The news has given us snippets of the Administrations affinity toward Islam, but they skate around the larger issue of who the White House claims as friends and partners.
Washington's Schizophrenic Approach Toward the Muslim Brotherhood
Steve Emerson – FamilySecurityMatters.org, September 30th, 2010
"Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; jihad is our way; and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." So reads the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a transnational Islamist organization with chapters in more than 70 countries. The group's long history includes collaboration with Nazi Germany, calls for the destruction of Israel, and support for attacks against American troops.
The Brotherhood's affiliates include the terrorist organization Hamas. Its alumni include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's terrorist mentor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaida's second in command, is said to have been heavily influenced by the ideology of the Brotherhood's Egyptian chapter.
That record has not dissuaded the Obama and George W. Bush administrations from working with MB-affiliated organizations in the United States. This relationship is on display in Chicago this week, where Rashad Hussain, President Obama's special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), addresses the American Islamic College (AIC). A Hudson Institute report last year identified the AIC as having been planned by the Brotherhood-affiliated Muslim Students Association (MSA). The AIC was once headed by MSA founder Ahmed Sakr.
Hussain's participation serves to highlight the fact that Washington has no policy for dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood, despite evidence that the group's agenda is hostile to the United States. In some cases around the world, there may be little choice but to do so. But a number of people who study the issue contend that the U.S. government is needlessly legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood.
Government officials should have a clear policy to avoid doing anything that grants groups like, CAIR, NAIT, ISNA, MAS and the International Institute for Islamic Thought legitimacy, Farah said.
"We don't fund them. We don't have our pictures taken with them. We don't go to their [events]." The reality, however, is dramatically different.
Recent examples have included a State Department-financed trip to Africa by a CAIR executive who spent time trashing U.S. law enforcement; sending representatives of ISNA and the Islamic Circle of North America to represent the United States abroad; and a U.S. Census Bureau lease with a Virginia Islamic Center that law enforcement officials call a front for Hamas.
Senior Obama Administration officials, including Hussain and Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett, have addressed ISNA's national conventions.
The final report issued by Muslimserve – the organization set up to implement President Obama's faith-based initiative in the Muslim Community – included a message from presidential appointee Dalia Mogahed thanking a number of groups including CAIR and ISNA for their work on the project. The report also showed the logos of CAIR, ISNA, ICNA and the Muslim American Society.
And the Obama Administration has invited groups like ISNA to attend iftar dinners [fast-breaking meals during Ramadan] held at the White House and at various federal agency offices.
One document introduced during the trial was an 18-page memorandum written in 1992 by Mohammed Akram, a member of the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It described the role the group sees for itself in America:
"The process of settlement in America is a Civilization-Jihadist process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
One tactic the Muslim Brotherhood uses in countries where Muslims are a minority is to "subvert" Muslim communities "so they become their de facto spokesmen," said former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs J. Scott Carpenter
It is understandable that people in the bureaucracy have positive impressions of some Brotherhood officials, said Stephen Coughlin, a former Army major who was the Pentagon's leading researcher on Islamic law. Having met numerous Brotherhood officials during his time in Washington, Coughlin said that, on a personal level, many of these people are quite friendly.
What officials fail to understand is that the Brotherhood people "are only doing outreach in order to subvert you," Coughlin said. "I believe the people in the federal bureaucracy [who take a benign view of some Brotherhood affiliated groups] want answers that are easy to get and make them feel good about themselves."
Rather than engage it, Coughlin believes the U.S. government should designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. While al Qaida seeks to destroy the United States through terrorism, the Brotherhood seeks to achieve this through "ideological subversion," he said. The MB and al-Qaida "are two sides of the same coin."
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Steve Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and the author of five books on these subjects, most recently "Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US." Steve also writes for the Counterterrorism Blog.
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