The Muslim Brotherhood is the name of a
world-wide Sunni Islamist movement, which has spawned several religious and
political organizations in the Middle East, including Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, dedicated to the jihadi credo:
“God is our objective, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our
leader, struggle is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of
our aspirations.”
It should be noted that al Qaeda’s
number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age fourteen. It
should also be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The Muslim Brotherhood was conceived in
1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a 22-year-old elementary school teacher, as a
fundamentalist Islamic movement in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire and the subsequent ban of the caliphate system.
Al-Banna believed that Islam was not only a religious dogma but an all-inclusive
way of life. Al-Banna based his fundamentalism on the tenets of Wahhabism,
supplementing the radically fundamentalist Islamic education for the Society’s
male students with jihadi training.
As stated in the organization’s charter and on its website, the Muslim
Brotherhood seeks to install an Islamic empire ruled under Sharia Law and a
Caliphate across the Muslim world and ultimately the entire world, through
stages designed to “Islamisize,” incrementally, targeted nations. We can
witness this very action taking place in Europe today.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been active
in the United States since the 1960s. Its goals, both stated and as perceived
through their actions, have included propagating Islam and creating havens for
and integrating Muslims into the US.
One of their main strategies for
achieving these objectives has been dawah or Islamic renewal and outreach. In
the 1960s, groups such as US military personnel, prison inmates and
African-Americans were specifically targeted for dawah.
The Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in
setting up numerous US front groups since the 1990s that should be regarded as
hostile and a threat to the United States, according to Stephen Coughlin, a
lawyer and military intelligence specialist on the Pentagon Joint Staff.
Islamist activists involved with the Muslim Brotherhood have started
organizations in the US including the Muslim Students Association in 1963,
North American Islamic Trust in 1971, the Islamic Society of North America in
1981, the American Muslim Council in 1990, the Muslim American Society in 1992,
and the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the 1980s.
In a September 2007 memorandum,
Coughlin explains that many US Muslim aid and civil rights groups viewed as
moderate by the Justice Department and other government agencies are linked to
the pro-jihadi Muslim Brotherhood. The groups are also engaged in influence and
deception operations designed to mask their activities and the overriding goal
of their organization, that being the advancement of Islamofascist doctrine
within the United States.
In December 2001, the US Department of
the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control joined the European Union in
designating the Holy Land Foundation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist
group.
In July of 2004, a federal grand jury in Dallas, Texas, returned a 42
count indictment against the Holy Land Foundation. The charges levied against
the organization included: conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign
terrorist organization, tax evasion and money laundering. The indictment
alleged that the Holy Land Foundation provided more than $12.4 million to individuals
and organizations linked to the terrorist group Hamas from 1995 to 2001.
The ensuing trial has exposed a direct
connection between the Holy Land Foundation and the Muslim Brotherhood in the
release into evidence of several documents, one of these documents being the
Ikhwan in America.
The Ikhwan in America is essentially a
20 point plan to replace the American Democratic Republic with an Islamist
State ruled under Sharia Law. This document reveals that the Muslim Brotherhood
engages in activities ranging from going to camps to do weapons training
(referred to as Special work by the Muslim Brotherhood), to engaging in
counter-espionage against US government agencies such as the FBI and CIA
(referred to as Securing the Group).
“The process of settlement is a
‘Civilization-Jihadist Process.’ The Ikhwan must understand that their work in
America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western
civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands
and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is
made victorious over all other religions.”
Recently, the Justice Department
participated in a conference held by the Islamic Society of North America in
Chicago. The ISNA, directly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, is one of 300
unindicted co-conspirator groups, including the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, named in the Holy Land Foundation indictments.
Former-Congressman Peter Hoekstra of
Michigan and Congresswoman Sue Myrick of North Carolina wrote to then Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales to express their concern over the Justice Department’s
attendance at the ISNA conference describing their participation as a “grave
mistake” as it would serve to legitimize a group with “extremist origins.”
The Justice Department’s response was
that its participation at the weekend meeting was part of an “outreach
efforts...to educate the public about how the department works to protect
religious freedom, voting rights, economic opportunity, and many other rights.”
“The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of
grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within
and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands...”
With this statement from the Justice
Department’s response to Congressmen Hoekstra & Myrick:
“...participation at the weekend
meeting was part of an “outreach efforts...to educate the public about how the
department works...”
One can successfully argue that the US
Justice Department was walking into – and continues to facilitate – information
gathering activities by an organization whose goal is to replace the
sovereignty and authority of the US Constitution with Sharia Law in their quest
for a global Caliphate.