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Rethinking “Radicalization”: Dutch Researcher Discusses What Makes a Homegrown Terrorist

December 26, 2017

Rethinking “Radicalization”: Dutch Researcher Discusses What Makes a Homegrown Terrorist, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, December 26, 2017

(Terrorism is obviously bad and we need to do our best to prevent it. However, my principal concern is about political Islam, aka Islamism. Islamists often do not need to engage in terrorism; they can rely instead on whatever democratic processes are available to Islamise nations. Look at Canada, for example. “Islamophobia” laws restrict free speech about Islam and its anti-democracy, pro-theocracy tendencies. In America, CAIR fights “Islamophobia” as well as organizations which want Muslims to respect American law. Here’s video on America and Sharia law.

(– DM)

On Nov. 2, 2004, Dutch filmmaker and writer Theo van Gogh left his home and set off to work, riding his bicycle as he did most days through the quiet streets of Amsterdam.

Minutes later, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim angered by van Gogh’s writings and films about radical Islam, fired eight shots at the filmmaker. As Van Gogh stumbled, Bouyeri shot again, then stabbed him with a butcher knife, piercing straight through his chest. Then he sliced across Theo van Gogh’s throat in a failed effort to decapitate him before stabbing him one final time. It was, as many later said, the country’s 9/11, the arrival of Islamist terrorism to the tranquil tulip fields and calm canals of the Netherlands.

Mohammed Bouyeri acted alone, but he was a leading member of what later became known as the Hofstadgroep (Hofstad Group), a loosely-knit circle of Dutch Muslim youth from Amsterdam and The Hague with extremist ideas and half-hatched plans to execute terrorist attacks around the country. In the days following Van Gogh’s death, police raided a home in The Hague, arresting seven Hofstadgroep members after a standoff lasting several hours.

Their trials, and the trials of other members, have shaped much of the Dutch understanding of Islamist terrorism both for citizens and law enforcement. Above all, the cases showed definitively that European Muslims could be radicalized, and that even Muslims raised in the West had become a threat.

In fact, as Bart Schuurman, a research Fellow at the International Centre for Counterterrorism in The Hague, argues in his upcoming book, Becoming A European Homegrown Terrorist, the Hofstadgroep case ultimately came to define homegrown jihadism in Europe. Thanks, too, to the work of Dutch journalists Janny Groen and Annieke Kranenberg, studies into the women in and around the Hofstadgroep have provided important insights into the radicalization of Muslim women in the West, and their role in homegrown jihad.

For his research, Schuurman spoke with Hofstadgroep members and studied the police interviews with the Hofstadgroep to better understand their actions and thought processes.

On the eve of the publication of his new book, Schuurman talked to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) about his findings, what they say about the making of a homegrown terrorist, and how his research can help bring new insights to the fight against Islamist terror.

Abigail R. Esman: The Hofstadgroep was limited to the Netherlands, and the group preceded (by over a decade) the rise of ISIS and even social media. How is knowledge about that group still useful for a more global and more contemporary analysis of home-grown terrorism?

Bart Schuurman: The Hofstadgroep is indeed an older case as it was active between 2002 and 2005. As such, it was part of what could be called the first wave of European homegrown jihadism. I argue that insights we can derive from how and why people became involved in the Hofstadgroep are still relevant now for several reasons. First of all, like the current foreign fighter phenomenon, the Hofstadgroep’s extremist inner-circle also initially tried to join jihadist insurgencies overseas. Only when this failed, did some of them begin to consider and plan terrorist attacks in the Netherlands. Secondly, the Hofstadgroep was not a phenomenon unique to the Netherlands, but one example of the broader phenomenon of European homegrown jihadism that is still with us today. While much has changed in terms of context, such as a shift in focus from Afghanistan to Syria, many of the underlying dynamics driving involvement in this type of terrorism remain unaltered. I think that the field of terrorism studies sometimes has the unwarranted tendency to see every development in the terrorist threat as heralding a fundamentally ‘new’ situation to which our previous explanations and theories are of little to no utility. I’d argue it’s exactly the opposite; especially because it’s relatively easier to access high-quality data on older cases, they are a great resource for informing the ongoing debate on what can motivate (and prevent!) people from becoming involved in terrorism.

ARE: Are there any other groups like the Hofstadgroep today, either in the Netherlands or elsewhere?

BS: In ideological terms, the Hofstadgroep could be broadly characterized as driven by an extremist Salafi-Jihadist worldview and focused on waging a ‘defensive’ jihad against what they saw as Western geopolitical aggression and the threat posed by heresy and apostasy. I think it’s safe to say that such views have continued to be embraced by Islamist extremists in the Netherlands and Europe more broadly, although it is difficult to assess the scale on which this has occurred. But it is crucial to distinguish between holding radical or extremist views and becoming involved in any capacity in terrorist violence. The vast majority of radicals never cross this threshold. What I think we see today in Europe is that relatively small numbers of (would-be) jihadist terrorists continue to pose a serious threat and that they are embedded in a broader ‘radical milieu’ from which they draw support. While this threat is a very real one, I think it is important to keep in mind that these individuals and groups are not representative of the Muslim community as a whole. A key observation that we sometimes miss, is that Muslims are in fact the number one victims of groups like [ISIS] and al-Qaeda when we look at the violence in countries like Syria and Iraq.

ARE: What did you learn about the personalities of those likely to join such groups, or to act as lone wolves? (Is there also a similarity between those who join groups and lone wolf attackers?)

BS: Most researchers would agree that there is no such thing as a terrorist profile, at least not one of any practical utility. Most terrorists are relatively young and most are male; beyond that considerably diversity has been observed in terms of socioeconomic background, family obligations etcetera. None of which means that personality factors cannot play a role at all. In fact, things like past involvement in violence or previous socialization to extremist beliefs can be important parts of the explanation for why someone became involved in terrorism. Perhaps the most important thing that I took away from my Hofstadgroep study in terms of the influence of personality factors, is that extremism and terrorism cannot simply be explained as stemming from psychopathology or deprivation. On the whole, group-based terrorists are not driven (primarily) by mental health problems or lack of opportunities to pursue alternative career paths in society. The uncomfortable truth is that, for many of these individuals, involvement in terrorism is a more or less conscious decision. An interesting finding about lone actors is that many of them did not ‘go it alone’ for tactical considerations, but because they failed to join or form a terrorist cell of their own. This may tie into the higher prevalence of mental health problems among lone actor extremists, which can make them appear untrustworthy or simply disagreeable and therefore prevent them from being truly accepted by other extremists.

ARE: Is there a difference between those who join local groups and the lone wolf types who are influenced by ISIS and Al Qaeda? That is to say, do they see the larger terror groups in the same way Hofstadgroep members saw their own group?

BS: Again, while some lone actors (Unabomber, Breivik) make a conscious decision to operate alone, many would have liked to join others but failed to do so. But both lone actors and participants in groups like Hofstad are generally heavily-influenced by the larger radical milieu of which they are a part; taking inspiration from videos, writings, speeches etc. of leading figures and groups.

ARE: You distinguish between radicalization and fanaticism in your work. Can you explain what these are?

BS: I have been critical of the concept of radicalization for a long time. Although it has become a household term since 2004, it doesn’t really explain how and why people become involved in extremism and terrorism. Radicalization suffers from lack of a clear definition and it is inherently subjective. A century ago, those in favor of extending voting rights to women were often labeled radicals by their opponents. Few would (hopefully!) dare make that same argument now. Not only do our views of what is ‘radical’ change over time, but by associating radicalization so closely with terrorism, we have lumped together activists who, although we may disagree with them, are essentially advocating change while remaining within the limits of the liberal democratic order, with individuals and groups committed to the use of extreme violence to get what they want. If that isn’t problematic enough, most interpretations of radicalization continue to overstate the degree to which beliefs influence behavior. Saying someone was ‘radicalized’ prior to committing a terrorist act doesn’t really help us understand that act; there are millions of people with radical or extremist views and the vast majority of them never become involved in terrorism in any way, shape or form. So while extremist beliefs are usually an important component of the overall picture of why people commit terrorism, they are insufficient by themselves to function as an explanation. For that reason, I think we should stop talking about radicalization and instead study the pathways to lead to involvement in terrorism, as this implicitly draws attention to the multitude of factors that constitute such processes. Fanaticism struck me as a more useful concept because, as it was developed by British psychologist Max Taylor, it recognizes that not all ‘fanatics’ will act on their beliefs but stipulates conditions under which they are more likely to do so. “Fanaticism” is thus able to overcome, at least to some degree, “radicalization’s” greatest shortcoming; namely, why the vast majority of radicals never become terrorists.

ARE: Why are fanatics more likely to become violent?

BS: It is more a question of when, rather than why. Fanaticism (or radicalism, if you will) is more likely to actually lead to violence when 1) the beliefs adhered to are distinctly militant; 2) when the fanatic/radical also holds to millenarian views, such as that the apocalypse is nigh and can be hastened by the individual believer; and 3) (to me most importantly) when the radical/fanatic is not exposed to contrarian views that can challenge his/her extremist convictions or inject some grey into a black/white world-view.

ARE: You also indicate that the Hofstadgroep members were less concerned with creating change than with making a statement about their own Islamic identity. In a way, it seems you are saying it was more about themselves than about the world. That’s an interesting perspective for me, because it parallels my own ideas about terrorists being narcissists, and I wonder if this isn’t in fact true of other terrorists and terror groups – not just Islamist. Is this a view or an approach to terrorism we have overlooked? Maybe we’ve been missing the real picture. Or is it some of both?

BS: I am always a bit careful using terms like narcissism because people can then be quick to pathologize such statements. But there is definitely something interesting going on in terms of identity. A key question for me is always; why would anyone join a terrorist group? The most likely outcomes are death or a life in prison. Now, while jihadists (at least profess to) want to die for their beliefs, terrorism has a much longer and broader history than Islamist extremism alone. There have been many secular terrorist groups who were not keen to go to an afterlife. So, what does terrorism offer that can make some people takes these risks? A large part of the answer lies, I believe, in the attractions of group membership. Things like status within a particular community, the notion of being part of something grandiose and important, the feeling of living an important and exciting life, the comradeship formed under fire, these are key factors binding people to terrorist groups, whether we’re talking about [ISIS], the IRA or the Italian Red Brigades. I think it would be great to delve more deeply into such factors in future research.

ARE: Finally: How can your research help counterterrorism analysts and law enforcement going forward?

BS: I hope that my work will be able make a contribution to the work of counterterrorism policymakers and practitioners in two ways. First of all, by providing a unique primary-sources based account of how and why involvement in a key example of European homegrown jihadist group occurred, I hope to contribute to their subject-matter expertise. More importantly, I hope that my findings will challenge counterterrorism professionals to keep critically re-examining the assumptions about such processes that they use to guide their own work.

Categories: Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist organizations
Tags: Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist organizations

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I react to the latest attack in NYC near Times Square this morning 12.11.2017

December 12, 2017

I react to the latest attack in NYC near Times Square this morning 12.11.2017, Islamic Forum For Democracy via YouTube

Categories: Islamic radicalization, Islamist infiltration, Islamist infiltration in America, Islamist objectives, Islamist terror groups, Islamists in the West, New York City terror attack, Zuhdi Jasser
Tags: Islamic radicalization, Islamist infiltration, Islamist infiltration in America, Islamist objectives, Islamist terror groups, Islamists in the West, New York City terror attack, Zuhdi Jasser

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Brigitte Gabriel and Dave Rubin: Terrorism, The Muslim Brotherhood, and Linda Sarsour

July 9, 2017

Brigitte Gabriel and Dave Rubin: Terrorism, The Muslim Brotherhood, and Linda Sarsour via YouTube, May 19, 2017

(The transition of Lebanon from a vibrant homogeneous society into an Islamist state where Muslims, formerly friends of Christians and Jews, became violent enemies — about five minutes into the video — bodes ill for much of Europe. Although this video was posted on YouTube on May 19th, some of the content suggests that the interview occurred significantly earlier. — DM

Categories: "Feminists", Activism, American values, Brigitte Gabriel, Freedom of religion, Freedom of speech, Islam and homosexuals, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror attacks, Islamist terror groups, Islamist victimhood, Islamists and freedom of speech, Islamists in America, Israel and Lebanon, Lebanon, Linda Sarsour, Useful idiots
Tags: Activism, American values, Brigitte Gabriel, Feminists, Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, Islam and homosexuals, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror attacks, Islamist terror groups, Islamist victimhood, Islamists and freedom of speech, Islamists in America, Israel and Lebanon, Lebanon, Linda Sarsour, Useful idiots

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Bazian Uses Islamist Convention to Push “Islamophobia” Scare

May 5, 2017

Bazian Uses Islamist Convention to Push “Islamophobia” Scare, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, May 5, 2017

Bazian’s effort to accuse “Islamophobes” of a racist clash of civilizations at the MAS-ICNA conference and on other occasions distracts from the Islamists’ stated desire to supplant Western civilization.

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University of California, Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian has made a career out of demonizing critics as Islamophobes and flipping the script, arguing jihad is not the problem, but its critics are. He accuses opponents of promoting a type of McCarthyism and a racist clash of civilizations against Muslims.

“…Islamophobia comes in as a way to rationalize a clash of civilizations, using cultural markers as a way of constructing difference,” Bazian said in a speech last month at the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) joint conference with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held in Baltimore. “Let me say the following: Cultural racism is another signpost for biological racism.”

Bazian’s anti-Semitism runs deep. As a San Francisco State University (SFSU) student in the late 1980s and early 1990s he campaigned against Hillel, the student Jewish organization. He allegedly participated in an assault on the SFSU campus newspaper, The Golden Gator, claiming it was filled with “Jewish spies,” a 2011 Campus Watch report said. Bazian also allegedly worked to prevent a Jewish student from being appointed to the Student Judicial Council. He also served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), which was aligned with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Bazian has a long association with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to isolate Israel. He helped found Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in 2001 as an outgrowth of GUPS; SJP is known for its pro-Hamas stance and anti-Semitic acts such as disrupting an on-campus Holocaust remembrance event at Northwestern University. In recent years, Bazian has served as chairman of the national board of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). It is closely connected with groups that comprised the Muslim Brotherhood’s defunct anti-Israel network in the United States called the Palestine Committee. Bazian also raised money for KindHearts, a Hamas front whose assets were frozen by the U.S. government in 2006.

Bazian’s Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project that he founded in 2009 churns out academic papers through its Islamophobia Studies Journal that blames the West for terrorism. He also helped found Zaytuna College, the first Muslim liberal arts college in America.

For Bazian, screaming “Islamophobia” is a way to build a smokescreen against inconvenient truths when debating the facts about Islamist aggression.

Some in the Islamic community, such as California Imam Abu Laith Luqman Ahmad, contend the entire concept of Islamophobia is about shirking responsibility.

“By declaring [Islamophobia], the number one threat to Islam and Muslims in the United States, we effectively bypass the central doctrines of self accountability, and moral fortitude; principles upon which our faith is founded,” Ahmad wrote in The Lotus Tree Blog in 2010. “The sooner we wake up and take an intrepid and honest look at ourselves, the better.”

Bazian’s hosts for his recent speech have their own ties to international Islamist movements.

Prosecutors describe MAS as the “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., and it has been alleged to have financial ties to Hamas. ICNA retains a strong spiritual connection with Islamist pioneer Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, founder of the radical South Asian Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami. In his book Jihad in Islam, Maududi argues that Muslims should destroy “all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it.” ICNA’s 2010 Member’s Hand Book advocates the “struggle for Iqamat-ad-Deen,” or the establishment of Islam in its totality, “in this land.”

In his MAS-ICNA remarks, Bazian specifically named Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson, Pamela Geller, David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes as drivers of the “Islamophobic industry” dedicated to preserving Israel’s interests.

Playing off the foundations of Islam, Bazian defined the “five pillars of Islamophobia” starting with the government’s “constant war on terrorism that defines it as a war on Islamic terrorism.” He misleadingly cited data to argue that Muslims are responsible for only 4 percent of terrorism in the United States and Europe. He did not cite a source for his data, but did note that it covered a period ending in 1995 – before al-Qaida, ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and other Islamist terrorist movements that have recruited westerners and attacked Western targets.

Other “pillars” Bazian mentioned include the counter-jihad movement, neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists. But Bazian’s emphasis on “Islamophobes” is to be expected. One cannot expect to attract funding for an Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project without concocting the frightening specter of “Islamophobes.”

Bazian similarly denounced Emerson, Pipes and Geller following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings for connecting the bombings to jihad before the Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the attacks were identified.

“…[The] crime of the terrorist is immediate, while that of the Islamophobes is long-lasting, for it creates and impresses on our collective public mind the logic of hate and racism …,” Bazian wrote in an academic paper called “Boston Bombing, Islamophobia and Sudden Ignorance Syndrome.”

But this was no wild leap of logic. The pressure-cooker bombs used in Boston were just like those recommended by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s English language magazine, Inspire. Dhzokhar Tsarnaev later told investigators he and his brother, Tamerlan, got their idea for the bombs from the magazine.

In Bazian’s world, however, it’s Islamophobic and racist to connect violent and imperialistic interpretations of Islam to acts of terrorism today. The Tsarnaevs, indeed, were the bombers, he acknowledged. “But the Islamophobic machine committed crimes against our collective consciousness by exploiting the suffering and pain of our fellow citizens.”

Much of his MAS-ICNA speech was spent attacking Samuel Huntington’s 1993 essay, “The Clash of Civilizations?” which predicted global conflict would be driven more by cultural differences than ideology and economics.

Bazian dismisses this as a “clash of ignorance,” arguing that the past sins of white Western Christians are more important to discuss than jihadist terror.

“Bernard Lewis’ question about Islam of ‘What Went Wrong?’ should be asked in relation to European history with emphasis on the Inquisition, genocide of the Natives in the Americas, the European Trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization, 8 Apartheid South Africa, WWI and WWII, with the good White Aryan Christian Europeans responsible for the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons against civilians recorded in history to this day,” Bazian wrote.

Then as now, Bazian charged that “Islamophobes” relished in a clash of civilizations.

“It’s interesting that repeated aggressions by Islamists, both violent and non-violent [including Bazian’s speech] don’t count for anything, while criticism of Islamists is used to say that the Bill of Rights is being rescinded,” Pipes told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “That’s highly untenable considering that we’re not the cause of jihad.”

Islamophobia has nothing to do with misunderstanding Islam or Muslims integrating into Western societies, Bazian said at the MAS-ICNA convention. It’s about protecting Western dominance over the rest of the world.

“So often [what] you get with debate and discussion, immediately the Islamophobes who jumps in – ‘well Islam is not a race.’ Well, again, race is a socially constructed category, but the directions of how people are racialized could be for a number of areas,” Bazian said. “You could be racialized because of your language; you could be racialized because of your skin tone; you could be racialized because of your religion.”

Bazian’s cultural racism concept is a flawed one, said American Islamic Forum for Democracy founder and President Zuhdi Jasser. Islam is a belief system. It cannot be treated as a monolithic entity exempt from criticism.

“If you are going to believe that Islam cannot be debated and cannot be reformed, and cannot be changed, the bottom line is you have to make it into a racial identity,” Jasser said. “That’s why Islamists are wedded … to the idea of Islam as a single tribal identity that is defined by the leaders of that tribe who are imams, clerics or theocrats.”

Islamists then use this tribal identity to depict Christians, Israeli Jews and the West as the enemy, Jasser said.

Fellow Muslims also can be “Islamophobes” if they disagree with Bazian. That’s the word he used to slur Muslims who supported the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, which ended the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief rule. Presumably this included Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s most important clerical institution, who blessed Morsi’s ouster.

When it comes to aggressive clash of civilizations rhetoric coming from Islamists, Bazian turns a blind eye. He chose to write for UCLA’s newsmagazine Al-Talib in the late 1990s and early 2000s despite the fact that Al-Talib regularly featured pro-jihadist articles. For example, an article he wrote in the March 1999 issue appeared along with a piece praising Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

The July 1999 edition contained an editorial titled “Jihad in America” that criticized calling Osama bin Laden a terrorist. Bin Laden, it said, was a “freedom fighter” who spoke out against oppressors.

By that time, bin Laden had publicly declared war on the United States, “Jews and Crusaders.” That fatwa invoked the Quran to declare that killing Americans “an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…” The al-Qaida suicide bombing attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place the year before Bazian’s Al-Talib article.

Bazian could have opted to stop writing for the newsmagazine after the pro-terrorist articles were published, yet he chose to submit articles in Al-Talib’s September 1999 issue and again in Al-Talib‘s March 2000 issue.

“I think he is a classical civilizational Islamist supremacist,” Jasser said, “meaning that until he is caught and exposed on various positions he’ll do whatever possible to advance the concept that where Muslims are a majority that an Islamic state is the best avenue for governance.”

Islamists love clash of civilizations rhetoric because they view the world in terms of the Land of Islam and the Land of War ruled by non-Muslims, Jasser said.

Bazian’s effort to accuse “Islamophobes” of a racist clash of civilizations at the MAS-ICNA conference and on other occasions distracts from the Islamists’ stated desire to supplant Western civilization.

Categories: Academia and Islamists, Clash of civilizations, Hatem Bazian, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic Jihad, Islamic media, Islamist "outreach" to heathen, Islamist infiltration, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist State of Iran, Islamist terror - justifications, Islamist victimhood, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Islamophobia
Tags: Academia and Islamists, Clash of civilizations, Hatem Bazian, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic Jihad, Islamic media, Islamist "outreach" to heathen, Islamist infiltration, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist State of Iran, Islamist terror - justifications, Islamist victimhood, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Islamophobia

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Threat Assessment in the Domestic War

April 26, 2017

Threat Assessment in the Domestic War, Understanding the Threat, April 24, 2017

(Please see also, PC Pentagon Caves to CAIR, Agrees to ‘Review Anti-Terror Training Program. –DM)

Our federal intelligence and law enforcement officials have little understanding of the jihadi movement, key players, intent, modus operandi, and Islamic doctrine (sharia) driving the movement. The lack of basic knowledge of this information is staggering. Local and state officials have relied on DHS and the FBI for their understanding of the threat which is why there is little understanding at the local level as well.

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An objective review of the activities of the Islamic Movement in the United States, the response from US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and the actions of local, state and federal leaders reveals the U.S. is closer to losing the war domestically than at any point in time since 9/11/2001.

Enemy Forces

The leading Muslim Brotherhood organization in the United States and the “mother ship” of their jihadi Movement – the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) – hosted their second annual “Advocacy Day” on Capitol Hill on April 18, 2017 continuing it’s overwhelming information operation against the U.S. perpetrating the lie that Islam is here to peacefully coexist with our Constitutional Republic. This hostile effort continues to produce elected officials willing to help promote the enemy’s agenda instead of doing their legal duty of identifying enemies and defending the Constitution against them.

The Diyanet Center of America, a massive Islamic Center/Mosque complex in Maryland, operates as a base for the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood’s operations with the support of local and state officials there. The Turkish MB’s influence in the US rivals the Palestinian MB’s (Hamas) presence here.

The Diyanet Turkish Islamic Center of America in Maryland

The Turkish MB is continuing its info op on state legislators by paying for trips to Turkey to show the lawmakers it is a moderate” nation. Groups like “The Holy Dove Foundation” and the “Turquoise Foundation” propagate this dangerous operation.

The most prominent Islamic organizations in the United States are a part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s network whose stated objective is to wage “civilization jihad” to establish an Islamic state under sharia (Islamic law). Many of these organizations currently work with the U.S. government, including the USCMO, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MFLA), Muslim Advocates, Muslim Students Association (MSA), Hamas (doing business as CAIR), and many others. The Muslim Brotherhood’s logistics and support network here is significant and they have penetrated all national agencies, have a broad plan and activities inside key U.S. infrastructure nodes, and control the U.S. national security decision-making process as it relates to Islamic jihad.

Anti-American hate groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and much of the media provide direct and aggressive support for these jihadi (“terrorist”) organizations. Much of the media has demonstrated no interest in doing investigative journalism on these matters, and simply regurgitates whatever information the suit-wearing jihadi groups give them.

Preparations for War: The USCMO is over-seeing the national coalescing of Islamic forces from individual mosques through regional councils to the USCMO leadership. The USCMO is solidifying communications and logistics coordination as well as assisting in preparations for confrontation. Mosques/Islamic Centers are organizing for armed confrontation with law enforcement, shoring up physical defenses where they see likely confrontation and increasing their pre-attack surveillances of churches and other targets.

Funding: Nearly 16 years after 9/11, the U.S. government still views the government of Saudi Arabia as an ally in the war, despite the fact it has been implicated time and again in funding the global jihad against the West and, specifically, the United States. Massive funding for Hamas and Hizbollah – both of which have a heavy presence in the U.S. – comes from Iran, and intelligence officials now believe the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, is being shielded by the Pakistani government in Karachi. Pakistan is another U.S. “ally.”

Our leaders still believe they can use “moderate” muslim leaders to help America find it’s way to victory – a foolish and increasingly dangerous path.

“Friendly” Forces

The impact of the enemy’s information campaign (propaganda) is significant. The recent jihadi incident in Sioux Falls, South Dakota sums up this entire war.

A sharia adherent jihadi – Ehab Jaber – went to a Christian event, filmed it live on Facebook, brandished weapons on video saying the crowd should be “terrified” and posted a number of other videos clearly indicating he had intent and desire to do harm to those who conflict with Islam. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors refused to take any action and even publicly said the perpetrator broke no laws. According to one state legislator, the Attorney General of South Dakota refused to push for a prosecution in this matter.

When massive public pressure came after the story gained international prominence last week, a SWAT team from Siuox Falls arrested Jaber last Friday (April 21). The South Dakota Attorney General is now taking credit for this effort.

Updates on the Sioux Falls story can be followed HERE.

Our federal intelligence and law enforcement officials have little understanding of the jihadi movement, key players, intent, modus operandi, and Islamic doctrine (sharia) driving the movement. The lack of basic knowledge of this information is staggering. Local and state officials have relied on DHS and the FBI for their understanding of the threat which is why there is little understanding at the local level as well.

A Solution

UTT’s experience is that none of the law enforcement professionals, military, and intelligence analysts UTT trains have ever heard the information laid out in UTT’s 3-day “Understanding and Investigating the Jihadi Network” program, yet all of them state the information is “critical” to protecting their communities.

The enemy situation represents an insurgency in the United States. Doctrinally, the response must be a counter-insurgency strategy. In a counter-insurgency, the focus of effort is at the local level. This is why the strategy for victory must be local police and citizens who understand the threat and have the courage to engage and defeat it.

This requires police be trained to understand and investigate the threat, and citizens be given the knowledge to support their police in aggressively taking care of the enemy in their communities.

UTT remains the only organization in America providing the training to do this and provide law enforcement with the tools they need to proactively find jihadis (“terrorists”), map out the jihadi network, and develop aggressive and innovative counter-strategies at the local and state level.

Citizens must move to get the attention of their sheriffs and pastors and organize to defend their communities.

Some content on this page was disabled on April 24, 2020 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Hassan Haji. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

https://wordpress.com/support/copyright-and-the-dmca/

Categories: Hamas, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist mosques, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror groups, Islamist terror strategies, Islamist vetting, Islamist victimhood, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Muslim Brotherhood
Tags: Hamas, Islamist infiltration, Islamist moral values, Islamist mosques, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror groups, Islamist terror strategies, Islamist vetting, Islamist victimhood, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Muslim Brotherhood

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PC Pentagon Caves to CAIR, Agrees to ‘Review Anti-Terror Training Program

April 26, 2017

PC Pentagon Caves to CAIR, Agrees to ‘Review Anti-Terror Training Program, Front Page Magazine, Paul Sperry, April 26, 2017

(The article does not identify the “Pentagon brass” who committed this atrocity. Are they (he?) Trump appointees or Obama hold-overs? In either event, the swamp needs lots more draining. — DM)

The Pentagon has agreed to formally review an anti-terror training program taught to special forces by a private contractor for material deemed offensive to Islam and Muslims, even though the Muslim group that lodged a complaint against the allegedly “Islamophobic” program has been accused by the Justice Department of supporting terrorism and is currently banned from outreach activities by the FBI.

The instructor hired to teach the program says he fears his class might not get a fair hearing, because military brass have assigned the review to a Muslim military chaplain who graduated from a radical Saudi-funded Islamic school raided by federal agents after 9/11 on suspicion of terrorist activities. He is their second choice for conducting the review. They had originally picked a more radical military chaplain to inspect the training materials before learning he has ties to an imam with a history of ministering to Muslims later convicted of terrorism.

Brass decided to launch the review after receiving a letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations last month demanding the commander of US Air Force Special Operations sever ties with longtime counterterrorism instructor Patrick Dunleavy, claiming his lessons “contain anti-Islamic content.” CAIR, a suspected terrorist front organization, did not cite any examples of content from his “Dynamics of International Terrorism” course to support its claim.

Dunleavy formerly served as deputy inspector general of New York State prisons’ criminal intelligence division and also worked with the NYPD’s intelligence division for several years. His five-day course, which he’s taught complaint-free at the Air Force for several years, covers homegrown terrorism and prison radicalization, which tie directly into recent ISIS cases.CAIR claims to be a “Muslim civil-rights organization,” but the feds have ID’d

CAIR and its founder as “members of the US Muslim Brotherhood,” while designating them both as “unindicted co-conspirators” in a 2008 terror-financing case involving Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a US-designated terrorist group.

“From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists,” US prosecutors charged in one court filing.

As a result, the FBI has cut off ties to CAIR until investigators “can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.”

Air Force Special Operations commander Lt. Gen. Marshal Webb received the CAIR letter and, in turn, ordered Special Operations School commandant Lt. Col. Christopher Portele to initiate a review. It is not clear if Webb is aware of CAIR’s well-documented support of terrorists. A spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Dunleavy says top brass more than likely are in the dark about the extent of CAIR’s terrorism ties. “I’m sure they don’t have a complete knowledge of CAIR or other Muslim Brotherhood groups,” he said in an interview.

He notes that the military also has a problem vetting Islamic clergy.

Air Force chaplain Walid Habash is expected to begin reviewing slides from Dunleavy’s lesson material later this week, despite the fact that he received his Islamic education from a radical Muslim Brotherhood school in Virginia. Habash’s alma mater the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, or GSISS, was raided by federal agents in 2002 as part of a post-9/11 terrorism investigation. The longtime director of GSISS — Saudi-tied Taha Jabir Alalwani — is an unindicted co-conspirator in two federal prosecutions related to terrorist financing.

Other GSISS alumni include former New York prison chaplain Warith Deen Umar, who preached that the 9-11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs and that black converts to Islam are natural recruits for carrying out future attacks against the US.

Habash has led Islamic prayer service at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp. In 2005, the FBI busted up what was described as an Islamist “spy ring” for al-Qaida at Gitmo involving other Muslim military chaplains, as well as Arabic translators, accused of “serious breaches of national security.”

Habash was substituted last week for Muslim military chaplain Rafael Lantigua after Air Force brass learned of his radical associations, apparently for the first time.

It turns out that Lantigua sits on the board of directors of an Islamist group with a radical cleric who ran a New York mosque where the terrorists who plotted to bomb synagogues in the Bronx were radicalized. That 2009 case — which touches the cleric, Imam Salahuddin Muhammad — is one of Dunleavy’s presentation slides. Muhammad, a former convicted armed bank robber, was a protege of Umar.

In addition, Lantigua recently spoke at a New York Islamic conference where cop-killer Jamil Al-Amin and Luqman Abdullah, a Detroit imam killed in a shootout with the FBI, were honored. Muhammad gave the keynote address at the February event.

Once this information came to light, and questions were raised over how impartial Lantigua, who holds the rank of captain, could be regarding the subject of Islamic radicalization in the prisons, Air Force brass began a search for a new Muslim chaplain to review Dunleavy’s lesson plan.

“The military has an ongoing problem vetting their Muslim clergy,” Dunleavy told me. “Nobody wants to touch this political powder keg.”

In a press release CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper accused Dunleavy of being an “anti-Muslim propaganda mouthpiece” with a “personal prejudice against Islam and Muslims.” The same spokesman once told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he wants the US to become a Muslim country.

“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,” Hooper said, betraying CAIR’s real agenda.

Nonetheless, CAIR has found success already in convincing law enforcement to alter training programs, including bleaching references to “Islam,” “Shariah,” “caliphate” and “jihad” and other allegedly offensive terms from state and federal anti-terrorist training materials. It has also pressured the sidelining of some instructors.

Emboldened, the group is now targeting military training curricula for censorship. Dunleavy is just the latest subject-matter expert targeted for a smear campaign.

He and other trainers chiefly blame “political correctness” for the capitulation to CAIR at the highest levels of government. Talking honestly about the violent nature of Islam, a minority religion, is taboo in Washington. It’s much safer for career advancement to apologize for it — even though officials know that sweeping the religious doctrines and motives behind growing Islamic terrorism under the rug won’t make them disappear. In fact, it will only lead to more attacks and more American victims.

“The concerted effort by groups like CAIR to remove any material from law enforcement or military training that outlines the process of Islamic radicalization is fraught with danger,” Dunleavy warned, particularly in light of the case of the Paris terrorist Karim Cheurfi.

Cheurfi, an ISIS-tied Muslim who last week fatally shot a police officer while wounding two others with an AK-47, had all the indicators outlined by Dunleavy in the material the Pentagon is now second-guessing thanks to CAIR protesting. They include: prison radicalization, exposure to radical Islamic preachers, and attraction to jihadi violence. In spite of these and other warning signs, Cheurfi escaped close monitoring by authorities. Identifying ingredients in this “radicalizing cauldron” is key to authorities stopping such jihadists, says Dunleavy, author of “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection.”

It’s also important for screening military recruits, especially now that the Pentagon has started issuing more waivers for applicants with prison records.

Dunleavy says the government is basically letting supporters of the bad guys — working on both the outside and inside — blindfold law enforcement and military personnel to the point where they can’t effectively spot the bad guys.

Indeed, his case is the latest example of how baseless charges of “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim bigotry” are used to hamstring legitimate counterterrorism efforts, which will only pave the way for more islamic terror attacks in the future.

Categories: CAIR, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist clerics, Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Military training on Islam
Tags: CAIR, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist clerics, Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Military training on Islam

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The Muslim Brotherhood, Fountain of Islamist Violence

April 4, 2017

The Muslim Brotherhood, Fountain of Islamist Violence, The Middle East Quarterly, Cynthia Farahat, April 3, 2017

(Please see also, NATO Ally Turkey Working with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. A video about the Muslim Brotherhood featuring Brigitte Gabriel is provided immediately below.

— DM)

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (third from left). An Egyptian schoolteacher from a rural town north of Cairo, Banna engaged in Islamist activities from a young age, joining a local group that intimidated and harassed Christians and non-observing Muslims in his hometown.

What to make of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)? During the Obama years, it became commonplace for the U.S. administration and its Western acolytes to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate option to “more radical” Muslim groups. Thus, for example, U.S. director of National Intelligence James Clapper incredibly described the organization as “largely secular”[1] while John Esposito of Georgetown University claimed that “Muslim Brotherhood affiliated movements and parties have been a force for democratization and stability in the Middle East.”[2]

On the other hand, in 2014, the United Arab Emirates formally designated [3] the Muslim Brotherhood and its local and international affiliates, including the U.S. based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),[4] as inter-national terrorist groups. A British government review commissioned the same year similarly asserted that

parts of the Muslim Brotherhood have a highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism. Both as an ideology and as a network it has been a rite of passage for some individuals and groups who have gone on to engage in violence and terrorism.[5]

In the United States, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) have recently introduced legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. In February 2016, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a house bill that calls on the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. In July 2016, Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) introduced the “Naming the Enemy within Homeland Security Act,” a bill that prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from funding or collaborating with organizations or individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[6]

The question is—which view is correct? Without doubt, the second one is. The Muslim Brotherhood has been a militaristic organization since its inception and has operated as a terrorist entity for almost a century. It influenced the establishment of most modern Sunni terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (GI) Hamas, and the Islamic State (ISIS). These organizations have either been founded by current or former Brotherhood members or have been directly inspired, indoctrinated, or recruited by MB members and literature. Contrary to what the MB propagates to Westerners, MB violence is not just in the past but is an ongoing activity.

Historical Background

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (1906-49), an Egyptian schoolteacher and sometime watch repairer from a small rural town north of Cairo. Reared in a deeply devout household steeped in the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence popular among Wahhabi and Salafi jihadists,[7] Banna engaged in Islamist activities from a young age, joining a local group that intimidated and harassed Christians and non-observing Muslims in his hometown.[8] He was also fascinated by secret societies, cults, and fraternal orders, which flourished in Egypt at the time, and this obsession drove him to form the Brotherhood as a fraternity cult with its own secret militia—al-Tanzim al-Khass (the Special Apparatus, also known as the Secret Apparatus)—charged with strategizing, funding, and executing military training and terror activities.[9]

During the first few decades of its existence, the Special Apparatus carried out numerous acts of political violence in Egypt, notably the 1947 assassination of Judge Ahmed Khazinder Bey and the 1948 assassination of Prime Minister Mahmoud Nuqrashi Pasha, who reportedly considered outlawing the MB.[10] At that time, according to a secret U.S. intelligence memorandum, the Brotherhood’s “commando units” were estimated to possess “secret caches of arms … reported to have 60,000 to 70,000 rifles.”[11] This military buildup was ac-companied by infiltration of the Egyptian army, including the conspiratorial group of Free Officers, who in July 1952 overthrew the monarchy in a bloodless coup.[12]

The Secret Apparatus was not only involved in assassinations but also carried out a large wave of terrorism and bombings.[13] Thus, for example, on Christmas Eve 1945 it bombed the British Club in Egypt, and in December 1946 bombed eight police stations in Cairo. Two years later, the Brotherhood bombed several Jewish homes in Cairo and many Jewish owned businesses and cinemas.[14] The Brotherhood also bombed trains in Sharqia and Ismailia, as well as the King George Hotel in Ismailia. In a 1948 raid on one of the organization’s Cairo offices, the police confiscated 165 bombs.[15]

After Banna’s assassination in 1949, Hassan Hudaybi, who succeeded him as MB general guide (al-Murshid al-Amm), claimed to have dissolved the Secret Apparatus in order to ease the government’s persecution of the movement,[16] only to be arrested in 1965 alongside other MB leaders for forming a new militia that engaged in military training with a view to assassinating President Gamal Abdel Nasser.[17] Hudaybi managed to escape with a three-year prison sentence (the MB’s foremost ideologue Sayyed Qutb was executed in 1966 together with two other leaders); his false denial of the MB’s military wing was to become a standard tactic of the Brotherhood to date.

Laying Infrastructure

This denial notwithstanding, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the formation of a number of MB terror groups under ostensibly independent banners. The first such group was Gama’at al-Muslimin, commonly known as Takfir wa-l-Hijra (Excommunication and Emigration), formed by two leaders of the Secret Apparatus released from prison: Shukri Mustafa and Sheikh Ali Ismael, brother of MB leader Fattah Ismael who was executed alongside Qutb.[18] Another terrorist group created by the Brotherhood at the time was al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (GI, the Islamic group), which was responsible for the October 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Both groups were founded by active leaders of the Brotherhood, who never claimed to have left the organization or their leadership positions therein. Indeed, in his last speech, one month before his assassination, Sadat equated the GI with the Brotherhood and expressed regret for having released many Brotherhood operatives from prison.[19]

Omar Abdel Rahman (“The Blind Sheikh”) and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

During the 1990s, the Egyptian authorities battled against a sustained wave of Islamist terrorism involving attacks on government officials and the country’s Coptic minority, the murdering of foreign tourists as well as an audacious attempt on the life of President Hosni Mubarak while he was in Ethiopia in June 1995.[20] In the same year, GI’s leader and MB spiritual authority, Omar Abdel Rahman, known as “The Blind Sheikh,” and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Abdel Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina, and in Muhammad Morsi’s first speech as Egyptian president in Tahrir Square, he called for Abdel Rahman’s release and acknowledged the sheikh’s family who was present in the audience.[21]

No less important was the formation of the movement’s International Apparatus by Banna’s son-in-law Said Ramadan. Having fled Egypt to Saudi Arabia in 1954, Ramadan moved to Geneva in 1958 where he established the International Apparatus under the guidance of Mustafa Mashour, head of the Secret Apparatus, future MB general guide, and author of its militant manifesto “Jihad Is the Way.”[22] The International Apparatus was not fully operational until the mid-1980s when Mashour, who fled Egypt after Sadat’s assassination, settled in West Germany[23] in 1986 where he reestablished the Apparatus.

The International Apparatus is not just responsible for the Brotherhood’s public operations, but is also involved in operating and funding terrorist groups responsible for attacks on American soil. Thus, for example, Chakib Ben Makhlouf, one of the most prominent leaders of the MB’s Geneva office, is also the president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. He has been described by Egyptian member of parliament and terrorism expert Abdel Rahim Ali as “one of the most dangerous operatives of the Brotherhood’s International Apparatus.”[24] Likewise, according to Egyptian general Fouad Allam, who investigated the MB’s operations in the 1960s-70s, the Geneva office funneled funds that helped establish al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.[25]

Later Influence

The International Apparatus’s most critical mission, though, has been to infiltrate, subvert, and recruit operatives from within the armies, governments, educational systems, and intelligence agencies of the MB’s targeted states, especially in the West, in what is called “civilization jihad.”

This term dates to a 1991 document titled The Explanatory Memorandum, drafted in a meeting that outlined the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic goals for North America and entered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terror funding trial in 2008—the largest terror financing case in U.S. history.[26] In 2009, five MB leaders were charged with providing material support to Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch and a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The 1980s and 1990s were the two most important decades for the “civilization jihad.” During this time, Hamas was transformed from an essentially missionary and charitable organization seeking to win Palestinian hearts and minds into a fully-fledged terror group during the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993), and the seeds were sown for the advent of al-Qaeda through the newly-formed Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK, the Services Bureau), also known as Maktab Khidamat al-Mujahidin al-Arab (the Services Bureau of Arab Jihadists) and the Afghan Services Bureau.

As jihadists flocked to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the Soviet occupation, the Brotherhood was busy running recruitment, jihadist services through its MAK offices throughout the Middle East. In 1984, MB operative Abdullah Azzam established the MAK office in Jordan.[27] Azzam’s philosophy helped establish and organize the Brotherhood’s “global jihad” movement, which earned him the alias, “The Father of Global Jihad.”[28] No less important, this philosophy inspired GI and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) to try to export their terrorism and greatly inspired Osama bin Laden, whom Azzam taught at a Saudi university.[29]

In 1985, MB operatives Abdullah Azzam (L), bin Laden, and Ayman Zawahiri (R) founded MAK in Pakistan, which evolved into al-Qaeda. The Amman MAK recruited Abu Musab Zarqawi, who founded Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, which evolved into al-Qaeda in Iraq and eventually into ISIS.

In 1985, Azzam, bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, leader of Takfir wa-l-Hijra who fled Egypt after the Sadat assassination, founded MAK in Pakistan, which subsequently evolved into al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, the Amman MAK office recruited one of the world’s most brutal terrorists of modern time, Abu Musab Zarqawi.[30] Mentored by Jordanian former MB leader Abu Muhammad Maqdisi, in 1999, Zarqawi founded Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad (Organization of Monotheism and Jihad), which six years later, evolved into al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) after Zarqawi pledged allegiance to bin Laden in late 2004. This group eventually morphed into ISIS after Zarqawi’s death in June 2006. Indeed, in a 2014 interview reported in Al-Arabiya News, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Yusuf Qaradawi admitted that ISIS leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.[31] For their part, several MB leaders publicly announced their support for ISIS, including the Qatar-based Sheikh Wagdy Ghoneim.[32]

The nature of al-Qaeda’s current relationship with the Brotherhood is somewhat unclear. While Zawahiri argued that bin Laden’s affiliation with the MB was severed in the 1980s due to differences over the anti-Soviet Afghanistan campaign,[33] this claim was discounted by Tharwat Kherbawy, the highest ranking MB member to have defected from the organization,[34] and also by evidence suggesting that the Brotherhood is still organizationally involved with al-Qaeda. Thus, for example, after Morsi’s July 2013 ouster from power, Zawahiri issued a videotaped statement on his behalf where he criticized Egyptian Salafi jihadists for not formally joining the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party to help it uphold Shari’a law.[35] In another statement, Zawahiri criticized the deposed MB president for having played politics with opponents,[36] but eventually prayed for his release and supported him while he was facing trial for inciting the killing of regime opponents and for espionage for foreign militant groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp.[37]

A Political Party or a Jihadi Group?

The Obama administration’s stubborn support for the Morsi regime and its tireless attempts to cast the MB as a moderate organization are preposterous—not only because the Brotherhood is the bedrock of some of the worst terror groups in today’s world but also because violence is endemic to the movement’s raison d’être: restoring the caliphate via violent jihad. Were the Brotherhood to give up this foundational goal, it would lose its legitimacy and sole reason for existence. This is why Banna used military terminology in structuring the MB, calling the organization “Allah’s battalion,”[38] a term used to this very day to denote the MB’s governing core; this is why the current Brotherhood leadership includes operatives who personally engaged in violent jihad and terror activities such as Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh.[39]

Osama Yassin, a former minister in Muhammad Morsi’s cabinet, revealed that members of the MB’s 95 Brigade militia engaged in the abduction, beating, and torture of “thugs” during riots leading to Mubarak’s downfall.

Furthermore, the organization’s Secret Apparatus remains intact and operational with new recruits required to undergo military training by such militias as the 95 Brigade,[40] which was established in 1995 and which played an active role in the January 2011 riots leading to Mubarak’s downfall. In a series of interviews with al-Jazeera TV, Osama Yassin, a former minister in Morsi’s cabinet, revealed that members of the brigade engaged in the abduction, beating, and torture of “thugs” and threw Molotov cocktails at their opponents.[41] Asked by an Egyptian newspaper to clarify these revelations,[42] the MB dismissed them as a joke. Still, the brigade operatives were later implicated in the killing of anti-Brotherhood protestors. In March 2014, for example, two operatives were sentenced to death after an online video clip showed them killing a teenager by throwing him from a building.[43]

According to the Brotherhood’s own standards and internal bylaws,[44] there are ten solid, unchangeable thawabit (precepts) in their organization’s bai’a (Islamic oath of allegiance) process. The fourth of these precepts is violent jihad and martyrdom,[45] which the Brotherhood states is an obligation of every individual Muslim, as well as the collective obligation of their organization.

Unfortunately, many American specialists either receive foreign funding or are otherwise oblivious to these facts and actively engage in a disinformation campaign. For example, a Brookings Institute article turned the meaning of the “fourth precept” of the Brotherhood’s bylaws on its head, stating that it stipulated that “during the process of establishing democracy and relative political freedom, the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to abide by the rules of democracy and its institutions.”[46]

Reality, of course, was quite different. When after Mubarak’s downfall the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in a sham presidential election,[47] which brought its operative Mohamed Morsi to the presidential palace, its violent [48] and undemocratic rule triggered, in short notice, mass protests throughout the country that brought millions of protestors to the streets and enabled the military to overthrow Morsi in a bloodless coup.

Islamic Reformers

Indeed, the sheer brutality of ISIS and various Brotherhood-affiliated or inspired terror groups across the Middle East has led to the advent of a mainstream Islamic reformist movement that draws on vastly more popular support than the Brotherhood itself. This unprecedented revival of a reform-oriented movement has received too little attention in the West. For example, Islam Behery, one of the movement’s heroic leaders, was incarcerated for a year for blasphemy for insulting al-Azhar University and the Sunni doctrine on his television show.[49] For two years, that show had been dedicated daily to exposing the brutality and terrorism of Sunni doctrine while offering a non-theocratic, liberal interpretation of Islam that pushes for separation of mosque and state. Behery received a presidential pardon in December 2016, which was unprecedented in Egyptian history.

Another supporter of reformation and freedom of thought is Ibrahim Issa, a popular Egyptian commentator, television host, and owner and editor-in-chief of the independent opinion newspaper Al-Maqal. Earlier this year, Issa announced that he would end his TV show due to “current events,” kindling speculation that the cancellation was related to Saudi pressure on the Egyptian regime because of Issa’s criticism of the kingdom’s violent Wahhabi sect.[50] Issa’s reformist stance has placed him on terrorist hit lists since 1992, and he has been living under tight security ever since. His opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood has made him one of the organization’s high profile targets, and in 2015, he became the subject of an official fatwa declaring him an “infidel.”[51]

Another heroic figure of Islamic reform currently facing the possibility of incarceration for blasphemy is the popular author and prominent secular figure Sayyed Qemani. His sin: stating that al-Azhar University should be designated a terrorist organization.[52] Behery, Qemani, and their like have the support of the most mainstream media figures in Egypt and across the Middle East, and they have dramatically changed the Islamic political discourse. Yet Western audiences have almost never heard of their heroic efforts.

The war of ideas is highly dynamic in today’s Middle East. The vast majority of the region’s peaceful Muslims are marginalized by Western support for the Brotherhood and the West’s refusal to designate the MB as a terrorist organization.

Conclusion

The deadly Brotherhood cult is responsible for almost a century of terror since the young Banna engaged in the intimidation and harassment of his Christian and moderate Muslim neighbors. Since then, the Brotherhood established Hamas as its Palestinian wing. Three Brotherhood activists established al-Qaeda. Brotherhood leaders, from inside their prisons, founded al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Brotherhood members recruited the founder of Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad who started the trend of video decapitations, and one of its former operatives is currently acting as the caliph of Islamic State. The MB also has other connections to organizations on the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Neither Washington, nor any capital, can hope to counter Islamic terrorism successfully without allying with Muslim
figures fighting on the forefront of the battle of ideas. Washington can give these moderate Muslims a voice by designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood has stated its intention to destroy the West’s “miserable house” by infiltrating Western society and institutions and subverting them from the inside.[53] Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization will stop its operatives from reaching sensitive positions in the intelligence community and in other powerful U.S. government positions. It will also stop Brotherhood operatives in the United States from funding terrorism operations worldwide.

_______________________

[1] ABC News, Feb. 10, 2011.

[2] John Esposito, “The Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism and U.S. Policy,” The Huffington Post (New York), Mar. 22, 2016.

[3] Reuters, Nov. 15, 2014.

[4] The Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2014.

[5] Reuters, Dec. 17, 2015.

[6] Rep. Dave Brat, press release, Brat.House.gov, July 19, 2016.

[7] Abdallah Aqeel, “Al-Sheikh al-Muhadith Ahmad Abdel Rahman al-Banna al-Sa’ati,” AlaqeelAbuMostafa.com, accessed Aug. 30, 2016.

[8] Hassan al-Banna, Mudhakkirat al-Da’wa wa’l-Da’iyah (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shihab, 1979), pp. 17-8, 25-6; Misr al-Balad TV (Cairo), Mar. 19, 2014.

[9] Mahmoud Sabbagh, Haqiqat al-Tanzim al-Khass (Cairo: Etisam Publishing, 1989).

[10] Abdel Rahim Ali, “Abdel Rahman Sendi: Mu’asis al-Tanzim al-Khass bi’l-Ikhwan,” Islamists-Movements.com, Nov. 12, 2015.

[11] “Assessing the Islamist Threat, circa 1946,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2006, pp. 76-82; FrontPage Magazine (Sherman Oaks, Calif.), Feb. 13, 2006.

[12] Khaled Mohieddin, Al’an Atakkalam: Mudhakkirat al-Thawra (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1995), p. 45; Hassan Ashmawy, Mudhakkirat Harib (Cairo: Islamic Publishing House, 2000), p.15.

[13] Farouk Taifour, “Al-Juz’ al-Rabi: al-Ikhwan wa’l-Tanzimat al-Sirriya,” Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, EIPSS-EG.org, Feb. 24, 2016.

[14] “Profile: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” BBC, Dec. 25, 2013.

[15] Al-Wafd (Cairo), Dec. 14, 2013.

[16] Salah Shadi, Safahat min al-Tarikh (Cairo: Islamic Publishing House, 1987), p. 79.

[17] Ahmad Abdel Majid, Al-Ikhwan wa Abdel Nasser: Al-Qissa al-Kamila li-Tanizm 1965 (Cairo: al-Zahra for Arabic Media, 1991), p. 33.

[18] Tharwat Kharbawi, Sirr al-Ma’bad (Cairo: Nahdet Misr Publishing, 2012), p. 220.

[19] YouTube, “Al-Sadat Yatahadath an al-Gama’a al-Islamiya wa’l-Ikhwan,” May 9, 2012.

[20] Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013; rev. ed.), chap. 12.

[21] TV News (Cairo), June 29, 2012.

[22] Mustafa Mashour, “Al-Jihad huwa al-Sabil,” The Official Muslim Brotherhood Encyclopedia, IkhwanWiki.com, accessed Aug. 31, 2016; idem, “Jihad Is the Way,” trans. Palestinian Media Watch, Jerusalem, Feb. 9, 2011.

[23] Daniel Pipes, “How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam,” National Review Online, May 25, 2010.

[24] Al-Bawabah News (Cairo), Mar. 11, 2014.

[25] Rifaat Sayed, Hassan al-Banna, al-Sheikh al-Musalah (Cairo: Akhbar al-Youm Publishing, 2004), p. 198

[26] “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan for America—Court document,” The Clarion Project, Washington, D.C., accessed Sept. 1, 2016.

[27] Farouk Taifour, “Hal Kharajat Daesh min Rahm Fikr al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin?” Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, EIPSS-EG.org.

[28] “Abdullah Azzam: Overview,” Counter Extremist Project, New York, accessed Feb. 9, 2017.

[29] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, chap. 13.

[30] Elaph (London), July 18, 2005.

[31] Al-Arabiya News Channel (Dubai), Oct. 14, 2014.

[32] “Al-Sheikh Wagdy Ghoneim: La li’l-Tahaluf al-Salibi dudd al-Dawla al-Islamiya,” You Tube, Sept. 19, 2014.

[33] Stephen Lacroix, “Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood,” Foreign Policy, Oct. 3, 2012.

[34] Al-Aan TV (Cairo), Apr. 19, 2014.

[35] “Ta’kib al-Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri ala Azl Morsi wa-Tahdid al-Jaish,” You Tube, July 5, 2013.

[36] “Ayman al-Zawahiri Yuwajih Risalat Itab li-Morsi wa-Yadou Allah an Yafuku Asrahou,” You Tube, Feb. 11, 2014; Erich Follath, “Political Stability Eludes Polarized Egypt,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), July 29, 2013.

[37] Reuters, Dec. 17, 2015.

[38] Banna, Mudhakkirat al-Da’wa, p. 144.

[39] “Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh Yajtami ma’a Haraket Taliban Afghanistan,” You Tube, June 8, 2013.

[40] Al-Wafd (Cairo), Jan. 11, 2013.

[41] Al-Jazeera TV (Cairo), Nov.-Dec. 2011.

[42] Al-Watan (Cairo), Jan. 3, 2013.

[43] Al-Arabiya News, Mar. 29, 2014.

[44] “Bylaws of the International Muslim Brotherhood,” June 1928.

[45] Muhammad Kandil, “Al-Thabit al-Rab’i: al-Jihad Salbiluna,” The Official Muslim Brotherhood Encyclopedia, IkhwanWiki.com, accessed Sept. 1, 2016; “The Muslim Brotherhood: Understanding its Roots and Impact, 1. Overview,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Washington, D.C., accessed Feb. 9, 2017.

[46] Umar Ashur, “Hal Ya’ud al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun fi Masr ila’l-Unf al-Siyasi?” Brookings Institute, Washington, D.C., July 30, 2014.

[47] Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat, “Egypt’s Sham Election,” National Review Online, Dec. 6, 2011; Shuruk News (Cairo), Mar. 22, 2016.

[48] Amb. Yahia Najm, Akhbar al-Yom TV (Cairo), in Cynthia Farahat, “CairoGate: Egyptian Diplomat Survives MB Torture Says ‘It was like a Nazi camp,'” Dec. 9, 2012.

[49] Al-Ahram (Cairo), Dec. 29, 2015.

[50] Bawabat al-Qahira (Cairo), Jan. 1, 2017.

[51] Bawabat al-Haraqat al-Islamiya (Cairo), Mar. 18, 2015. The fatwa was subsequently broadcast on the official Muslim Brotherhood television channel Rabaa, broadcasting from Turkey. See Al-Arabiya News, Dec. 5, 2017.

[52] Al-Dustur (Cairo), Jan. 3, 2016.

[53] “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Plan for America—Court document,” The Clarion Project, Washington, D.C., accessed Sep. 1, 2016.

Categories: Islamist "moderates", Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror groups, Muslim Brotherhood - history geography and goals
Tags: Islamist "moderates", Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror groups, Muslim Brotherhood - history geography and goals

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NATO Ally Turkey Working with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood

April 4, 2017

NATO Ally Turkey Working with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, Center for Security Policy, April 3, 2017

Osama Abu-Irshaid (National Director of American Muslims for Palestine, AMP, a founding member of the USCMO), USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal (center) and Naeem Baig (President of the Islamic Center of North America, ICNA, a founding member of the USCMO) outside AK Party Headquarters in Ankara, Turkey, during an August 2014 visit

While the Center for Security Policy has followed the activities of the USCMO, MLFA and AMJA, the realization of just how closely the Turkish government at the highest level is working in collusion with these Muslim Brotherhood-associated groups to thwart any legal measures that may be directed their way by the new Trump administration and Department of Justice led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions still comes as something of a shock. The U.S. Brotherhood and its international partners were way ahead of the Trump team in foreseeing a possible renewal of legal risk and liability under this new management and began taking steps to confront it. They bring significant financial and legal resources to the fight, plus, as we now see, state-level backing from NATO member Turkey whose pro-HAMAS stance has long been known.

But given that an official organization of the Ankara regime is now operating a large Center (with numerous associated centers and mosques) barely thirteen miles from the U.S. Capitol and working there in collaboration with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood to thwart possible legal actions by the U.S. government is certainly noteworthy. As the international as well as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood gear up for coming confrontations, so must U.S. national security leadership as well.

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During the 2016 U.S presidential campaign, senior leadership figures of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) began strategic planning to ensure the advancement and protection of the group’s objectives, no matter who won the White House. USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal and HAMAS dba Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad set plans in motion to defend the Muslim Brotherhood’s Civilization Jihad inside the U.S. Those objectives were first exposed and described in the Center’s 2015 publication, in Star Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party.

Joining directly in those efforts then and now is the pro-HAMAS Turkish government, under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). The groundwork for what is now a close working relationship began well before the March 2014 announcement of the USCMO’s formation, but it is known that on 15 May 2013, a visiting President Erdoğan placed a ceremonial stone on the 16-acre construction site that would become the Turkish Diyanet Center of America in Lanham, Maryland. The following year, in August 2014, a USCMO delegation led by Secretary General Oussama Jammal traveled to Ankara to meet with President Erdoğan and AK Party leaders. And then, on 29 December 2014, in a recorded video message, Dr. Mehmet Görmez, President of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), addressed the 13^th Annual MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America) Conference in Chicago, Illinois and discussed a gift for all Muslims: the Turkish Diyanet Center of America. Of note for the future of the US Muslim Brotherhood-Turkish relationship, this conference was sponsored by the Turkish-backed American Zakat Foundation and included the first-ever attendance of a Turkish-American group at a MAS-ICNA conference.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shaking hands with USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal during the USCMO delegation reception with Erdoğan in NYC in September 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressing an assembly of US Muslim Brotherhood leadership during the week of the September 2016 UN General Assembly meeting. USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal is in the front row at the far right, Mazen Mokhtar, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS), can be seen in the middle, and Nihad Awad, CAIR Executive Director, is seated at the far left. Awad also welcomed the Turkish government delegation to CAIR’s WDC headquarters that same week.

It will be recalled that Erdoğan himself joined U.S. President Barack Obama on 2 April 2016 at the opening ceremonies for the Diyanet Center of America, located on a large 16-acre site in Lanham, Maryland. The Diyanet Center, also known as the Turkish American Cultural Center (TACC), is a wholly-owned facility of The Presidency of Religious Affairs, an official state institution of the Turkish government.

Under the Trump administration, the USCMO is especially concerned with legal issues, as calls were heard during the 2016 campaign urging that the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) HAMAS terror funding trial be re-opened to pursue possible cases against the more-than-200 unindicted co-conspirators named by the Department of Justice. Apparently concerned over possible vulnerability should the books of mosques, Islamic Centers and Muslim Brotherhood front groups come under renewed official scrutiny, CAIR and other members of the USCMO therefore engaged the services of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), itself a founding member of the USCMO.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the first major event to be co-sponsored by the USCMO, TACC and the MLFA in the Trump era will be a 13 May 2017 Muslim Non-Profit Leadership Conference, to be held at the Diyanet Center of America. Among the program topics are Safeguarding 501(c)3 status; Board fiduciary responsibilities; record keeping and disclosure requirements; Fundraising regulations, state registrations, unrelated business income; and Banking regulations, FDIC, DOJ, Watchlists, international charitable giving.

One of the MLFA’s top legal representatives, now working openly with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, is U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander (ret.) Charles Swift, formerly of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Swift, a 1984 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, who was recognized by the Muslim Brotherhood for his legal role advocating for client Salim Ahmed Hamdan in the U.S. Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfield 548 US 557 (2006). This role doubtless contributed to the choice of Swift as Director and Counsel for the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America (CLCMA), a project of the Muslim Legal Fund of America led by Executive Director Khahil Meek.

The MLFA’s CLCMA project presents itself as dedicated to two primary missions:

“Challenging governmental security measures affecting Muslim communities which encroach upon the constitutional liberties guaranteed to all.”
“Protecting the rights of Muslim individuals and organizations in the United States to exercise their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to worship.”

Pictured left to right: “Jihadis in Suits” Nihad Awad, Khalil Meek, Oussama Jammal

In apparent pursuance of these missions, the MLFA continues actively to seek the release from federal prison of defendants in the HLF trial, which concluded in late 2008 with a unanimous guilty verdict on all 108 counts. The MLFA also engages in lawfare, using lawsuits as an offensive means of shutting down opposition to its civilization jihad operations. For example, as noted by the Thomas More Law Center in the 2009 case of Joe KAUFMAN, Appellant, v. ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF ARLINGTON, Texas, Islamic Center of Irving, DFW Islamic Educational Center, Inc., Dar Elsalam Islamic Center, Al Hedayah Islamic Center, Islamic Association of Tarrant County, and Muslim American Society of Dallas, Appellees, No. 2-09-023-CV: “The head of that organization [MLFA], Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example. Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats.”

More recently, in response to U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s early March 2017 revised executive order to restrict immigration from six Muslim-majority nations, the MLFA working in conjunction with the USCMO, is referring all Muslims to its “advisory prepared by Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America.” The MLFA may cloak itself in the colors of Star Spangled Shariah as a “constitutional rights organization” but Executive Director Khalil Meek still whines that “We continue to be troubled by this administration’s ongoing attempts to single out Muslims for adverse actions. Such blatant discrimination is a violation of our nation’s constitutional freedoms of speech, expression and religion.”

Finally, it is worth taking note of the following guidance. The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) provides the authoritative juridical backup on Islamic Law (shariah) for the American Muslim community and U.S. Islamic legal organizations such as the MLFA. Addressing the U.S. Muslim community on 28 November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, AMJA issued the following bracing statement:

“No one could possibly be unaware of the political storm that has recently overtaken this country…For this reason, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America is addressing the Imams, Islamic workers and the entire Muslim community with permanent values that must be emphasized during this stage as well as a number of principles to be used in dealing with these events, what has happened as well as what is expected to happen…Islam, with respect to its belief and legal foundations, is unalterably fixed. It does not accept any replacement for change.” (emphasis added)

While the Center for Security Policy has followed the activities of the USCMO, MLFA and AMJA, the realization of just how closely the Turkish government at the highest level is working in collusion with these Muslim Brotherhood-associated groups to thwart any legal measures that may be directed their way by the new Trump administration and Department of Justice led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions still comes as something of a shock. The U.S. Brotherhood and its international partners were way ahead of the Trump team in foreseeing a possible renewal of legal risk and liability under this new management and began taking steps to confront it. They bring significant financial and legal resources to the fight, plus, as we now see, state-level backing from NATO member Turkey whose pro-HAMAS stance has long been known.

But given that an official organization of the Ankara regime is now operating a large Center (with numerous associated centers and mosques) barely thirteen miles from the U.S. Capitol and working there in collaboration with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood to thwart possible legal actions by the U.S. government is certainly noteworthy. As the international as well as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood gear up for coming confrontations, so must U.S. national security leadership as well.

Categories: CAIR, CAIR funding, Cultural jihad, Donald Trump and Islamists, Donald Trump and Muslim Brotherhood, Erdogan, Erdogan and Islamism, Hamas, Islamisation, Islamist charities, Islamist infiltration, Islamist mosques, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Turkey, Trump and Erdogan, Trump and Turkey, Turkey's proxies
Tags: CAIR, CAIR funding, Cultural jihad, Donald Trump and Islamists, Donald Trump and Muslim Brotherhood, Erdogan, Erdogan and Islamism, Hamas, Islamisation, Islamist charities, Islamist infiltration, Islamist mosques, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Obama and Islamists, Obama and Turkey, Trump and Erdogan, Trump and Turkey, Turkey's proxies

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U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Saul Alinsky: A Match Made in America

March 28, 2017

U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Saul Alinsky: A Match Made in America, Center for Security Policy, March 28, 2017

(Please see also Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood’s designation as terrorist organization. — DM)

In September 2015, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) published Star Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party. Warnings issued then have since been confirmed, specifically, that the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), while deceptively cloaked in red, white, and blue, is simply the leading edge of the Islamic Movement in this country. In pursuit of Civilization Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood’s information operations – including many tactics learned directly from the KGB – have enabled this organization to insinuate itself gradually into a position from which it can assault the pillars of our society. These include: academia, the U.S. judicial system, faith groups, all levels of government, the media, intelligence and security agencies, and our refugee resettlement and other immigration processes. As will be shown here, a development not new but recently uncovered reveals that USCMO Secretary General Ousamma Jammal is directly connected to Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a Marxist-Leninist organization dedicated to revolution in America.

In his Brotherhood/USCMO leadership role, Jammal has a well-established track record of political activism and success at developing strategic relationships for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood including with members of the U.S. government. In the ‘About Us’ section on the USCMO website, the third prong of the USCMO Mission Statement declares the necessity “to create and sustain an urgent, collective sense of direction that well-serves the American Muslim community toward the betterment and guidance of our nation.” What the USCMO fails to share with the American people is the USCMO’s commitment to the establishment of Islamic Law (shariah) in place of the U.S. Constitution.

It’s long been known that the USCMO is openly allied with far-left racist and revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter. Recall that, in March 2016, the Center released a videowhich highlighted the statements of Muslim Brotherhood leaders that should be chilling to Americans who cherish the Constitution and oppose the expansion of shariah. That video showed top USCMO leadership figure, Nihad Awad (also the Executive Director of HAMAS USA dba the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR), explicitly aligning the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood with the Black Lives Matter movement. The Muslim Brotherhood alignment with the overall Red-Green Axis demonstrates the genuine aims of jihadis in suits: undermining the U.S. Constitution and national security through the global Islamic Movement.

In CSP’s Civilization Jihad Reader series publication, The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration, and the Agenda to Erase America, author James Simpson provides several crucial data points that hint at the Brotherhood’s other, Marxist-Leninist, affiliations.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is the grant making vehicle of the USCCB. It was founded in Chicago in 1969 with the help of radical organizer Saul Alinsky specifically to fund Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

CCHD has been a radical leftist funding vehicle ever since, giving millions to ACORN, the radical training school, Midwest Academy and others. IAF receives the largest percentage of CCHD grants of any CCHD grantee.

In a Metro Industrial Areas Foundation action memo dated 20 November 2016 and published by member organization ‘Dupage United’ on 9 December 2016, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal is listed among the leadership. The …And Take Counsel section on the USCMO website states, “When we speak with one clear, communal voice, our advice can help true the direction of American society toward justice.” It must be understood, however that within Islam, the word ‘justice’ means ‘shariah’ and only shariah. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood version of social justice is not intended as benevolence towards non-Muslims; quite to the contrary. Rather, in true Saul Alinsky form, the aim of the Red-Green Axis is anarchy intended to collapse the U.S. system of Constitutional law and order.

Jammal is fully cognizant that the Muslim Brotherhood’s manipulation of progressive leftist social justice entities aligned with the Red-Green Axis is strategic for the advancement of the settlement process. The Muslim Brotherhood has both co-opted the interfaith religious dialogue movement and mastered the operational mechanics of the political process in the U.S. to advance Islam’s shariah objectives. That Jammal works so closely with IAF leadership should be a red flag warning and belies what the USCMO shares with non-Muslims when it says: “Our well-deliberated and sincerely expressed words for the benefit of the nation can fortify attitudes that propagate harmony between people and institutionalize policies that spread prosperity to all.”

This revelation, that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood works directly with the Marxist-Leninist Alinsky-founded IAF at the highest levels, lends yet additional substance to the overall Red-Green Axis, whose seemingly disparate elements nevertheless have been collaborating to bring down this Republic for some time. Forthcoming CSP publications will delve even further into the Brotherhood-IAF connection.

Categories: Alinsky, CAIR, Hamas, Islamist charities, Islamist infiltration, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamists and Black Lives Matter, Islamists and freedom of speech, Islamists and the media, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law
Tags: Alinsky, CAIR, Hamas, Islamist charities, Islamist infiltration, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamists and Black Lives Matter, Islamists and freedom of speech, Islamists and the media, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law

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Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood’s designation as terrorist organization

March 28, 2017

Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood’s designation as terrorist organization, Washington Times, Guy Taylor, March 27, 2017

(Please see also, Five Reasons The Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terror Group. Who at the State Department are advising against designation as a terrorist organization? Holdovers from the Obama administration?– DM)

In 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood briefly was elected democratically to power in Egypt before its leader, Mohammed Morsi, was ousted from power.

President Trump has — for the time being — put on the back burner an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, according to U.S. officials close to a heated debate inside the administration over the status of the global Islamist movement.

While the White House has declined to comment publicly, officials speaking on condition of anonymity say the administration backed down from a plan to designate the Brotherhood last month after an internal State Department memo advised against it because of the movement’s loose-knit structure and far-flung political ties across the Middle East.

The memo “explained that there’s not one monolithic Muslim Brotherhood,” according to one of the officials, who told The Washington Times that while the movement may well be tied to such bona fide terrorist groups as Hamas, its more legitimate political activities would complicate the terrorist designation process.

The Brotherhood has prominent political factions engaged — at least perfunctorily — in democracy in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and several other Muslim-majority nations, and the State Department memo coincided with high-level pressure placed on the Trump administration from at least one of them.

Senior diplomats from Jordan — a close U.S. ally — are believed to have weighed in heavily against the idea of adding the Brotherhood to the State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list, said the official, because the movement’s political arm in Amman currently holds 16 Jordanian parliament seats.

But debate over the Brotherhood’s status remains biting in Washington, where hard-liners in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism say former President Barack Obama erred for years by failing to target the organization’s promotion of extremist ideology, and that President Trump is now badly fumbling a chance to rectify the situation.

Links to terror

A small but vocal group of Republicans on Capitol Hill is pushing legislation that would direct the State Department to either designate the Brotherhood, as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations or justify why they are being kept off the list.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood portion of the legislation last month with a House version backed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, says listing the movement would “codify needed reforms in America’s war against radical Islamic terrorism.”

“This potent threat to our civilization has intensified under the Obama administration due to the willful blindness of politically-correct policies that hamper our safety and security,” the Texas Republican said in a statement at the time.

“This bill would impose tough sanctions on a hateful group that has spread violence and spawned extremist movements throughout the Middle East,” added Mr. Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican.

While hard-line groups have rallied behind such assertions for years, the legislation also has a number of more moderate backers, including Qanta A. Ahmed, a Muslim British physician and author, who argues that the Brotherhood “birthed modern-day Islamism” as a “supremacist totalitarian ideology that seeks to undermine pluralist societies and impose hardline theocratic regimes.”

“Founded in Egypt in 1928 and with branches or affiliates in over 70 nations, the Muslim Brotherhood today masquerades as a legitimate Islamic institution and a benign democratic actor,” Ms. Ahmed argued in an article published this month by the National Review.

“It is neither,” she wrote, adding that the movement has “well-documented links to the financing of terrorism” and that “the United States should designate [it] as a foreign terrorist organization.”

Missing the nuances

Current and former State Department officials say those calling for the designation of a movement as broadly based as the Muslim Brotherhood are ignoring a host of complex factors that could undermine the designation’s legitimacy.

The Brotherhood, analysts say, exists as a vast and loosely knit political and social organization, with millions of followers and dozens of factions spread across the Muslim world.

Few question its promotion of Shariah or Islamic law, or that some of its followers have embraced terrorism — the most notable example being the Palestinian group Hamas, whose official charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas was put on the terror list in 1997 and has stayed there since.

But away from Hamas, many Brotherhood leaders were known during the 1970s to renounce violence in favor of politics. And recent decades saw factions of the movement embrace democracy to gain legitimacy in various Middle East nations, as well as to try to topple dictatorships.

Following the 2011 overthrow of Egypt’s authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood was — albeit briefly — democratically elected to power in Cairo before the nation’s military ousted the movement’s national leader, Mohammed Morsi.

While several Gulf Arab monarchies view the Brotherhood as an internal political threat, the movement’s factions are seen as part of the democratic landscape in other places, including Turkey, where many see the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a distant Brotherhood affiliate.

Creating problems

“If you’re talking about just broadly listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, you’re going to run quickly into a serious definitional problem,” says P.J. Crowley, who served as an assistant secretary of state for public affairs under President Obama.

“Certainly, if you look at Hamas, it’s part of the Muslim Brotherhood family,” Mr. Crowley told The Times. “But the Brotherhood is also a distant cousin of the AKP in Turkey, so once you start down that road, you get into an immediate problem that could create significant diplomatic issues. And what about Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia?

“The one thing that distinguishes the Muslim Brotherhood from groups like al Qaeda is that al Qaeda wants to blow up any democratic process, while the Brotherhood is theoretically prepared to participate in the democratic process,” he said.

A report by NPR recently maintained that the Brotherhood became popular among Middle East university activists in the 1960s and 1970s — and when some immigrated to the United States with student visas, they brought the movement’s ideology with them.

“They were helped even by our State Department,” Hossein Goal, who emigrated from Iran during the period, told NPR. “They gave them sanctuary to come here.”

It follows that members of the movement had significant roles in establishing mosques, Islamic schools and other U.S.-based Muslim organizations. NPR suggested that, over the years, the situation fueled debate over the whether the movement’s true aim was to participate in American life or to advance an Islamist political agenda in the U.S.

Seeking truth

One prominent U.S. Muslim organization says the push to get the Brotherhood listed as a terrorist organization today is a ruse. “We believe it is just a smokescreen for a witch hunt targeting the civil rights and civic participation of American Muslims,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Sponsors and supporters of the designation have for many years falsely linked the majority of mainstream American Muslim organizations and leaders to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Hooper told The Times. “[This] will inevitably be used in a political campaign to attack those same groups and individuals, to marginalize the American Muslim community and to demonize Islam.”

One of the strongest advocates for designating the Brotherhood says that’s nonsense.

“It is a terrorist organization,” says Frank Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy think tank in Washington. “It’s the leading edge in this country and elsewhere in the West for Shariah supremacism.”

Mr. Gaffney, who drew liberal ire during the Obama years for claiming the former president was secretly a Muslim, told The Times that U.S. policy has long been afflicted by thinking the “Brotherhood is part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

“We are in the fix we’re in today, 16 years since 9/11 and having basically lost two wars, not due to military inadequacies but due to this incoherent understanding, or nonunderstanding, of the nature of the enemy,” Mr. Gaffney said.

“One of the things that was most important about Donald Trump’s claim that he understood the nature of the enemy was that he seemed to recognize that it involves the Muslim Brotherhood — and, for that reason, he should designate it a terrorist organization.”

Categories: CAIR, Department of State, Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood
Tags: CAIR, Department of State, Islamist infiltration, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood

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