islamic charities operating near the mosque and prevent Sabri Samirah, a leader from the mosque and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), from returning to the U.S. from Jordan. What Jammal neglected to mention was that, in fact, it was a HAMAS operative – Mousa Abu Marzook – who established the Islamic Association for Palestine in 1981. On 8 October 1987, the U.S. Department of State (DoS) designated HAMAS a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The IAP was also parent to the Council on American Islamic Relations, which was incorporated in 1994 by the IAP leadership that included Nihad Awad (current CAIR National Executive Director and USCMO member), Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber.

As shown by court documents, the IAP was a prong of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, until the U.S. government froze the IAP’s assets and shut it down in December 2004 on the grounds that it was funding terrorism. The IAP was identified as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s twenty-nine likeminded “organizations of our friends” in the May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”

Before USCMO Secretary General Jammal invited U.S. Representatives Ellison and Carson to the USCMO’s historic inaugural event in June 2014 in the Washington, DC area, he likely would have been aware that both these members of Congress previously had participated at various conventions of Muslim Brotherhood organizations. One of these engagements included the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in August 2008, where Ellison and Carson discussed effective strategies for the community-based political advocacy necessary to mobilize the Muslim political machine in the U.S.

In December 2008, U.S. Representative Ellison made history as the first member of Congress to make a MAS-sponsored hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society (MAS) was created by the Muslim Brotherhood; MAS also is a founding member of the USCMO. In 2007 and 2008, Ellison gave the keynote address at MAS conventions in Minnesota. This very same MAS Minnesota chapter that paid for Ellison’s hajj highlighted writings on its website from Islamic clerics who praised HAMAS and urged Muslims to “wage Jihad until death.” The architects of HAMAS and some of Al-Qaeda’s founding figures were members of the Muslim Brotherhood first.

During a Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) convention in the summer of 2012, U.S. Representative Carson stated in his address about the State of The American Family that “America will never win the war against terrorism without help from the Muslim community. America will never tap into educational innovation and ingenuity without looking at the model that we have in our madrassas, in our schools, where innovation is encouraged, where the foundation is the Quran.”

Carson continued on an aggrieved and somewhat exaggerate theme, noting that “America must understand that she needs Muslims. There are over 7 million Muslims in this country. While we are under attack, we cannot retreat. We have been a part of America since the inception of America…Now, It is unfortunate that there are those who are thinking at this convention right now, we are having secret meetings, that we are plotting to destroy this country. But I say to those who are here undercover, Allah will not allow you to stop us.”

The lack of transparency apparently favored by the USCMO and its Secretary General Jammal, at least when U.S. Congressmen with a record of Muslim Brotherhood linkages are involved, doesn’t bode well for any of them. Careful control of the USCMO image, narrative, and messaging to the U.S. public may shield them from criticism for the moment, but at a time when the Muslim Brotherhood has been declared a terrorist entity by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and the Islamic State (a similarly jihadist organization) is running amok across the Middle East, it is going to be difficult for the USCMO—or its Congressional pals—to maintain the façade forever.