Tag Archives: Mohamed Morsi

The world’s not better off

Eleven years after 9/11, President Obama would have us believe that, at least with respect to our national security, we are better off than we were when he came to office. Specifically, he now claims that al Qaeda – the terrorist organization that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that terrible day – is “on the path to defeat.”

That contention is, of course, predicated in part on the laudable fact that al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, is dead, as are a number of the organization’s other senior leaders. The President deserves credit for achieving such successes.

But they do not mean even that the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are nearly defeated. In fact, its franchises are going – and growing – concerns in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Pakistan, to say nothing of the theaters We have abandoned (Iraq), or are in the process of abandoning (Afghanistan).

More importantly, even if it were true that al Qaeda is being defeated, a net assessment would clearly show that, on Mr. Obama’s watch, the world has become much more hospitable to its ideology and goals, and much less safe for America and our interests.

That is the case in no small measure because of the help Team Obama has given to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that fully shares al Qaeda’s ambitions to impose its totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine known as shariah on the rest of the world under the rule of a Caliph. As the Center for Security Policy has documented in a free online video-based curriculum entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within, that help has taken myriad forms including: recognizing and engaging the Brotherhood in Egypt; helping it come to power there; and providing $1.5 billion in aid after the Brotherhood’s political party dominated Egyptian parliamentary elections and on the eve of the election of its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, to the presidency.

The Obama administration is preparing to do still more for the Brothers in Egypt now that they have established effectively complete control in one of the Middle East’s most strategic nations. It is engineering another $1 billion in debt relief at U.S. taxpayer expense and over $4 billion in assistance from international financial organizations (a substantial chunk of which will come out of our hides, too).

It is also warning Israel not to object to Egypt’s remilitarization of the Sinai, in blatant violation of the peace treaty between the two nations signed at Camp David in 1979. And it is preparing to roll out the red carpet for Brother Morsi in New York and the White House later this month.

Are such steps a problem – especially collectively? After all, the Muslim Brothers are, according to Mr. Obama’s administration, the sort of benign Islamists with whom we can safely deal since they have, in the words of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, “eschewed violence.”

In point of fact, the Brothers have no more eschewed violence towards infidels and even Muslims who stand in the way of their geopolitical ambitions than they are, in another unforgettable example of Gen. Clapper’s cluelessness, “a largely secular organization.” These rabid and avowed Islamists are perfectly prepared to use violence – think Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise – when they believe it will conduce to success.

Until that time, shariah requires its adherents to pursue the same goals through means that are best described as pre-violent, rather than non-violent. And it is the steady progress that the prime practitioners of this approach – which the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – have made unnoticed, or at least un-countered, by President Obama and his subordinates that has actually made the world vastly more dangerous than it was when they came to office.

Just how dangerous may be on display when President Obama hosts Mohamed Morsi. It will be interesting to see whether he emboldens that Islamist, as he has others, by bowing to him. But what will be far more important than such symbolic gestures is what further concessions Mr. Obama offer, concessions that – according to the doctrine of shariah – are interpreted as tangible signs of our submission?

One that will be at the top of Mr. Morsi’s agenda is his demand that the United States release one of the most world’s most dangerous jihadists, Omar Abdul Rahman. Better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” this terrorist was convicted of leading, among other conspiracies, the first, lethal attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Presumably, President Obama would not dare pardon or transfer Abdul Rahman to Egypt before his “last election,” but he may feel free to do so afterwards – when he has, in his words, “more flexibility.”

Either way, the Morsi visit will be a “teachable moment” for every American. All other things being equal, it will demonstrate tangibly that eleven years after 9/11 – notwithstanding the tactical successes achieved by our courageous servicemen and women, lethal drones and intelligence and homeland security professionals, we are losing, not winning, the war against those who are driven by shariah to wage jihad, of either the violent or stealthy kind, against us. We better pray it will prompt the American
people to insist on a fundamental course correction two months from now.

Israel Betrayed

In October 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued a prophetic warning:  “Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a ‘convenient temporary solution’.” He declared: “Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.”

Tragically, President Obama today is increasingly treating Israel as Western leaders did in abandoning the Czechs seventy-four years ago.  He is signaling to a genocidal regime in Iran that the Jewish State is on its own – a signal like the one to which Hitler responded with the worst bloodletting in world history.

To be sure, Team Obama has engaged from the get-go in what Governor Mitt Romney has called “throwing allies like Israel under the bus.”  For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been treated with utter contempt by President Obama. His demands that the Jewish State make serial and unreciprocated concessions to its Palestinian enemies – including adopting indefensible borders – have been dictated in public and high-handed ways.

Even more troubling has been the cumulative effect of Obama policies towards the Middle East that are helping transform large swaths of the region into a festering Islamist sore, prone to jihad – most immediately against Israel and, inevitably, against the United States.  In particular, Mr. Obama’s determination to legitimate, empower and enrich the government of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi adds materially to the danger confronting the Jewish State and American interests.

The legitimation will reach new heights later this month when Morsi gets the red-carpet treatment in New York and Washington.  The empowering included not just demands conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July that the Egyptian military surrender power to Brotherhood-dominated presidency and legislature; it also apparently entails U.S. acquiescence to Morsi’s moves to remilitarize the Sinai in violation of the Camp David Accords.  And the enriching piece involved an unconditional, lump-sum payment earlier this year, over bipartisan congressional objections, and is reportedly to be followed by the incipient transfer of a further $1 billion.

Predictably, as with the sell-out of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, what such concessions will produce is an emboldening of freedom’s enemies.  And that will not be good for its friends – abroad or here.

Much the same can be said of the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran.  Yes, it has reluctantly imposed – usually at the insistence of the Congress – sanctions on various aspects of the regime and its supporting industrial, commercial and security edifices.  But in virtually every other regard, Team Obama has bought time for the mullahs to complete their nuclear weapons program and efforts to render it essentially invulnerable to attack through relocation of enrichment operations to hardened underground factories.

President Obama and his civilian and military subordinates have done just about everything short of a preemptive strike on the Jewish State to prevent the Israelis from trying to neutralize a looming existential threat to their nation.  They are said to have employed both carrots and sticks – for example, promises of help with doing the deed after the election (trust us!) and evidently compromises of Israeli operational plans for recovering strike aircraft in Azerbaijan, which had the desired effect of foreclosing that option.

In the face of mounting evidence that Israel feels compelled to act alone and within the next two months, the Obama administration has become even more aggressive.  In London last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, went so far as to declare his opposition to such an attack, saying, “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

While the exact meaning of that statement is unclear, an indication of what the general – and his boss, the Commander-in-Chief – have in mind might have been the subject of a report in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.  It claims that U.S. diplomats have gone to third-parties to communicate to Iran that the United States will not support an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program provided the mullahs “steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf.”  One can almost hear Neville Chamberlain pledging no objection to the Chechs losing the Sudetenland to the Nazis as long as Hitler agreed to leave the French and Brits alone.  While the White House spokesman says the report is “false,” it sure sounds right.

But what if Israel does attack Iran and Iran does retaliate – not only against U.S. “assets” in the Persian Gulf, but elsewhere including in this country? Can the possibility be ruled out that this President – simpatico as he clearly is with the Iranian regime and hostile as he clearly is towards Israel – responds by finding ways to punish the Jewish State that go beyond a refusal to sustain its military capabilities, as Nixon did in 1973?  Could he even use the pretext of attacks by Iran or its proxies here to invoke the sweeping emergency powers he has granted himself and his subordinates in a series of executive orders to disrupt an election that might otherwise unseat him?

We cannot know the answers to such questions at the moment.  We can only imagine, though, if this is how President Obama behaves on the eve of a national election in which Jewish votes may be critical to his bid for a second term, imagine how he will treat Israel if he has “more flexibility” post-November.

The Grand Deflection

A magician typically succeeds when the attention of the audience is diverted from his main activity onto some distraction.  President Obama has raised this sort of deflection into a political art form.

Take, for example, the matter of revelations by five Members of Congress and the Center for Security Policy that there appear to be a number individuals working for or with the Obama administration with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.   The possibility that their influence may be helping to shape U.S. policy in ways that increasingly align it with the demands, ambitions and goals of the Brotherhood and other Islamists is a national security problem of the first order.  That is especially true at a moment when Muslim Brothers are consolidating their hold on power in Egypt with the cashiering of two top generals at the hands of the Brotherhood’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Yet, Team Obama and its allies in the elite media have aggressively worked to deflect the focus away from these realities.  At first, they did so by viciously attacking Congresswoman Michele Bachmann – even though she was just one of five legislators who asked for investigations into these seeming influence operations by inspectors general of five federal agencies.

Then, they sought to portray as a victim of racism and bigotry just one of those about whom the Members of Congress raised legitimate questions: Huma Abedin, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper repeated uncritically – and unprofessionally –  assurances that there was no factual basis for linking Ms. Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Where compelled to acknowledge that members of her family do have ties to Brotherhood-connected organizations, the administration and its allies denounced such concerns as “guilt by association” and “McCarthyism.”

Then, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, former Muslim Brother Walid Shoebat and other researchers established a direct tie between Huma Abedin and a Muslim Brotherhood front, the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA).  IMMA was established essentially as an Abedin family business by Abdullah Omar Naseef, an officially designated al Qaeda financier.

Shortly after IMMA was founded under his chairmanship, Naseef became the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL) which Mr. McCarthy described in an August 8thspeech in Washington sponsored by the Center for Security Policy as: “the Saudi-financed global propagation enterprise by which the Muslim Brotherhood’s virulently anti-Western brand of Islamist ideology is seeded throughout the world, very much including in the United States.”

It happens that Huma Abedin was listed for twelve years on the masthead of the IMMA’s journal as an associate editor.  For at least seven of those years, Omar Naseef was also listed as a member of the editorial advisory board.

In his remarks last week, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney McCarthy directly spoke to charges that Huma Abedin was being unfairly challenged by virtue of these various ties to the Muslim Brotherhood: “‘Guilt by association’ has nothing to do with fitness for high public office. High public office is a privilege, not a right. Access to classified information is a privilege, not a right. You need not have done anything wrong to be deemed unfit for these privileges.”

Andrew McCarthy added pointedly:  “It is not a question of your patriotism or your trustworthiness. It is about whether you would be burdened by such obvious conflicts of interest that you would be tempted to act on those interests, rather than in the best interests of the United States.”

Nonetheless, two days later, the Deflector-in-Chief used the occasion of remarks at his fourth annual White House Iftar dinner – a ceremony marking the breaking of the Ramadan fast – to provide a shout-out to one of his guests, Huma Abedin.  Mr. Obama pronounced: “Huma is an American patriot, and an example of what we need in this country – more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit. So, on behalf of all Americans, we thank you so much.”  Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Not only does Ms. Abedin’s relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood and involvement in policies favorable to its interests warrant close official scrutiny. There are at least six other individuals with Brotherhood ties whose involvement in Obama administration “Muslim outreach” and/or related policy-making also deserve investigation by the IGs and the Congress:

  • Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation;
  • Dalia Mogahed, an advisor to President Obama;
  • Mohamed Elibiary, a member of Homeland Security Department’s Advisory Council;
  • Mohamed Magid, a member of the Homeland Security Department’s Countering-Violent Extremism Working Group;
  • Louay Safi, until recently the credentialing authority for Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and now a leader of the Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council; and
  • Kifah Mustapha, a Hamas-fundraiser and graduate of the FBI’s ‘Citizens Academy’

The American people are entitled to know who is shaping the policies that are increasingly empowering, enriching and emboldening the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization sworn to our destruction.  Under no circumstances should legitimate and well-grounded congressional requests for formal investigations be deflected, let alone suppressed.

And the results of those investigations must be available to inform the critical choice American voters have to make this November.  It just might make all the difference in the outcome – which is presumably why the grand deflection is being pursued with such determination.

Center Report Reveals Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official Huma Abedin’s Mother

WASHINGTON, D.C.:  A book published and translated by the mother of Obama administration State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin provides fresh evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aide has deeply problematic foreign associations that could, in violation of departmental guidelines, “create… a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”

In light of the escalating controversy over the role being played in U.S. security policy-making by Ms. Abedin and others with personal and/or professional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Part 8 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), the revelations contained in a new Center report— Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother— could not be more timely, or important.

The Center’s report excerpts and analyzes relevant passages from a book published and translated by Saleha S. Mahmood Abedin called Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations by Fatima Umar Naseef. Naseef is a past head of the “women’s section” and professor of shariah at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where Dr. Abedin is also on the faculty.  The book was published in 1999, the same year Dr. Abedin founded Dar Al Hekma, a university for women also in Jeddah, that Secretary Clinton visited and spoke admiringly of with Huma Abedin in February 2010.  [See Remarks on that occasion by Mrs. Clinton, including her comment that Huma holds a “very sensitive and important position” in her department, and those by her hosts.]

Excerpts from Women in Islam in Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother include Islamic shariah justifications for the following practices:

  • Stoning for Adultery when Married; Lashing for Adultery when Unmarried
  • No Death Penalty for the Murder of an Apostate
  • Freedom of Expression Curtailed to What Benefits Islam
  • Women’s Right to Participate in Armed Jihad
  • Social Interaction Between the Sexes is Forbidden
  • Women Have No Right to Abstain from Sex with their Husbands
  • A Woman Should Not Let Anyone Into the House Unless Approved by Her Husband
  • Female Genital Mutilation is Allowed
  • Man-Made Laws “Enslave Women”

The organization responsible for the publication of Women in Islam was the International Islamic Committee for Woman & Child (IICWC), chaired at the time by Dr. Abedin.  IICWC misleadingly describes itself as “an international organization of concerned women who are committed to improving the condition of women and children around the world.”  In fact, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League (MWL) and other Islamist organizations with which it is associated, the IICWC is committed to eviscerating the rights of women and children by imposing everywhere shariah, a code that denies them fundamental – and, in the United States, constitutional – liberties.

Specifically, the book published by Dr. Abedin wholeheartedly affirms: limits on women’s free expression; the permissibility of stoning as a punishment for adultery, killing of apostates and female genital mutilation; the contention that “man-made laws” enslave women; and more.  It also endorses women’s right to fight in armed jihad.  Women in Islam is available online and sold at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist organization co-founded by Huma Abedin’s mother and her late father, Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin.

On July 21, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy posted an essay at National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone commenting on the request by five Members of Congress led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota for Inspector General investigations of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government.  In it, he observed that the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs “was backed by the Muslim World League. As the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran relates, the MWL was started by the Saudi government in 1962 ‘with Brotherhood members in key leadership positions.’ It has served as the principal vehicle for the propagation of Islamic supremacism by the Saudis and the Brotherhood.”

Mr. McCarthy notes that:

The five House conservatives…are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman – a convicted terrorist and clerical inspiration for jihadists worldwide, whose release from federal prison at the insistence of Muslim Brother and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been the subject of discussions within and enabled by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department – goes on to observe that:

The State Department is particularly wary when it comes to the category of ‘foreign influence‘ – yes, it is a significant enough concern to warrant its own extensive category in background investigations. No criminal behavior need be shown to deny a security clearance; access to classified information is not a right, and reasonable fear of “divided loyalties” is more than sufficient for a clearance to be denied. The [Department’s own security] guidelines probe ties to foreign countries and organizations because hostile elements could “target United States citizens to obtain protected information” or could be “associated with a risk of terrorism.” Note: The Brotherhood checks both these boxes.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, said upon the release of the Center’s new report, Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother:

In the interest of informing the debate about the need to investigate Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda, and those of others shaping policy in the Obama administration, the Center for Security Policy offers in Ties That Bind? further cause for such an investigation.  That includes, for instance, evidence of Dr. Saleha Abedin’s personal involvement with the International Islamic Committee on Woman and Child’s affiliated organization, the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR). The IICDR was banned in Israel in 2008 for its collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi‘s Union for Good in the funding of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, Hamas. In the United States, the Union for Good was designated a terrorist entity in late 2008.

This further documentation of Dr. Abedin’s positions on shariah law, her leadership of the IICWC and its affiliation with a designated terrorist entity such as the IICDR makes plain that a thorough investigation is fully justified regarding her daughter’s access to classified information and policy-influencing role.  In particular, in connection with the latter, Ties That Bind powerfully reinforces the Center’s earlier warning that the IICWC is currently advocating for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to shariah. Americans want no part of such an agenda. They should they have  reason for concern that senior officials in their government are stealthily encouraging it.

 

 

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About the Center for Security Policy

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

The Company They Keep

The truism that you know someone by the company they keep has rarely been more true than with respect to the Obama administration and its burgeoning ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Just this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the latest member of Team Obama to consort with sworn enemies of the United States when she sat down with the newly installed Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi.

Despite official, media and academic efforts to portray Morsi – and, for that matter, the Muslim Brotherhood more generally – as the kind of people with whom the United States can safely deal in the evolving Middle East and here, the determination of such Islamists to impose their supremacist Islamic doctrine of shariah worldwide could not be more palpable. Their hostility to America, Israel, Western civilization and other infidels goes back to the founding of the organization in 1928 and is rooted in its guiding program – shariah – and it is absolute and unwavering. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves or deliberately deceiving others.

While it cannot be confirmed at this writing, presumably Mrs. Clinton was accompanied on her travels as usual – particularly in the Middle East – by her Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin. That would be all the more probable given that Ms. Abedin has myriad family ties to the Brotherhood. For example, her mother, Saleha Abedin, is a leader of the organization’s secretive women’s auxiliary, the Muslim Sisterhood, in which she serves along with Mohammed Morsi’s wife, Naglaa Ali Mahmoud.

The presence of an individual with such associations in the seniormost ranks of the State Department at a moment when the Obama administration is assiduously "engaging" with the Muslim Brotherhood has raised concerns on Capitol Hill. To their credit, five legislators, led by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, have asked for a formal inquiry into the role Ms. Abedin and perhaps others have played in the adoption of problematic policies favorable to the Islamists.

For her troubles, Rep. Bachmann has recently been assailed by one of her colleagues – the self-styled "first Muslim congressman," Keith Ellison. The congresswoman responded Friday with a detailed – and devastating – 16-page, 59-footnote letter (http://bachmann.house.gov/uploadedfiles/letter_to_rep._ellison.pdf) to Mr. Ellison’s rash charge that there was no basis for concerns about Ms. Abedin.

The documentation provided also lays bare the established connections between several Muslim-American organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood. The upshot of Rep. Ellison’s foray is that he has inadvertently called attention to the bad company he keeps – namely, with various known Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Meanwhile, as Secretary Clinton headed off to Jerusalem, reportedly to assure Israeli leaders that Mr. Morsi means no harm to the Jewish State, a very different message is conveyed in a document (http://www.memri.org/clip_transcript/en/3431.htm) currently making the rounds. It is the transcript of an endorsement given at the kick-off rally of the Morsi campaign by one of his supporters, Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi. As the candidate looked on beaming, Higazi declared: "…The dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Muhammad Mursi and his brothers, his supporters, and his political party – that of the United States of the Arabs….The capital of the Caliphate – the capital of the United States of the Arabs – will be Jerusalem, Allah willing."

Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues also asked for investigations into the role being played in shaping U.S. policy by the president of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid. As documented at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com, that senior Brotherhood operative has been an advisor to President Obama, feted at the White House, State and Treasury Departments, literally embraced by the Justice Department and used as the vehicle for serial apologies by the Pentagon. Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole has dubbed Magid Team Obama’s "Diversity Czar."

The fact that the Obama administration is keeping such company is made all the more appalling by the kind of company Czar Magid keeps. For example, as Mr. Poole observed, at a recent ISNA "Diversity Forum" in Dearborn, Mohamed Magid presented CAIR-Michigan executive director Dawud Walid with a "diversity award." It speaks volumes about Walid’s actual "sensitivity" to others that he is on record (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDS-BWqWORw&feature=share) justifying the destruction of Jews. The Investigative Project on Terror’s Daniel Rogell reported last month that, in an anti-semitic rant, Walid asked rhetorically "Did Muhammad order the killing of Jews?" He subsequently answered, "Muhammad didn’t order it. Sa’ad ibn Mu’aadh [one of his followers] ordered that punishment. It was a correct one. (Emphasis added.)

Another award handed out by Mohamed Magid’s organization recognizes "community service" and is named for one of ISNA’s founders, Mahboub Khan. It happens that Mr. Khan is the father of someone else who has long been keeping company with Magid and his fellow Islamists – a controversial member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (ACU) named Suhail Khan. The younger Khan once declared at an ISNA conference, "What are our oppressors going to do with people like us? We are prepared to give our lives for the cause of Islam….I have pledged my life’s work…to work for the umma [Muslim nation.]"

Not only can you gain insights into people by the company they keep. When it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamists, it is downright dangerous to do otherwise.

 

Obama ‘Lost’ Egypt

In the past, American presidential campaigns have featured bitter recriminations over foreign policy reverses.  Harry Truman was charged with having “lost China” following the take-over of the Chinese mainland by Mao Tse-Tung’s communists. In subsequent years similar formulations were used to challenge those responsible for the loss to the Free World of Vietnam, Iran and post-Soviet Russia.

Today, the question for voters in the 2012 election to ponder might be posed as “Who lost Egypt?”  To make matters worse, it is likely that the losses won’t stop there. 

Indeed, before it’s over, we may well see nearly all the Middle East fall under the sway of the team President Obama has helped come to power in Cairo – the Muslim Brotherhood, to the grave detriment of the people most immediately affected, of Israel and of our interests, there and here.

To be sure, it is unclear at the moment exactly how things will shake-out in Egypt.  The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party succeeded in having its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, elected president in recent weeks and installed in that office on Saturday.  But the Egyptian military continues to be very much a force to be reckoned with and the extent and timing of any formal relinquishing of its current control of virtually all aspects of the government – from the armed services to the many industries they own to the parliament and constitution-writing mechanisms – remains to be seen.

Still, the direction Morsi seeks to take his country is unmistakable and should be deeply worrying to all who hoped for an authentic Arab Spring in Egypt and fear the emergence there and elsewhere of an Islamist Winter.  While the newly installed president has professed that he will be the leader of all Egyptians and promised to give tangible expression to that commitment by appointing as his vice presidents a Coptic Christian, a woman and a secular political figure, these will be, atbest mere window-dressing if he sticks to his pledge to impose shariah on all his countrymen.

For example, as captured in an Egyptian television report of May 13, 2012 translated by the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reLigeHGKzE&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1) – Morsi espoused during the course of the campaign the key tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood: “The Quran is our constitution. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.”  He went on to add, “This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through Islamic shariah.”  Morsi concluded by saying, “I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text of  [the constitution], Allah willing, the text will truly reflect shariah.”

Now in office, Mohammed Morsi is making clear that this direction may have dire implications for us, as well as for the people of Egypt.  He has declared that one of his priorities as president will be to secure the release from a life-sentence in U.S. federal prison of Omar Abdul Rahman.  Abdul Rahman is better known as the Blind Sheikh and the prime-moverbehind various terrorist plots – including trying to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.  Morsi wants himrepatriated to Egypt, ostensibly so he can serve out the rest of his sentence there.  Fat chance.

Which brings us to Team Obama.  President Obama was instrumental in assisting the Muslim Brotherhood emerge from the shadows and come to power.  For example, over the strenuous objections of his hosts, Mr. Obama demanded that the Brotherhood’s representatives be included in his June 2009 “outreach to the Muslim world” address at Cairo University.   

Less than two years later, Mr. Obama declared that Hosni Mubarak had to yield power within days of the Muslim Brotherhood’s operatives and other demonstrators taking to the streets demanding his overthrow.  In the months that followed, his administration began “engaging” with the Brotherhood and its formal political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.

Then, a few months ago, in the face of bipartisan objections from Capitol Hill, the Obama administration transferred $1.5 billion in a lump-sum, no-strings-attached grant to the Egyptian government.  This occurred at a time when Muslim Brotherhood and allied “Salafist” legislators were in charge of its parliament and drawing up a new constitution.

Most recently, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have welcomed the ascendancy of the Brotherhood’s Morsi.  They are evidently considering giving tangible expression to that sentiment by accommodating his demand for the release the Blind Sheikh as they allowed Hani Noor Eldin, a top member of Abdul Raman’s terrorist Gema’a al-Islamiyaa organization, to enter the U.S. and discuss the idea with their subordinates.

Should Team Obama now take this step, it would have an absolutely devastating effect – and not just in Egypt, where it would validate America’s utter submission to the Brotherhood agenda.  It will also be seen as further evidence that the global Islamist enterprise, of which the Brotherhood is the institutional and ideological vanguard, is succeeding inmaking the West – as the Quran puts it – “feel subdued.”

In short, the practical effect of “losing” Egypt in this way will be, pursuant to the doctrine of shariah, to invite aredoubled effort, including through the use of violence, to achieve the Brotherhood goals of imposing that totalitarian, repressive and supremacist code worldwide.  President Barack Obama must be held accountable for the consequences.

Who ‘Lost’ Egypt?

In the past, American presidential campaigns have featured bitter recriminations over foreign policy reverses.  Harry Truman was charged with having “lost China” following the take-over of the Chinese mainland by Mao Tse-Tung’s communists. In subsequent years similar formulations were used to challenge those responsible for the loss to the Free World of Vietnam, Iran and post-Soviet Russia.

Today, the question for voters in the 2012 election to ponder might be posed as “Who lost Egypt?”  To make matters worse, it is likely that the losses won’t stop there. 

Indeed, before it’s over, we may well see nearly all the Middle East fall under the sway of the team President Obama has helped come to power in Cairo – the Muslim Brotherhood, to the grave detriment of the people most immediately affected, of Israel and of our interests, there and here.

To be sure, it is unclear at the moment exactly how things will shake-out in Egypt.  The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party succeeded in having its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, elected president in recent weeks and installed in that office on Saturday.  But the Egyptian military continues to be very much a force to be reckoned with and the extent and timing of any formal relinquishing of its current control of virtually all aspects of the government – from the armed services to the many industries they own to the parliament and constitution-writing mechanisms – remains to be seen.

Still, the direction Morsi seeks to take his country is unmistakable and should be deeply worrying to all who hoped for an authentic Arab Spring in Egypt and fear the emergence there and elsewhere of an Islamist Winter.  While the newly installed president has professed that he will be the leader of all Egyptians and promised to give tangible expression to that commitment by appointing as his vice presidents a Coptic Christian, a woman and a secular political figure, these will be, atbest mere window-dressing if he sticks to his pledge to impose shariah on all his countrymen.

For example, as captured in an Egyptian television report of May 13, 2012 translated by the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reLigeHGKzE&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1) – Morsi espoused during the course of the campaign the key tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood: “The Quran is our constitution. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.”  He went on to add, “This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through Islamic shariah.”  Morsi concluded by saying, “I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text of  [the constitution], Allah willing, the text will truly reflect shariah.”

Now in office, Mohammed Morsi is making clear that this direction may have dire implications for us, as well as for the people of Egypt.  He has declared that one of his priorities as president will be to secure the release from a life-sentence in U.S. federal prison of Omar Abdul Rahman.  Abdul Rahman is better known as the Blind Sheikh and the prime-moverbehind various terrorist plots – including trying to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.  Morsi wants himrepatriated to Egypt, ostensibly so he can serve out the rest of his sentence there.  Fat chance.

Which brings us to Team Obama.  President Obama was instrumental in assisting the Muslim Brotherhood emerge from the shadows and come to power.  For example, over the strenuous objections of his hosts, Mr. Obama demanded that the Brotherhood’s representatives be included in his June 2009 “outreach to the Muslim world” address at Cairo University.   

Less than two years later, Mr. Obama declared that Hosni Mubarak had to yield power within days of the Muslim Brotherhood’s operatives and other demonstrators taking to the streets demanding his overthrow.  In the months that followed, his administration began “engaging” with the Brotherhood and its formal political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.

Then, a few months ago, in the face of bipartisan objections from Capitol Hill, the Obama administration transferred $1.5 billion in a lump-sum, no-strings-attached grant to the Egyptian government.  This occurred at a time when Muslim Brotherhood and allied “Salafist” legislators were in charge of its parliament and drawing up a new constitution.

Most recently, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have welcomed the ascendancy of the Brotherhood’s Morsi.  They are evidently considering giving tangible expression to that sentiment by accommodating his demand for the release the Blind Sheikh as they allowed Hani Noor Eldin, a top member of Abdul Raman’s terrorist Gema’a al-Islamiyaa organization, to enter the U.S. and discuss the idea with their subordinates.

Should Team Obama now take this step, it would have an absolutely devastating effect – and not just in Egypt, where it would validate America’s utter submission to the Brotherhood agenda.  It will also be seen as further evidence that the global Islamist enterprise, of which the Brotherhood is the institutional and ideological vanguard, is succeeding inmaking the West – as the Quran puts it – “feel subdued.”

In short, the practical effect of “losing” Egypt in this way will be, pursuant to the doctrine of shariah, to invite aredoubled effort, including through the use of violence, to achieve the Brotherhood goals of imposing that totalitarian, repressive and supremacist code worldwide.  President Barack Obama must be held accountable for the consequences.

The Brotherhood’s Bait and Switch

Egypt’s newly elected president, Mohammed Morsi, says he will be a “leader for all Egyptians.”  That sounds a lot like the sorts of lies his fellow Muslim Brothers have been telling for months, only to renege on them when they can.  We ignore the true character and ambitions of the Brotherhood – in Egypt, elsewhere in the Mideast, in the wider world and here – at our extreme peril.

In fact, the Brothers’ bait-and-switch gambits are standard operating procedure for their secretive organization.  After all, from the Muslim Brotherhood’s inception in Egypt in 1928, it has been a revolutionary organization committed to the imposition worldwide of a totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah. 

The unattractiveness of that brutally repressive agenda to non-Muslims and even many Muslims, has forced the group to operate largely in the shadows.  It wages a stealthy, pre-violent “civilization jihad” to advance its goals until circumstances are ripe for conquest via violent jihadism.

In the hope of attenuating the military’s opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood  rise, the latter has utilized myriad subterfuges.  In previous rounds of elections, the Brotherhood promised that it would not seek a parliamentary majority.  Then, it did.  It promised not to run a candidate for president.  Then, it actually ran two of them.

As its power grew, the Brotherhood cynically abandoned others in the opposition in the hope of cutting deals with the junta that ruled Egypt following the overthrow of long-time U.S. ally, Hosni Mubarak: the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).  When the SCAF cracked down on the eve of the second round of the presidential election, however, the Brothers were back in Tahrir Square making nice with those unlikely to fare well under shariah – Christians, secular liberals and women to whom   Morsi’s soothing words are obviously intended to appeal. 

Another Brotherhood bait-and-switch was laid bare in a Wall Street Journal interview with the Brotherhood’s formidable deputy supreme guide, Khairat Al Shater.  As Matthew Kaminski put it “If the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, Mr. Al Shater would be in charge.”  In other words, Morsi is a puppet for the leader of an outfit described by Kaminski as “a closed, rigidly hierarchical and disciplined quasi-Trotskyite organization.” 

Khairat Al Shater revealed one more gambit in his interview with the Journal.  Mr. Kaminski quoted him as saying that “the priority is ‘a close partnership’ with the U.S. which the [Brotherhood] expects to help it unlock credit markets and gain international legitimacy.” 

The Muslim Brotherhood appears to have a most willing partner for such purposes in President Obama and his administration.  On the occasion of Mr. Obama’s first “outreach to the Muslim world” speech at Cairo’s al-Azhar University in June 2009, he insisted that Brotherhood operatives be in the audience.  He threw Mubarak under the bus within a few days of demonstrations erupting in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt (instark contrast to his indifference to far larger and longer-running ones inIran). 

What is more, since the first “Arab Spring” uprisings in February 2011, Team Obama has engaged with the Brotherhood extensively – both here and in the region – and signaled its willingness to do so in government.  Notably, in April 2012, after the Brotherhood dominated parliamentary elections, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered the transfer of $1.5 billion in a lump-sum, no-strings-attached grant to Egypt.

 The best hope for those who legitimately fear the Muslim Brotherhood and its unwavering – if only intermittently acknowledged – determination to impose shariah in Egypt may be for the military there to continue to resist pressure to yield power to theMuslim Brotherhood.

Unfortunately, that pressure will be immense.  It will emanate from, among others, the Obama administration.  Team Obama’s support for the Brotherhood has become more and more aggressive, and reckless.  In the process, it is empowering not only the most serious enemy of any hope for freedom in the Middle East, but avowed enemies of this country, as well.

The next shoe to drop in that regard may be a decision by President Obama to agree to a demand from Egyptian Islamists to free one oftheir most dangerous leaders, Omar Abdul Rahman, the notorious “Blind Sheikh” who ordered the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.  That unrepentant terrorist subsequently tried to use his attorney, Lynne Stewart, to communicate from federal prison an order to his followers to conduct still further, murderous jihadist acts. 

Abdul Rahman’s return to Cairo – a jihadist triumph that would likely make the Islamists’ rapture at the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979 pale by comparison – has been urged most recently during high-level meetings in Washington by Hani Nour Eldin.  Eldin is a member of the Blind Sheikh’s designated terrorist organization, Gama’a al-Islamiyya.  An incredulous House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) has written HomelandSecurity Secretary Janet Napolitano asking why such a dangerous individual was granted a visa by the Obama administration and for her position on the release Abdul Rahman.

Subterfuge, subversion and sedition in the name of shariah are the tradecraft of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Team Obama’s enabling of the Brothers’ ascendancy in Egypt and its embrace of their operatives and those of other Islamist organizations in this country (see www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) is, if not actually illegal, certainly dangerous in the extreme.

Egypt: Radicalizing the Political Bargain, Part I

In an article for Middle East Quarterly last year, I established the historic and ongoing alliance between the current Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). While the current military junta and the Mubarak regime before  them have long encouraged the United States to believe a power struggle exists between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces(SCAF) and the Brotherhood, the real fight for control of Egypt lies elsewhere.

In July 2005, the former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Mahdi Akef publically gave Bay’ia (Islamic oath of loyalty) to Mubarak, and stated in an interview for Egyptian Magazine Akher Sa’a: “We support President Mubarak’s presidential candidacy, and I wish to meet with him.”  This explains why the Brotherhood initially formally declined to join in the January 25, 2011 protest against him.

Yasser El-Hodeiby a member of the MB Freedom and Justice and Party (FJP), stated in an interview with Almasry Alyoum newspaper on January 1, 2012 that the Brotherhood officially gave Bay’ia to Mubarak and his son Gamal, in 2005.

Several salafist leaders in Egypt like Tal’at Zahran also admitted to have given Bay’ia to Mubarak and stated that Salafists will be giving Bay’ia to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, or any other Muslim president that continues to uphold the basis of Islamic Jurisprudence (Shariah). Similarly, Salafist leader Mohammed Hassan even admitted to getting direct orders from Egyptian State Security Investigations Service (SSIS).

Khairat El-Shater, the MB political strategist and a previous presidential candidate of the FJP confessed that the MB was not banned under Mubarak’s regime. He stated a year ago before an Islamist crowd in Alexandria, that the MB was banned for 20 years, from 1954 to 1974, but started the “second foundation” of the organization under President Anwar Sadat (1970-1981) in the mid 70’s.

Shater affirms that the MB had absolute freedom under Mubarak and had substantial control of most Egyptian universities, villages, community centers, and cities all around Egypt with an office in every neighborhood. The MB’s presidential candidate adds that they the freedom they enjoyed under Mubarak reached its peak in the 90’s until Algeria’s militant Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won more that 50% of votes in elections and a threatened Mubarak reacted by arresting some of the Brotherhood’s leadership.

Moreover, Al-Arabiya reports that in an interview for El-Youm El-Sabe’ on April, 14 2012, Suleiman stated that he was “surprised” by the MB attack on his presidential campaign and according to his own words, “as we had no disputes with the MB and Islamists” while, “there might be a dispute” with jihadist movements, he further added: “Egyptian intelligence was the compassionate heart the MB turned to whenever they were pressured elsewhere, we were in contact with them, and we would advice and consult them.”

Suleiman also stated that he met with two of the leaders of the MB, Sa’ad el-Katatni and Mahammed Morsi -the MB’s current presidential candidate- to “sort-out” the revolution with them when he was Vice President briefly in early 2011. Which suggest that a deal was brokered to give them the parliament in Egypt’s past fraudulent make-believe parliamentary elections.

In reality, since 1975,the Muslim Brotherhood has played a convenient role as the regime’s pseudo-opposition. But while they were freely allowed to assemble, meet and advance, their secular liberal, moderate Muslim and Christian compatriots were completely banned and in several instances severely persecuted. Indeed, as a fake opposition group, the MB played a major role in defaming, discrediting, infiltrating, and intimidating true dissidents who truly and publicly opposed this stealth bargain between the military and Islamist parties.

The net result was that the tyranny of Shariah continued virtually unchecked while the USA and the West remained unaware, while the Egyptian regime radicalizes the political bargaining by offering the world a more radical option than themselves that they actively breed and inflate while wiping haunting down secular liberal dissent.

Thus, the real political equation in Egypt is not now nor never has been the MB versus Mubarak’s regime or SCAF. It is the MB, SCAF, Salafists, and Egypt’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman, head of the The General Intelligence Services (GIS), versus Egyptian secular dissidents.

Acknowledging the real war of ideas in Egypt and refusing to play the by the rule of this devious political game is the only way America can reclaim her role as a defender of those people seeking genuine liberty.

America needs to reclaim her role as the leader of the free world, where the enemies of freedom are forced to chose between reform or international consequence, through creating a conflict of interest for any Egyptian or Arab ruler if they ally with the enemies of human life, liberty and dignity rather than funding them, as our American friends say: “they did with you, they will do it to you.”

In part 2, Cynthia examines the real struggle for Presidential power in Egypt between the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, and intelligence chief and, under Mubarak, former Egyptian Vice President, Omar Suleiman.