1) What is Shariah?
Adherents to shariah are fundamentally and unalterably opposed to the survival of the Constitution of the United States. Shariah is based on the Quran, which Muslims believe is the “uncreated” word of Allah as dictated to the prophet Mohammed; hadiths, the sayings of Mohammed; and agreed interpretations by Islamic scholars. Shariah commands that Muslims carry out jihad indefinitely until the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, where shariah is not enforced, is brought under the domination of the Dar al Islam, or House of Islam (literally the House of Submission), where shariah is enforced.
Shariah commands both Islamic terrorism and pre-violent, “civilizational jihad” or “stealth jihad,” depending on necessity and circumstances. Those who work to insinuate shariah into the United States are conspiring to subvert and replace the Constitution, because under shariah, freedom of religion and other civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution – and the very concept of man-made law – are incompatible with Islam.Any system of man-made law is considered illicit under shariah, where Allah and only Allah has provided the law.
This is not a radical concept in Islam, but a fundamental tenet of the faith. Shariah is held by mainstream Islamic authorities – not simply fringe extremist elements who have supposedly “hijacked” the religion – to be the perfect expression of divine will and justice. All Muslims, regardless of where they live, must submit to be governed by shariah, a cradle-to-grave “complete way of life” that mandates social, cultural, military, religious and political norms.
Millions of Muslims around the world do not practice their faith in a manner consistent with shariah, but those who do submit to shariah have grounds for arguing that their version of Islam is the authoritative one. By offering little, if any, meaningful opposition to the shariah agenda and by meekly submitting to it, a large number of Muslim communities and nations generally exhibit an unwillingness to face the consequences of standing up to shariah’s enforcers within Islam.
Shariah is a totalitarian ideology that controls all aspects of life. All are forced to submit to Islamic law as defined by theologians. Shariah institutionalizes discrimination against women, deprives people of freedom of expression and association, criminalizes sexual freedom, and incites hatred and violence against people of certain social groups. As manifested in countries officially ruled by Islamic law, shariah condones or commands abhorrent behavior, including underage and forced marriage, “honor killing” (usually of women and girls) to preserve family “honor,” female genital mutilation, polygamy and domestic abuse, and even marital rape.
Islam requires all Muslims to wage jihad. Some interpret jihad as a personal struggle of self-discipline and self-sacrifice to improve oneself to glorify God. Others interpret it as holy war in pursuit of a global Islamic state known as a caliphate, ruled in accordance with shariah.
Islamic jurisprudence, known as fiqh in Arabic, forms the legal context for shariah and its rulings. Shariah scholars typically cite as authority for jihad any of the 164 verses of the Quran that specifically refer to jihad against non-Muslims in terms that include military expeditions, fighting enemies, or distributing the spoils of war. Among the most categorical of such Quranic entries and the most often cited as authoritative by the shariah scholars is the “Verse of the Sword.” That verse says, “So when the sacred months have passed, then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war; but if they repent and establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, then leave their way free to them; for surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” (Quran 9:5)
Under the terms set down in the Quran, pagans or polytheists must convert or die. As for Jews and Christians, known in the Quran as the “People of the Book,” the definitive prescription for their treatment is as follows: Fight them “until they pay the Jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (Quran 9:29) Thus, Jews and Christians need not convert or be killed. They have a third option: Submit to Islam as second-class citizens or “dhimmis.”
We inadvertently submit as dhimmis when we censor ourselves or one another to avoid “offending” Islam or Muslims. When we change our customs, rules and laws to conform with demands of Muslims who immigrate to our country. When we apologize unnecessarily for our country and our culture. We become dhimmis when we go along with demands by, say, a cleric who insists on offending the vast majority of our countrymen by building a mosque next to Ground Zero.
When we lose the ability to define our wartime enemy since 9/11, we become dhimmis. Our leaders do. Each of us does.
Little by little, we erode away our own rights, laws, customs and civilization by submitting as dhimmis. We eat away at our own national ideals, our own personal dignity, and the rights of those around us when we practice shariah-ordained dhimmitude.
Think this can’t happen in America? Look at Europe, where a number of nations have become dhimmified to the point where shariah law is now practiced in enclaves or more broadly, side by side with the national law awaiting the day when – through demographics, political action, financial subversion or other means, the West’s total submission is achieved.
In the next installment from Shariah: The Threat to America, we’ll take a look at the connection between shariah and jihad – and how together they threaten each and every one of us.
2) How does Shariah define Jihad?
Shariah – the law derived from Islam’s foundational documents – defines the Islamic doctrine of the universal obligation to jihad against non-believers.
The question is, What is meant by “jihad”? Is it merely a personal struggle to sacrifice for God and be the best possible Muslim? Or does jihad mean holy war, the pursuit of a global Islamic state known as a caliphate, that rules in accordance with shariah?
The Center for Security Policy’s “Team B” studied the question in its recent report, Shariah – Threat to America. On September 17, BigPeace ran Team B’s answer to the question, “What is Shariah?“ Today we summarize the Team B report’s findings on shariah and jihad.
The answer to the question, “What is Jihad?” is readily accessible to those willing to seek it – not from critics of Islam, but from the Quran and other foundational Islamic sources.
Shariah scholars typically cite as authority for jihad from the Quran any of the 164 verses that specifically refer to jihad against non-Muslims in terms that include military expeditions, fighting enemies, or distributing the spoils of war. By describing the warfare of jihad as something sanctioned by Allah himself, Islamic authorities set it apart from the common tribal warfare of the time and elevated it to a superior status of something sacred.
In addition to the Quran, which Muslims believe is the text of words delivered directly from Allah to Mohammed, the hadiths (accounts of the actions and sayings of Mohammed) are a second primary source governing jihad in Islamic doctrine. A third principal source is made up of recognized compilations of classical Muslim writings that systematize and codify Islamic law. They spell out the duty of jihad as holy war, which all Muslims, according to shariah, must advance in one or more carefully delineated ways.
Islamic jurisprudence, known as fiqh in Arabic, forms the legal context for shariah and its rulings. As such it relies first and foremost on the Quran and cites its verses to support the caliphate and jihad. Simple citation of the verses themselves, without the context provided by how sharia scholars (who guide and enforce Islamic thought and action) interpreted these verses, provides an incomplete and incorrect understanding.
The Team B report on Islamic threat doctrine specifically cites the sources. Reliance of the Traveler: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Umdat Al-Salik) written in the 14th century by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, states, “Jihad means to wage war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad.” According to this authoritative doctrinal text, the “greater” jihad is the struggle for the spiritual self – what the Muslim Brotherhood wants the non-Muslim world to understand as the “real” meaning of jihad.
When Reliance refers to the greater and lesser jihad, it indicates that this differentiation is not a part of the law of jihad – leaving us with no alternative but to understand that, under shariah, the meaning of “jihad” connotes force and violence.
In the 20th century, Muslim Brotherhood ideologues such as Hasan al-Banna (1906-49) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-56) recast modern jihad on the fiery language of revolution and anti-colonialism of the times and not just strictly warfare to expand Islamic and legal political dominance – whether against oppressive colonialist forces of Muslim rulers (“the near enemy”) who were judged apostates because of their failure to uphold shariah.
Qutb, the chief theoretician for the Muslim Brotherhood, declared in his capstone book Milestones, “The reason for jihad which have been described in . . . verses [from the sacred texts] are these: to establish God’s authority in the earth; to arrange human affairs according to the true guidance provided by God; to abolish all the Satanic forces and Satanic systems of life; to end the lordship of one man over others since all men are creatures of God and no one has the authority to make them his servants or make arbitrary laws for them. These reasons are sufficient for proclaiming jihad.”
By “Satanic systems of life,” Qutb was referring to the way of life practiced in Western-style, secular, liberal democracies. The reference to “the lordship of one man over others” was not reserved for dictators, but to any man-made law – including Muslim leaders who did not rule under the shariah code. The assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat acted on Mawdudi and Qutb’s injunctions with respect to jihad.
The Quran (verse 2:216) obligates all Muslims to wage jihad, “though it be hateful to you.”
Most Americans are familiar with the violent form of jihad as waged by the terrorists. There is a second kind of jihad that is not violent – at least not for the moment – that the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.” Civilization jihad is “pre-violent.” And it is all around us.
We will look at civilization jihad in Part 3 of this series.
3) ‘Civilization Jihad’ – the Muslim Brotherhood’s Potent Weapon
Violent jihad dominates the attention of those responsible for national security. But the more dangerous long-term threat, the Center for Security Policy’s Team B report found, is what the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.”
This pre-violent form of jihad, according to the totalitarian ideology of sharia, is considered an integral, even dominant element of jihad.
Team B, which used open-source information to compile its groundbreaking report, Sharia – The Threat to America, takes a look at civilization jihad as part of enemy threat doctrine. Here’s a summary.
While it is true that many Muslims do not follow the directives of shariah, let alone engage in jihad, too many of them provide the proverbial sea in which the jihadis swim. By offering little meaningful opposition to the jihadist agenda, a large number of Muslim communities and nations generally project a tacit agreement with jihadis’ ends, if not with their means.
Under shariah, civilization jihad – a “pre-violent” form of jihad – is considered an integral, even dominant element of jihad that is at least as obligatory for shariah’s adherents as the violent kind.
Such tactics are ostensibly “non-violent” (and therefore “moderate”) not because the Muslim Brotherhood eschews violence out of principle, but because it has decided that this phase of battlefield preparation is better accomplished through stealthy means. Hence civilization jihad can be considered “stealth jihad.”
Civilization jihad is a form of political and psychological warfare that includes multi-layered cultural subversion, the co-opting of senior leaders, influence operations, propaganda and other means of insinuating shariah gradually into Western societies.
The violence is always implicit in the overall strategy (such as that idea that we must proceed with the Ground Zero mosque, lest our opposition incite Muslim violence), albeit held in reserve for the final stages of the offensive. It is the combined effect of the violent and pre-violent strains of jihad that constitutes the most serious threat to America and its free people.
Origins of civilization jihad
We get the concept of civilization jihad from, among other sources, a document that was entered into evidence in the 2008 United States v Holy Land Foundation terrorist finance trial. The document, titled An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group, was written in 1991 by Mohamed Akram, a senior Hamas leader in the United States and a member of the board of directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.
The Explanatory Memorandum (click here for the original document in Arabic) explains that the Muslim Brotherhood-organized “Islamic Movement” in the US is a “settlement process” to establish itself in the United States and, once entrenched, to undertake a “grand jihad” characterized as a “civilization jihadist” mission under Muslim Brotherhood direction.
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.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is relying on non-Muslims in America to aid it, usually inadvertently, to destroy America from within.
Subjugation
Dawa, the call to Islam that by Islamic law must precede jihad, is all-too-often dismissed, as are its manifestations under the rubric of non-violent jihad, simply because this kind of assault does not kill. Instead, it intends “merely” to subjugate.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told a Toledo, Ohio, Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in 1995, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword, but through dawa.”
Absent an appreciation of the threat posed by stealth jihad, the pre-violent civilization jihadist is free to proceed unimpeded under the radar in Western societies, infiltrating and subverting along lines specifically tailored to today’s liberal, multicultural-minded non-Muslim populations. It does so in ways that are genuinely difficult to recognize, oppose or counter.
The objective of civilization jihad, also known as stealth jihad, is the same as the violent form of jihad: subjugation of Dar al-Harb (the “House of War,” or the non-Muslim world) to shariah, which would result in the non-Muslim population of humanity being subsumed under Dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam.
Team B deals with the issue at length in its section on the Muslim Brotherhood, because the Brotherhood has the dominant role with respect to the prosecution of the pre-violent form of jihad in the United States and in the West more generally. The insinuation of shariah and its adherents into America’s academic, banking and finance, government, intelligence, law enforcement and military institutions – as well as civil society more generally – is quite far advanced.
Official U.S. doctrine on threat development requires that threat assessment begin with an unconstrained analysis of the enemy’s stated threat doctrine. The first two sections of the Team B report make plain that it is indeed possible to know the enemy and his intentions with certitude.
If adherents to shariah have sworn to destroy us, it is their doctrine that we are required to know. Whether that doctrine is judged by Team B to be accurate, appropriate or even identifiable with “genuine” Islam is irrelevant.
If it can be demonstrated that the enemy refers to and relies on this doctrine to guide and justify his actions, then that is all that matters in terms of the enemy threat doctrine. US civilian and military leaders must thoroughly understand and orient upon this threat doctrine for the purpose of defeating such foes.
Failing to orient an enemy’s self-identified doctrines not only violates our own doctrine on threat analysis but renders us unable to defeat the enemy because we have failed properly to identify him.
4) True Lies – the Paradox of Debating Shariah
The Quran makes it difficult for non-Muslims to have sincere discussions with shariah-compliant Muslims because of a theological rationalization for lying.
Under shariah, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations. This complicates efforts to understand the true nature of the threat – and to have confidence in those Muslims at home and abroad with whom the government hopes to make common cause.
Shariah has two standards of truth and falsehood. In general, the Quran disapproves of Muslims deceiving other Muslims. It declares, “Surely God guides not him who is prodigal and a liar.” Yet Quranic passages and statements attributed to Mohammed in reliable hadiths provide exceptions even to the usual prohibitions on lying to fellow Muslims.
Authoritative classical Islamic texts such as the 14th century Reliance of the Traveler provide practical examples of where lying even to Muslims can be appropriate. Reliance also shows further examples in quotes from Mohammed, one of which is, “I did not hear him permit untruth in anything people say, except for three things: war, settling disagreements, and a man talking with his wife or she with him (in smoothing over differences).”
These exceptions are sufficiently broad to cover most cases in which lying would be expedient.
Shariah demands, moreover, that its adherents lie where it will be advantageous in dealings with infidels whose submission is a Quranic obligation. Consider the legal guidance provided in Reliance. In the Reliance sub-book titled “Holding One’s Tongue,” one finds sections on “Lying” and “Permissible Lying.” These cite the iconic Islamic legal jurist Imam Abu Hamid Ghazali:
“This is an explicit statement that lying is sometimes permissible for a given interest. . . . When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N: i.e., when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is prevent one from doing something permissible) and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory.”An example of the Quranic basis for the shariah standard of lying is: “Allah has already sanctioned for you the dissolution of your vows.” Indeed, in some places, it is Allah himself who is described approvingly as a capricious deceiver: “Say, ‘God leads whosoever He wills astray.’”
Team B notes that the authoritative Sahih Al-Bukhari wrote that Mohammed personally authorized a permissive attitude toward telling the truth: “The Prophet said, ‘If I take an oath and later find something else better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.’”
Besides lying, there is also guidance in Reliance about giving a misleading impression: “Scholars say that there is no harm in giving a misleading impression if required by an interest countenanced by Sacred Law.”
The issue of lying as a morally justified obligation under shariah leads us to another deceptive concept, known in Arabic as taqiyya, that national security professionals must understand in order to combat the enemy more effectively.
We will discuss taqiyya in Part 5 of this series.
5) Taqiyya: A Concept of Deceit that Security Professionals Must Know
Closely associated with shariah doctrine on lying is the concept of taqiyya, which is generally described as lying for the sake of Islam. National security professionals must understand taqiyya and its use as a major tool by Islamic terrorist organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Taqiyya is a concept in Islamic law that translates as “deceit or dissimulation,” particularly towards infidels. Taqiyya is based on Quran 3:28 and 16:106 as well as hadiths, tafsir literature, and judicial commentaries that permit and encourage precautionary dissimulation as a means for hiding true faith in times of persecution or deception when penetrating the enemy camp.
Quran 3:28 teaches, “Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers, and whoever does that, will never be helped by Allah in any way, unless you indeed fear a danger from them.”
According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya fi Al-Islam,
“Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees with it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream. . . . Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”The Pentagon has recognized taqiyya, without using the word, in its military briefings on enemy tactics abroad, calling it denial and deception. However, from a homeland security standpoint, it is important to recognize the use of taqiyya in American and Western civil society.
A respected modern-day authority on Islam, William Gawthrop, has observed in connection with the practice of taqiyya:
“Concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in time, [is permissible] to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split ‘the enemy.’ One result is the ability to maintain two messages, one to the faithful while obfuscation and denial is sent – and accepted – to the non-Muslim audience.”We find taqiyya as a basic instrument of the Muslim Brotherhood’s modus operandi in the United States and elsewhere. Omar Ahmad, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding trial, discussed separating the information role of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front, from the terrorist support operations role of the Holy Land Foundation.
In evidence presented at the trial, Ahmad had this to say regarding an information campaign against the United States:
“I believe that our problem is that we stopped working underground. We will recognize the source of any message which comes out of us. I mean, if a message is publicized, we will know. . . . , the media person among us will recognize that you send two messages, one to the Americans and one to the Muslims. If they found out who said that – even four years later – it will cause a discredit to the Foundation as far as the Muslims are concerned as they say ‘Look, he used to tell us about Islam and that there is a cause and stuff while he, at the same time, is shooting elsewhere.’” (Emphasis added)Taqiyya in practice
A classic example of the shariah practice of taqiyya can be found in the dual messaging of Yousuf al-Qaradawi, best known as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. For an intended Muslim audience, he wrote in the Saudi Gazette of June 11, 2010:
“. . . The acceptance of secularism means abandonment of shariah, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah’s injunctions. . . . For this reason, the call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of shariah is downright apostasy. . . .”Six years earlier, at a Democracy and Political Reform conference held in Qatar, al-Qaradawi declared, “There are those who maintain that democracy is the rule of the people, but we want the rule of Allah.”
Al-Qaradawi’s rejection of Western-style liberal democracy could not have been more clearly stated. He made his statements as an Islamic jurist, providing legal opinions specifically sourced back to the Quran and shariah. This is not the message he gives to other audiences, however.
For instance, during a January 2010 interview in the Egyptian newspaper Al -Shorouk, al-Qaradawi saw advantage for the Muslim Brotherhood and shariah in extolling the virtues of democracy – as a means of ending the rule of President Hosni Mubarak (who mostly suppresses the Brotherhood) and bringing the Brotherhood to power. Al-Qaradawi said, “Egypt will not regain its status, its well-being and its role unless it opens the windows of freedom. It must open the doors completely and make way for [new] figures and competition, as real democracy is the solution, not fake [democracy].”
Similarly, in the Muslim Brotherhood’s online forum, IslamOnline.net, which is published in English and aimed at a Western audience, al-Qaradawi went so far as to suggest that shariah actually embraces democracy: “Islam calls for democracy and grants people the right to choose their governor.”
In short, what Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know – or encouraged to think – by Islamic authorities. Taqiyya provides the legal and moral basis under shariah for this sort of deceptive dual messaging.
Real-world consequences of taqiyya
The consequences of taqiyya extend to real world issues related to pluralism, understanding and reconciliation, so we need to know what taqiyya is all about. Taqiyya is related to Muslim overtures for interfaith dialogue, peace, respect and mutual tolerance – all of which we must view in light of Islamic doctrine on lying.
Team B does not argue for trusting or mistrusting someone in any particular circumstance. It does, though, argue for professionals to be aware of these facts, to realize they are dealing with an enemy whose doctrine allows – and at times even requires – its adherents not to disclose fully all that they know, and deliberately to misstate that which they know to be the truth.
In the next section of this series, Part 6, we will look at the shariah concept of slander.
6) Slander: How it is Used and Abused Under Shariah
Violent jihad dominates the attention of those responsible for national security. But the more dangerous long-term threat, the Center for Security Policy’s Team B report found, is what the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.”
This pre-violent form of jihad, according to the totalitarian ideology of sharia, is considered an integral, even dominant element of jihad.
Team B, which used open-source information to compile its groundbreaking report, Sharia – The Threat to America, takes a look at civilization jihad as part of enemy threat doctrine. Here’s a summary.
While it is true that many Muslims do not follow the directives of shariah, let alone engage in jihad, too many of them provide the proverbial sea in which the jihadis swim. By offering little meaningful opposition to the jihadist agenda, a large number of Muslim communities and nations generally project a tacit agreement with jihadis’ ends, if not with their means.
Under shariah, civilization jihad – a “pre-violent” form of jihad – is considered an integral, even dominant element of jihad that is at least as obligatory for shariah’s adherents as the violent kind.
Such tactics are ostensibly “non-violent” (and therefore “moderate”) not because the Muslim Brotherhood eschews violence out of principle, but because it has decided that this phase of battlefield preparation is better accomplished through stealthy means. Hence civilization jihad can be considered “stealth jihad.”
Civilization jihad is a form of political and psychological warfare that includes multi-layered cultural subversion, the co-opting of senior leaders, influence operations, propaganda and other means of insinuating shariah gradually into Western societies.
The violence is always implicit in the overall strategy (such as that idea that we must proceed with the Ground Zero mosque, lest our opposition incite Muslim violence), albeit held in reserve for the final stages of the offensive. It is the combined effect of the violent and pre-violent strains of jihad that constitutes the most serious threat to America and its free people.
Origins of civilization jihad
We get the concept of civilization jihad from, among other sources, a document that was entered into evidence in the 2008 United States v Holy Land Foundation terrorist finance trial. The document, titled An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group, was written in 1991 by Mohamed Akram, a senior Hamas leader in the United States and a member of the board of directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.
The Explanatory Memorandum (click here for the original document in Arabic) explains that the Muslim Brotherhood-organized “Islamic Movement” in the US is a “settlement process” to establish itself in the United States and, once entrenched, to undertake a “grand jihad” characterized as a “civilization jihadist” mission under Muslim Brotherhood direction.
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.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is relying on non-Muslims in America to aid it, usually inadvertently, to destroy America from within.
Subjugation
Dawa, the call to Islam that by Islamic law must precede jihad, is all-too-often dismissed, as are its manifestations under the rubric of non-violent jihad, simply because this kind of assault does not kill. Instead, it intends “merely” to subjugate.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, told a Toledo, Ohio, Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in 1995, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword, but through dawa.”
Absent an appreciation of the threat posed by stealth jihad, the pre-violent civilization jihadist is free to proceed unimpeded under the radar in Western societies, infiltrating and subverting along lines specifically tailored to today’s liberal, multicultural-minded non-Muslim populations. It does so in ways that are genuinely difficult to recognize, oppose or counter.
The objective of civilization jihad, also known as stealth jihad, is the same as the violent form of jihad: subjugation of Dar al-Harb (the “House of War,” or the non-Muslim world) to shariah, which would result in the non-Muslim population of humanity being subsumed under Dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam.
Team B deals with the issue at length in its section on the Muslim Brotherhood, because the Brotherhood has the dominant role with respect to the prosecution of the pre-violent form of jihad in the United States and in the West more generally. The insinuation of shariah and its adherents into America’s academic, banking and finance, government, intelligence, law enforcement and military institutions – as well as civil society more generally – is quite far advanced.
Official U.S. doctrine on threat development requires that threat assessment begin with an unconstrained analysis of the enemy’s stated threat doctrine. The first two sections of the Team B report make plain that it is indeed possible to know the enemy and his intentions with certitude.
If adherents to shariah have sworn to destroy us, it is their doctrine that we are required to know. Whether that doctrine is judged by Team B to be accurate, appropriate or even identifiable with “genuine” Islam is irrelevant.
If it can be demonstrated that the enemy refers to and relies on this doctrine to guide and justify his actions, then that is all that matters in terms of the enemy threat doctrine. US civilian and military leaders must thoroughly understand and orient upon this threat doctrine for the purpose of defeating such foes.
Failing to orient an enemy’s self-identified doctrines not only violates our own doctrine on threat analysis but renders us unable to defeat the enemy because we have failed properly to identify him.
7) How Shariah ‘Blasphemy’ Laws are Being Imposed On Us
Shariah blasphemy doctrine matters to free societies because of followers who seek to impose that doctrine in civilized countries.
The United States and its allies are accustomed to confronting external threats. Democracies are generally uncomfortable about facing internal threats. The Muslim Brotherhood and others are exploiting our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to demand tolerance of its medieval religious practices and to repress free speech where it gives offense to them. In this sense, they are effectively imposing shariah blasphemy laws in America, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
Shariah is fundamentally about power – the enforcement of a body of law, not faith. Therefore it is a political force, not a religious one. In the words of Muslim Brotherhood theoretician Sayyid Qutb, “Whenever an Islamic community exists which is a concrete example of the Divinely-ordained system of life, it has a God-given right to step forward and control the political authority so that it may establish the divine system on earth…”
Part 6 of this series examined how followers of shariah denounce as “slander” anything that offends them. Similarly, shariah proponents apply Islamic blasphemy laws as part of their civilization jihad to force those with whom they disagree to submit to their will.
For non-believers (including modern Muslims), the corollary to the Islamic rule against disclosing anything disadvantageous to Islam is shariah’s prohibition against blasphemy. This requires that infidels refrain from engaging in discussions about Islam that extend beyond what is permitted of them or would give offense to Muslims.
Such suppression of information is invaluable to the shariah enterprise because a straightforward reading of Islamic doctrine lends credence to claims by its adherents to be in the mainstream and orthodox. The current approach enshrined in U.S. national intelligence and security policy, which conforms to shariah blasphemy dictates, has the effect of removing these facts from discovery.
This submission to shariah is evident in the failure of US government agencies accurately to describe the enemy and his threat doctrine described elsewhere in the Team B report. It is also reflected in other, less obvious but highly insidious ways. These include gaps in the professional education of senior civilian and military personnel and in possible biases based on such failures inherent in the promotion process for federal employees across the governmental bureaucracy.
Such policies are systematically corroding the US government’s situational awareness by effectively imposing – via implicit or explicit gag orders – a system of self-censorship. The practical effect is that the truth about shariah and its adherents is suppressed, as is informed deliberation about the appropriate responses to the threats it poses. This amounts to a collective act of submission to shariah by the national leadership of the US that emboldens our enemies even as it disables our defenses against them.
By contrast to current US government policy about the shariah threat that avoids facts as unwanted disclosures, an effective analytic process could be tailored specifically to answer questions concerning the enemy’s doctrine by direct reference to those same facts. There can be no successful intelligence analysis – or appropriate national security strategy – where the underlying facts are barred.
We also see submission to shariah blasphemy dikitats in civil society, outside the government and military.
On campuses across the country, Muslim Brotherhood fronts like the Muslim Students Association (MSA) promotes aggressive political influence and intimidation operations – not merely to discredit Israel and promote the Muslim Palestinian cause as many MSA chapters do, but to serve as focal points for efforts to impose shariah blasphemy rules or otherwise control speech.
To this end, MSA members frequently engage in disruptive actions aimed at preventing speakers from exposing students to information about shariah Islam, jihad and their targets that would be deemed “offensive” or otherwise contrary to the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood.
(Not mentioned in the Team B report, but relevant to the discussion, are the following examples: Newspapers, magazines, websites and television channels are censoring their writers and themselves in order to comply with shariah blasphemy demands, lest they lend offense or suffer violent consequences. The Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed are a case in point. Comedy Central has banned its own artists from depicting Mohammed, even though it allows ridicule of Jesus Christ. As of this writing, a young Seattle woman who was behind a good-natured, satirical campaign to draw pictures of the prophet Mohammed in protest of the censorship has faced death threats and was forced into hiding, under a new identity, at the urging of the FBI.)
Charges of “religious defamation,” “racism,” “bigotry” and “blasphemy” have become, like Pavlovian gongs, instant conversation-enders. The aggressiveness of the allegations – and the confusion or timidity of those on the receiving end – has allowed Islam in the west to become increasingly insulated not just from criticism, but also from the poking and prodding of analysis. Islam in the West is becoming insulated from reality itself.
This may be precisely the kind of “protection” from secular “blasphemy” (read, criticism) that shariah has long maintained it requires.
In the next section of this serialization of the Team B report, Part 8, we will look at the Muslim Brotherhood itself: The threat doctrine operationalized.
8) What is the Muslim Brotherhood and How Does it Operate?
Shariah stresses its adherents’ exercise of information dominance. Accordingly, its campaign of civilization jihad against the United States prominently features political and psychological warfare, influence operations and other techniques for neutralizing and, ultimately subverting the nation’s foundational institutions.
Targets include the political system, the military, law enforcement, public and private education from preschool through graduate school, religious institutions of all major faiths, the financial system and the media.
The shariah information war in the West and the civilization jihad of which it is a central element is driven by an organization called the International Muslim Brotherhood (MB), also known by its Arabic title “Ikhwan.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is the Communist Party-like “vanguard” or tip-of-the-spear of the current Islamic movement in the world. While there are other transnational organizations that share the MB’s goals, if not its tactics – including al Qaeda, which was born out of the Brotherhood – the Ikhwan is by far the strongest and most organized.
Organizational structure and processes
The MB is now active in more than 80 countries. In each country with an Ikhwan presence exists an Organizational Conference (planning group), a Shura Council (legal body), and a General Masul (leader) or “General Guide.” The “Supreme Guide” is the individual leader of the International Muslim Brotherhood and is based in Cairo, Egypt.
The MB’s civilization jihadist process is primarily conducted by groups posing as peaceable, “moderate” and law-abiding Muslim community organizations. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood’s bylaws (viewable in English on the Ikhwan’s website), MB doctrinal books in English, and a series of Muslim Brotherhood documents found in a 2004 FBI raid and entered into evidence in the largest terrorism-financing trial in American history in 2008, make one thing plain: The Ikhwan’s mission in the West is sedition in furtherance of shariah’s supremacist agenda, not peaceful assimilation and co-existence with non-Muslim populations.
Thanks to the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial that resulted in the convictions of all the accused, it is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States today is actually controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.
Background of the Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement shariah worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State, known as the caliphate. Therefore, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood have the same objectives. They differ only in the timing and tactics involved in realizing them.
The Brotherhood’s creed is: “Allah is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” It is evident from the Creed, and from the Brotherhood’s history and current activities detailed in the Team B report, that violence is an inherent part of the MB’s tactics. The MB is at the root of the majority of Islamic terrorist groups in the world today.
The Ikhwan believes that its purposes in the West are, for the moment, better advanced by the use of non-violent, stealthy techniques, properly known as “pre-violent” techniques. In that connection, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to establish relations with, influence and, wherever possible, penetrate government circles in executive and legislative branches at the federal, state and local levels; the law enforcement community; intelligence agencies; the military; penal institutions; the judicial system; the media; think tanks and policy groups; academic institutions; non-Muslim religious communities; and other elites.
The MB engages in all of these activities and more for one reason: to subvert the targeted communities in furtherance of the Ikhwan’s primary objective – the triumph of shariah.
In Part 9 of this serialization of the Center for Security Policy’s Team B report on shariah, we will examine the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood and its movement to penetrate Western democracies.
9) The Genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood
The aftermath of World War I, with the defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, saw the destruction of the Islamic political authority called the “caliphate.” Mustapha Kemal Ataturk established post-Ottoman Turkey as a secular westernized state and abolished the caliphate. Among his reforms to dismantle the shariah system, Ataturk banned the tradition of growing beards by men and wearing headscarves by women, banned the call to prayer from the mosques, abolished the Turkish language’s script and replaced it with the Latin alphabet, and made the Turkish military the custodians of a new secular tradition.
This did not sit well with Islamic traditionalists. Some became determined to restore the caliphate, if not in Turkey, then somewhere else. One such individual was Hassan al Banna, the son of a Muslim imam who lived outside Cairo, Egypt. In 1928, al Banna founded an organization called the al-Ikhwan al-Musilmin, known in English as the Society of Muslim Brothers or the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
The purpose of the MB or Ikhwan was to unify the predominantly Islamic countries under a new caliphate and subordinating all lands to the rule of a single caliph, under shariah law.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s bylaws make clear the organization’s objectives and how it intends to achieve them:
“The Muslim Brotherhood is an International Muslim body which seeks to establish Allah’s law in the land by achieving the spiritual goals of Islam and the true religion which are namely the following: . . . (F) the need to work on establishing the Islamic State; [and] (G) The sincere support for a global cooperation in accordance with the provisions of the Islamic Sharia.”Chapter II, Article 3 of the MB’s bylaws states:
“The Muslim Brotherhood in achieving these objectives depends on the following means: . . . (D) Make every effort for the establishment of educational, social, economic, and scientific institutions and the establishment of mosques, schools, clinics, shelters, clubs, as well as the formation of committees to regulate zakat affairs and alms; (E) The Islamic nation must be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and the enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing the Islamic state.”By the early 1930s, the Brotherhood had developed a formal organizational structure around groups of men with special spiritual and physical training called “Battalions.” By 1940, the MB created the “secret apparatus” which was the Ikhwan’s military wing, abandoning the Battalions in 1943. The Ikhwan developed a relationship with the Nazis during the war. The MB’s military wing continues to operate today and is called the “Special Chapter.” The Special Chapter’s operations are known as “special work,” meaning military fighting or covert operations.
During World War II and the years that followed, the MB became increasingly aggressive and violent. It called for the removal of all British forces (“non-Muslim Forces”) from Egypt (“Muslim Lands”) as required by shariah or Islamic law.
During the late 1940s, the MB targeted Egyptian officials (including Muslims), British soldiers and their families, and in December 1948, a Muslim Brother assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi. In February 1949, Egyptian security forces killed MB founder Hassan al Banna in Cairo.
The period following the assassination of al Banna was marked with significant MB violence against the Egyptian monarchy and the British. After a ban on MB activities was lifted in 1951, the Ikhwan coordinated actively with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the young officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952. As soon as the Ikhwan felt powerful enough to confront the government on its own, however, it turned against the new President Nasser.
Nasser, in turn, launched a crackdown against the MB in 1954 that accelerated an exodus of many top Brothers and the expansion of the organization around the world, including into the West.
The Team B report lists prominent Ikhwan members during this transitional period who played vital roles in transforming the MB into the international Muslim mafia it is today. One of those figures was Said Ramadan, who was al Banna’s assistant for years and married his daughter. The history of their penetration of Western societies in Europe is instructive for those seeking to understand how and the extent to which similar influence operations are being run against the United States.
Said Ramadan’s son and al Banna’s grandson Tariq Ramadan is a member of the MB leadership and one of the most skillful practitioners of the stealth jihad. In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed a six-year ban on his entry into the United States. Tariq Ramadan has used his renewed access to American audiences to advance the Brotherhood’s civilization jihad.
This serialization of the Team B report will continue, with Part 10 discussing the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood into the West.
10) Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood into the West
Before we look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of the United States, we’ll study its penetration of the Western societies of Europe. Knowing how the extremist “civilization jihad” movement moved covertly into the European democracies provides insights in how it burrowed into America.
The Team B II report on shariah identifies five prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, known in Arabic as Ikhwan, during the early infiltration of Europe: Said Ramadan, Youssef Nada, Ghaleb Himmat, Mohamed Akef and Yousef al Qaradawi, the latter of whom today is known as the International Muslim Brotherhood’s “spiritual guide” and is considered a leading Islamic legal scholar. Each man played an important role in transforming the Ikhwan into the international Muslim mafia that it is today.
Of the five, Said Ramadan is particularly noteworthy.
Ramadan was Ikhwan founder Hassan al Banna’s assistant for years. He married al Banna’s daughter and became a driving force in the MB leadership after the Egyptian security forces killed al Banna in the 1950s. His son, Tariq Ramadan, is a member of the Ikhwan royalty and one of today’s most assiduous practitioners of stealth or civilization jihad.
The George W. Bush administration banned Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States in 2004. In January, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed the ban, allowing the younger Ramadan to use his renewed access to American audiences to advance the Ikhwan’s civilization jihad.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Post-World War II Europe
Postwar West Germany offered the MB a valuable safe haven in the heart of Europe, primarily because the Ikhwan had established a relationship with the Nazis during World War II and maintained ties to powerful Germans after the war. The West Germans were especially welcoming of Syrians and Egyptians because of a state policy that offered assistance to any “refugees” from nations that formally recognized Bonn’s rival, communist East Germany – something both Egypt and Syria did.
The Ikhwan leadership, which insinuate ditself into the societies of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European countries, established numerous front organizations for the Brotherhood – a pattern the organization follows aggressively around the world and especially in the West to this day.
For example, Said Ramadan moved to Cologne, where he received a law degree, and founded the Islamic Society of Germany. He presided over the organization from 1958-1968.
Spreading across Europe and beyond
In 1962, Ramadan founded the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia, a global Muslim Brotherhood front that would set up chapters in scores of countries worldwide.
Another of the five individuals, Ghaleb Himmat, was a Syrian who was a citizen of Italy. He directed the Islamic Society of Germany from 1973-2002. He established the Al-Taqwa Bank, which Italian intelligence dubbed “the bank of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Himmat ran Al-Taqwa and a group of front companies in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas with yet another of the five, Youssef Nada.
Before it was shut down in 2002, Al-Taqwa Bank became known for its funding of: al Qaeda; the Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm, known as Hamas; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters; and other terrorist organizations.
In the 1960’s, these senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders planned and built a huge complex known as the Islamic Center of Munich which became an important staging point for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.
A new book by Ian Johnson entitled A Mosque in Munich describes the powerful force-multiplier this facility became for Ikhwan operations in Europe and beyond. It also reveals longstanding U.S. government ties to the Brothers, including Said Ramadan who contributed to the construction of this mosque.
In 1973, several dozen Muslim Brothers attended a meeting of the Islamic Cultural Centres and Bodies in Europe in London, England in order to organize the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Europe. Ghaleb Himmat was present as the head of the Islamic Community of Southern Germany. While no agreement on strategy to develop a European Islamic network was reached, this meeting laid the foundation for such a plan.
Four years later, the senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders met in Lugano, Switzerland, near the homes of Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada to discuss the strategy for moving the Brotherhood forward.
Yousef al-Qaradawi, another of the five, was among those present at this meeting. One of the first actions taken afterwards was the establishment of the MB front known as the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). IIIT’s role was to maintain the ideological purity and consistency of the Brotherhood’s expanding operations.
During a subsequent meeting in Saudi Arabia in 1978, the Brotherhood decided to set up IIIT near Temple University in Philadelphia, an institution where leading Islamic thinker and Muslim Brother Ismail Faruqi was teaching at the time. Later, the IIIT moved its headquarters to Herndon, Virginia.
The next part of this BigPeace series, Part 11, continues with the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of Western democratic societies.
11) The Muslim Brotherhood’s Westward Infiltration
After years of steady growth in Europe through the 1960s and ‘70s, the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s moved its European headquarters from Germany to the United Kingdom.
At that time, Mohammed Akef, who would become the MB’s Supreme Guide for several years until early 2010, served as the imam at a Munich mosque when he moved the Ikhwan’s European operations into the Markfield Conference Centre near Leicester, U.K.
The Markfield Conference Centre is owned by the Islamic Foundation, an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain – both Muslim Brotherhood front groups. The Centre now houses the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), led by an Iraqi named Ahmed al-Rawi. FIOE has become one of Europe’s largest MB organizations.
Yousef al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader, is heavily involved with this entire network. The FIOE has become the starting point for a number of other Muslim Brotherhood entities, including the Institute for the Study of Human Sciences and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Al-Qaradawi heads the latter group.
In France, the Brotherhood has the Union of Islamic Organizations in France; the Italian counterpart is the Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy. Those groups work, respectively, with the French and Italian governments in order to advance the Ikhwan’s agenda and subvert the respective host countries. They use claims of victimhood and demands for equality and tolerance to mask their true intentions and marginalize or silence critics.
In the U.K., the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain are two of the most prominent MB organizations. Like their continental counterparts, the MCB and MAB work with Her Majesty’s government at the highest levels toward the same end: subverting the British government and nation from within.
Muslim Brotherhood youth fronts
The late 1990s saw the MB launch the Forum for European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. FEMYSO describes itself in its own literature as “a network of 42 national and international organizations bringing together youth from over 26 different countries,” and credibly claims to be the primary organization in Europe for Muslim youth.
This Muslim Brotherhood organization, like most of the Ikhwan’s other fronts, has significant influence and appears to have encountered little resistance from European security services. In short, Muslim Brotherhood organizations exist across Europe today.
Domination of Muslim groups across Europe
As we shall see with respect to the MB footprint in the United States, the leading Muslim organizations across North America – virtually without exception – are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Even though the affiliation with the Brotherhood for most of these organizations is easily established, and the true, seditious objectives of these organizations are readily discernable, most European governments are unwilling to face reality, let alone deal effectively with the threats posed by MB penetration of the highest levels of their societies.
Take, for example, the following cases in point. Two of the most prominent MB operatives in Europe, Ghaleb Himmat and Yousef Nada, were designated as terrorism financiers by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Treasury also deemed their bank, Al-Taqwa, as an entity that funds terrorism.
For his part, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yousef al-Qaradawi, was named in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing trial as an unindicted co-conspirator for his involvement with the HLF Hamas fundraising front. (On the list of unindicted co-conspirators in this trial, Qaradawi was Number 38.)
All three individuals – Himmat, Nada and al-Qaradawi – nonetheless have been allowed to continue doing business with, and in some cases, actually inside Europe.
One reason for Europe’s general unwillingness to confront and counter the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its operatives is that in the parliamentary politics of some countries, Muslim communities are increasingly seen as critical voting blocs.
The Ikhwan has been able to capitalize on such perceptions long before Muslims achieve majority status in the demographics of a number of European nations, by insinuating shariah into those countries.
Growing unease among Europeans about the success of the Islamicization of parts of the continent has begun translating into pushback. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ party has garnered unprecedented support for its opposition to shariah. The question is, will the efforts amount to much and, if so, will they achieve results in time?
12) The Muslim Brotherhood in America
The Muslim Brotherhood began its penetration of the United States in the 1950s. In 1953, Princeton University hosted a group of “prominent Muslims” for an “Islamic Colloquium.” Brotherhood delegates asked for and were granted a meeting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who agreed on the counsel of his defense and intelligence advisors, who saw it as an opportunity for the U.S. to influence the Muslim world and to use them against the Communists, who were on the ascendancy.
One of the delegates at the meeting was the “Honorable Saeed Ramahdan, Delegate of the Muslim Brothers,” as described in the official White House documents. A now-declassified CIA document recording the events of the meeting described Ramadan as follows: “Ramadan seems to be a Fascist, interested in the grouping of individuals for power. He did not display many ideas except for those of the Brotherhood.”
Setting down roots
As the Muslim Brothers “settled” in North America, they did so according to their stated bylaws. The MB’s bylaws, and specifically the approved “means” to achieve the Ikhwan’s objectives in America, include this mandate: “Make every effort for the establishment of educational, social, economic, and scientific institutions and the establishment of mosques, schools, clinics, shelters, clubs.”
Through these means, the Muslim Brotherhood would wage civilization jihad in North America. At the University of Illinois in Urbana, the Ikhwan created its first North American front organization, the Muslim Students Association (MSA), in 1963. Today, MSA chapters are present on many college campuses across the country, serving as recruiting nodes for the MB and, in some cases, for violent jihadist organizations.
As the Team B II report on shariah explains, out of the MSA came nearly every Muslim organization in America today.
Initially, as MSA chapters sprang up on American campuses, they presented Islam in public as a mainstream alternative to other religions, never mentioning extremist or revolutionary aspects. In recent years, MSA members have become ever-more aggressive in their demands for accommodations and silencing those who oppose them.
In the 1970s, the Brotherhood formed a number of trade organizations for the purpose of insinuating its members more deeply into American society. Those organizations included the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), the Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE), the Islamic Medical Association (IMA), the Muslim Communities Association (MCA), and others. The Brothers also formed other student groups in the 1970s, including the Muslim Arab Youth Assembly (MAYA) and Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA).
In 1973, the Saudis created an important new enabler of Brotherhood operations in the United States and domination of American Muslim communities: the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). NAIT “controls” approximately 80 percent of the titles/deeds to the mosques, Islamic organizations and Islamic schools in the United States, ensuring that the vast majority of Muslim facilities in this country are dominated by the most reactionary strains of Islam.
Typically, along with such ownership come Saudi-trained and appointed imams, textbooks for the madrassas, jihadist literature and videos for the bookstores, paid hajj pilgrimages (the obligatory trip to Mecca) and, in some cases, training for jihad.
According to NAIT’s website, NAIT promotes a lifestyle for Muslims to live in America “in a shariah-compliant way.” The site does not provide a street address for NAIT, but lists office phone numbers that have a Chicago area code.
In 1980, the Brotherhood created a new organization to extend the footprint made possible by the swelling ranks of Muslim Students Association alumni. It brought together most of its groups under the auspices of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), based in Indiana, which today is the largest Muslim Brotherhood front on the continent.
NAIT says on its website, “NAIT supports and provides services to ISNA, MSA, their affiliates, and other Islamic centers and institutions. The President of ISNA is an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of NAIT.”
The creation of ISNA ushered in an era of massive growth of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in North America. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Ikhwan created hundreds of new organizations and built hundreds of mosques and Islamic schools across North America. It did so primarily with funding from Saudi Arabia.
Breaking the code
An alert Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer, on an August day in 2004, observed a woman wearing traditional Islamic garb videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and conducted a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle was identified as Ismail Elbarasse. Elbarasse was detained on an outstanding material witness warrant issued in a Chicago Hamas case.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office raided Elbarasse’s residence in Annandale, Virginia. In the basement of the suspect’s home, the FBI found a hidden sub-basement. In the sub-basement, agents discovered the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.
The documents confirmed what investigators and counterterrorism experts had previously suspected and contended about the myriad Muslim-American groups in the United States – namely, that nearly all of them are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and, therefore, as shariah dictates, are hostile to the United States, its Constitution and its freedoms. The documents make clear that the strategic objective of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is to implement shariah law in the United States in furtherance of establishing a global caliphate.
In Part 13, Team B shows how the FBI blew apart the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations in the United States in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial of 2008.
13) The Holy Land Trial: On the Trail of the Muslim Brotherhood
An extensive FBI investigation and federal prosecution resulted in convictions that shed light on the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations in the United States. In addition to the convictions of five defendants for terrorist funding-related activity, the Texas trial produced a Justice Department list of “un-indicted co-conspirators” with the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a terrorist fundraising front for Hamas.
Many of those un-indicted co-conspirators are individuals and organizations who are prominent in Muslim advocacy today, and who have cast themselves as mainstream Muslims. Many are also identified as Muslim Brotherhood operatives.
This section of the Team B report on shariah describes the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Between July and September 2007, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, Texas, along with attorneys from Main Justice (DOJ), working with FBI case agents and analysts from the FBI Dallas Field Office tried the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLFRD or simply HLF) and its senior leadership in U.S. Federal Court, Northern District of Texas.
At the time, HLF was the largest Muslim charity in North America, and funneled money and assistance to Hamas overseas in support of their terrorist operations. Hamas had been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. government in 1995.
Uncontested evidence provides unprecedented insights
In the course of the HLF trial, scores of exhibits and testimony were introduced into evidence uncontested by the defense. Taken together, they provided unprecedented insights into the web of connections among a handful of alleged Hamas front groups that have operated on American soil throughout the 1990s to this day.
This network serves as a central node in the Muslim Brotherhood’s wider U.S. organizational infrastructure.
HLF was the largest Hamas front organization ever prosecuted by the U.S. government; its trial was the largest in the history of official efforts to counter terrorism financing in America.
On October 22, 2007, after 19 days of deliberation, a jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the charges against the defendants. U.S. District Judge Joe A. Fish declared a mistrial after a decision could not be reached.
In September 2008, the second Holy Land Foundation trial began. On November 24, 2008, after six weeks of testimony and seven days of deliberation, the jury convicted HLF and five of its leaders on charges of providing material support to Hamas. As the Department of Justice stated at the time:
The government presented evidence at trial that, as the U.S. began to scrutinize individuals and entities in the United States who were raising funds for terrorist groups in the mid-1990s, the HLF intentionally hid its financial support for Hamas behind the guise of charitable donations.Commenting on the verdicts, Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, observed:
HLF and these five defendants provided approximately $12.4 million in support to Hamas and its goal of creating an Islamic Palestinian state by eliminating the State of Israel through violent jihad.
Today’s verdicts are important milestones in America’s efforts against financiers of terrorism. For many years, the Holy Land Foundation used the guise of charity to raise and funnel millions of dollars to the infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization. This prosecution demonstrates our resolve to ensure that humanitarian relief efforts are not used as a mechanism to disguise and enable support for terrorist groups.The following sentences were handed down for the defendants:
- Shukri Abu Baker, 50, of Garland, Texas, was sentenced to a total of 65 years in prison. He was convicted of 10 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization; 11 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, funds, goods and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist; 10 counts of conspiracy to commit, and the commission of, money laundering; one count of conspiracy to impede and impair the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); and one count of filing a false tax return.
- Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, of San Diego, California, was sentenced to the statutory maximum of 15 years in prison. He was convicted on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
- Ghassan Elashi, 55, of Richardson, Texas, was sentenced to a total of 65 years in prison. He was convicted on the same counts as Abu Baker, and one additional count of filing a false tax return.
- Mufid Abdulqader, 49, of Richardson, Texas, was sentenced to a total of 20 years in prison. He was convicted on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, one count of conspiracy to provide goods, funds, and services to a specially designated terrorist, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
- Abdulrahman Odeh, 49, of Patterson, New Jersey, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was convicted on the same counts as Abdulqader.
- HLF, now defunct, was convicted on 10 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization; 11 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, funds, goods and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist; and 10 counts of conspiracy to commit,and the commission of, money laundering.
Unfortunately, on April 1, 2010, Assistant Attorney General David Kris, who heads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, denied a request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, Texas for further prosecutions in the HLF trial.
The prosecutions were to be aimed specifically at the Muslim Brotherhood fronts that were designated as unindicted co-conspirators. Despite the efforts of the USAO-Dallas and the FBI Dallas Office, the Department of Justice is not supporting any further action.
The question occurs: Is the reason for quashing such criminal prosecutions to avoid bringing to light potentially highly embarrassing evidence concerning the extent to which this and previous U.S. administrations have embraced and legitimated the very Ikhwan organizations that would be defendants in such cases? (The topic of troubling official conduct like this with respect to understanding and countering shariah and its adherents is discussed at length in Chapter nine of the Team B report.)
In addition, the North American Islamic Trust (and perhaps other unindicted co conspirators) have appealed the court’s ruling on their listing. According to press reports, a panel of the 5th Circuit held a closed-door hearing on the matter in 2010. As of this writing, neither the government’s position nor the judgment of the court of appeals is known.
In Part 14, Team B describes a secret Muslim Brotherhood strategy memorandum that the FBI discovered during a raid on a suspected terrorist house in suburban Virginia.
14) The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan
Here, we look at the contents of the secret Muslim Brotherhood strategic plan for North America, which the FBI uncovered in 2004. The plan explains how the Ikhwan seeks to extend shariah into the United States and Canada.
‘An Explanatory Memorandum’
The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan for North America was a closely-held secret until the FBI discovered it during a 2004 raid of a house in Annandale, Virginia. Agents discovered a secret basement containing internal Ikhwan documents, including the strategic plan titled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group.”
The strategic plan was written by a member of the Board of Directors for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America and senior Hamas leader named Mohammed Akram, and was approved by the Brotherhood’s Shura Council and Organizational Conference in 1987.
The plan establishes the mission of the Muslim Brother in North America in this following passage:
“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of 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.”
In other words, the Ikhwan’s strategy for destroying the United States is to get us, specifically our leadership, to do the bidding of the MB for them. The Muslim Brotherhood intends to conduct Civilization Jihad by co-opting our leadership into believing a counterfactual understanding of Islam and the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, thereby coercing these leaders to enforce the MB narrative on their subordinates.
At the ground level, this means that when police officers, federal agents, military personnel, or any other Americans who have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution challenge their leadership with facts, the latter is faced with a hard choice: admit a lack of understanding of the threat and that he or she has been duped, or the leader must suppress the facts and his subordinates in the interest of protecting his or her professional reputation.
Extensive anecdotal evidence obtained from law enforcement professionals, federal agents, and military service members suggests that there is considerable suppression of the facts about shariah and efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to bring it to America. This behavior frequently impedes ongoing investigations and countervailing efforts.
For instance, police officers in a number of communities around the country have been pushed out of their Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) or counterterrorism positions by their chiefs or deputy chiefs for factually articulating that certain MB operatives working with their police leadership are, in fact, hostile to the United States and the police department in question. A similar phenomenon has also been evidenced within the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal, as well as state and local, entities. That is what is meant by “‘sabotaging’ Western Civilization by ‘their hands.”’
The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Phased Plan’
We know from, among other things, the Elbarasse trove of MB documents, that the goal of destroying Western Civilization from within is to be achieved by the Brotherhood in accordance with a “phased plan.”
The plan is a stepped process modeled directly after Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones and the shariah doctrine of progressive revelation. One such document is an undated paper entitled, “Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan.” It specifies the five phases of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in North America.
They are described, together with comments about the Ikhwan’s progress in realizing each goal as follows:
“Phase One: Phase of discreet and secret establishment of leadership.This document offers a chilling operational insight into the mindset, planning, and vision of the Islamic movement in North America.
“Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities (It greatly succeeded in implementing this stage). It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government. Gaining religious institutions and embracing senior scholars. Gaining public support and sympathy. Establishing a shadow government (secret) within the Government.
“Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media. Currently in progress.
“Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach. It is aggressively implementing the above-mentioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour. It has noticeable activities in this regard.
“Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united.”
The Implementation of Shariah by the Muslim Brotherhood
The Elbarasse archives and close observation of the Brotherhood’s operations reveal the following as the most important of the techniques employed by the Ikhwan in America to achieve the seditious goals of its civilization jihad:
• Expanding the Muslim presence by birth rate, immigration, and refusal to assimilate;The next section, Part 15, is a case study of Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the United States government.
• Occupying and expanding domination of physical spaces;
• Ensuring the “Muslim Community” knows and follows MB doctrine;
• Controlling the language we use in describing the enemy;
• Ensuring we do not study their doctrine (shariah);
• Co-opting key leadership;
• Forcing compliance with shariah at local levels;
• Fighting all counterterrorism efforts;
• Subverting religious organizations;
• Employing lawfare – the offensive use of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits;
• Claiming victimization / demanding accommodations;
• Condemning “slander” against Islam;
• Subverting the U.S. education system, in particular, infiltrating and dominating U.S. Middle East studies programs;
• Demanding the right to practice shariah in segregated Muslim enclaves;
• Demanding recognition of shariah in non-Muslim spheres;
• Confronting and denouncing Western society, laws, and traditions; and
• Demanding that shariah replace Western law. Note that many of the foregoing techniques entail, in one way or another, influencing and neutralizing the American government at all levels.
15) Penetration of the US Government: A Case Study
Ikhwan Operative Gains Access Through Clinton Administration
One of the most successful Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in support of the phased plan that has been uncovered to date involved arguably the Ikhwan’s preeminent figure in America during the 1990s: Abdurahman Alamoudi. His is a tale of a sustained effort to penetrate and compromise both Democratic and Republican administrations and their partisan organizations.
Alamoudi immigrated from Eritrea in 1979 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1996. During the 1990s, he parlayed his role as founder and executive director of the American Muslim Council (AMC) and his involvement with nearly two-dozen other Muslim organizations in this country into entrée to the White House itself.
This access afforded Alamoudi various opportunities for mounting influence operations against the Clinton administration. According to multiple sources, in 1995, Alamoudi helped President Clinton and the ACLU develop a presidential guideline entitled “Religious Expression in Public School.” In November of that year, Alamoudi and 23 other Muslim leaders met with President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
On December 8, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, met with Alamoudi and several other AMC Board members. On February 8, 1996, First Lady Hillary Clinton penned a newspaper column based on talking points provided by Alamoudi. Later that month, Mrs. Clinton asked AMC to draw up a guest list for a reception marking the end of Ramadan that was to be held at the White House.
Alamoudi also parlayed his access at the highest levels of the U.S. government into the lead role in establishing the Muslim Chaplain Program for the Department of Defense, and then serving as the certifying authority for Muslim chaplains serving U.S. servicemen and women. He was also the founder and leader of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC).
In 1993, the Defense Department certified AMAFVAC as one of two organizations (the other was the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) authorized to approve and endorse Muslim chaplains.
From about 1993 to 1998, the Pentagon would retain Alamoudi on an unpaid basis to nominate and approve Muslim chaplain candidates for the U.S. military. Among the chaplains Alamoudi hired was James Yee, who was arrested in 2003 by the U.S. government on charges he was supporting the jihadis detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Muslim men working with Yee at Guantanamo, uniformed and contract employees (linguists), were all convicted on charges including mishandling classified information and espionage.
Infiltrating Republican activists and the Bush Administration
In 1998, Alamoudi provided at least $20,000 in checks enabling Republican activist Grover Norquist to establish what would become a Muslim Brotherhood front organization targeted at penetrating GOP circles and the campaign of then-Governor George W. Bush.
The new entity was called the Islamic Free Market Institute (better known as the Islamic Institute, or II). Alamoudi also detailed his long-time deputy, Khaled Saffuri, to serve as II’s first executive director, with Norquist as the Chairman of the Board.
As a result of these connections, Alamoudi was among a group of Muslim Brotherhood operatives who were invited on May 1, 2000 to meet with Bush in the Texas governor’s mansion. Saffuri was designated the Bush campaign’s Muslim outreach coordinator and Norquist assisted another prominent Brother, Sami al-Arian, to obtain a commitment from Candidate Bush that, if elected, he would prohibit the use of classified intelligence evidence in deportation proceedings. This was a priority for al-Arian since his brother-in-law was being held at the time by federal immigration authorities on the basis of such evidence.
After the election, a member of the Islamic Institute’s board of directors has myriad and longstanding connections to other Muslim Brotherhood organizations, Suhail Khan, was appointed to be the gatekeeper for the Muslim community in the White House Office of Public Liaison. Such relationships and placements afforded the Ikhwan unprecedented opportunities for influence operations against the U.S. government, especially after 9/11.
‘We are all supporters of Hamas’
Unfortunately for Alamoudi, his own ability directly to exploit such opportunities had by that time been irreparably damaged by his appearance at an anti-Israel rally outside the White House in October 2000. On that occasion, he carelessly gave the game away, when he declared on video:
“I have been labeled … as being a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supporters of Hamas here? [Roars of approval from the crowd.] We are all supporters of Hamas. [More roars.] I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah. [More roars.]”Alamoudi arrested as part of assassination plot
Then, in 2003, Alamoudi was arrested at Heathrow Airport (UK) on his way back from Libya with $340,000 in cash given to him by Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi for jihad. The money was to be used to underwrite a plot involving two U.K.-based al Qaeda operatives intending to assassinate Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Alamoudi was extradited to the United States where, in the Eastern District of Virginia, he pled guilty to and was convicted of terrorism-related charges. He was proven to be a senior al Qaeda financier, who moved at least $1 million dollars to the terrorist organization. Alamoudi had also been caught on recorded conversations supporting acts of terrorism, terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah, and clearly stated his objective of making America a Muslim nation. Alamoudi is now serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison.
Before his fall, Abdurahman Alamoudi was one of the leaders of the global Islamic Movement and one of its most successful influence operatives. His arrest and conviction should have sent shock waves through the U.S. intelligence community, particularly its counterintelligence units, since Alamoudi’s blown cover provided a reality check on the extent of shariah’s stealth jihad in this country, and how badly we have been penetrated.
Here was, after all, proof that an al Qaeda and Hamas operative had enjoyed access to the most senior levels of the American government. Thanks to that access, he was allowed – among other things – to create and run the program for selecting and placing members of his team to proselytize as Muslim chaplains in what can be the two most lucrative target populations for jihadist recruiters: the U.S. military and imprisoned felons.
Far from regarding the Alamoudi revelations as a wake-up call, however, administrations of both parties transferred his responsibilities for the chaplains to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in this country.
In the absence of a serious effort to understand the true nature of shariah and the determined campaign being mounted to insinuate it into this country, together with an aggressive counter-intelligence operation aimed at defeating such influence and penetration operations, it is predictable that the next Alamoudi will be able to do vastly more damage than did the original.
16) Mapping the Muslim Brotherhood in America
The “process of settlement” outlined in the Explanatory Memorandum and in published Muslim Brotherhood doctrine, such as Toward a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy and Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in American Perspective has been operationalized in the United States by one MB-related front group after another, starting with the very first, the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and continuing to the present day.
As noted earlier, through this process, the Muslim Brotherhood has, as a matter of historical fact, established, built and maintained control over most of the prominent Muslim organizations in America.
The identified MB fronts and the other, as-yet-unknown groups share an inherent enmity for the United States and the West. It follows that when any friendly entity – to include federal, state and local law enforcement or intelligence units in the United States, other public officials, media organizations and religious institutions – works with individuals representing a self-described “Muslim” group, there is the probability those with whom such outreach is being conducted and the group with whom it is being undertaken, are actually hostile to the United States.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s own Explanatory Memorandum identifies the following groups under the heading “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends”:
- • Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
- • Muslim Student Association (MSA)
- • The Muslim Communities Association (MCA)
- • The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS)
- • The Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE)
- • Islamic Medical Association (IMA)
- • Islamic Teaching Center (ITC)
- • North American Islamic Trust (NAIT)
- • Foundation for International Development (FID)
- • Islamic Housing Cooperative (IHC)
- • Islamic Centers Division (ICD)
- • American Trust Publications (ATP)
- • Audio-Visual Center (AVC)
- • Islamic Book Service (IBS)
- • Muslim Businessmen Association (MBA)
- • Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA)
- • ISNA Fiqh Committee (IFC)
- • ISNA Political Awareness Committee (IPAC)
- • Islamic Education Department (IED)
- • Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA)
- • Malasian (sic) Islamic Study Group (MISG)
- • Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
- • United Association for Studies and Research (UASR)
- • Occupied Land Fund (OLF)
- • Mercy International Association (MIA)
- • Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
- • Baitul Mal Inc (BMI)
- • International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT)
- • Islamic Information Center (IIC)
To Know the Front Groups is to Know the Networks
The Team B report shows that the ties of such groups to the Muslim Brotherhood can nonetheless be readily established by the involvement in their founding and/or operations of individuals associated with other Ikhwan fronts.
In order to be considered by the Muslim Brotherhood to be one of “our organizations” or an “organization of our friends,” all of these entities had to have embraced the aforementioned Ikhwan creed: “Allah is our goal; the Messenger is our guide: the Koran is our law; Jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our inspiration.”
As we have seen, the actualization of the Muslim Brotherhood creed demands the triumph of shariah globally and the re-establishing the caliphate on a global basis. This end-state will entail subordinating to shariah the governing system of non-Islamic nations like ours (and Muslim nations not currently adhering to Islamic law) and, in due course, the destruction of such alternatives.
Pre-violent Jihad
The inherently seditious nature of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda and its incompatibility with Western civilization and governments is typically obscured in the Free World by the assertion that the Ikhwan only seeks to achieve its objectives through non-violent means. As a result, the Brothers, their allies and proxies are all-too-often considered to be acceptable and reliable partners for governments seeking to counter violent jihad.
Such openness to the Ikhwan is astounding not only because of the toxic nature of the MB’s ambitions.
It also ignores the fact that Brotherhood doctrine recognizes that violence must be used when needed to achieve shariah’s supremacist objectives. For example, the Brotherhood bylaws call for Muslims to “fight the tyrants” when necessary to establish the Islamic State, indicating violence is approved when the time is appropriate.
Even more dispositive is the fact that the U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, Hamas, was formed out of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, jihadi organizations such as al Qaeda sprang out of the Muslim Brotherhood and have among their leaders senior Muslim Brothers.
These realities underscore the inadvisability of any “outreach” to American Muslim organizations that espouse shariah, whether or not they acknowledge a tie to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Part 17 is devoted to “Understanding the Depth of Muslim Brotherhood control of the shariah offensive in the West.”
17) Who’s Who in the American Muslim Brotherhood
This section of the Team B II serialization discusses two of the most worrisome of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the United States: the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
Muslim Students Association
As we have seen, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) was the first Muslim Brotherhood entity formed in the United States at the University of Illinois, Urbana campus in 1962-63. The MSA has chapters at nearly every major college and university campus in the United States making it the most visible and influential of all Islamic student organizations in North America. The MSA is a point of recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood and for jihadis.The MSA’s own website previously noted that all major Muslim organizations in America grew out of the MSA.
These references have been removed from the MSA website, however. It is nonetheless indisputable that among the MSA’s offshoots are: the Islamic Medical Association (IMA), the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
While presenting itself as just another moderate Muslim group working on college campuses, MSA in fact promotes a shariah-based Islamic agenda dedicated to spreading Islam among North American youth by way of an aggressive dawa program. The ideology that underpins the MSA mission is the same ideology as defines the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. The MSA perspective is global and its aspirations are closely linked to those of the “global Islamic Movement.”
A succession of MSA leaders have made statements condemning the United States and/or calling for the killing of all Jews. Several MSA presidents have publicly supported jihad, and in the case of at least one, Omar Hammami from Alabama, have actually participated in violent jihad overseas. MSA members routinely express admiration and support for terror organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah and for the foundational leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood such as Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb.
In addition to promoting aggressive political influence and intimidation operations like “Israel Apartheid Week” on many campuses, MSA chapters are also focal points for efforts to impose shariah blasphemy rules or otherwise control speech. To this end, members frequently engage in disruptive actions aimed at preventing speakers from exposing students to information about shariah Islam, jihad and their targets – notably, the United States and Israel – that would be deemed “offensive” or otherwise contrary to the ambitions of the Ikhwan.
Islamic Society of North America
In 1980, the Muslim Brotherhood created the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) “to be a nucleus for the Islamic Movement in North America.” From the time of its founding in Plainfield, Indiana, ISNA has been run by the senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Movement in the United States and Canada, and has emerged as the largest of the MB fronts in North America.ISNA’s prominent role in the Ikhwan operations in America is suggested by its listing at the top of the Explanatory Memorandum’s roster of its front groups. The subheading on that list is: “Imagine if they all march according to one plan.” ISNA was established as an umbrella organization to help foster such a plan, and ensure that all MB organizations “march” according to it.
Over the past three decades, thanks largely to its numerous chapters, its “over 300 community and professional organizations in North America,” its substantial resources and aggressive influence operations, the U.S. government has accorded ISNA considerable stature as its leading “educational” and “outreach” partner in the Muslim-American community.
For agencies with national and homeland security responsibilities like the White House, the FBI, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments and the intelligence community to confer such legitimacy on ISNA is all the more astounding given the results of the aforementioned successful prosecution of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the Northern District of Texas in 2008.
ISNA and the Terror Funding Trial. As the Team B II report discusses elsewhere, the trial of the Texas-based “Holy Land Foundation” was the largest involving Hamas and terrorism financing in U.S. history. In the course of its proceedings, the Justice Department established ISNA’s role as a leading Muslim Brotherhood organization and its hostility to U.S. interests.
In particular, thanks to evidence of financial transactions between ISNA and Hamas that the government introduced, along with scores of Muslim Brotherhood documents, it became clear that the Islamic Society of North America directly supports Hamas and its operations. On the basis of such evidence, ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorist-financing trial.
ISNA, along with the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT, see part 20 of this serialization), filed a motion with the court to be removed from the un-indicted co-conspirator list. On July 10, 2008, the government filed a response to ISNA/NAIT’s request. It is worth citing relevant parts of that response at some length:
“Although the indictment in this case charges the seven named individual defendants and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, it will be obvious that the defendants were not acting alone…. The defendants were operating in concert with a host of individuals and organizations dedicated to sustaining and furthering the Hamas movement. Several of the individuals who hold leading roles in the operation of Hamas are referenced by name in the indictment.The judge ruled against ISNA and NAIT, left them on the list of Unindicted Co-conspirators in the HLF trial and permitted the public release of that list.
“A list of unindicted coconspirators is attached to this trial brief. (Attachment A).
“The object of the conspiracy was to support Hamas. The support will be shown to have taken several forms, including raising money, propaganda, proselytizing, recruiting, as well as many other types of actions intended to continue to promote and move forward Hamas’s agenda of the destruction of the State of Israel and establishment of an Islamic state in its place. (p. 5)
“ Attachment A to the Trial Brief listed 246 different individuals and organizations as either unindicted co-conspirators and/or joint venture partners under one or more headings:
“(1) individuals/entities who are and/or were part of the Hamas social infrastructure in Israel and the Palestinian territories;
“(2) individuals who participated in fundraising activities on behalf of HLF;
“(3) individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations;
“(4) individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the Palestine Chapter of the International Muslim Brotherhood;
“(5) individuals who are and/or were leaders of Hamas inside the Palestinian territories;
“(6) individuals who are and/or were leaders of the Hamas Political Bureau and/or Hamas leaders and/or representatives in various Middle Eastern/African countries;
“(7) individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood;
“(8) individuals/entities that are and/or were part of the Global Hamas financing mechanism;
“(9) individuals/entities that [Hamas official Mousa Abu] Marzook utilized as a financial conduit on behalf and/or for the benefit of Hamas;
“(10) individuals who were HLF employees, directors, officers and/or representatives; and
“(11) Hamas members whose families received support from the HLF through the Hamas social infrastructure. (p. 5)
“ISNA and NAIT are listed in the attachment under the seventh heading, individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. (p. 6)
“During the trial, the Court entered into evidence a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking ISNA and NAIT to the HLF and its principals; the Islamic Association for Palestine and its principals; the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and its Palestine Committee, headed by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook; and the greater Hamas affiliated conspiracy described in the Government’s case-in-chief.” (p 7)
“The evidence introduced at trial, for example, established that ISNA and NAIT were among those organizations created by the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood. (p 12)
“ISNA and NAIT, in fact, shared more with HLF than just a parent organization. They were intimately connected with the HLF and its assigned task of providing financial support to Hamas. (p 13).”
The Facts Create Questions that Demand Answers
Based on the facts presented herein, several questions demand answers: Why are ISNA and its leadership still given access to the U.S. government at the highest levels, to include the White House, the intelligence community, the military, and other obvious targets for Muslim Brotherhood influence operations?
For example, ISNA President Ingrid Mattson was invited to attend President Obama’s 2010 Iftar dinner where he announced his support for the Ground Zero mega-mosque.
Why are ISNA subsidiaries still the certifying authority for all Muslim Chaplains at the Department of Defense and within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons? Why was ISNA selected to provide training for U.S. Army senior enlisted men and officers to orient them about Islam prior to their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan?
Why has ISNA become the U.S. government’s leading partner for “outreach” to the Muslims of America – including for the FBI and DHS, the very organizations mandated by law to protect and defend us from domestic enemies?
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