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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > A Primer On The Muslim Brotherhood - Why What Happens In Egypt Is Important To America

A Primer On The Muslim Brotherhood - Why What Happens In Egypt Is Important To America

February 7, 2011

By WILLIAM MAYER

February 7, 2011 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - The Muslim Brotherhood or the Ikhwan as it is known in Arabic, is a revolutionary Muslim organization which was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, an Egyptian school teacher.

It was created along the same organizing principles which guide Sunni Wahhabism - the official extremist Muslim sect of the Saudi Kingdom. Al-Banna thought that Islam had strayed in modern times away from the very strict, fundamentalism of the time of Mohammed. Therefore he sought to purify Islam, reverting to what he believed to be its true form, more rigid, less accommodative, more combative and keyed to conversion.

The Brotherhood's key intellectual was Sayyid Qutb. He was educated in the U.S. for a period of time in the late 1940s. During his college years he became increasingly scandalized by what he called the decadence and capitalistic spirit of American society, he was especially offended by the libertine way college men and women openly fraternized.

Returning to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and proceeded to write what might be called the bible of jihad, entitled "Milestones." In it he preached strict observance of Shari'a, or Islamic law as the sole organizing principle for all of humanity. In his mind Islam was a truly revolutionary ideology.

Qutb believed that Islam, as David Cook1. explains was, "nowhere present on the contemporary stage other than in the heart of the believers...abandoned by the elites and rulers...Therefore it is necessary for Muslims to revive Islam and fight..."

Just to show how influential Qutb's work is still considered by key jihadists, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin-Laden's second in command and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, stated, "Sayyid Qutb's call for loyalty to God's oneness and to acknowledge God's sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad..."

The Muslim Brotherhood [MB, Ikhwan in Arabic, literally the Muslim brothers] self-describes its founding principles using the motto:

"Allah is our objective.
The Prophet is our leader.
Qur'an is our law.
Jihad is our way.
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The group is international in scope with over 70 affiliated branches all over the world.

It has been active in the United States using various allied front groups for many years, officially at least since 1953, when a delegate from the Brotherhood attended a White House meeting.

Among the Ikhwan's more prominent American front groups are the Muslim Students Association [est. 1963] and Islamic Society of North America [ISNA].

"...In 1980, the Brotherhood created a new organization to extend the footprint made possible by the swelling ranks of Muslim Students Association alumni. It brought together most of its groups under the authority of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which is today the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in North America. The creation of ISNA ushered in an era of massive growth of the Movement in North America. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Brotherhood created hundreds of new organizations and built hundreds of mosques and Islamic schools across North America. It did so primarily with funding from Saudi Arabia..." 2.

The MB influence in certain American Muslim circles is overwhelming with nearly every major American Muslim pressure group having adopted the Brotherhood's rejection of a purely secular and personal Islam. Many, if not most of these organizations work together in various ways.

The Brotherhood's members are fanatically devoted to their work and have survived brutal oppression at the hands of Egyptian rulers since the group's inception - understandable since they and their affiliates had a hand in the assassination of two Egyptian rulers, Prime Minister Nokrashi in 1948 and Anwar Sadat in 1981. Sadat's killers detested his new relationship with Israel and acted accordingly.

Since the height of the suppression, the Ikhwan has claimed moderation and peaceful opposition, even support for their conception of democracy.

The group's supposed moderation however is a feigned position because it certainly didn't stop them from creating Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization, a group over which they still exert a degree of operational control, we have learned from recent court documents made available via the Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI].

"...During the military tribunal of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt General Guide's second deputy, Kheirat Al-Shatar, the prime witness revealed documents attesting to an organizational connection between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. According to his testimony, the purpose of the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood coordination was to infiltrate jihadist elements into the Palestinian territories for purposes of military training and establishing armed groups in Egyptian Rafah, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon.." [source, Documents In Egyptian Military Tribunal Reveal Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood Coordination, http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/2728.htm]

Actually the MB created Hamas much in the image of itself, with allies who are unapologetic violent jihadists and others which provide for social needs. This allows them to say, as have Hamas and Hezbollah, that they are a charitable organization at heart. A specious claim to be sure, but one which has proven remarkably effective, especially in liberal Western circles.

The Muslim Brotherhood's leadership has had to be very clever in conducting its American operations. Since they are a tiny minority, they created a plan for victory through internal subversion, laid out in a long document which was captured in a domestic terrorism raid. This plan first came to wide public attention as a result of the largest Hamas funding prosecution in U.S. history, U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation, where it was entered into evidence.

This plan, half in Arabic, half in English is entitled "The General Strategic Plan For The Group In North America," and it was devised as a method of waging a successful war from a minority position. Much like the manner in which small African predators such as hyenas successfully hunt animals far larger than themselves, the Brotherhood intends to nip and bite at the vulnerabilities of democracy and constitutional government until it is wounded enough to collapse, whereupon it will be devoured.

Here is the essence of the plan, in the Muslim Brotherhood's own words:

"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..." 3.

They have infiltrated government, the legal system, education etc., in a manner similar to what the left has done, so that they may gain influence. In the words of the left they have and continue to "march through the institutions," which create cultural norms.

As a lever they have actively created the myth after 9/11, that there is widespread Islamophobia in the U.S. This is of course a complete fabrication and FBI statistics prove that there is only a miniscule amount of true Islamophobia in the United States.

On its face, much of what the American MB team does seems to be innocuous, but is craftily executed with two main goals, one to gain influence in policy making circles and two, slowly inject Shari'a principles into the American legal system, often using lawsuits or threats thereof.

Examples of this abound and are easily discernable if you know how to look:

A. Forcing employers to make unreasonable accommodations for Muslim workers [often poorly educated production workers] to allow them to pray 5 times a day, to allow Muslima's to wear religious garb while on the job, to allow Muslim jurors to swear on the Qur'an rather than simply affirming the truth [note representative Keith Ellison taking the Oath of Office on a Qur'an] and to push American law ever closer to accepting the proposition that criticism of Islam is hate speech - a crime - as proposed by the United Nations.

This is occurring today where the state of Maine actually fined the Christian Action Network over a promotional mailer, charging that it carried an, "inflammatory anti-Muslim message."4.

B. Radical Muslims have created, post 911, the myth that America is a bigoted society, rampant with Islamophobia. This casts radical Muslims as victims - a protected class - in multicultural America, granting them the veritable keys to the car.

C. The alphabet soup of American Islamist organizations which are ideologically linked to the MB have created a blizzard of "outreach" programs designed to subject groups [including government, law enforcement, religious and the military - often enforced via legal actions - demanding Muslim "sensitivity training"] to thoroughly disingenuous presentations about Islam. These same Islamist groups have been appointed by the MSM as the official spokesmen for American Islam, despite their proven radicalism, in the process throttling the voices of genuinely moderate [non-political] Muslims.

D. Our laissez-faire attitude regarding the threat posed by Shari'a has allowed Saudi Wahhabists to establish Muslim study centers throughout academia, including huge programs at Georgetown University and Harvard. These centers have become the loci from which creeping Shari'a flows and is given Western tinged intellectual justification. A new center which could function in this manner given its influences was just dedicated at the University of Minnesota. 5.

In this intellectual battle, of special concern to conservatives is the influence which individuals such as Grover Norquist and his allies are exerting over the American Conservative Union and by extension CPAC, the conservative political action committee, which meets this coming weekend.

According to a Center for Security Policy study, Norquist acted as a gatekeeper/power broker in the George W. Bush administration, obtaining access for all manner of Islamists under the guise of outreach including, Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving a 23 year sentence on a myriad of terror related convictions.6.

This short synopsis should provide the reader with the information necessary to do further research and assess for themselves the degree of threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood's worldwide operations.

Today with the continuing turmoil in Egypt it is important to remember that the Brotherhood is by far the best organized, tech savvy and powerful political party in that country. The Ikhwan has a substantial hand in this unrest which works to its great benefit. It is incumbent on all Americans to be mindful of the hidden agenda which the Brotherhood has set in motion. Failure to defeat this enemy can only increase the threat already posed by Islamism.

Notes:

Definition: Islamism - political Islam, the non-secular practice of the Muslim religion with the primary intent of spreading Shari'a, Islamic law incrementally - through nominally peaceful means - throughout the West and all non-Muslim societies.

1. Understanding Jihad, Dr. David Cook, U.C Press, 2005, pg. 103

2. See, Shariah: The Threat To America, sourced at end note 6.

3. For the full text of the Ikhwan's master plan for subversion, please refer to this PipeLineNews document, available at The General Strategic Plan For The Group In North America

4. See the Christian Action Network's press release on the incident at Christian Action Network

5. For an embarrassingly laudatory article on the University of Minnesota's "Islamic Think Tank," please refer to, http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/02/05/shining-light-darkness-u-m-opens-think-tank-islamic-law-and-human-rights

6. Please refer to the Center for Security Policy's Team B Report, Shariah: The Threat To America, "...In 1998, Alamoudi provided at least $20,000 in checks enabling Republican activist Grover Norquist to establish what would become a Muslim Brotherhood front organization targeted at penetrating GOP circles and the campaign of then-Governor George W. Bush.219 The new entity was called the Islamic Free Market Institute (better known as the Islamic Institute, or II). Alamoudi also detailed his long-time deputy, Khaled Saffuri, to serve as II's first executive director, with Norquist as the Chairman of the Board.220 As a result of these connections, Alamoudi was among a group of Muslim Brotherhood operatives who were invited on May 1, 2000 to meet with Bush in the Texas governor's mansion..."

Continuing:

"...Then, in 2003, Alamoudi was arrested at Heathrow Airport (UK) on his way back from Libya with $340,000 in cash given to him by Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi for jihad. The money was to be used to underwrite a plot involving two U.K.-based al Qaeda operatives intending to kill Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.224 Alamoudi was extradited to the United States where, in the Eastern District of Virginia, he pled guilty to and was convicted of terrorism-related charges. He was proven to be a senior al Qaeda financier, who moved at least $1 million dollars to the terrorist organization. Alamoudi had also been caught on recorded conversations supporting acts of terrorism, terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah, and clearly stated his objective of making America a Muslim nation. Alamoudi is now serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison..." pg.76

We highly recommend downloading the complete 177 page report which has been provided by the Center for Security Policy at, Shariah: The Threat To America

©2011 PipeLineNews.org LLC, William Mayer. All rights reserved.

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=mb272011101%2Ehtm

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