- Muslim Brotherhood in USA
- -- Motto of the Muslim Brotherhood
- The upheavals of 2011-2012 across the Middle East and North Africa swept aside secular rulers and the established political order with startling speed, and continue to focus world attention on the revolutionary forces driving these far-reaching events. Poverty, oppression, inequality, and lack of individual freedom are all hallmarks of the societal stagnation that has gripped the Islamic world for the better part of fourteen centuries, but the driving force of the so-called "Arab Spring" is a resurgent Islam, dominated by the forces of al-Qa'eda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Energized as Islam may be at this time, however, without the active involvement of the United States to help arm, fund, support, and train the region's Islamic rebels, it is questionable whether they could have gotten this far, this fast.
- This report describes how the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist, whether knowingly or not, the mission of its grand jihad. Its hard-won position at the forefront of the 21st century Islamic Awakening is possible only because of decades of patient infiltration and political indoctrination (Da'wa) in the West, and especially the United States of America, even as the grassroots work of building an organizational structure advanced steadily in the land of its origin as well. It is important to recognize the sophistication of the Brotherhood's international strategy and how the takedown of U.S. national security defenses from within was critical to the current Middle East-North Africa (MENA) campaign to re-establish the Caliphate and enforce Islamic Law (shariah).
- U.S. Government in the Bull's-Eye
Given the long history of Muslim Brotherhood activity in this country, its declared objective to "destroy the Western civilization from within," and the extensive evidence of successful influence operations at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it is urgent that we recognize this clear and present danger that threatens not only our Republic but the values of Western civilization.
"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration."
To reach this level of influence, the Muslim Brotherhood had moved gradually, in the classical stepped process patterned after Muhammad and his early followers, and that Sayyed Qutb outlined in his seminal monograph, "Milestones." The establishment of Islamic centers, mosques, communities, and front group organizations was the first step in the "civilization jihad." The mainstreaming of their existence—and ultimately their messaging—in American society formed the foundation of a Brotherhood campaign to target U.S. government circles in all three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative) at the federal, state, and local levels. The national security and intelligence communities were top priority, but law enforcement, military and penal institutions, the media, think tanks and policy groups, academia, and non-Muslim religious communities were also part of the overall strategy. The remainder of this paper will focus in more closely on Muslim Brotherhood penetration of U.S. government agencies, especially at the senior executive level.
The careful insinuation of Muslim Brothers into positions from which they can exercise influence on U.S. policy began long before the attacks of 9/11, although their success has accelerated dramatically under the administration of President Barack Obama. The massive Muslim Brotherhood organizational network in the U.S., so patiently built up over the decades since that first Oval Office meeting in 1953, eventually gave it a prominence and (false) reputation of credibility that was unmatched by any other Islamic groups, moderate or otherwise.
Using a combination of taqiyya (deceit, dissimulation) and intimidation, the Muslim Brotherhood succeeded not only in making itself the "go-to" authority on all things related to Islam, but in suppressing those who would speak truth about Islam—again, often by persuading the U.S.'s own senior officials to do the job for them: "by their hands". When Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, publicly excoriated, then fired, US Army LTC Matthew Dooley, an instructor at National Defense University, in April 2012 over an earlier-approved course on Islam, and then ordered Dooley's career-ending Negative Officer Evaluation Report, the lesson was meant to serve as a stark warning to anyone else in the DoD who might be tempted to become accurately educated about Islam.
The horrific violence of terror attacks such as 9/11 also played a role by softening up the intended target: Western society. As Pakistani Brigadier S.K. Malik wrote in 1979, "Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved." By contrast with jihadis, who would fly airplanes into skyscrapers and send suicide bombers into pizza parlors full of women and children, the Muslim Brotherhood looked tame. That its ideology and ultimate objectives — re-establishment of the Caliphate and universal enforcement of Islamic Law — were identical to those of al-Qa'eda was part of the Ikhwan's Information Operation to control what U.S. officials are allowed to know.
The first task was to maneuver Muslim Brothers into positions of trust with key U.S. government officials. One of the most successful Brotherhood placement and influence operations discovered to date involved Abdurahman Alamoudi, who penetrated the upper echelons of both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. A naturalized American citizen who emigrated from Eritrea in 1979, Alamoudi parlayed his leadership roles with dozens of Muslim organizations all the way to the White House. Despite being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who openly had declared his support for HAMAS, he was accepted as a "moderate Muslim" and became an advisor to President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. He was permitted to establish the Muslim Chaplain Program for the Department of Defense and then served as its nominating and certifying authority from 1993-98.
Deciding to hedge his bets by 1998, Alamoudi provided at least $20,000 in start-up funds to Republican activist Grover Norquist "to establish what would become a Muslim Brotherhood front organization" called the Islamic Free Market Institute, which aimed to penetrate Republican Party circles and the campaign of future President George W. Bush. Along the way, Alamoudi inserted his long-time deputy, Khaled Saffuri, and eventually another prominent Ikhwan operative, Sami al-Arian, into the Bush presidential campaign. Alamoudi's moves paid off: after Bush's victory, another Alamoudi protégé with vast Brotherhood connections, Suhail Khan, was appointed to the White House Office of Public Liaison, from which key position he was able to manage the access of the U.S. Muslim community to the White House. This position gave the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood unprecedented opportunities to influence operations at the top levels of U.S. policymaking. Grover Norquist himself escaped scrutiny for years thereafter as he continued operating within the conservative movement.
Despite Alamoudi's eventual fall from grace, arrest and imprisonment following conviction on terrorism-related charges as a senior al-Qa'eda financier, the damage was done. Even the eventual unmasking of Sami al-Arian as a senior operative of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) did not seem to jolt the counterintelligence instincts of the U.S. intelligence community. The U.S. executive branch, from the president to the NSC and key Cabinet Departments, had been effectively neutered at the very start of the Global War on Terror. This is how President Bush could stand on 17 September 2001 inside the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., flanked by Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR (the U.S. branch of HAMAS), and in all sincerity, declare that "Islam is peace."
The George W. Bush administration was targeted with a multifaceted, sophisticated information operation designed to deceive national security officials about the true nature of the Islamic jihadist enemy that attacked the homeland on 9/11. Surrounded by Muslim Brotherhood voices which told him true Islam had been "hijacked" by a "tiny minority of extremists," President Bush responded by flinging U.S. military might against those who had physically carried out those attacks. Far more importantly, however, is that he was successfully deterred from investigating the belief system that inspired those hijackers by a blanket of Muslim Brotherhood taqiyya that successfully smothered inquiry about the very Islamic doctrine that al-Qa'eda and the hijackers themselves declared to be their motivation. Although few realize it to this day, the crippling of the Bush administration's GWOT response marked a crucial turning point in the U.S. ability to defend itself against Islamic jihad.
Hesham Islam was a senior advisor for international affairs who worked for Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in the George W. Bush administration. A native of Cairo, Egypt, Islam, who is a Muslim, acted as point man for Pentagon outreach program to the Muslim community. Among the groups with which Islam brokered contacts for the Defense Department was ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), an acknowledged affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood that was named by the Justice Department in the summer of 2008 an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation's HAMAS terror-funding trial. Thanks to Islam's efforts, England forged close ties with ISNA, attended its conventions and hosted ISNA delegations at Pentagon events, even inside England's own office.
Also serving in the Bush administration, in the intelligence section of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), was Army Reserve Major Stephen Coughlin, a lawyer by training, who had become the Pentagon's top expert in Islamic law and jihad. His 2007 master's thesis, "'To Our Great Detriment': Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad," accepted at the National Defense Intelligence College, has become the standard classic on the subject of what Islamic law teaches about jihad. Coughlin conducted countless briefings on his findings for senior Defense Department officials, and in 2007 prepared an analysis on the evidence being submitted by Justice Department prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation case.
That evidence, based on the Brotherhood's own documents, demonstrated that U.S. Islamic organizations established as front groups by the Muslim Brotherhood were waging a "civilization jihad" to "destroy the Western civilization from within," to use its own words. Among the organizations actively involved in channeling illicit funding to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, HAMAS, was ISNA, one of the largest and most prominent of such front groups — and, thanks to Mr. Islam, a Pentagon outreach partner. Hesham Islam moved swiftly to defend his own position, ISNA, and the Brotherhood. In March 2008, as a result of Hesham Islam's campaign to have him removed, Coughlin's contract with the JCS was not renewed.
Louay Safi is a Syrian-American Muslim who has held official positions with the Brotherhood-affiliated ISNA and the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). As ISNA's Executive Director of Leadership Development, Safi served for a number of years in the mid-2000s as an endorsing agent for the Pentagon's Muslim military chaplain program. He also served as IIIT's executive director (1995-97), and director of research (1999-2003); IIIT is another listed Muslim Brotherhood organization. Safi was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2003 trial of Sami al-Arian, who was convicted as a fundraiser for the terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Despite this documented resume, Safi was hired by the Pentagon under a Naval Postgraduate School contract to teach Islam to U.S. troops about to depart on deployments to Afghanistan. Safi was at Ft. Bliss, TX on the day in November 2007 when Army Major Nidal Hassan gunned down thirteen service members and civilian employees at Ft. Hood, TX. The Army Criminal Investigations Division subsequently opened an investigation into the Army's use of Safi to provide seminars on Islam -- and those seminars were ended. Grieving family members were outraged in early December 2011 when Safi was permitted access to Ft. Hood in an attempt to present a check to them on behalf of ISNA; called "blood money" by at least one military source, the check was refused.
Later, Safi's 2011 book, "Peace and the Limits of War" (published by IIIT), openly justified violence against apostates from Islam as well as "preemptive strikes" against troops preparing to attack Muslims. Apparently in search of new employment for his skills, in August 2011, Safi reappeared as a founding member and director of the political office of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a Syrian rebel group dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. His photo and profile appear on the SNC website
As bad as these developments were, things became immeasurably worse for American national security under the administration of Barack Obama. Whereas President Bush and most of his administration insiders remained largely unaware that they had been manipulated by the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and his close advisors proactively chose to reach out to the Brotherhood, its affiliates, and supporters for advice, training, and even administration appointments.
Another senior affiliate, Rashad Hussain, is the Obama administration's envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Hussain's background is replete with Muslim Brotherhood associations, including the American Muslim Council (founded by al-Qa'eda and Muslim Brotherhood operative, Abdurahman Alamoudi); the IIIT (which is on the Brotherhood's own list of "our friends and the organizations of our friends"); and the Muslim Students Association (MSA, the original Brotherhood front group in the U.S.). In his official capacity, Hussain is responsible for providing advice on national security and Muslim outreach.
He assisted in writing the President's June 2009 Cairo speech, in which Obama announced a new approach to the Muslim world and essentially declared war on his host, then-President Hosni Mubarak, by publicly signaling his recognition of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Hussain also acts as point man for the Obama administration's cooperation with the Istanbul Process, the OIC effort to criminalize internationally any criticism of Islam. The current administration's weeks-long duplicity in the aftermath of the 11 September 2012 terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, when it repeatedly and mendaciously claimed that an Internet video trailer sparked a protest there that got out of hand, appears to have been carefully scripted not just with the OIC but Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the U.S., as well.
Eboo Patel, Obama Administration Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, spoke at a Muslim Students Association and ISNA convention, appearing on a panel alongside Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood's founder, and Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and has defended the convicted WTC bombers. Wahhaj allegedly advocates the Islamic takeover of America.
Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, has served her in various capacities since first coming to the White House as an intern in 1996, while a student at George Washington University in Washington DC (where she was a member of the MSA Executive Board). For decades, she and members of her immediate family — mother, father, brother, and sister — have been closely associated with individuals among the top ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qa'eda financial support organizations, and the Saudi royal family. Given Abedin's security clearance and responsibilities to advise the Secretary on Middle East policy and politics, these affiliations must raise serious questions about her suitability for this post.
To begin, Abedin's mother, Dr. Saleha Abedin is a senior member of the Muslim Sisterhood (the distaff side of the Muslim Brotherhood) and is on record publicly supporting female genital mutilation, child marriage, marital rape, as well as stoning and lashing for adultery because they are consistent with Islamic shariah. A co-founder with Dr. Abedin of the Dar el-Hekma Women's College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Yaseen Abdullah Kadi, is a Treasury Department "specially designated global terrorist." In February 2010, at the behest of Huma Abedin, Secretary Clinton visited and spoke at Dar el-Hekma.
The most troubling associate of the Abedin family, however, is Abdullah Omar Nasseef, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leadership figure and Saudi royal family insider with direct connections to financial entities implicated in pre-9/11 funding of al-Qa'eda. During his long career, Nasseef has been the President of the Muslim World Congress, Vice President of the Saudi Shura Council, President of King Abdul Azziz University, and Secretary General of the Muslim World League (MWL, co-founded by al-Banna son-in-law Ramadan and the parent organization of International Islamic Relief Organization [IIRO], an al-Qa'eda front tied to the 1993 World Trade Center and 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings). Nasseef and his financial organizations were listed as defendants in post-9/11 legal cases based on his involvement with Al-Baraka Investment and the Rabita Trust (which Nasseef founded in 1988), a subsidiary of the Muslim World League, and a Special Designated Global Entity listed by the UN Security Council for financing al-Qa'eda.
Abdullah Omar Nasseef has been a close associate and benefactor of the Abedin family for well over 30 years. While President of King Abdul Azziz University in the 1970s, Nasseef named Huma Abedin's father, Zainul Abedin (who was a visiting professor) the head of his newly-established Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) and editor of its journal (JMMA). From then through at least 2012, the Abedin family — both parents, Huma, her brother Hassan, and sister Heba A. Khalid — has been responsible for editorial production of the IMMA journal. For twelve years, from 1996-2008, Huma Abedin and Nasseef, the al-Qa'eda financier, served together on the JMMA's editorial board. This included the time when Huma Abedin was serving as a White House intern, then as assistant during and after Clinton's Senate campaigns, and finally as Clinton's traveling chief of staff during her 2008 presidential campaign.
During the years that Huma Abedin has been a close to Hillary Clinton, the Department of State, like the U.S. government as a whole, has undergone a drastic shift in policy direction. Free speech issues and US government support for the al-Qa'eda/Muslim Brotherhood role in the MENA region revolts certainly top the list of concerns. While no outsider can know what advice Abedin provides behind closed doors, she has given no indication that her own world view or allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood differs in any major respect from that of her family or life-long family associates.
- Conclusion
As we can see, as early as the George W. Bush administration period, the Muslim Brotherhood already had achieved an information dominance that, in coming years, would only intensify. Not only did figures associated and identified with the Muslim Brotherhood achieve broad penetration at senior levels of U.S. policymaking, but voices that warned of their true agenda (such as Stephen Coughlin's) were actively excluded. That information dominance has contributed to startling consequences, most evident in the U.S. policy towards the al-Qa'eda and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated revolutions that many call the "Arab Spring," but which in fact are more accurately termed an "Islamic Awakening." Under the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Obama administration, U.S. policy has undergone such a drastic shift in the direction of outright support for these jihadist movements — from al-Qa'eda militias in Libya, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and both al-Qa'eda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebels in Syria — that it is scarcely recognizable as American any more. The infiltration of individuals such as Magid, Hussain, and Abedin, to name just a few, with such close Muslim Brotherhood identifications, to positions of influence at the highest levels of U.S. policymaking must be considered, at a minimum, a contributing factor.
In June 2012, five courageous U.S. Congressional representatives (Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland) sent letters to the Inspectors General of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State as well as the Office of the Director of National Security, requesting an investigation of Muslim Brotherhood influence within those agencies. That their patriotic initiative in defense of the security of U.S. policymaking should have been met only with an overwhelming barrage of criticism is tragic testament to the extent of success the Muslim Brotherhood has achieved in suppressing even the duty to counterintelligence awareness that is the first defense of a free people. Given the long history of Muslim Brotherhood activity in this country, its declared objective to "destroy the Western civilization from within," and the extensive evidence of successful influence operations at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it is urgent that we recognize this clear and present danger that threatens not only our Republic but the values of Western civilization.
Alain Laprise June 20, 2014
