Patrick Poole, National Security and Terrorism Correspondent for PJ Media; and Stephen Coughlin, Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy speak at Center for Security Policy’s National Security Group Lunch on Capitol Hill regarding US policy and Egyptian counter-terrorism effort after their recent travel thru Egypt.
Tag Archives: Muslim Brotherhood
What’s in a Name?- The Boko Haram-Al Qaeda Connection
An interesting piece in today’s Daily Beast by Eli Lake discusses the possible role played by Osama Bin Laden in the formation of Boko Haram. In the piece Lake notes the disagreement in the Intelligence Community over the organization and nature of Al Qaeda:
The dispute inside the intelligence community falls along familiar lines about al Qaeda. The White House has emphasized the distinctions between al Qaeda’s core and its affiliates and other aspiring jihadists, who the White House sees as operating almost entirely independent of the central group.
However, another faction inside the U.S. intelligence community—one that comprises the current leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency and others working in the military—see al Qaeda as a flatter organization that coordinates between nodes and operates through consensus in the model of an Islamic Shura council.
In the case of the Boko Haram debate, this latter group inside the intelligence community has pointed to documentation and raw intelligence that suggested the Nigerian group had evolved over time—particularly after 2010—into something that resembles an unofficial al Qaeda affiliate and a threat to the West.
If there was recognition within the USG that Al Qaeda views itself as organized around shariah law, the debate on the shura council model would be over, since it is a model that is understood as theological prescribed in Surah 3:159,
“…And take counsel with them in all matters of public concern; then, when thou hast decided upon a course of action, place thy trust in God: for, verily, God loves those who place their trust in Him.”
Muslim Brotherhood thinker Sayyid Qutb (whom the 9/11 Commission report noted was very influential on Bin Laden’s world view) notes In the Shade of the Quran:
We have here a distinctive order: “Consult with them on the conduct of public affairs.” This principle, which is basic to the Islamic system of government, is established here, even when Muĥammad himself, God’s Messenger, is the one who conducts public affairs. This is, then, a definitive statement that leaves the Muslim community in no doubt that consultation is central to Islamic government. Without it, no system is truly Islamic.
Another point worth making regarding Boko Haram as an “unofficial” AQ-affiliate is it’s real name is “Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad” or “Group Committed to the Propagation of the Sunnah (Traditions of the Prophet) and Jihad. Compare that to another terrorist group in North Africa, now called “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” but once called the “Salafist Group for Call and Combat” al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl. The two names are effectively synonymous, and carry with them clear ideological meaning. Both are groups (jamaat) committed to the call or propagating (dawa) of the traditional Islam of Mohammed and the early Muslims (ahl-Sunnah or as-Salaf) and to fighting jihad.
It is the ideology which informs the doctrine, which in turn establishes how forces are organized, and it is the ideology that drives the names groups give themselves. Our failure to understand the motivating drivers and doctrine of the enemy, namely shariah, has resulted in strategic confusion that in turn translates to the inability to agree on even basic analytical questions such as “How is Al Qaeda organized” more than a decade after 9/11.
Unsafe Spaces: Islamist Mosques
The contempt that America’s enemies have for the United States these days is palpable. The most obvious current example is Vladimir Putin’s disdain for President Obama, whom he regards as little more than a speed-bump on the road to his conquest of Ukraine and perhaps other nations in what the Kremlin calls Russia’s “near-abroad.”
Not content with snatching Crimea and preparing reprises elsewhere, Putin has a jet buzz one of our ships in the Black Sea for ninety minutes then launches a new multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile. By contrast, Team Obama is busily dismantling what’s left of our navy and strategic forces.
Then there’s the back of the hand treatment China showed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel when, during his recent visit to the People’s Republic, the Pentagon chief had the temerity to lecture his hosts about how to behave internationally. They took him to see their just-refurbished aircraft carrier and unveiled a new fighter aircraft to operate from it. The best Hagel could do was announce that the U.S. was going to respond to Beijing’s increasing belligerence in the region by sending there a grand total of two more anti-missile destroyers–by 2017.
A more subtle, but no less in-your-face kind of contempt has just been served up by Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other Islamists in this country.
To mark the occasion of the first anniversary of two of their fellow jihadists’ murderous attack at the Boston Marathon, the leaders of several Brotherhood fronts have launched something called the “Safe Spaces Initiative.” They evidently think we are so stupid, or at least now so submissive, that they can try to put mosques off-limits to law enforcement. This is all the more astounding since we know that the perpetrators of the terrorism of a year ago used the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge to become versed in the ways of the supremacist Islamist doctrine known as shariah and the jihad it commands.
A chief proponent of this Safe Spaces gambit is Salam al-Marayati, the president of an Islamist influence operation out of California with extensive access to the Obama administration, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). In an opinion piece posted by altmuslim blog on March 28, al-Marayati actually makes plain the true purpose of his Safe Spaces Initiative.
Notwithstanding the portrayal of this proposal as a means of preventing radicalization in mosques, in the words of al-Marayati: “Safe spaces are needed so that government informants and extremist recruiters are prevented from violating the sanctity of the mosque. In essence, we want to enhance both a spiritual safety and public safety.” (Emphasis added.)
Unfortunately, the latest announcement by William Bratton–the former police commissioner recently re-appointed by New York’s new, Islamist-friendly mayor, Bill de Blasio–would sure seem to justify the Brothers’ low regard for us. As the New York Times reported today “The New York Police Department has abandoned a secretive program that dispatched plainclothes detectives into Muslim neighborhoods….Plainclothes detectives looked for ‘hot spots’ of radicalization that might give the police an early warning about terrorist plots.”
The Times quoted the NYPD’s chief spokesman, Stephen Davis, who made clear the completeness of the department’s submission to the Islamists who style themselves as the “leaders” and “representatives” of all Muslim Americans: “‘Understanding certain local demographics can be a useful factor when assessing the threat information that comes into New York City virtually on a daily basis,” Mr. Davis said. “In the future, we will gather that information, if necessary, through direct contact between the police precincts and the representatives of the communities they serve.”
I discussed the folly of making mosques surveillance-free zones in an interview on Secure Freedom Radio this evening with former federal prosecutor and best-selling author Andrew C. McCarthy. Here’s part of our conversation (for the entire podcast, click here):
FRANK GAFFNEY: The Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who’s a Muslim Brother fellow-traveller jihadist type, has a rather poetic turn of phrase for it. He says, “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, and the faithful our army.” And, Andy, this gives rise to a concern that I’m sure you share about an initiative that some of these Muslim Brotherhood types, notably Mohamed Magid, the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States, the Islamic Society of North America–and, oh, by the way, a frequent visitor at the Obama White House and prominent source of counsel to him and others in his Administration–
ANDY MCCARTHY: And another unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation.
FG: Indeed. These guys have cooked up something called the “Safe Spaces Initiative.” I wonder what you make of that idea, particularly as it seems their purpose is to, as one of them put it, “keep government informants…from violating the sanctity of the mosque.”
AM: Yeah, well, you know, it’s unfortunate that with this particular Justice Department and this Administration they’re probably pushing on an open door.
FG: It’s probably a wired game, let’s be honest. These guys have almost certainly got this rigged with the Justice Department.
AM: But the amazing thing is for all of Obama and Eric Holder’s caterwauling about, you know, how we’ve proved again and again that the civilian justice system is the best way to prosecute terrorism cases–well, why don’t they ever check into what was proved in those prosecutions that they like to tout around? Because if they open the transcripts…what they would find is that mosques were used as recruitment centers, they were used for conspiratorial conversations and agreements, they were used to house weapons, they were used to transfer weapons, and they really were used to light a fire under people who might have been fence-sitters but who were powerfully influenced by some of the imams, particularly the guy who I prosecuted in the 1990s, the Blind Sheikh.
It was in the mosques that [Omar Abdel-Rahman] did most of the damage that he did to the United States. So this is not something we speculate about, Frank. This is something that’s actually been proved in court, and proved again and again and again. So, if you’re going to say that a mosque needs to be a safe space, then what you’re really saying is we’ve taken willful blindness, which was a problem, and we’ve now codified it, so it’s not just willful blindness; it’s just mulish, absolute refusal to come to terms with what we’re up against.
FG: Yeah. And to speak to the other subject of your trilogy there, it is a formula for more of the grand jihad, not less. It is a certainty that you will find more Tsarnaev boys being recruited, or being trained, or being armed, or in other ways being enabled. It simply is mindboggling, Andy, and I think the American people couldn’t comprehend what’s going on here, or believe it if told it.
We can’t afford more of the sort of willful blindness that will give rise to more unsafe mosques and other places, and more jihad.
‘Civilization Jihad’ Comes to Court
Want to know what our Islamist enemies have in mind for America? Look at Europe.
Virtually every country there has found itself under siege from Muslims seeking to impose the supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah on everyone else. The preeminent organization promoting this agenda is the Muslim Brotherhood, now banned as a terrorist group in its home country of Egypt, but prospering in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in what has been known as the Free World. In fact, as Egyptian courts hand down death sentences to those engaged with the Brotherhood’s violent efforts to overthrow the government there, ours is opening the door to asylum for those who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism.
More insidious than the Muslim Brotherhood’s violence, however, is its stealthy subversion. In a 1991 strategic plan introduced into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a senior Brother named Mohammed Akram described this form of warfare as “civilization jihad.”
In Akram’s words, the goal of the Brotherhood’s civilization jihadists is “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” His “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” lays out how this ambitious goal is to be achieved under our noses by penetrating and subverting “from within” the West’s civil society and governing institutions.
The London Telegraph reports that this campaign has just scored a major success in Great Britain. That country’s trade association for lawyers, the Law Society, has declared its members can begin drawing up shariah-compliant wills that will be enforceable in British common law courts.
As the Telegraph put it on March 22nd:
“Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.
“The documents, which would be recognized by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs.
“Anyone married in a church, or in a civil ceremony, could be excluded from succession under Shariah principles, which recognize only Muslim weddings for inheritance purposes.”
Such inroads are coming on top of the presence of something on the order of 87 shariah courts that operate side-by-side with Britain’s own judiciary. As one of the U.K.’s most courageous opponents of such practices, Baroness Caroline Cox, told the Telegraph: “No longer do we have a single legal code in our society. Instead, alongside our own law, there is now effectively a parallel quasi-legal system operating within some Muslim communities.”
Think that cannot happen here? Think again. The Muslim Brotherhood’s largest front group in this country, the Islamic Society of North America, requires each of its chapters to maintain arbitration panels that serve as proto-shariah courts. It is a matter of time before Islamists and their apologists begin demanding that such courts be allowed to adjudicate disputes not just between willing parties, but in cases where one party – most likely women and/or children – would prefer to have the protections of our Constitution.
Worse yet, as a study published by the Center for Security Policy in 2011 has documented, there have been at least 27 different instances in which U.S. courts have allowed the use of shariah law to govern – even where doing so has violated constitutional rights of the plaintiffs or defendants. (An updated version of this study now nearing completion indicates that, as of today, there are many more such cases.)
As a corrective to this civilization jihadist incursion into American jurisprudence, seven states have adopted legislation known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC). If they wish to avoid the fate now facing British citizens who are likely to be denied their rightful inheritances and, in due course, other privations at the hands of shariah, every state in the country should adopt ALAC.
Of course, our Constitution’s Article VI declares that it is the supreme law of the land. But that will no long be the case if the civilization jihadists have their way. We must ensure that shariah is not allowed to undermine that constitutional precept – to the detriment of women, children and the rest of us.
Obama Switches Sides
It’s long been clear that, under the Obama administration, America has switched sides in the War for the Free World.
Today, we are arming al Qaeda in Syria, underwriting Iran and embracing the Muslim Brotherhood – a subversive jihadist group sworn to our destruction.
A particularly alarming manifestation of this crazy policy reversal was a recent announcement: From now on, asylum-seekers who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism can get refuge in the United States.
Meanwhile, Team Obama has reportedly been denying visas to Israelis engaged in fighting our mutual terrorist enemies and protecting one of our most important allies.
The take-away is unmistakable: It’s much better to be a mortal enemy of this country than its friend.
Whose side is President Obama on?
Grover Norquist & Co. Build Islamist Influence in GOP
How the GOP Came to Embrace the Muslim Brotherhood Lobby
Islamism is not a partisan issue. Special interests, major companies and foreign powers have long tried to affect both political parties—and the Muslim Brotherhood lobby is no different. Ten former senior officials, including a former CIA director, have issued a joint statement with meticulous documentation about how the Republican Party was and is influenced by this lobby.
The Beginning
When the Muslim Brotherhood arrived in the U.S. in the 1960s, it recognized that violent action is counterproductive. Instead, it began political organizing so it could lead the growing Muslim-American community and use it to affect U.S. policy.
In the 1980s, the FBI recruited a confidential source deep inside the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood lobby. He warned that the Brotherhood established a network of front groups including the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Muslim Students Association, Islamic Society of North America and North American Islamic Trust. One of the chief objectives was to penetrate the U.S. government with sympathizers and IIIT already claimed success.
The network was so impressive that Pakistani intelligence bred its own influence operation from it in 1990 with the Brotherhood’s support. It donated to campaigns on both sides of the political aisle and met with officials involved in foreign policy.
The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood drafted a secret plan in 1991 that defined its “work in America as a kind of grand jihad…in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” It was not a doctrine of violence, but of activism based on aligning with non-Muslim political forces. It listed about 30 of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends” to accomplish it. This document was recognized as authentic by the U.S. Department of Justice as was introduced as evidence in the Holy Land terror financing trial.
In 1993, the FBI wiretapped a secret meeting of top Brotherhood operatives in Philadelphia. A key theme was deception and secrecy in support of their non-violent activism. In the words of one participant, the objective was “forming the public opinion or coming up with a policy to influence…the way the Americans deal with the Islamists, for instance.”
The Brotherhood decided that a new front with an apparently clean track record was necessary. Two of the participants in that meeting founded the Council on American-Islamic Relations the following year. By 1994, the infrastructure of the Brotherhood lobby was in place, though it would continue to expand with new organizations and name changes.
The Influence Peddlers
The most senior elements of the Brotherhood lobby handled outreach to the Clinton Administration and both political parties, especially the presidential campaign of then-Texas Governor George W. Bush.
Sami al-Arian was a central figure. He admits having been a Muslim Brotherhood member from 1978 to 1982, but his involvement in the American lobby continued after that. In a 1992 letter, al-Arian acknowledged that his organization and IIIT, the aforementioned Brotherhood front, were essentially one and the same. He was convicted in 2006 of the charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization.
Another central figure was Abdurrahman Alamoudi and his American Muslim Council. He developed intimidate ties to both political parties, despite his support of terrorist groups. In 2004, he was indicted on terrorism-related charges. He later wrote from his prison cell, “I am, I hope, still a member of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the U.S.A,” as reported by the Grand Deception documentary.
In 2000, Alamoudi was asked by an Islamic website how Muslims should “decrease the influence of the Zionist lobby on presidential candidates.” He said they must elect sympathetic candidates like Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA).
Rep. Campbell spoke at the Brotherhood lobby’s events and touted their causes. He became the example and was rewarded with political support and donations to his Senate campaign in 2000, including a fundraiser that brought in $35,000. The man guiding Campbell was Suhail Khan, his campaign coordinator in 1995 and press secretary and legislative assistant from 1996 to 1999.
Khan’s father was a bit of a legend in the Brotherhood lobby, as one of the original founders of the MSA and ISNA. It is well-documented that the early establishers of these groups were part of a Brotherhood campaign. He also established an Islamist mosque in California that would later host the “Blind Sheikh” involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and have Muzzamil Siddiqi, former president of ISNA, as its imam.
Khan’s mother helped CAIR set up operations in her state, serving as a member of the Executive Board of CAIR-California (CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood entity that was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land terror financing case by the Department of Justice).
Khan himself spoke at the Brotherhood lobby’s events. In one speech he gave at an ISNA conference in 1999, he called on the audience to emulate Mohammed’s early followers that prevailed in combat. He said:
“The earliest defenders of Islam would defend their more numerous and better equipped oppressors, because the early Muslims loved death, dying for the sake of almighty Allah, more than the oppressors of Muslims loved life. This must be the case where we– when we are fighting life’s other battles. … [W]hat are our oppressors going to do with people like us? We’re prepared to give our lives for the cause of Islam.”
Khan mentioned specific battlefields where Muslims must unite to defeat the “oppressors” of Islam: Palestine, Bosnia, Iraq and Kashmir.
He also told Muslims that they were under siege in America from the government and society and claimed that harassment was commonplace and that mosques and Islamic centers being burned and desecrated. Two years before 9/11, Khan and the Brotherhood lobby were already using their “Islamophobia” strategy.
Alamoudi was so proud of Khan’s work that he presented him with an award in June 2001. In a prediction that would later be fulfilled, Alamoudi said, “Some of you saw [Khan] in today the White House but inshallah [Allah willing], soon you [will] see him in better places in the White House.”
Khan acknowledged his personal connection to Alamoudi when he received the award, saying he has “been very supportive of me and I want to give him thanks.”
One of the major issues that Al-Arian, Alamoudi, Khan and the Brotherhood network fought for was freedom for al-Arian’s brother-in-law, who was arrested in 1997 on terrorism-related charges and detained indefinitely based on undisclosed evidence.
Enter Grover Norquist. Norquist encouraged the Republican Party to take up the cause. GOP Rep. Campbell was one of the first to join in, going so far as to visit Al-Arian’s relative in jail.
They began intensively lobbying to end the use of secret evidence to detain non-citizens, thereby freeing him and stopping his deportation. The Clinton Administration was not receptive, so the Brotherhood lobby looked to its rival political party.
Target: GOP
In 1996, President Clinton won the Muslim-American vote, a growing minority that the Republican Party saw as an opportunity.
Two years later, Alamoudi dispatched his closest aide, Khaled Saffuri, to team up with an extremely influential Republican activist named Grover Norquist to form the Islamic Free Market Institute. He has been called the “most powerful man in America” because of his ability to make Republican congressmen and candidates bend to his anti-tax platform. Suhail Khan also joined as chairman and a board member.
Saffuri had personal ties of his own to the Brotherhood lobby beyond Alamoudi. He has worked with Jamal Barzinji, one of the main founders of the network, since 1988. The FBI’s source around that time mentioned Barzinji by name as a Muslim Brotherhood operative trying to influence U.S. policy.
He remains a senior IIIT official and his home was raided in 2003 as part of a terrorism investigation. Special Agent David Kane said Barzinji “is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.”
The evidence suggests that Norquist’s passion was triggered by a personal conversion to Islam. His wife, Samah, is a devout Muslim. In 2008, they adopted a Palestinian baby from Bethlehem. When asked by author Paul Sperry if he converted, Norquist dodged the question by saying it is “personal.”
The Brotherhood lobby instantly rallied behind the Norquist-Saffuri initiative to create the Islamic Free Market Institute.
Alamoudi provided two payments of $10,000 to the institute in 1999. In addition, he paid a total of $50,000 in 2000 and 2001 to a Norquist-linked lobbying firm. The Safa Trust, a component of the Brotherhood network whose offices were raided after 9/11, provided $35,000 (Author Paul Sperry has a copy of one $10,000 check from 2000 here). Barzinji’s IIIT gave $11,000.
In addition, at least $15,000 came from Saudi sources in 1999 and 2000, $30,000 from the Kuwaiti government in 1999 and $100,000 in 2001 from the Qatari government, one of the Brotherhood’s largest state sponsors.
The effect on the GOP was immediate. Norquist’s Islamic Free Market Institute scored an endorsement from Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson. GOP officials began meeting with the Institute, Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council and other Brotherhood entities.
Texas Governor George W. Bush announced his presidential campaign in June 1999 and his campaign reached out to Norquist. The lobby became intimately involved in its Muslim outreach and Saffuri became its national advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs.
In January 2000, Bush met with Islamist Imam Hasan Qazwini. In March, Bush met with Sami al-Arian. In May 2000, Bush’s picture was taken with Alamoudi and Saffuri during a meeting at the Governor’s mansion in Texas that included Saffuri. Bush adopted their position against the use of secret evidence, calling it a form of “racial profiling” against Arabs during the second presidential debate.
The Bush campaign’s efforts to win Muslim support by adopting the lobby’s positions were open and aggressive. Bush publicly touted al-Arian’s main cause. Talat Othman, then chairman of the Norquist/Saffuri group, gave the invocation at the Republican National Convention.
There is contradictory information about the impact this outreach had on the Muslim vote, but it’s generally agreed that it produced significant results. CAIR’s polls showed that Bush’s share of the Muslim vote was 28% in July 2000 and grew to 40% in mid-October. Gore’s share fell from 33% to 24%, while Nader’s increased from 5% to 20%, possibly due to anger at Gore for choosing the staunchly pro-Israel Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate.
After the election, CAIR said that 72% voted for Bush, 19% for Nader and 8% for Gore. Another organization, the American Muslim Alliance, said over 80% went to Bush. Norquist and the Brotherhood lobby boasted that their Muslim outreach had swung the state of Florida for Bush.
“Bush was elected President of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote,” Norquist said.
The lobby’s access to Bush’s inner circle continued after he took office. Suhail Khan was given a position in the Office of Public Liaison and managed the White House’s interfaith relationships.
In April 2001, the Bush Administration invited 83 Muslim activists to the White House for a meeting. The guestlist, uncovered by author Paul Sperry, includes:
- Over 20 officials from Norquist’s group (including Norquist, Saffuri and Othman)
- Six officials from Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council
- Barzinji and Yaqub Mirza from IIIT
- Six officials from CAIR including Omar Ahmad, Ibrahim Hooper and Hussam Ayloush
- Three officials from the Muslim Public Affairs Council including Mahdi Bray.
- Dr. Syed Fai from the Kashmiri-American Council, who was later convicted of being a Pakistani ISI spy. His group was a central component of the Brotherhood-linked Pakistani lobby.
- Taha al-Alwani from the Saudi-backed Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences that was raided in 2002 and labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in Al-Arian’s trial.
- Susan Douglass, a teacher at a Virginia school linked to the Saudi government that came under heavy criticism for promoting extremism.
- An official from the Brotherhood/Hamas-linked Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center.
In June 2001, Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council was given a briefing by Karl Rove and al-Arian was among the invitees. Al-Arian also visited the White House that month. In July, al-Arian honored Norquist with an award, crediting him with convincing President Bush to oppose the use of secret evidence.
By that time, the lobby had grown impatient. In September 2001, shortly before the 9/11 attacks, al-Arian spoke at an ISNA conference and urged the audience to overwhelm the White House with demands that Bush follow through on his campaign promise to stop the use of secret evidence in immigration courts.
It worked. The Brotherhood lobby’s meeting with President Bush was scheduled for September 11, 2001.
The “War on Terror” Begins
Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, shared office space with Norquist when the 9/11 attacks happened. When the lobby’s meeting with Bush was cancelled, it was there that they reconvened at.
Gaffney and his colleague, national security expert Dr. J. Michael Waller, saw Norquist, Khan and their colleagues enter the building. Waller, located next door to the meeting room, was able to listen in on their conversation.
Waller says he heard them discussing how to posture themselves after the attacks. Some of the participants felt uncomfortable condemning the attack on the Pentagon because they viewed it as a legitimate military target. The group decided to vaguely condemn the attacks in a way that would not offend the American public or violate their Islamist sensibilities.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration realized it needed to put moderate Muslim voices out front that would discredit the terrorist propaganda that the U.S. was waging a war on Islam, as well as limit any backlash against patriotic Muslims.
The Brotherhood lobby wanted to be the “moderate” face of the Muslim-American community and obtain all the influence that would bring. Norquist and Khan went to work. James Zogby would later explain that Norquist was also a main “interlocutor.”
On September 17, Bush spoke at the Islamic Center of Washington after meeting with Muslim leaders. One of the “moderate” Muslim leaders standing to Bush’s left was Nihad Awad, executive-director of CAIR. To his right, was Saffuri.
On September 26, Bush sat next to Muzammil Siddiqi, former ISNA president, as he addressed the press. Bush praised Siddiqi for leading a September 14 prayer service at the National Cathedral and upheld him as one of the moderate Muslim leaders the U.S. must support.
“He [Siddiqi] did a heck of a good job, and we were proud to have him there. And I want to thank you very much for the gift you gave me, Imam, the Koran. It’s a very thoughtful gift,” Bush said.
Unbeknownst to Bush, Siddiqi preached that Muslims should implement Sharia in the U.S. using the Brotherhood doctrine of “gradualism.” He taught that participation in the democratic process was a means to this end.
In October, Attorney General John Ashcroft met with a group of Muslim leaders that included Mahdi Bray of MPAC. Bray has an exceptionally strong history of extremist rhetoric. In 2000, Bray was on stage with Alamoudi and gestured his approval when he praised the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In 2008, Bray went to Egypt to express his solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood.
President Bush’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove, would later admit that he had not known of the extremist backgrounds of those Bush had embraced. It is highly unlikely that Norquist and Khan were unaware. It is probable that their endorsements explain why the Islamists slipped in under the radar.
Another problem was the security clearance process and the administration’s flawed view of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was not and is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Sympathy for the Islamist group, or even having a direct connection, does not disqualify someone from serving in an official capacity.
Waller explains that background checks focus almost exclusively on illegal activity. During the Cold War, membership in the Communist Party meant you were considered to be under the “operational control of a foreign entity.” That is not the case with the Brotherhood. In addition, it is now reported
that the largest outside investigator for government security clearances, is accused of intentionally sending the government 650,000 incomplete background checks since 1996.
The honeymoon between the Bush Administration and the Brotherhood lobby did not last long.
President Bush never delivered on taking actions that would free al-Arian’s brother-in-law. Sami al-Arian himself would go to jail for being a secret Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader. The Brotherhood lobby still, to this day, maintains his innocence and asserts that he is jailed simply for being Muslim.
Alamoudi was likewise imprisoned on terrorism-related charges. The offices of many organizations belonging to the Brotherhood lobby, like IIIT and ISNA, would be raided as part of the “Operation Green Quest” terrorism investigation. The St. Petersburg Times observed that “more than 50 targets of the raid were people and organizations connected to Norquist and the Islamic Institute.”
These apparently separate organizations demonstrated their unity as a single lobby whenever one of them came under investigation. In each case, they’d simultaneously use their megaphones to claim they were victims of anti-Muslim persecution by the U.S. government. The “War on Terror” was presented as a “War on Islam.” The very partners that the Bush Administration chose to battle this narrative advanced it instead.
They tried to use Norquist to put an end to the crackdown. He organized a meeting between Saffuri, Othman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, whose position gave him a leading role in the terrorism-financing investigations into IIIT and the other Brotherhood lobby components. They protested the government’s actions to no avail.
In July 2002, Gaffney saw Al-Arian and Norquist again meeting in the office space. It is not known what they discussed.
The propaganda machine of the Brotherhood lobby went into overdrive, especially furious at the closing of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. CAIR projected that 80% of Muslim-Americans would vote for Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. After the vote took place, CAIR changed its estimates. It claimed that 93% voted for Kerry, 5% voted for Nader and less than 1% voted for Bush.
Nonetheless, Norquist remained a powerhouse influence in the Republican Party, even though he and his Islamist allies did nothing to combat the damaging rhetoric from the Brotherhood lobby. His Muslim wife, Samah, served the U.S. Agency for International Development as Senior Advisor for Arab and Muslim Outreach. His brother, David, became the chief financial officer of the Department of Homeland Security in 2006.
Norquist’s close associate, David Hossein Safavian, was also treated well after 9/11. In 1997, he formed a lobbying company named Janus-Marritt Strategies with Norquist and later served as a director for Norquist’s Islamic Free Market Institute. Their lobbying firm was even hired by Alamoudi in 2000-2001 and, after Safavian left, Barzinji of IIIT.
In May 2002, Safavian was appointed to Senior Advisor and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. government’s General Services Administration. In November 2003, he was nominated to a top position in the Office of Management and Budget as the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.
Safavian was later indicted in 2005 as part of the corruption investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In 2009, he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Khan was moved from the Office of Public Liaison to the Transportation Department as the Assistant to the Secretary for Policy.
Karl Rove, President Bush’s most trusted political advisor, dismissed concerns about Norquist in 2003 despite his admitted ignorance of the Brotherhood lobby in 2001.
TODAY
The Brotherhood lobby’s influence reached new heights under the Obama Administration, capitalizing on the ground it gained under the Bush Administration.
Norquist and Khan still work with the Brotherhood lobby, despite immense documentation of its extremism. They are unconcerned with the U.S. government’s labeling of three major groups—CAIR, ISNA and NAIT—as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities and unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Khan is chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition. He is a board member of the American Conservative Union that sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the nation where he often is a speaker.
Khan parrots the Brotherhood lobby’s lines when its nature is pointed out. In 2009, he was asked about criticism of CAIR after the Islamist shooting at Fort Hood. He said, “it’s even more sad to see that there might be some who would use and exploit this tragedy for their political partisan and, worse, for their racist ends.”
In 2011, he told a CPAC audience that the Muslim Brotherhood does not even exist in the U.S. He defends ISNA and denies that it is a Brotherhood front, despite the fact that the Department of Justice recognized it as such. He similarly denies that his father was involved with the Brotherhood in any way. He also denies any connection to Alamoudi.
Norquist, his wife and Khan came out swinging against conservatives that opposed the Ground Zero Mosque project. They described it as an attack on Muslims and warned that the GOP would lose all support from minority voters if it continued.
In 2011, Norquist even spoke at a Michigan event that branded the Brotherhood lobby’s critics as anti-Muslim bigots belonging to an “Islamophobia” industry. Also speaking at the event was Dawud Walid, the executive-director of CAIR-Michigan.
The Republican Party remains largely neutralized, with none of the leading presidential contenders for 2016 showing any sign of knowledge about the Brotherhood lobby.
In fact, N.J. Governor Chris Christie is earning the praises of CAIR and is shockingly close to Islamists involved with the Brotherhood lobby, going so far as to defend one from deportation by the Department of Homeland Security. He reacts to criticism on this issue with angry defensiveness, blasting those that mention it as anti-Muslim bigots.
Former GOP presidential nominee Senator John McCain and his close friend, Senator Lindsey Graham, once viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as adversaries. Now they view it as a partner and pushed the Obama Administration into retaliating against Egypt for overthrowing the Brotherhood’s rule.
The best example of the power of the Brotherhood lobby’s political warfare is what happened when five Republican members of Congress brought attention to its influence on parts of the U.S. government in 2012. They were hit with a tidal wave of negative press coverage, much of it due to fellow Republicans.
They were harshly blasted by Republican officials like McCain, possible presidential candidate Florida Senator Marco Rubio, House Speaker John Boehner, then-Senator Scott Brown, Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake and Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.
The evidence presented here of Islamist Muslim Brotherhood influence at the highest ranks of the Republican party’s apparatus is overwhelming. Separate research should be conducted to evaluate the level of Islamist influence in the Democratic party. Islamist infililtration into American political parties should be a bi-partisan concern, since the Islamist ideology is anti-democratic and its ultimate goal is to replace the American Constitution with Islamic sharia law. It’s hard to conceive of a more bi-partisan issue than that.
U.S. Lifts Ban on Immigrants With Links to Terrorism
Muslim Brotherhood affiliates scored a major victory in their efforts to degrade U.S. national security measures in early February 2014 when the Obama administration decided to override by fiat portions of the U.S. Criminal Code and immigration policy pertaining to individuals who provide “material support to terrorism.”
As published in the Federal Register on February 5, 2014, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State issued a joint notice that, henceforth, certain asylum seekers and refugees who only provided “limited material support” to terrorism would be allowed into the U.S.
The earlier law as written, The Real ID Law of 2005, states quite explicitly that the definition of engaging in terrorist activity includes:
To commit an act that the actor knows, or reasonably should know, affords material support, including a safe house, transportation, communications, funds, transfer of funds or other material financial benefit … to a terrorist organization [emphasis added]
Such activity, no matter how minor, constituted grounds for exclusion from entry to the U.S.
By unilaterally lifting restrictions — without so much as consulting Congress — for those intending immigrants who engaged in “(1) certain routine commercial transactions or certain routine social transactions (i.e., in the satisfaction of certain well-established or verifiable family, social, or cultural obligations), [or] (2) certain humanitarian assistance,” that benefited terrorist organizations, the Obama administration simply overrode existing law. So far, both the judicial and legislative branches of the U.S. government have let the administration get away with it.
According to the Daily Caller, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry signed the exemptions despite very real concerns about the legality of the executive branch deciding to ignore aspects of an existing law it doesn’t want to enforce and replacing them with its own guidelines.
Former State Department official and current director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies Jessica Vaughan worried as well that “those evaluating these cases will be ordered to ignore red flags in the applications, especially if the applicant is supported by one of the many advocacy groups that have the ear of senior DHS staff.”
The new policy decree marks a significant win for agents of influence belonging to advocacy groups acting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda to pursue “civilization jihad” “to destroy Western civilization from within…by [our] hands,” as asserted in the “Explanatory Memorandum,” a key Brotherhood document introduced as evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.
As described at some length in “The Islamists’—and their Enablers’—Assault on the Right: The Case Against Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan,” an February 11, 2014 dossier of particulars published by the Center for Security Policy (CSP), it is precisely in executing political influence operations aimed at U.S. national security leadership (whether Republican or Democratic) that the Muslim Brotherhood so excels.
The CSP paper explains in exhaustive detail and with meticulously referenced citations how the Muslim Brotherhood targeted the Republican Party and the conservative movement over a period of years and succeeded in placing senior operatives such as Abdurahman Alamoudi, Sami al-Arian, Nihad Awad, and Khaled Saffuri deep inside senior leadership circles.
It was at those top levels of government—the Executive Branch, the Intelligence Community, and the National Security Council—where critical decision-making took place, especially in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, that set U.S. counterterrorism strategy on a hopeless loop that deliberately avoided, and indeed later would forbid, knowledge about Islamic doctrine, law and scripture as the animating inspiration for Islamic terrorism.
By divorcing the enemy’s core ideology from study of the enemy threat doctrine, Muslim Brotherhood agents of influence succeeded in ensuring that U.S. blood and treasure would be endlessly and fruitlessly expended in Counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare, nation-building exercises and democracy experiments in the most unsuitable places possible: Muslim lands under rule of Islamic law (sharia).
As noted in CSP’s 2010 Team B II Report, “Shariah: The Threat to America,” Americans do pretty well at defending against military-style frontal assaults. We do far less well, though, at either recognizing or countering the “menace posed by jihadist enemies who operate by deceit and stealth from inside the gates.”
And yet it is the latter threat that poses a far more serious threat to open, tolerant societies like ours than the openly terrorist attack like the one that struck on 9/11.
As cited by CSP’s Norquist and Khan report, the Washington Post described the stealthy operating style of the Muslim Brotherhood in a revealing September 11, 2004 front page article, “In Search of Friends Among the Foes.”
Juan Zarate, then-chief of the Treasury Department’s terror finance unit, admitted confusion about the Brotherhood and how it operated through familiar Western business enterprises but with Islamic “philosophy and ultimate objectives” that are antithetical to our own. Through a disciplined strategy and patient willingness to work under the radar for decades, they progress towards specific goals and, ultimately, “conquest through dawah,” as Yousef al-Qaradawi, senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, has put it.
So it has been with the steady campaign to chip away at U.S. counterterrorism legislation and policy, much of it, like the Patriot Act, implemented in the months and years following 9/11.
In his 2007 book, “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated America,” Paul Sperry noted, for instance, that, by securing key positions within the White House, such as the Office of Public Liaison, for Brotherhood operatives like Suhail Khan, access by various Islamic organizations could be controlled.
Likewise, the appointment of Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim Brotherhood front organization in the country, to the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group in 2010, served to place a top Brotherhood operative in a key position from which to influence U.S. counterterrorism policy.
In July 2012, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, joined by four other courageous Representatives, sent letters to the Inspectors General of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State plus the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, requesting each to investigate the extent of Muslim Brotherhood influence in these respective agencies.
Rep. Bachmann followed up with a sixteen-page letter to Rep. Keith Ellison (who had criticized the investigation request) in which she laid out documented instances of apparent Muslim Brotherhood influence over U.S. policy. These included Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s February 2011 testimony before Congress, in which he described the openly jihadist Muslim Brotherhood as “secular;” drastic, pro-Brotherhood policy initiatives by the State Department, during a period when Huma Abedin, who had been closely involved with the Muslim Brotherhood for years, served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton; and U.S. cooperation with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on a pro-sharia campaign to criminalize the criticism of Islam.
With the 2011-2012 government-wide Great Purge of training curriculum related to fact-based instruction about Islam followed by the wholesale backing for the al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood-led revolts in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, U.S. policy is far gone along the pathway of acquiescence to a jihad and sharia agenda. When Hani Nour Eldin, member of Gama’at al-Islamiyya, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, was granted a visa in June 2012 to visit the White House in order to petition the National Security Council for the release of Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheikh), the warning indicators were already well in evidence that the Obama administration was turning the Global War on Terror policy on its head.
Allowing political asylees and refugees known to have provided material support to terrorism to enter the country is yet one more milestone step bringing U.S. policy into closer compliance with sharia objectives—to our great detriment.
The bitter results of Middle East failure
There is no question that American interests in the Middle East are facing their gravest threats. The genesis for the current turmoil goes back many years with its roots in the Carter administration. Each subsequent administration contributed to the turmoil, particularly that of President Obama.
There were key events, actual acts of war against the United States that, had we responded with the required military action, could have changed the course of history.
The first occurred under President Carter when we undercut our key ally, the Shah of Iran, and facilitated the return and rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Islamic fundamentalist regime.
The result was the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of our diplomats hostage for 444 days. Our failure to respond to this act of war served as the launching pad for radical Islam.
The second major event occurred during the Reagan administration when we failed to respond to both the bombing attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, and then the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut October, which killed 241 of our finest military personnel.
It was the greatest loss of Marines in a single day since the battle for Iwo Jima in World War II. We had positive proof the orders for the attack came from Iran. We had our Sixth Fleet Carrier Strike Force planes loaded and ready to respond but could not get authorization to launch.
Our failure to respond became Osama bin Laden’s rallying cry: Americans can’t suffer casualties, they will cut and run. In the eyes of the Middle East, that’s what we did. The mastermind for these two bombings in 1983 was Imad Mughniyeh, an agent for Iran.
Next was the Gulf Tanker War in 1986-88. Even though Iran was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Iraq, it still continued to conduct “acts of war” against the United States. We had an opportunity in late August 1987 to shut down Iran when we had three battle groups and an amphibious ready group all coming together in the North Arabian Sea.
The plan was called “Window of Opportunity.” We were prepared to proceed systematically up the Persian Gulf, destroying Iran’s key facilities and their residual military forces including the Bushehr nuclear power plant, but authorization was not obtained.
It is important to understand that in the early 1990s Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda formed a terrorist alliance. They overcame the Sunni-Shia religious divide in order to confront the “great Satan,” the United States.
With the help of Imad Mughniyeh, this alliance led to several well-known terror attacks, including the 1996 truck bombing of the U.S. Air Force Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; the simultaneous U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; and the horrific terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 innocent Americans. Yet Iran remained off-limits.
Judge George Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled on Dec. 15, 2011, that Iran and Hezbollah were co-responsible with al Qaeda for the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In response, the Bush administration launched attacks against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. These attacks were initially very successful, but then we shifted our focus to Iraq where we became obsessed with Saddam Hussein’s potential weapons of mass destruction program.
It can be argued that at that point, the United States made a strategic mistake by invading Iraq in 2003 without first changing the dynamics in Iran, which had warred against the West for 24 years and had caused the loss of thousands of American lives.
Instead, our overthrow of Saddam Husain removed the greatest check on the expansion of the Iranian Shia crescent throughout the Middle East.
When Barack Obama became president, he believed he could change the dynamics of the Middle East by engaging our enemies, particularly Iran. His June 2009 Cairo “outreach” speech to the Muslim world, with the outlawed Muslim brotherhood leadership prominently seated in the front row, in effect gave a green light to the Arab Spring.
Secular dictatorships that were cooperating with the United States and keeping Islamic jihadists under control were clearly the first target. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim brotherhood, notwithstanding the fact that its goal is to destroy the United States from within by our own “miserable hands.” Their goal is to replace our Constitution with seventh-century Islamic Shariah law.
In Libya, the Obama administration started arming al Qaeda-affiliated militias that were under the control of the Muslim brotherhood. The Benghazi tragedy is one of the results of this unwise policy.
Nothing will change in the Middle East until the Obama administration changes direction. First, its dangerous policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood must be reversed.
Clearly, the organization has exerted undue influence on both our international and domestic policies in combating Islamic terrorism. An example is the Department of Justice’s recently reported move to ban religious profiling in terror probes.
Second, Mr. Obama must give up his delusion that somehow by signing a tentative agreement with Iran, the regime will curtail its nuclear weapons program.
No sooner had Mr. Obama finished crowing about that agreement than Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said on Capitol Hill that Iran is now fully capable of making a nuclear weapon whenever it chooses. A military option must be given consideration.
Greenlighting Terrorism Supporters
House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday that lawmakers are reluctant to enact new immigration laws because Barack Obama increasingly enforces only the ones he likes. This practice is a threat to our republican form of government and the Constitution that assures the rule of law, not that of imperial presidents.
A case in point is Team Obama’s new decision to enforce selectively the laws prohibiting material support for terrorism. Now, individuals who have knowingly given “minor” assistance to jihadists can be admitted into our country.
Allowing entry to supporters of jihad will inevitably mean giving greater latitude to such activities in this country, too – a top objective of Muslim Brotherhood operatives influential with the Obama administration. But it is against the law, and Congress must ensure that the law is enforced.
Muslim Brotherhood Goal Is to Spread Terror
The recent rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt brings home an awkward truth about current threats and 21st century warfare against Americans. We can never prevail in any “war on terror” without first acknowledging our enemies who would engage in terrorism.
Terrorism per se is not among our various “enemies, foreign and domestic,” to quote the U.S. statutory oath of office. The Muslim Brotherhood is in addition to al-Qaida, etc.
A full 500 years before Christ, the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu warned in “The Art of War”: “One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement.”
Unless and until Americans face the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is our enemy, based on its own writings and core values, we are doomed to lose many if not most of our wars against “terrorism.”
According to a recent Washington Post Op-Ed, “The radicalization of the Brotherhood seems more a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ In the name of fighting terrorism, the [Egyptian] regime is making the problem far worse.”
The more important question for freedom-loving Egyptians and for Americans today is, “What does the ‘radicalization of the Brotherhood’ really mean?”
Fortunately, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America have explained in detail what its purpose is, and how it intends to destroy everything for which we stand.
The subversion campaign self-identified by the Muslim Brotherhood as “civilization jihad” must not be confused with, or tolerated as, a constitutionally protected form of religious practice.
Its ambitions transcend what American law recognizes as the sacrosanct realm of private conscience and belief. It seeks to supplant our Constitution with its own totalitarian framework, the core of which is Shariah supremacism.
This concept of civilization jihad derives from, among other sources, a document entered into evidence in the 2008 United States v. Holy Land Foundation terrorist finance trial in Texas titled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group,” which is reproduced in full as an appendix to, and parsed in, the 2010 “Report of Team BII” published by the Center for Security Policy under the title, “Shariah The Threat To America; An Exercise In Competitive Analysis.”
The “Explanatory Memorandum” was written in 1991 by Mohamed Akram, a senior Hamas leader in the U.S. and a member of the board of directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America (also known as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen or Ikhwan). The document makes plain that the “Islamic Movement” is a Muslim Brotherhood effort, led by the Ikhwan in America.
The Explanatory Memorandum explains that the “Movement” is a “settlement process” to establish itself inside the United States and, once established, to undertake a “grand jihad” characterized as a “civilization jihadist” mission that is likewise led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Specifically, the document describes the “settlement process” as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Even more powerful and illuminating evidence comes from the various public statements of the international Muslim Brotherhood’s senior leadership. These statements by the group’s senior leadership belie the suggestion that “extremism” is somehow a new phenomenon in the Muslim Brotherhood brought on by outside forces.
In the fall of 2010, foreshadowing if not inspiring the so-called Arab Spring, the supreme guide of the International Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie, announced that Muslims “crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life . . . the U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.”
Given the extremity of these (among other) views espoused by Muslim Brotherhood leadership, to speak of “the radicalization of the Brotherhood” suggests an ignorance of the organization’s history, and wholly mischaracterizes the dilemma of “radicalization” in Egypt and internationally.
It disregards the possibility, if not likelihood, that the Muslim Brotherhood is a principled organization committed to certain strategic objectives, regardless of what forces and circumstances “push” the organization.
In attempting to determine what the strategic objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood are, both in Egypt and in America, one might start with the organization’s founding documents in the 1920s, or its enduring official motto: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and dying in the way of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
It’s time for Americans to face facts: the Muslim Brotherhood views us as an enemy, both in Egypt and in the United States, regardless of whether or not it is “pushed toward terrorism.”