Since its founding in 1993, the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has presented itself publicly as a benign Muslim American “civil rights organization.” From that time to this, however, the United States government has known that CAIR actually is an entity founded by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise: Hamas, a group officially designated since 1994 as a terrorist organization.
Evidence of CAIR’s true character as a U.S.-based instrument for political warfare and fundraising for Hamas – and the federal government’s certain knowledge of the truth – did not come to light until the largest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history: the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation prosecution. In the course of that trial, FBI Agent Laura Burns testified about, and helped explain, the transcripts of wiretap surveillance conducted in the course of two planning sessions leading up to the organizational meeting of CAIR held in Philadelphia in October 1993 and during the meeting itself. Specifically, she presented proof that CAIR’s mission was to assist “Sister Samah,” its founders’ hardly opaque code-name for Hamas, as the prospect of its terror designation loomed.
Annotated highlights of the CAIR transcripts are now available for the first time, complete with relevant excerpts from Agent Burns’ testimony, in the latest product of the Center for Security Policy’s “Muslim Brotherhood Archival Series”: CAIR Is Hamas: How the U.S. Government Proved that the Council on American Islamic Relations is a Front for Terrorism. As with the first two publications in this series – “An Explanatory Memorandum”: From the Archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America and Ikhwan in America: An Oral History of the Muslim Brotherhood in their Own Words, this new product from CSP Press is making accessible original source material together with professional analysis concerning the inner workings of the network the Muslim Brotherhood has operated in America for more than fifty years for the stated purpose of “destroying Western civilization from within.”[1]
Upon the release of CAIR is Hamas, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney observed:
The production of this proof of CAIR’s jihadist nature is especially timely as legislatures in states around the country are considering resolutions seeking to discourage their agencies from interacting with this Hamas front and as the U.S. Congress considers legislation calling for the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. CAIR is Hamas should be required reading for lawmakers, other officials at every level of government, the press and ordinary Americans misperceiving CAIR’s true jihadist and subversive nature.
The Center for Security Policy reported in its September 2015 publication Star Spangled Shariah that the Muslim Brotherhood was actively setting its sights on the 2016 election cycle and preparing for a ‘get out the vote’ operation to mobilize its base. The United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the first U.S. political party openly associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, is aggressively pursuing many of its operational objectives behind a screen of feigned ‘patriotism’. Since the inception of the USCMO in March 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood-led organization more than once has relied upon a less-than-transparent modus operandi that obscure its true agenda, activities, and intentions for the U.S. political process from the general public and even members of Congress.
The Muslim Brotherhood agenda for the United States includes the subversive infiltration of every sphere of American society and recruitment of assistance in the subversive process from unwitting American themselves. The Muslim Brotherhood understood that the successful execution of its plan for societal destruction from within depends on what it calls the ‘settlement process:’ ‘In order for Islam and its Movement’ to become ‘a part of the homeland’ in which it lives, ‘stable’ in its land, ‘rooted’ in the spirits and minds and people, ‘enabled’ in the life of its society, and firmly established within organizations through which the Islamic structure is to be built, the Movement must work to obtain ‘the keys’ and tools of this of this ‘Civilization Jihadist’ project that is the responsibility of its vanguard, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
The USCMO and its Secretary General Oussama Jammal relied upon the expertise of veteran Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leader Sabri Samirah, banned and deported from the United States for a decade until his (apparently temporary) 2014 return. Samirah worked as chairman of the Islamic Association of Palestine, the progenitor to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). It will be recalled that the IAP was established in 1981 by HAMAS operative Mousa Abu Marzook. Samirah has functioned effectively as a catalyst for the next steps of Civilization Jihad described in the 1991 document ‘An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for North America’ by working closely with USCMO leadership to ‘get out the vote’ to influence key elections before his return to Jordan in October 2015.
Today, the principal leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-led USCMO is none other than Foreign Terrorist Organization-listed HAMAS doing-business-as CAIR. In the fall of 2016, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad unveiled the first-ever Muslim Brotherhood ‘Muslims GOTV’ campaign. As noted on the CAIR website, donations to support the ‘Muslims GOTV’ campaign are both tax deductible and zakat eligible. As explained in Islamic Law (shariah), however, ‘zakat’ is not merely ‘charity,’ but rather an obligatory tax on all Muslims and Muslim firms. According to shariah, all zakat proceeds collected anywhere on earth must be distributed among a legally-fixed set of recipients, at least one-eighth of which is always jihad.
In essence, therefore, HAMAS dba CAIR and the USCMO are not only running an influence operation under cover of ‘citizen activism’ during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but using proceeds dishonestly acquired under the cloak of star spangled shariah to support enemies of the United States and the Free World.
In response to a top-level national security panel presentation organized by Rabbi Jonathan Hausman at the Ahavath Torah Congregation tonight in Stoughton, Massachusetts, HAMAS-doing-business-as-CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and the notorious jihad incubator at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) have joined forces to mount a last-ditch intimidation campaign.
On Wednesday, 2 November 2016, the Ahavath Torah Congregation is scheduled to host an event featuring Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, Family Research Council Executive Vice President Lieutenant General (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin, and The United West Founder Tom Trento. In response, ISBCC Executive Director Yusuf Vali has coopted nearly 100 interfaith leaders who represent the Christian and Jewish communities in the Boston area in an attempt to pressure the leadership board of Rabbi Hausman’s synagogue to cancel the program, which is dedicated to highlighting the national security threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamic Movement.
So, by whom exactly have these interfaith collaborators allowed themselves to be conned into this latest Brotherhood-led assault on free speech? It may be recalled that during the 2016 general election cycle, the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), formed in 2014, described on its website the group’s efforts to “promote peace and harmony in society.” And yet, the principal leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-led USCMO is none other than Foreign Terrorist Organization-listed HAMAS dba CAIR. While CAIR tries to present itself as a civil rights organization, it has here joined forces with the ISBCC, jihad command and control center for the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
As noted by Robert Spencer in March 2016, the ISBCC has long been a haven for jihadists.
The Boston Marathon individual jihadis, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Pakistani neuroscientist and jihadi, Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence for trying to kill American soldiers in July 2008
Tarek Mehanna, U.S. citizen pharmacist and jihadi, who is serving seventeen years for providing material support to al-Qaeda
Ahmad Abousamra, who before he was killed in a June 2015 airstrike in Iraq, was considered a key architect of the Islamic State’s social media presence
The Islamic Society of Boston’s founder, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, was once a major player in Washington and the nation’s most prominent “moderate” Muslim. Now he is serving a twenty-three year sentence for charges including fundraising for al-Qaeda.
That HAMAS dba CAIR is working alongside the ISBCC is not a coincidence. CAIR under the leadership of Executive Director Nihad Awad has not only condemned publicly and repeatedly the counterterrorism efforts of the local law enforcement community and United States government, but has an extensive record of defending jihadis and jihadi organizations. As former FBI Assistant Director Steven Pomeranz stated, “By masquerading as a mainstream public affairs organization, CAIR has taken the lead in trying to mislead the public about the terrorist underpinnings of militant Islamic movements, in particular, HAMAS.” In December 2015, USCMO member, CAIR’s Awad, openly declared the Muslim Brotherhood’s allegiance with the far-left racist and revolutionary movement, Black Lives Matter.
In early October 2016, USCMO leader CAIR (CAIR-Chicago) unsuccessfully led a campaign with a series of partners including Black Lives Matter – Chicago, Arab American Action Network, and the Center for New Community to cancel the Illinois Tactical Officers Association (ITOA)’s five day Tactical Training Conference (9 -13 October 2016) for law enforcement officers and emergency medical technicians. CAIR also mounted pressure in a botched attempt to terminate the contractual relationships between ITOA and the Cook County, IL Department of Homeland Security & Emergency Management (DHSEM), in addition to other government agencies.
Next, it was CAIR-Oklahoma Executive Director Adam Soltani’s turn to strike out on 25 October 2016, when he took aim at a national security briefing on ‘the ideological roots, nature and magnitude of the jihad threat’ provided to the Oklahoma State Legislature. Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett, a combat veteran Marine in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, called for an Oklahoma State Judiciary and Civil Procedure Committee’s Interim Study on “Radical Islam, Shariah Law, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Radicalization Process.” During the hearings Bennet sponsored, former FBI agent John Guandolo and Chris Gaubatz of Understanding the Threat provided a clear explanation about shariah as the doctrinal Islamic basis for jihad and set forth a succinct evidentiary legal framework about the subversive Brotherhood network in this country. Frank Gaffney, President and Founder of the Center for Security Policy, and Gen. Jerry Boykin also spoke at the hearing, with Gaffney explaining how zakat, the obligatory annual Muslim tax, according to Islamic Law is required to fund jihad.
Clearly, the facts of the accelerating worldwide jihad are becoming all-too obvious to all—and the only rear-guard action the MB’s U.S.-based jihadis in suits seem able to muster at this point is against the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee for free speech. Civilization Jihad and Star spangled shariah in action.
The Muslim Brotherhood front group, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), proved incapable of drumming up much interest for The American Muslim March on Washington, which turned out to be quite the flop for its organizers on the evening of 23 July 2016. The logistical planning for this “Star Spangled Shariah” program on the National Mall near the Capitol Building began months ago, including a video introducing the event on the 9 May 2016 and a press conference held just 2 1/2 weeks after the 12 June jihadist rampage at the Orlando, Florida nightclub. Effusively portrayed as an opportunity for Muslims to unite “Against terrorism, hate, and violence” and rally for “Peace, Truth, Unity”, the American Muslim March on Washington instead went wobbly in its goal to “send a strong message to the rest of our nation and to the world.” It would appear that the dismal turnout of fewer than 200 people may indicate something of a factional division between Muslim Brotherhood rivals in North America.
Dismal attendance for Muslim Rally against ISIS and Jihad
While the Brotherhood leadership in the United States should have had ample time to rally its memberships, neither the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) nor the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) promoted this gathering, intended to deliver a patriotic-themed taqiyya narrative about a peaceful Islam after a series of bloody jihadist attacks in the U.S. and Europe. A possible internal conflict between the leadership of ISNA and USCMO members has resulted (thus far) in ISNA still declining to become a member of the USCMO long after the announcement of its formation in March 2014.
Likewise during the recent Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – Muslim American Society (MAS) conference over the 2016 Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore, Maryland, there was an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood leadership to promote and encourage members to support this upcoming march in the nation’s capital. Despite ready access to a host of social media resources amply used for other events, the USCMO and CAIR did not go out of their way to dedicate time or promote The American Muslim March on Washington.
Indicators of such a divide have surfaced previously. In August 2014, Tariq Ramadan slammed ISNA when he said, “We cannot be forever silent: what kind of active and responsible citizenship does the ISNA leadership offer young American Muslims? What kind of example? That of silent, fearful sycophants–or of free, public-spirited citizens who, while defending the values of human dignity and justice, serve their country in the most sincere and critical way? That of the unconditional loyalty of the timorous, or the critical loyalty of free individuals? To attend the ISNA convention would be to endorse their silence.”
Event screenshot showing partners for the American Muslim March on Washington
Noted speakers on the agenda for The American Muslim on Washington slated to last from 5pm – 9:30pm included Imam Mohamed Magid (Executive Director, All Dulles Area Muslim Society), Dr. Muzamil Siddiqui (member of ISNA Majlis Ash-Shura and Fiqh Council of North America), Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed (ISNA National Director, Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances). Representation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) included SSA Melanie Jimenez and Sarah Saenz. Paul Monteiro, an Obama-appointed former Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, represented the U.S. Department of Justice. This sparsely-attended ISNA event never drew the tens of thousands Muslims billed by its organizers. The deafening silence from Muslims in America who failed to attend and criticize the Islamic State’s adherence to shariah speaks volumes.
The Muslim Brotherhood leadership obviously faces a significant public relations challenge trying simultaneously to present themselves as peaceful, civil rights-oriented activists, while balancing their solidarity with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in support of his dreams for a shariah-compliant neo-Ottoman Empire. The steady drumbeat of Islamic terrorists pledging allegiance to the Islamic State before slaughtering innocent civilians cannot be helping the Muslim image much either. Evidently, The American Muslim March on Washington was either just not a top priority, proving too difficult to muster the voice of Muslims, or the organizers bit off more than they could chew without the support of the USCMO and CAIR.
The “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) initiative has been, from its inception in the United Kingdom to its implementation here under President Obama, an initiative of hostile Islamic influence operators. Their object has been to obscure: the nature of the enemy we face (i.e., Islamists who engage in either the violent type of jihad or the stealthy sort of subversion honed by the international Muslim Brotherhood); what impels them (i.e., the Islamists’ totalitarian ideology known as Sharia); and the sorts of measures that would most effectively defeat their agenda (i.e., time-tested, fact-based policing, intelligence and counter-intelligence techniques).
Tragically, under the influence of known Sharia-supremacist groups in America (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas fronts like CAIR, ISNA and MPAC), the federal government’s CVE apparatus has given priority to avoiding any offense to Islamists, rather than preventing their jihad. Federal agents, analysts and state/local police are being trained to remain ignorant of what motivates and enables the global jihadist movement. They are told that “right-wing” extremism is a greater danger than that posed by Sharia and jihad (terms whose use CVE actually forbids). This practice virtually ensures more Fort Hoods, San Bernardinos, and Orlandos as our first lines of defense are effectively precluded from being proactive in the face of knowable threats.
Since Countering Violent Extremism is designed to fail us, it cannot be redirected or redefined, (for example by changing the name to “countering radical Islamist terrorism”). It must be abandoned, dismantled and reversed. U.S. taxpayer resources must go to protecting America, not protecting the Sharia-supremacists in our midst.
‘Victory Over Jihad’
Congress must not endorse, legitimate, institutionalize or otherwise enable CVE as practiced by the Obama administration or under any other name. The goal of any new congressional initiative must be, instead securing “Victory Over Jihad” (VOJ). Those whose adherence to Sharia obliges them to strive to replace our Constitution with their totalitarian, supremacist doctrine are enemies, not “partners” just because they use pre-violent techniques for advancing this goal (notably, subversive influence operations, lawfare, infiltration, migration, material support for terrorism, etc.), rather than violent ones.
New bureaucracies and funding must not go to institutionalizing and enabling a failed approach. “Community partnering” must be with anti-jihadist Muslims, not Islamic supremacists.
Victory Over Jihad will require the sustained pursuit of a comprehensive, fact-based approach involving all instruments of national power at the federal, state and local levels and, wherever possible, the help of like-minded allies.
We simply cannot afford to perpetuate what is, at best, official willful blindness and at worst, our first defenders’ unilateral disarmament. There is no acceptable substitute for Victory Over Jihad.
Victory Over Jihad (VOJ) Program Mission Statement
The mission of the Victory Over Jihad Program is to resist and defeat the global jihad movement that seeks to replace our Constitution with the totalitarian, Islamic supremacist doctrine known as Sharia.
Jihadists use both violent and pre-violent techniques (including subversion, influence operations, infiltration, propaganda, lawfare, migration, material support for terrorism, etc.) against all pillars of American civilization (in particular, our political system, military/intelligence/law enforcement communities, media, clergy, economy, education system, courts, etc.) NATO defines subversion as “an action designed to weaken the military, economic or political strength of a nation by undermining the morale, loyalty or reliability of its citizens.”[1]
The jihad must be effectively and decisively countered, rolled back, dismantled and ultimately defeated through the sustained use of a comprehensive, fact-based approach involving all instruments of national power at the federal, state and local levels and, wherever possible, the help of like-minded allies.
[1]NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions, AAP-06 Edition 2012 Version 2
Key Premises of CVE
Violence is the problem. We must focus on it, alone.
Islam has nothing to do with “violent extremism.”
Islam is a religion of peace; those who engage in violence in its name are seeking to “pervert” or “hijack” a great Abrahamic faith.
Muslims are peaceful and tolerant.
Jihad is about personal struggle; it has nothing to do with “violent extremism.”
Mosques are places of worship only and must not be subjected to surveillance.
Muslims are routinely victims of “Islamophobia” – irrational fear animated by “haters’” racism, bigotry.
Muslim Brotherhood and other Sharia-supremacist “community leaders” can be relied upon for guidance about the threat and outreach.
Offense must not be given to Muslims by basing policing policies on – or even using such terms as – jihad, Sharia, Islamism or Islamic supremacism.
Right-wing “violent extremists” are more dangerous than Islamic supremacists.
Fact-based VOJ Premises
Sharia is the problem. Those who seek its imposition through stealthy, pre-violent techniques are also enemies, not just “violent” jihadists.
Sharia is an inherently violent, totalitarian doctrine derived from the Koran and other sacred Islamic texts.
The authorities of Islam declare Sharia to be the true faith. They regard non-adherent Muslims as perverters of Islam and apostates, deserving death.
Many Muslims reject Sharia. But hundreds of millions adhere to Sharia and, thus, to its intolerance and jihad.
The sacred texts of Islam and authoritative renderings of Sharia make clear that jihad is “holy war” against infidels.
Supremacist mosques are multipurpose facilities, used for worship and recruiting and equipping jihadists.
It is not irrational to fear terrifying jihadism. Sharia is intolerant, hateful and requires infidels’ submission.
The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to “destroy Western civilization from within.” It and other Sharia-supremacist groups are enemies, not an ally.
Insistence on not offending Muslims restricts free expression and clear understanding, deterring people who “see something” from saying anything.
We face a global jihad movement that has no counterpart among returning veterans, Tea Party activists, etc.
Late last week, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed and adopted a resolution (http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1004598) calling on law enforcement and government agencies in Louisiana to avoid and suspend contacts and outreach activities with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The very focused resolution was authored by Representative Barry Ivey in response to CAIR’s concerted efforts at outreach to law enforcement across America and the fact that the FBI has severed ties with the organization.
The resolution passed with broad bipartisan support, with multiple Democrats voting with the Republican majority to adopt it.
The Louisiana resolution comes just two weeks after the Texas Republican Party adopted very similar language as part of its state party platform at its convention in Dallas.
The resolution pointed out CAIR’s problems with law enforcement, as well as several of its officers and employees who were convicted of terrorism and other related charges:
The FBI has suspended all formal contacts with CAIR due to evidence demonstrating a relationship between CAIR and HAMAS, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization;
In the U.S. v the Holy Land Foundation, the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history, CAIR was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group and was named an unindicted co-conspirator;
CAIR opened its first office in Washington, D.C. with the help of a grant from the Holy Land Foundation., the charitable organization that was shut down by the US Treasury Department for funding Jihadist terrorist organizations;
In 2014, US ally the United Arab Emirates officially designated CAIR as a terrorist organization;
In March 2011, Muthanna al-Hanooti, one of CAIR’s directors, was sentenced to a year in federal prison for violating U.S. sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq;
In 2006, the co-founder of CAIR’s parent organization, IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine), Sami Al-Arian, was sentenced to 57 months in prison on terrorism charges for financing Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization according to the US State Department;
In 2004, CAIR-Northern Virginia director Abdurahman Alamoudi pled guilty to terrorism-related financial and conspiracy charges, which resulted in a 23-year federal prison sentence;
Randall Todd Royer, who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State Department’s international terror list and was also indicted on charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American troops in Afghanistan and was sentenced to twenty years in prison on April 9, 2004.
In September 2003, CAIR’s former Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and agreed to be deported to Egypt after he had funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and had published material advocating suicide attacks against the United States, illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR;
Ann Arbor, Michigan CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddad was arrested on terrorism-related charges and was deported from the United States due to his work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation, which in October 2002 was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
On Monday, April 18, legislators’ offices will be visited by individuals associated with a group unknown to most lawmakers: The United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). In the interest of helping members of the U.S. Congress understand precisely who their interlocutors are, permit a brief introduction: The USCMO is the latest in a long series of front organizations associated with, and working to advance, the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
Members of Congress should be clear about the true nature of that agenda. It is laid out most authoritatively in a document introduced into evidence by federal prosecutors in the course of the largest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation et al. Written in 1991 by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Mohamed Akram, and entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America,” this internal correspondence was meant for the eyes only of the organization’s leadership in Egypt. So, the document is direct and to the point: It explicitly states that the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is “destroying Western civilization from within … by [the infidels’] hands and the hands of the believers so that Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
There are two other important facts legislators should know about Akram’s memo.
First, the document helpfully attaches a list of 29 groups under the heading “Our organizations and organizations of our friends: Imagine if they all march according to one plan!” A number of the identified Muslim Brotherhood fronts — and many others that have come into being since 1991 — are members of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations. Representatives and associates of such fronts will be among the Islamists in congressional offices on Monday.
Second, the memo describes in detail the Muslim Brotherhood’s favored technique for accomplishing its stated goal of “destroying Western civilization” — at least until such time as they are strong enough to use violence decisively: “civilization jihad.” This sort of jihad involves employing stealthy, subversive means like influence operations to penetrate and subvert our government and civil society institutions. (The successful application of these means have been chronicled extensively in the Center for Security Policy’s “Civilization Jihad Reader Series.”)
With the launch of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations in March 2014, the Muslim Brotherhood has secured a new instrument for its subversion: a self-described U.S. “political party” meant to dominate and mobilize Muslim voters across the country and get them marching according to one plan. The object is to elicit support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s demands from candidates and to help achieve what the Islamic supremacists would regard as favorable outcomes in the 2016 elections. (For more on the USCMO, its purpose and activities to date, see “Star Spangled Sharia: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party.”)
Unfortunately, some members of Congress have already embraced the Council of Muslim Organizations. For example, two with longstanding ties to assorted Muslim Brotherhood fronts, Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), spoke at the USCMO’s inaugural banquet in June 2014. Neither has disavowed the USCMO’s subsequent participation in anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations and its fundraising on behalf of Islamic Relief USA, a large, U.S.-based Islamic supremacist charity.
Another reason lawmakers and their staffs should be leery of this new Muslim Brotherhood front group is its avowed intention to make common cause with radical non-Muslim entities like the Black Lives Matter movement. At a conference in December 2015 convened by two of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most virulent fronts, the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America, leading USCMO figures publicly discussed how they could impart lessons to African-Americans by holding up the Brotherhood as the community that staged revolutions across the world.
Congress is on notice: As long as organizations associated with Islamic supremacism like the USCMO and its member organizations dominate “Muslim Advocacy Day” on Capitol Hill, it will actually be Muslim Brotherhood Advocacy Day. And legislators should have nothing to do with either its participants or its programs.
In a March 24 New York Times article, “Feeling G.O.P. Peril, Muslims Try to Get Out Vote,” Alan Rappeport wrote about how three Muslim groups and organizations in the United States are organizing to elect Democratic candidates this fall because of perceived hostility toward American Muslims by Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
Rappeport indicated these Muslim organizations especially object to Senator Cruz’s call to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.
Given the strong liberal bias of the New York Times, it was not a surprise when this article failed to mention that the alleged “Islamophobic” statements by Senator Cruz and Mr. Trump were in fact criticisms of radical Islam and President Obama’s refusal to name or confront this threat.
It was surprising that all of the Muslim groups cited by Rappeport have ties to radical Islam that he failed to mention.
The most stunning example of this is the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia which Rappeport says has been holding voter education workshops to convince its members to vote against Republican presidential candidates.
Rappeport neglected to mention the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center’s notorious past. Anwar al-Awlaki, a key official with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, was Imam at this mosque between January 2001 and April 2002. Two of the 9/11 hijackers worshipped there. There also have been reports of violent materials found in this mosque.
The Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center may be the best possible example proving the need for Senator Cruz’s call to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.
Rappaport also omitted the Islamist radicalism of other American Muslim groups cited in his article he says are encouraging mosques to turn themselves into voter registration centers.
One is the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) which claims to be “America’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.” However, its record shows this is far from the case.
CAIR was named in 2007 as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case — the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.
Two days after the Dec. 2, 2015 terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, tried to blame U.S. policy for this deadly attack when he told CNN’s “New Day,” “some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West have fueled that extremism . . . We are partly responsible.”
In July 2014, while Hamas was firing rockets at Israel from Gaza, attendees at a CAIR-Florida-organized protest praised the Hamas attacks at a rally in Miami by chanting, “We are Hamas!” “We are Jihad!”
Two other Muslim American Group cited by Rappaport, The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), also have radical Islamist ties that he did not mention.
ICNA preaches a global caliphate and Islamic shariah law over America to its members and reportedly has an “ultimate goal of the establishment of Islam as the sole basis of global society and governance” according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism. ICNA also was named as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case.
The USCMO is an umbrella organization of American Muslim groups. CAIR and ICNA are two of its founding members. Another founding member, The Muslim American Society, has been described by federal prosecutors as the “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.
In a related development, Hillary Clinton used an appearance at a panel last week sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) to condemn Republican presidential candidates for pitting groups against one another and giving in to fear. In reporting Clinton’s remarks, no one in the mainstream media mentioned MPAC’s extremism and how it has followed a consistent pattern of defending designated terrorist organizations and their supporters, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric.
The battle to defeat ISIS and Al Qaeda requires recognizing and defeating a radical ideology that is at war with Western civilization: radical Islam.
Alan Rappeport’s article and Hillary Clinton’s MPAC panel proves that they, like President Obama, are still in denial about this threat.
“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech” – Benjamin Franklin
As presidential candidate Donald Trump headed to Chicago for a campaign rally on 11 March 2016, violent protesters took to social media and then to the streets to shut him down in President Obama’s hometown. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, MoveOn.org, and Bernie Sanders supporters joined in solidarity with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists and other jihadis, Marxists, leftists, progressives, and even the convicted domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground. They assembled to protest Trump’s rally at the Pavilion on the premises of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), a campus stronghold for Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and regular staging area for leftists and antisemitic demonstrations. The chain of events that led to that assault on Americans’ First Amendment free speech rights began long before that fateful date, however, among a motley assembly of forces that coalesced that night and with intent to expand and replicate elsewhere along the campaign trail. This was truly a ‘Red-Green Axis’ of groups that include the Muslim Brotherhood in America, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a collection of communists, leftists, progressives and socialists whose sole unifying objective is to bring down the U.S. government. Those who fund them include many of the top U.S. and international liberal foundations, as detailed in a superb January 2016 article by Jim Simpson, “Black Lives Matter: The Roots of Black Lives Matter.”
When George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing in July 2013, the BLM launched its Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter. As explained by Jim Simpson, “Exploiting blacks to promote Marxist revolution is an old tactic. The late Larry Grathwohl, former FBI informant in the Weather Underground, understood from personal experience how white communists exploited blacks and other minority groups.” Since its inception, the BLM movement has become synonymous with support for radical leftist causes as well as blatant promotion of vicious racism. As Simpson explains, “…while justifying violence to achieve ‘social justice,’ the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one.” Now, with an eye on the 2016 election cycle, the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella organization constituting the first U.S. Muslim Brotherhood political party, and indeed the first religious identity political party in the history of this country, openly is allying itself with far-left anti-American, racist, revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter.
Prior to the creation of the USCMO in March 2014, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) whose own leadership historically has been directly connected to the Muslim Brotherhood also understood the importance of these strategic relationships with leftist causes and organizations. On its website at the “Who We Are” section, the CIOGC states: “The Council not only builds and nurtures unity within the Muslim American community, but it also leverages the strength that comes with unity to work in coalitions and partnerships on shared issues and on common concerns with community-based and interfaith groups as well. This further empowers the Muslim American voice while lending its strength to the broader communities in which we live.” This includes a CIOGC partnership with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). In the beginning of 2012, the CIOGC shared information about programs offered by ICIRR with assistance from the far left Wellstone Action, a national leader in electoral organizing and training.
On 4 March 2016, Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, past chairman of the CIOGC (2005-2008) issued a post on his Facebook page about the protest against the Republican Party presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s rally at the Pavilion on the University of Illinois Chicago campus. He also confirmed in the statement his planned presence at this protest. Mujahid, founder of the Chicago-based Sound Vision, has troubling ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
ICNA is also a founding member of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), which operationalizes the Brotherhood’s responsibility to purse Civilization Jihad in the U.S. in a specifically political way. In the course of national conventions by front organizations representing the Brotherhood in the United States, these entities were closely studying the BLM movement. Additionally, they sought ways to utilize alienated, angry minority populations to further the aims of the Brotherhood’s Muslim community.
It is significant to note that ICIRR played a role in the protests on the 11th of March 2016. ICIRR partners also happen to include the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), CIOGC, and the Mosque Foundation. ICIRR is an array of organizations that promote hardcore leftist causes. ICIRR’s board includes two leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood leadership: Zaher Sahloul and Ahmed Rehab (Executive Director for CAIR Chicago). Sahloul is a member of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) and past president of the Mosque Foundation. Both CAIR and The Mosque Foundation are USCMO members.
CAIR and ICNA previously were identified as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood during the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial which concluded in 2008. Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, who has worked with Ousama Jammal (Secretary General of the USCMO and current Mosque Foundation board member) at The Mosque Foundation, was listed by name as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. According to documents entered into evidence at the HLF trial, he was a “registered agent for HLF in Illinois” who acknowledged fundraising for the HLF from the mid-1990s until 2001. Mustapha has also raised money for MAS and ICNA initiatives during their annual conferences in Chicago.
That the Muslim Brotherhood has a leadership role within ICIRR is not coincidental, as USCMO members have routinely manipulated the civil rights narrative of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and social justice themes to establish their credibility among radical leftist organizations in the U.S. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ground game in these areas has been the focus of its leadership, which is evidenced in programs held during yearly MAS-ICNA, ICNA-MAS, and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national conventions. The planning process for the Brotherhood’s involvement in this arena has benefited from the expertise of a well-experienced international Brotherhood leader who served as a conduit among USCMO members in 2014 and 2015.
In August 2014, a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leader named Sabri Samirah (banned from the U.S. from 2004-2014 as a national security risk) revealed plans at The Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview Illinois, which are instrumental in the promotion of the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’. Samirah’s research to determine Muslim population centers in jurisdictions where they could affect key election outcomes was indicative of his underlying strategy for the Muslim Brotherhood to establish a unified voting bloc. The launch then of an ambitious voter mobilization program aligned with key issues inevitably set the stage for the upcoming 2016 presidential election cycle.
But most importantly, the strategy emerged clearly when Samirah and fellow operatives discussed co-opting non-Muslim African American and Latino communities with which Muslims proposed to join in solidarity through exploiting such themes as civil rights issues, in return for these communities backing issues of prime importance to the Muslim community. By the end of 2015, USCMO members, including CAIR (its key leadership group), had a very clear direction for commandeering the Black Lives Matter movement.
During the 14th Annual Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) Convention held in December 2015 at the McCormick Place in Chicago, Brotherhood leadership discussed their role within the BLM movement and how they could impart lessons to African Americans by holding up the Brotherhood as the community that staged revolutions across the world. The Center’s video, “Star Spangled Shariah or Muslim Brotherhood Revolution?”, from that convention highlights the radical statements of three of its top jihadi leadership figures that should be chilling to all Americans who cherish the Constitution and oppose the expansion of shariah.
Dr. Hatem Bazian, Chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (another USCMO founding member), issued a statement via Twitter on 12 March 2016 about the previous night’s protests in Chicago. Crucial to note, Bazian was elected as a chairman of the National People of Color Student Coalition and an executive board member of the United States Student Association in the late 1980s. Not only was he an outspoken advocate for affirmative action as a student then, but he also supported the Central American Solidarity Movement, which advanced communism.
In July 2014, Bazian condemned the U.S. for its deportation of illegal aliens and suggested that more than two million African Americans were incarcerated because of their skin color. As shown in his tweets, Bazian echoes points of strategy delineated by Brotherhood leader Sabri Samirah and urges the funding of progressive efforts.
On 13 March 2016, as Chicagoans continued to absorb the impact of previous days’ violent events before the start of the weekend that began the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, a convicted jihadist was represented at the afternoon community gathering “Political Repression, the National Security State & Collective Legal Resistance” hosted by the National Lawyers Guild Chicago chapter.
The event was described on a Facebook page as the following: “Over the past fifteen years, people in the United States–and dissidents in particular–have witnessed a steady escalation of the National Security State, including invasive surveillance and infiltration, indiscriminate police violence, and unlawful arrests. These concerted efforts to criminalize dissidents and undermine meaningful social change are made more repressive by the coordination of numerous local, state, and federal agencies often operating at the behest of private corporations.”
A representative from the national Free Rasmea Odeh campaign was invited to speak alongside other presenters, as individuals gathered to discuss their grievances about the arrests of protesters made by the Chicago Police Department the previous Friday evening.
Rasmea Odeh had been convicted in federal court in Detroit in November 2014 on charges that she lied on her immigration and naturalization forms. She was found guilty of falsification of information by her denial that she’d ever been arrested, convicted or imprisoned, stemming from her role as a convicted bomber of the SuperSol supermarket in “West” Jerusalem in 1969, which resulted in two fatalities.
Evidently, these facts of the Odeh case did not matter to the National Lawyers Guild, Chicago organizers whose focus was legal support for the lawbreakers promoting progressive social movements.
In response to the subversive elements that gathered in Chicago to suppress protected First Amendment free speech, Abdul Malik Mujahid smugly issued the following statement in praise of their actions on his Facebook page on 12 March 2016.
As the country heads into the next months of supercharged presidential electioneering, it is important to identify those taking to the streets in protest and violence for what they represent: an in-your-face challenge to our Constitutional rights, law and order, and the very foundational principles of the Republic itself. As Jim Simpson so presciently noted in his Jan 2016 article, “Islamist organizations have also jumped on the BLM bandwagon, reminding us of the unholy alliance that exists between them and the radical Left. In September 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood front-group Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) joined BLM activists in storming California Governor Jerry Brown’s office. CAIR also participated in the Ferguson protests. Meanwhile ISIS is recruiting American blacks for its cause.”
Make no mistake: in true Alinsky form, the aim of the Red-Green Axis is anarchy. Divisiveness, racism and violence are their means—but shutting down the free speech of those who call them out for what they are (street thugs) is top of their To Do list. Our best defense remains a vigorous exercise of the right of free speech that is enshrined in the First Amendment.
To conclude as we began this essay, with Ben Franklin: “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved,” wrote Founding Father Benjamin Franklin in The Pennsylvania Gazette.”
2014 saw the founding of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella organization constituting the first U.S. Muslim Brotherhood political party, and indeed the first religious identity political party, in the history of this country.
USCMO founding members CAIR and ICNA were previously identified as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood during the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial in 2007. Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, who has worked with Ousama Jammal (current Mosque Foundation board member) at The Mosque Foundation, was listed by name as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. According to documents entered into evidence at the HLF trial, he was a “registered agent for HLF in Illinois” who acknowledged fundraising for the HLF from the mid-1990s until 2001. Mustapha has also raised money for MAS and ICNA initiatives during their annual conferences in Chicago.
Now, with an eye to the 2016 election, the USCMO is allying itself with far-left racialist and revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter. The following video highlights the radical statements of 3 Islamists that should be chilling to Americans who cherish the Constitution and oppose the expansion of shariah law:
“We are the community that staged a revolution across the world. If we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?” – Khalilah Sabra
