Tag Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

The wages of national security fraud

As al Qaeda raises its black flag of jihad over parts of Iraq liberated from its clutches at the cost of enormous American blood and treasure, we are getting a taste of what President Obama’s serial national security fraud is wreaking around the world.

Remember back in the 2012 campaign when he told us, repeatedly, that al Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”?  That was a deliberate fraud, meant to shore up his Commander-in-Chief credentials at a time when he (wrongly) thought they might properly be seriously challenged by Republican Mitt Romney.

Remember when the jihadists’ flag was flown over the U.S. embassy in Cairo and accompanied the murderous sacking of two American facilities in Benghazi on September 11, 2012?  These events were symptomatic of our nation’s perceived weakness – a perception that is, as Donald Rumsfeld says, “provocative.”  (The failure of the Republican leadership in the House to hold the Obama administration accountable for such outrages – or even to establish the truth about the latter – is the subject of a scorching letter from conservative leaders, families of the fallen and others delivered on Monday.)

Remember when Mr. Obama assured us that there were “moderates” among the Syrian opposition and that we should bomb their enemy, Bashar Assad, to punish him and, presumably, with a view to bringing them to power.  As a practical matter, the only people who count among the “rebels” are Islamists, whose supremacist shariah doctrine requires them inevitably to seek our destruction.

The same goes for Assad’s Shiite backers in Iran and Hezbollah.  They hate the Sunnis of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, like al Qaeda.  But they are perfectly willing to make common cause against us whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Think 9/11.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  We have been repeatedly deceived by Team Obama about the nature of the enemy we face.  And our Islamist enemies have only grown more formidable, more numerous, on the march in more places and more emboldened by what they rightly see as our submission.

What is especially worrisome is that the wages of the ineptitude – or worse – of American leaders in the face of such threats are immensely increased by the fact that scarcely any among them are even aware that we face yet another kind of jihad: the stealthy type the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.”

We know from a secret plan providentially discovered in Annandale, Virginia in 2004 that the Brotherhood is using subversion and sedition to destroy Western civilization “from within.”  And a new paper published by the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern entitled the “Islamization of Britain in 2013” documents how far advanced this destruction is in the land of our closest European ally – and what is in store for the rest of the West if we remain oblivious to this threat.

The following are among the most appalling leading indicators of the U.K.’s inexorable submission to shariah:

  • “In January, Muslim gangs were filmed loitering on streets in London and demanding that passersby conform to Islamic Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes – who call themselves Muslim London Patrol – are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting ‘this is a Muslim area.’ One video records the men shouting: ‘Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia!’”
  • “In April, a documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Shariah Law courts operating in Britain exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists….The undercover investigation proves what has long been suspected: namely, that shariah courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic shariah law that are at odds with British law. Although shariah rulings are not legally binding, those subject to the rulings often feel obliged to obey them as a matter of religious belief, or because of pressure from family and community members to do so.”
  • “[There has been] a wave of sex crimes involving predatory Muslim taxi drivers who are raping female passengers. The number of so-called taxi rapes is snowballing to such an extent that a British judge has issued a warning that no woman can expect to be safe while traveling in a cab.”
  • “In June, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (a.k.a. the Old Bailey) sentenced seven members of a Muslim ‘child grooming’ gang based in Oxford to at least 95 years in prison for raping, torturing and trafficking British girls as young as 11….According to government estimates that are believed to be ‘just the tip of the iceberg,’ at least 2,500 British children have so far been confirmed to be victims of grooming gangs, and another 20,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation. At least 27 police forces are currently investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs across England and Wales.

Think these sorts of things can’t happen in America?  A decade ago, most Brits couldn’t have imagined them happening there, either.  But don’t worry, the Obama administration says you have nothing to fear – except from those of us who are raising the alarm about its submissive policies and serial national security fraud.

John Guandolo: Raising a Jihadi Generation

John Guandolo discusses his new book, RAISING A JIHADI GENERATION. John is a former Marine Reconnaissance Officer who served as a commissioned officer and Platoon Commander in both the 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company and 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines, leading his infantry unit through combat operations in the Persian Gulf War.  He has also served the FBI as a Subject Matter Expert in the Counter Terrorism Division (CTD), SWAT Team Leader, and a Special Agent for 12 years.   From his perspective in the national security community, John recounts the pervasive political correctness that that inhibits Federal law enforcement from understanding and strategically responding to the threat of Islamist terrorism in the United States.

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Designate the Terrorist Brotherhood

What would you call an organization that has as its stated mission “destroying Western civilization from within”? How about “the enemy”?  If the group explicitly calls for the use of terrifying violence to accomplish that goal, at least it should be recognized as a terrorist organization.

Both are characteristics of the Muslim Brotherhood, a  global enterprise founded in Egypt and that, for a time, misruled that country.  The government that, with broad popular support, overthrew the Brotherhood’s regime has not only banned the organization.  It’s just been designated a terrorist group.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is one of the few in Congress who really understands the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadism here, as well as abroad.  She says the United States should treat it as the Egyptians have.  She’s absolutely right.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s winter offensive

Sixty-nine years ago this month, Nazi Germany mounted its last, horrific offensive in the dead of winter in what came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.  Perhaps taking a page from the playbook of their fellow totalitarians, the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have its own audacious winter offensive underway – only this one is being waged inside America, a country the Brothers have declared they seek “to destroy from within.”

At the moment, the object of this exercise appears to be to prevail on the U.S. government to do what it did once before: help install a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt.  The difference, of course, is that the last time was in the heyday of the so-called “Arab Spring,” a moment when the ambitions of Egyptian Islamists and those of their counterparts in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere were temporarily obscured by disinformation and wishful thinking.

In short order, however, the determination of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk to impose the supremacist and brutally repressive doctrine they call shariah became evident in Cairo and the rest of the Middle East.  Whether they gained power via violent revolution or through the ballot box, the goal was the same: compel moderate Muslims, secularists, Christians and everybody else to submit to orthodox Islamic misrule. Resistance was met with violence, imprisonment and the destruction of churches.

Fortunately, as many as thirty million Egyptians took to the streets of their cities last summer to denounce the Brotherhood and demand the removal from power of its president, Mohamed Morsi.  He was overthrown and arrested in July by the military-led opposition, his organization banned and its other leaders incarcerated.  Most sentient Americans recognized this as a very positive development.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s operatives, front organizations and allies in this country have nonetheless demanded Morsi’s restoration. They present themselves as champions of democracy, hoping no one will notice the practical effect of the Brothers’ policies when in power: a state in which elections amount to nothing more than one man, one vote, one time.

The Brotherhood’s advocates enjoy considerable access to and influence with the Obama administration.  For example, the President and his subordinates take counsel from Homeland Security Department advisors like Mohamed Magid, the president of this country’s largest Muslim Brotherhood front, the Islamic Society of North America, and Mohamed Elibiary, an Islamist community organizer based in Plano, Texas. At the urging of their ilk, Mr. Obama cut off military sales to the Egyptian government a few months ago.  In addition to needlessly alienating Cairo when it is rolling up our mutual enemies, he thus created an opportunity for Vladimir Putin to pick up the slack and, in the process, further reestablish Russia in the Middle East.

The Muslim Brotherhood in this country (the subject of a free ten-part online course at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) is evidently determined to do even more for their fellow jihadists in Egypt.  Hence, they have created new fronts to promote Egyptian “democracy” and held lobbying and fundraising events in several U.S. cities featuring top Brotherhood personalities.

As the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism first reported, one of those is Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna.  Ramadan was allowed into the United States in January 2010 at the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose longtime aide, Huma Abedin, also has extensive personal and family ties to the Brotherhood.

Even more outrageous is the presence at several of these events – including one in the House Cannon Office Building on December 5th – of Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian would seem an unlikely choice to sell Congress on so dubious a proposition as restoring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt.  After all, he not only engaged in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” in the United States. That’s the stealthy subversion Islamists employ until they are able to use violence to foist shariah worldwide.

Sami al-Arian was also convicted in 2006 of aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist group he led for many years.  PIJ has been responsible for murders of innocents in the past and applauded a bus bombing in Israel just last Sunday.  Why on earth would Judge Leonie Brinkema allow Al-Arian, who is awaiting disposition of contempt of court charges and faces possible deportation, to collaborate and agitate with his fellow Muslim Brothers, albeit with a location-monitoring bracelet?

It is obscene that anyone in Congress would host such a jihadist. Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), a Muslim legislator who sponsored the event at which Al-Arian appeared, claims not to have known that he would be there.  True or not, he and President Obama have certainly failed to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood for the enemy it is.

That failure makes all the more dangerous the Muslim Brotherhood’s present offensive.  As we mark the anniversary of the bloody and avoidable Battle of the Bulge, we would do well to reflect upon an event held last month at the Brotherhood beachhead at Georgetown University, the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.  Among those invited to promote a “return to democracy” in Egypt was a featured guest speaker named Rami Jan, who happens to be a member of the Egyptian Nazi party.

A new doctrine of disengagement

Most Americans did not comprehend in 2008 what President-to-be Obama meant when he declared that he was going to “fundamentally” transform America. The first clear indication should have come with his June 2009 Cairo “outreach” speech to the Muslim world. With the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood leadership prominently seated in the front row (and his host, Egypt’s then-president, Hosni Mubarak, not in attendance), his speech, in effect, gave the green light to the Arab Spring movement. Secular dictatorships that were cooperating with the United States and keeping Islamic jihadists under control were clearly the first targets.

This should have raised the question: Is this the new Obama doctrine? If so, it has left our friends and allies not only confused, but at times feeling betrayed. Certainly, that is the case for our longtime and closest ally in the Middle East, Israel. With the Obama administration’s ill-conceived agreement with Iran, Israel, for all practical purposes, has been cast adrift and must now make plans to ensure its own survivability.

The sense that America is disengaging, coupled with our unilateral disarmament, is contributing to instability throughout the world. With Iran on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power, the net result will be to foster the spread of nuclear-weapon states. Clearly, this initial agreement with Iran has implications far beyond the Middle East. It has brought into question the reliability of our security guarantees that our allies and friends have counted on as part of the key underpinning for their own national security. Aside from Israel, this is of particular concern to our allies in the Western Pacific with China’s bullying tactics in trying to enforce their illegal claims in both the South China Sea and East China Sea.

Beijing’s massive military buildup over the past two decades is clearly targeting the United States, particularly the U.S. Navy. Its anti-ship ballistic missile is designed to attack our aircraft carriers and other major surface combatants as part of their anti-denial, anti-access strategy. China’s strategic force modernization program, which includes more than 3,000 miles of underground reinforced tunnels for its fixed and mobile nuclear forces, also includes its strategic nuclear ballistic-missile and conventional submarine forces operating from underground submarine pens off Hainan Island. With typical arrogance, some Chinese have boasted that their submarines are on alert and prepared to kill between 5 million and 12 million Americans in Western U.S. cities.

Not surprising, with the perception that the United States is disengaging with its ill-advised one-war strategy, our pivot to Asia has not impressed the Chinese. Beijing senses the opportunity is near to achieve its core objectives of hegemony in the Western Pacific. As part of what some analyst have termed the “Finlandization” of the Western Pacific, China’s latest move was to declare an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea requiring all military and civilian aircraft to report flight information before entering. Japan has ordered its domestic and military aircraft to ignore the requirement.

Regretfully, Japan was undercut by the Obama administration, which has told U.S. commercial carriers to comply, even though we have flown military aircraft through the zone without notifying China. The identification zone just happens to cover the disputed Senkaku Islands, which Japan has administered since 1951 as part of our World War II peace treaty and China is now claiming. Our response should be to demand that China withdraw the zone. Further, equivocation on our part will only lead to additional Chinese air-defense identification zones.

Likewise, Russia’s announced $750 billion modernization military program cannot be ignored. It will include new strategic ballistic- and cruise-missile submarines, and new fifth-generation stealth fighters as well as modernization of its strategic and theater nuclear forces. Vladimir Putin’s attempt to re-establish part of the old Soviet empire, primarily through economic blackmail, should be of serious concern. Ukraine is the key prize that Mr. Putin has forced into joining Russia’s Customs Union instead of the European Union. Even with massive street protests in Kiev, the Obama administration ignores what clearly would be a victory for the West, just as he did in ignoring the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran.

The actions the Obama administration are now pursuing are clearly jeopardizing our national security. The continued pursuit of the “zero option” along with the failure to modernize our strategic nuclear infrastructure is but one example. The crushing debt now at more than $17.2 trillion and growing at the rate of more than $1 trillion per year will fundamentally change America. It certainly will call into question our creditworthiness.

The unilateral disarmament brought about by forcing our military forces to absorb 50 percent of the sequestration cuts made no sense. Our open-border policy is another serious national-security issue. Al Qaeda jihadists are free to infiltrate our borders at will. It should be remembered that, ideologically, there is no difference between al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian theocracy. They all have the same objective; namely, to destroy America and Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood creed is instructive as it clearly states the objective is to destroy America from within. The question is, with his left-wing background, has Mr. Obama and his administration embraced the Muslim brand of fundamental change for America? If so, then this represents the greatest threat to our nation’s security.

Saudi state TV flaks for CAIR’s “Islamophobia” report

The only TV channel to cover CAIR’s new Islamophobia report as a featured story was KSA-2, the official English-language network of the regime of Saudi Arabia.

Despite substantial promotion on CAIR’s part the report received little media coverage, but they posted KSA-2’s flattering 4-minute segment on their YouTube channel.  CAIR fails to identify which news outlet produced the segment in the video description, and the reporter’s benign demeanor and American accent suggest some nondescript local news affiliate.  But just next to the call sign “KSA-2” on the reporter’s microphone, one can discern crossed sabers reminiscent of the Saudi flag.  “KSA” stands for “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” and the channel is owned and operated by the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information.

At the very end the reporter identifies himself as Burton Bollag of KSA-2 Washington.  CAIR has been the subject of at least 3 softball segments with Bollag since April, when CAIR used the opportunity to do damage control after Chechen-born jihadists bombed the Boston Marathon.

The release of CAIR’s “Legislating Fear” Islamophobia report was largely overshadowed by a piece of investigative journalism authored by Charles Johnson of the Daily Caller, exposing CAIR’s receipt of millions of dollars from foreign donors using a series of shell organizations.  Relevant to the KSA-TV coverage, Johnson’s report noted a donation of $199,980 from “Kingdom Holding Company, Saudi Arabia.”  The CAIR Observatory website documents another $1.2 million in donations from Saudi nationals including Princes Alwaleed bin Talal and Abdulla bin Mosa’ad.  CAIR Observatory uses open-source data to propose that CAIR’s receipt of funding and direction from, and execution of influence operations on behalf of foreign principles is in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).  Those principles include Saudi nationals, organizations and the government itself.

In the immediate wake of the report’s release, CAIR posted only three clips of media coverage to its YouTube channel, all of them local media items less than one minute in length.  In addition, the usual Islamist and far-left fringe outlets echoed the message, but more influential left-of-center cable news and websites declined to partake.

Despite their pretensions to major “civil liberties organization” status, CAIR has a wilting domestic membership and fundraising capability, which necessitates direction and funding from a variety of foreign sources.

Pro-Brotherhood DHS advisor creates lawfare blind spot

Under revised Department of Homeland Security guidelines, crafted with the input of senior adviser Mohamed Elibiary, counter-terrorism personnel will be left uneducated about a favorite non-violent tactic of the Islamists: lawfare.

Mohamed Elibiary is the subject of a new 37-page report by the Center for Security Policy and Institute on Religion and Democracy. Consisting mostly of an interview I conducted with Elibiary, this senior Department of Homeland Security adviser’s pro-Islamist sentiment is laid out for all to see. The Clarion Project has a list of 15 unsettling facts from the report, which include: personal connections to and praise of the Muslim Brotherhood; associations with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists, a “hardline Islamist group” that calls for the establishment of sharia law in America, marital rape, and jihad against Israel; admission to actively helping U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups avoid prosecution; accusations that the West “routinely insults Muslim dignity.” Elibiary has also voiced support for Shukri Abu Baker, CEO of the now defunct Holy Land Foundation, who was convicted in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history.

As a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee, Elibiary is in a position to impact policy with his beliefs. He was promoted last month to Senior Fellow. He was a member of the DHS Working Group on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), the subject of Elibiary’s focus.

Elibiary says he was instrumental in crafting the DHS policy on CVE.

“The area that has earned me the most amount of anti-Islamist media criticism has been my role assisting DHS and the broader administration craft a framework and later a strategy for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). I helped write parts of the initial [CVE] document President Barack Hussein Obama was briefed on in the Oval Office,” Elibiary said in our interview.

In 2011, the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties released a document titled, “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts.” Produced by the DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, it contains a list of specific recommendations for federal, state and local government officials “organizing CVE, cultural awareness, counter-radicalization or counter-terrorism training.” In other words, the “Do’s and Don’ts” targets anyone involved in learning about militant Islam.

The guidelines aim to prevent instruction about non-violent Islamists and their tactics, right in line with the policies advocated by Elibiary in our interview.

One of the suggested regulations is to prohibit training about “lawfare,” the abuse of Western laws and judicial systems to achieve strategic military or political ends. Lawfare is particularly manifested in the United States in the form of frivolous lawsuits filed to intimidate members of the counter-terrorism community with the threat of bankruptcy and vilification for exercising their free speech rights to educate Americans on issues of national security and public concern, such as the imminent threat of Islamist terrorism.

The DHS guidelines instruct agencies to stay away from “training premised on theories with little or no evidence to support them. One theory the DHS wants discarded posits that “Muslim Americans are using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.”

Brooke Goldstein, director of The Lawfare Project, says, “There is a plethora of evidence indicating lawfare as the newest, most visible and increasingly emergent form of asymmetric warfare, which must be countered both tactically and strategically. It is undeniable that Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations have filed lawsuits aimed at silencing and punishing anyone who expose their connections to designated terrorist organizations or say things that are ‘offensive’ to Islam. DHS guidelines that not only delegitimize this very real threat but also deny its existence leave American counterterrorism personnel open to attack by, amongst other things, failing to brief them on legitimate ways to protect themselves and undermining those in the counterterrorism and legal communities who are working to protect this country.”

Best-selling author and terrorism expert Richard Miniter told me in 2010 that self-censorship is becoming commonplace because of the “threat that is hung over every writer.”

The Lawfare Project has published a scholarly paper about the threat that includes multiple examples of lawfare suits filed by American Islamists against U.S. citizens. For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, filed a defamation lawsuit against former Congressman Cass Ballinger for linking CAIR to Hezbollah in response to a reporter’s question. It was dismissed because the statement was “within the scope of his employment.”

CAIR also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the Clarion Fund, one of its opponents. CAIR tried to argue that the organization was lobbying for Senator McCain in the presidential election by raising awareness about the Islamist threat. That complaint, too, was dismissed.

In 2007, CAIR associates sued counter-terrorism expert Joe Kaufman for writing about an entirely different organization. Not a single plaintiff was even mentioned in his article, and the case was ultimately decided in Kaufman’s favor due to plaintiffs’ lack of standing and failure to meet the requisite elements of their defamation claims.

In another lawfare case, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of Boston sued 17 media figures for reporting on its Saudi funding. The lawsuit was dropped as soon as the defendants gained access to the mosque’s financial records through the process of discovery.

Islamists outside of the U.S. also use lawfare to try to silence American opponents.

In August 2010, President Obama signed into law the SPEECH Act (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act), which was unanimously passed by Congress. The legislation’s purpose is to prevent Americans from having their free speech oppressed via foreign lawsuits.

The late Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz’s use of lawfare sparked the legislation. He sued 45 publishers or journalists for writing about his financing of Islamist terrorists and extremists. Every single one settled, except for Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of the meticulously researched book, Funding Evil.

Though Dr. Ehrenfeld is an American living in the U.S., she was victimized because of the United Kingdom’s libel laws. The so-called Human Rights Committee of the U.N., a body that is far from a pro-American bastion, acknowledged in 2008:

“…application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as ‘libel tourism.’”

According to the American Public Policy Alliance, state legislation against “libel tourism” has passed in New York, California, Illinois, Florida, Utah, Louisiana and Tennessee.

The legal persecution of these individuals represents but a mere fraction of lawfare cases filed in the United States.

The DHS training guidelines not only discourage instruction about Islamist use of lawfare — they discourage instruction about non-violent Islamists, including the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, entirely.

Other “unsubstantiated” theories, according to the DHS document, are that “[m]any mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties” and “[m]ainstream Muslim organizations are fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America.” These claims are based on internal U.S. Muslim Brotherhood documents submitted into court as evidence, the conclusions of federal prosecutors, a 2009 Texas District Court ruling, and the documented statements of American Islamists, all of which indeed substantiate the aforementioned theories.

Among the supposedly innocent “mainstream Muslim organizations” those sources identify as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA), the Muslim Businessmen Association (MBA), the National American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Additionally, there has been an active publicity effort to whitewash the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the movement’s reputation for engaging in political violence and its spawning of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Brotherhood’s credo proclaims, “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.”

Shockingly, ISNA president, Imam Mohamed Magid, was on the same CVE working group committee as Elibiary. Therefore, the DHS literally had a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity (ISNA) and a Brotherhood apologist (Elibiary) crafting its policy to protect the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. How is this acceptable government practice?

And that’s just the beginning of it. The CVE working group had several other allies of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

Thanks to the influence of Brotherhood acolytes in the administration like Elibiary, countless counter-terrorism professionals will be left ignorant of lawfare and the Islamists that wage it.

. He was promoted last month to Senior Fellow. He was a member of the DHS Working Group on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), the subject of Elibiary’s focus.

Elibiary says he was instrumental in crafting the DHS policy on CVE.

“The area that has earned me the most amount of anti-Islamist media criticism has been my role assisting DHS and the broader administration craft a framework and later a strategy for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). I helped write parts of the initial [CVE] document President Barack Hussein Obama was briefed on in the Oval Office,” Elibiary said in our interview.

In 2011, the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties released a document titled, “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts.” Produced by the DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, it contains a list of specific recommendations for federal, state and local government officials “organizing CVE, cultural awareness, counter-radicalization or counter-terrorism training.” In other words, the “Do’s and Don’ts” targets anyone involved in learning about militant Islam.

The guidelines aim to prevent instruction about non-violent Islamists and their tactics, right in line with the policies advocated by Elibiary in our interview.

One of the suggested regulations is to prohibit training about “lawfare,” the abuse of Western laws and judicial systems to achieve strategic military or political ends. Lawfare is particularly manifested in the United States in the form of frivolous lawsuits filed to intimidate members of the counter-terrorism community with the threat of bankruptcy and vilification for exercising their free speech rights to educate Americans on issues of national security and public concern, such as the imminent threat of Islamist terrorism.

The DHS guidelines instruct agencies to stay away from “training premised on theories with little or no evidence to support them. One theory the DHS wants discarded posits that “Muslim Americans are using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.”

Brooke Goldstein, director of The Lawfare Project, says, “There is a plethora of evidence indicating lawfare as the newest, most visible and increasingly emergent form of asymmetric warfare, which must be countered both tactically and strategically. It is undeniable that Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations have filed lawsuits aimed at silencing and punishing anyone who expose their connections to designated terrorist organizations or say things that are ‘offensive’ to Islam. DHS guidelines that not only delegitimize this very real threat but also deny its existence leave American counterterrorism personnel open to attack by, amongst other things, failing to brief them on legitimate ways to protect themselves and undermining those in the counterterrorism and legal communities who are working to protect this country.”

Best-selling author and terrorism expert Richard Miniter told me in 2010 that self-censorship is becoming commonplace because of the “threat that is hung over every writer.”

The Lawfare Project has published a scholarly paper about the threat that includes multiple examples of lawfare suits filed by American Islamists against U.S. citizens. For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, filed a defamation lawsuit against former Congressman Cass Ballinger for linking CAIR to Hezbollah in response to a reporter’s question. It was dismissed because the statement was “within the scope of his employment.”

CAIR also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the Clarion Fund, one of its opponents. CAIR tried to argue that the organization was lobbying for Senator McCain in the presidential election by raising awareness about the Islamist threat. That complaint, too, was dismissed.

In 2007, CAIR associates sued counter-terrorism expert Joe Kaufman for writing about an entirely different organization. Not a single plaintiff was even mentioned in his article, and the case was ultimately decided in Kaufman’s favor due to plaintiffs’ lack of standing and failure to meet the requisite elements of their defamation claims.

In another lawfare case, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of Boston sued 17 media figures for reporting on its Saudi funding. The lawsuit was dropped as soon as the defendants gained access to the mosque’s financial records through the process of discovery.

Islamists outside of the U.S. also use lawfare to try to silence American opponents.

In August 2010, President Obama signed into law the SPEECH Act (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act), which was unanimously passed by Congress. The legislation’s purpose is to prevent Americans from having their free speech oppressed via foreign lawsuits.

The late Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz’s use of lawfare sparked the legislation. He sued 45 publishers or journalists for writing about his financing of Islamist terrorists and extremists. Every single one settled, except for Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of the meticulously researched book, Funding Evil.

Though Dr. Ehrenfeld is an American living in the U.S., she was victimized because of the United Kingdom’s libel laws. The so-called Human Rights Committee of the U.N., a body that is far from a pro-American bastion, acknowledged in 2008:

“…application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as ‘libel tourism.’”

According to the American Public Policy Alliance, state legislation against “libel tourism” has passed in New York, California, Illinois, Florida, Utah, Louisiana and Tennessee.

The legal persecution of these individuals represents but a mere fraction of lawfare cases filed in the United States.

The DHS training guidelines not only discourage instruction about Islamist use of lawfare — they discourage instruction about non-violent Islamists, including the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, entirely.

Other “unsubstantiated” theories, according to the DHS document, are that “[m]any mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties” and “[m]ainstream Muslim organizations are fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America.” These claims are based on internal U.S. Muslim Brotherhood documents submitted into court as evidence, the conclusions of federal prosecutors, a 2009 Texas District Court ruling, and the documented statements of American Islamists, all of which indeed substantiate the aforementioned theories.

Among the supposedly innocent “mainstream Muslim organizations” those sources identify as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA), the Muslim Businessmen Association (MBA), the National American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Additionally, there has been an active publicity effort to whitewash the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the movement’s reputation for engaging in political violence and its spawning of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Brotherhood’s credo proclaims, “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.”

Shockingly, ISNA president, Imam Mohamed Magid, was on the same CVE working group committee as Elibiary. Therefore, the DHS literally had a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity (ISNA) and a Brotherhood apologist (Elibiary) crafting its policy to protect the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. How is this acceptable government practice?

And that’s just the beginning of it. The CVE working group had several other allies of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

Thanks to the influence of Brotherhood acolytes in the administration like Elibiary, countless counter-terrorism professionals will be left ignorant of lawfare and the Islamists that wage it.

Glenn Beck Presents ‘Just The Beginning’ Of Why You Need To Pay Attention To Grover Norquist

Glenn Beck on Monday began what he said is “just the beginning” of his work to reveal the background and motivations of Grover Norquist, the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Beck began by playing recent clips of Norquist calling out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his efforts to derail Obamacare, noting that while he used to joke about the left’s portrayal of Norquist as a “big power player,” he’s since revised his dismissive opinion in light of the warnings that you “don’t ever take this guy on unless you’re prepared.”

Beck’s show Monday primarily concentrated on Norquist’s alleged connections to Islamists. He invited Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, and Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, to weigh in.

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist attends a press conference discussing the taxation of marijuana businesses outside the U.S. Capitol September 12, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Getty Images)

“[Norquist] is the guy responsible for a lot of the Muslim Brotherhood stuff that goes on in the White House, isn’t he?” Beck asked the two.

“Glenn, I think most people who know Grover only as a prominent anti-tax guy in the conservative movement would find that statement unbelievable, and to be honest with you I would’ve, but for the fact that I saw it first-hand as a result of sharing office space for what I think of seven biblically long years with Grover Norquist,” Gaffney remarked.  “I saw terrorists in his office space. I had colleagues come to me and say, ‘You know there’s a Muslim Brotherhood front operating out of his office suite?’”

“It was called the Islamic Free Market Foundation, or Institute,” Gaffney continued, saying it is more commonly known as simply the Islamic Institute. “This was an operation that was created by a man who’s now serving time in federal prison for terrorism by the name Abdurahman Alamoudi.”

Gaffney added that at MuslimBrotherhoodInAmerica.com, where viewers can find a ten-part course on the Muslim Brotherhood by the Center for Security Policy, there is a clip of “Norquist at a meeting in Dearborn, Michigan in October 2011 put together between George Soros’ progressives or leftists, radicals, and the Islamists.”

“[Norquist] talks very candidly about what amounts to an influence operation that he’s been running against a prominent conservative Republican Senate leader, and you just can’t come away from this with any conclusion other than he knows exactly what he’s doing, and what he’s doing in this case is advancing the agenda of not just Muslims, but Islamists, and I’m afraid that’s the kind of thing that he’s got to be held accountable for,” Gaffney said.

Glenn Beck speaks with Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, and Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, about Grover Norquist. (Photo: TheBlaze TV)

When asked why he would have such connections, Greenfield weighed in: “Well the Muslim Brotherhood, like the communists and the Nazis before them, are experts at setting up front groups with innocuous names and finding people who would be useful to them. Norquist was useful to them, and in some ways, they were useful to him.”

Greenfield later added: “If you were a freedom guy, then why would he be backing an ideology associated with a complete totalitarian regime? Why would he be backing the…misfortunes of the conservative movement? And why would he be doing everything possible to undermine the possibility that the Republican Party can back a freedom-based agenda?”

Beck concluded by saying this is a “complex issue,” but that it is time that somebody takes on the “establishment Republicans” and tell you “exactly who’s who.”

“If you’re for the Constitution, I don’t care if you’re a liberal or a Democrat or a Republican and a conservative, I don’t really care, if you’re for the Constitution of the United States of America,” Beck said. “That’s our dividing line, and there are too many in the Republican Party, so let’s clean out our own house first.”

Disturbing Facts About a Senior Homeland Security Adviser

The Clarion Project, the Center for Security Policy and the Institute on Religion and Democracy have published a shocking interview with Mohamed Elibiary, a senior Department of Homeland Security adviser. The Daily Caller reported on it yesterday.

Elibiary is a member of the Secretary’s Homeland Security Advisory Committee and founder of Lone Star Intelligence LLC. He served on the DHS Countering Violent Extremism Working Group and the DHS Faith-based Security and Communications Advisory Committee.

On September 12, he announced that he had been reappointed to the Committee and promoted to Senior Fellow. He was also a delegate for Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

The complete 37-page annotated interview is available here. The report is full of interesting material, but here are 15 important points to focus on. If you feel that these facts are concerning, e-mail, mail and/or fax a copy of this article to the House Homeland Security Committee, the Senate Homeland Security Committee as well as your congressman whose job is to represent you.

1. Elibiary says he knows the Muslim Brotherhood in a “personal manner.”

In 2007, Elibiary wrote, “[O]ur government is playing a post-9/11 script it played in the 1960s against the Mafia, but this time against a social network it calls the ‘International Muslim Brotherhood.’ People like me know of the brotherhood group in a much more personal manner than the Average White Guy, who has no more insight than what’s available in the media.”

2. Elibiary praises the Muslim Brotherhood and says the U.S. should support it.

In his interview with me, Elibiary said, “MB in Egypt is a pragmatic, non-violent and generally pluralistic socio-political movement by Egyptian cultural standards. It is not accurate to paint MB-Egypt as dogmatic, violent or autocratic, much less more sensationalized terms like dictatorial, totalitarian or jihadist.”

He continued: “I believe that MB and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has by and large acted responsibly, if not always effectively, during the democratic transition period that Egypt is in the very early stages of.”

His Twitter photo has a pro-Muslim Brotherhood “R4BIA” logo that protests a violent crackdown on a Brotherhood protest in Egypt after the military toppled President Morsi by popular demand. He says it is a pro-freedom symbol that is “bigger than” the Brotherhood.

Elibiary says the U.S. should partner with the Muslim Brotherhood. In our interview, he said, “Our government needs to deepen our strategic engagement with MB.”

3. Elibiary compares the Muslim Brotherhood to Christian evangelicals.

In 2007, his organization made a presentation at a conference of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. It stated: “The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Jordan, Tunis, etc. is a social movement for religious revival that seeks to Islamicize the society through cultural changing Dawah and that includes the political system, sound familiar? Yup you’re right they are the Muslim world’s version of the Evangelical Christian Coalition/Moral Majority movement.”

He told the Daily Caller “Islamism is a multi-century, transnational, intellectually grounded movement with influential philosophical works from multiple continents … It has many subcultures and currents of thought. Some are no different than conservatives who ground their values in a Judeo-Christian worldview and it has its violent extremist strains.”

4. Elibiary has associated with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America and pro-Khomeini groups.

As mentioned above, Elibiary spoke at a joint conference of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) and the North American Imams Federation.

AMJA is a hardline Islamist group whose fatwas call for the gradual establishment of sharia law in America using deception; marital rape; jihad against Israel and ban Muslims from joining the FBI or serving the US military in a combat capacity.

AMJA opposes offensive jihad in the West because “the Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at this time.”

In our interview, Elibiary says he “spent a week with dozens of very senior Salafi scholars” from the group discussing Islamic jurisprudence.

He also speaks of when he brought a senior Salafi cleric “to give the first Friday Muslim congregational prayer literally inside the Texas State Capitol.” It is unclear if this Salafi cleric was from AMJA.

In 2004, Elibiary spoke at a pro-Khomeini conference. He said he did not know of the event’s extremist nature.

5. Elibiary says the U.S. should not oppose sharia law in Muslim countries.

In the same presentation, Elibiary’s group said, “We should remember that them [Islamists] ruling their countries with sharia law doesn’t mean them coming to our country and using our planes to destroy our buildings.”

“We must always resist the temptation to force one group such as Islamists to reform by adopting ‘liberalism’ for example. That would be denying them their self-determination to structure their societies according to their public will,” it also said.

6. Elibiary is a long-time friend of the former head of the Holy Land Foundation, a convicted Brotherhood/Hamas fundraiser.

In 2007, Elibiary wrote that he was 16 years old when he met Shukri Abu Baker and his life was changed when Abu Baker told him about the alleged persecution of Palestinians by Israel. Elibiary took the first $50 he ever deposited into a bank account and donated it to the Holy Land Foundation and donated monthly until it was shut down in 2001.

Abu Baker was the CEO of the Holy Land Foundation, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity that was shut down for financing Hamas. He was convicted in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history. The FBI had wiretapped Abu Baker during a secret Brotherhood/Hamas meeting urging participants to engage in deception to further their Islamist goals.

The two were so close that they met for coffee the day before the verdict.

7. Elibiary depicts the Holy Land Foundation and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network as a victim of political persecution by the U.S. government.

In 2010, Elibiary blasted the guilty verdict in the Holy Land Foundation trial in an editorial. He wrote, “Using the law to force compliance with unjust foreign policies by our government will simply trigger civil disobedience.”

“This global war on terror needs a new strategy, because we’re destroying ourselves more than al-Qaeda ever could,” he wrote in another editorial in reaction to the prosecution.

In our interview, Elibiary said he was “warning against the strategy being deployed against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and a broader Muslim Brotherhood network, in the eyes of the government, as if they were an organized criminal syndicate akin to the mafia. I viewed this strategy in 2007 as counterproductive to our national interest and instead called for an honest dialogue between the US and Islamists to find common ground and turn the page on the past.”

8.  Elibiary says he helped “safeguard” U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups from prosecution.

In our interview, Elibiary made three statements about his role in protecting American Islamists:

·        “I helped my community pick up the pieces and safeguard its nonprofit organizations, in order to protect its liberties, after the HLF’s closure and eventual conviction.”

·        “But the corollary to my position was that if the Muslim community leadership and the government can mutually reconcile and turn a new page, then the targeted national Muslim community organizations should be allowed to proceed anew.”

·        “As has been reported in multiple conservative media outlets over the past few years, the long-desired HLF 2.0 trial for the unindicted co-conspirators is no longer going to happen.”

The statements substantiate reports by counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole in 2011 that the Justice Department cancelled planned prosecutions of senior U.S. Muslim Brotherhood figures, including a founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

9. Elibiary likely helped craft Islamist-friendly counter-terrorism training guidelines.

In our interview, Elibiary said, “The area that has earned me the most amount of anti-Islamist media criticism has been my role assisting DHS and the broader administration craft a framework and later a strategy for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE).”

A Clarion Project analysis of the DHS Countering Violent Extremism training guidelines concluded that they prevent instruction about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and non-violent Islamist tactics. Elibiary served on the DHS Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.

10. Elibiary is accused of trying to leak confidential documents for political purposes.

Patrick Poole reported in 2011 that Elibiary tried to leak confidential documents to a media outlet in an attempt to damage the presidential campaign of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Elibiary reportedly had his access to the database containing the files revoked.

Elibiary says he was exonerated by the Secretary of the DHS. Poole says, “At no time was I or my source ever contacted by anyone at DHS. How could they have done an investigation with only one side being heard?”

11.  Elibiary is hostile to anti-Islamist Muslims.

In our interview Elibiary said, “There are other Muslim advocates of reform who have instead publicly chosen to politically demonize, in conservative media outlets, mainstream Muslim community organizations as ‘Islamists.’ Labeling these or other Muslim community organizations as either ‘Muslim Brotherhood-associated’ or ‘Muslim Brotherhood-legacy’ in my opinion is counterproductive.”

Elibiary, though, used the term “Islamist” throughout the interview.

This same hostility was present in the DHS Countering Violent Extremism training guidelines. The new guidelines advise agencies that “trainers who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’ may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted unbiased information.”

12. Elibiary said the West “routinely insults Muslim dignity.”

In 2004, Elibiary wrote, “Just because I listen to Osama bin Laden’s tapes and agree that the West routinely insults Muslim dignity, that doesn’t make me al-Qaeda. By listening I gain a better understanding of a philosophy I wish to counter.”

13. Elibiary says the U.S. government should not “touch” houses of worship.

On October 7, Elibiary tweeted, “US successfully prosecutes individuals 4 allkinds of criminal activity. That shd always b done w/o gov touching Churches, Mosques, etc.”

14. Elibiary repeats Brotherhood attacks on Coptic Christians.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood regularly blasts its Coptic Christian opponents as being anti-Muslim. So does Elibiary.

On September 14, he tweeted, “Good read by @mwhanna1 on need to reform #Coptic activism in #US including stop promoting #Islamophobia.”

The next day, he tweeted, “For >decade since 9/11 attack extremist American #Coptic activists have nurtured anti #Islam & anti #Muslim sentiments among AM RT wing,”

15. Elibiary praises Sayyid Qutb, a Brotherhood cleric whose preaching inspired Bin Laden and Islamists around the world.

In 2006, Elibiary wrote, “I’d recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in our hearts.”

An Anniversary to Remember – and Learn From

Jerusalem, Israel: Forty years ago this week, Arab armies launched the Yom Kippur War at a moment when practically every Israeli was preoccupied with religious obligations.  The Arab coalition very nearly succeeded in their longstanding goal of driving the Jews into the sea.

Such a peril arose principally because the Israelis failed to understand the enemies they were confronting at that moment – and their perception that the Jewish State was, if not weak, at least unready for a concerted, coordinated attack.  As has happened so often in the past, such a perception need not be right to precipitate war.  It just has to take hold in the minds of freedom’s foes.

Four decades later, we have much to learn from this experience.  Now, as then, the forces of the Free World are ignoring the nature and ambitions of the enemy arrayed against it.  And we are engaged in behavior that encourages the latter to behave aggressively towards us.

Seen from the vantage point of the Middle East, for example, there appears to be a widespread consensus:  What I think of as the Obama Doctrine – diminishing our country, emboldening our adversaries and undermining our friends – is sowing the seeds for escalating instability.  The result may once again be war.  Perhaps it will be a regional one.  Perhaps, as the Yom Kippur War threatened to do, it will spread beyond the Middle East.

While the recent raids by U.S. special operations units in Somalia and Libya are commendable – and indeed long overdue, like drone strikes targeting al Qaeda-linked individuals, these actions cannot begin to make up for the Obama administration’s failure to recognize that, far from being on the “path to defeat,” Osama bin Laden’s organization is continuing to metastasize.

This bit of national security fraud, which was perpetrated for nakedly political purposes in the course of the last presidential election, is greatly compounded by another: the proposition that al Qaeda and its franchises are the only jihadist danger we confront.  In fact, they are but subsets of a much larger threat posed by those who fully share Osama bin Laden’s supremacist agenda of imposing shariah worldwide.

Specifically, Team Obama persists in its efforts to embrace, legitimate, empower, fund and arm the wellspring of that Islamist threat: the Muslim Brotherhood. Even after the Egyptian military forced Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi from power, rounded up the group’s leadership and, most recently, banned it outright, President Obama remains on the wrong side of history.

In Egypt, that may drive the new government into the arms of Russians. In Syria, Libya and Tunisia, it has us helping jihadists. And it contributes to a policy of weakening and otherwise isolating the one state in the region that stands as an actual counterweight to these forces: Israel.

The question occurs:  Why?

Clearly, President Obama is personally sympathetic to what he perceives as a “non-violent” Islamic group with whom we can do business, and he has surrounded himself with subordinates who share that view.  This ignores the fact that the federal government has proven in court that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in our own country is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…by [our] hands.”

The Obama administration’s own clueless proclivities towards such enemies are being powerfully reinforced by Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals now advising the President and U.S. national security agencies.  A free on-line course produced by the Center for Security Policy (www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) details the roles played by six such individuals.

One of them is Mohamed Elibiary, a Texas-based Islamist activist with a long-record of associations with and advocacy for the Muslim Brotherhood.  He was recently reappointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council and given the title of Senior Fellow there.

Yet, as Charles Johnson reported at the Daily Caller on 7 October, Elibiary makes no bones about his support for convicted terrorists and their funders.  Worse yet, an annotated series of interviews with Elibiary conducted by the Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro published the same day by the Center for Security Policy establishes that Elibiary has used his advisory role to discourage the prosecution of his friends on material support for terrorism grounds. He has also played an instrumental role in the purging of official training materials of information about shariah and civilization jihad that our homeland defenders, law enforcement, intelligence community and military need to know to protect us.

A similar sort of wishful thinking and failure to calibrate the enemy nearly destroyed the Jewish State in October 1973.  The potential cost of our persisting in such a mistake today is as predictably high as it is avoidable.  But in order to avoid the bitter fruits of the Obama Doctrine, we have to understand our Islamist foes and, for starters, take a page from the new Egyptian government, by removing them and those who do their bidding from positions of influence and power in that of the United States of America.