The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (12 page)

Read The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy Online

Authors: Erick Stakelbeck

Tags: #Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism

Perhaps better than anyone else alive today, Tariq Ramadan knows and fully grasps the violent legacy of his grandfather. He simply chooses to lie about it—and it works, time and time again. The reason he’s able to get away with it is simple. The vast majority of today’s Western leaders that Ramadan and other slick Islamist spokesmen spend their days hoodwinking flat-out ignore the first rule of war: know your enemy. If you don’t believe me, take a poll of both houses of the U.S. Congress and ask members a) Who Hassan al-Banna was and b) What Hassan al-Banna believed and you’ll mostly be greeted by blank stares as annoyed Hill staffers try to shoo you away. I’ve spent a decade in Washington, D.C., and interviewed dozens of lawmakers from states across the Republic. I’d estimate that out of the 535 members of Congress, maybe forty could pass the hypothetical al-Banna poll. In my experience, Democrats are the most egregiously uninformed, but most Republicans don’t know enough about our Islamist enemies either. Plus, both sides are crippled by political correctness and a refusal to link Islamic terrorism with the Islamist ideology that inspires it. Because that would require, heaven forbid, a serious examination of the Koran and hadiths—the texts the terrorists themselves cite, time and time again—and how they encourage violence. And we just can’t have that, because we all know that Islam is a religion of peace and beyond reproach.
In the House, some of the better informed members are Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, and Peter King. The Senate, on the other hand, is a wasteland. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are the Senate’s most vocal members on national security, but both are also diehard interventionists whose policy prescriptions for the Middle East—arming rebel factions and hoping that an acceptable Islamo-democracy emerges—inadvertently help the Brotherhood and other hostile Islamists. Witness McCain’s bizarre visit to the notorious jihadist hotbed of Benghazi, Libya, in April 2011. Reports were rampant then that the rebel forces working to overthrow Gaddafi were riddled with al-Qaeda types, including some who had fought against American troops in Iraq. McCain, undaunted, encouraged the U.S. government to arm these same Libyan mujahideen, whom he called his “heroes.”
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Despite McCain’s giddy endorsement, our dalliance with Benghazi’s Islamists hasn’t worked out so well, if the September 2012 sacking of our consulate and subsequent murder of four Americans there, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, is any indication.
In an age when America is waging war—militarily and ideologically—against Islamic fundamentalists, the pervasive ignorance in Congress about the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk is not just unacceptable, it’s downright disgraceful. You cannot begin to understand al-Qaeda, for instance, without first understanding the history and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that spawned AQ and so many other Islamist movements bent on the destruction of the United States.
Which brings us back to Hassan al-Banna. Ever wonder where al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamikaze suicide bombers got their inspiration? In his book,
Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11
, German author Matthias Küentzel recounts the Brotherhood founder’s morbid glorification of jihadi martyrdom, or what al-Banna called “the Art of Death.” Küentzel writes:
In 1938, in a leading article entitled “Industry of Death,” which was to become famous, Hassan al-Banna explained to a wider public his concept of jihad—a concept in which the term Industry of Death denotes not something horrible but an ideal. He wrote, “To a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.”
According to al-Banna, the Koran enjoins believers to love death more than life. Unfortunately, he argues, Muslims are in thrall to a “love of life.” “The illusion which had humiliated us is no more than the love of worldly life and the hatred of death.” As long as the Muslims do not replace their love of life with the love of death as required by the Koran, their future is hopeless. Only those who become proficient in the “art of death” can prevail. “So, prepare yourself to do a great deed. Be keen on dying and life will be granted to you, so work towards a noble death and you will find complete happiness,” he writes in the same essay, republished in 1946 under the title, “The Art of Death.”
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In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a Taliban fighter famously proclaimed, “The Americans lead lavish lives and they are afraid of death. We are not afraid of death. The Americans love Pepsi Cola, but we love death.”
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Clearly, thi s reasonable chap had embraced al-Banna’s “Art of Death” concept. Repeatedly over the past three decades, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, and Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah have espoused this theme. So have the 9/11 hijackers, the London and Madrid mass transit bombers, and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas. For example, as Israel conducted Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in November 2012, Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, released a video declaring that their fighters “love death more than [Israelis] love life.”
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This kind of fanatical mentality, popularized in the modern age by al-Banna, has brought us the grotesque ritual of Palestinian mothers eagerly sending their sons to conduct suicide attacks that murder and maim Israeli women and children.
Every last modern-day jihadist—whether Palestinian, Pakistani, or Parisian—owes a depraved debt, in some form or fashion, to the Muslim Brotherhood. The virtual death cult festering today across the Islamic world can clearly be traced back to the teachings of al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and their Brotherhood acolytes. But the Ikhwan didn’t create it all out of thin air. The Muslim glorification of martyrdom is as old as Islam itself and comes directly from the Koran and hadiths. A few examples:
• “Let those who fight in the Cause of Allah sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fights in the Cause of Allah, whether he is slain or gets victory—soon shall We give him a great reward.” (Qur’an: 4:74)
• “If you are slain, or die, in Allah’s Cause [as a martyr], pardon from Allah and mercy are far better than all they could amass.” (Qur’an: 3:156)
• “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s Cause as dead. Nay, they live, finding their provision from their Lord. Jubilant in the bounty provided by Allah: and with regard to those left behind, who have not yet joined them, the Martyrs glory in the fact that on them is no fear, nor have they cause to grieve. Allah will not waste the reward of the believers.” (Qur’an: 3:169)
• “The Prophet said, ‘Nobody who dies and finds Paradise would wish to come back to this life even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to get killed again in Allah’s Cause.’” (Bukhari: V4B52N53)
• “I heard Allah’s Apostle saying, ‘Allah guarantees that He will admit the Muslim fighter into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and booty.’” (Bukhari: V4B52N46)
That is but a very small taste of what generation after generation of Muslims have ingested for some 1,400 years from their holy books. Hassan al-Banna’s genius was to take the “Art of Death” message taught throughout Islam’s core texts and package it into an easily digestible, modern form that would resonate with contemporary Islamists enraged by Western imperialism and the re-birth of Israel. Not surprisingly, al-Banna’s emphasis on the glories of martyrdom had a powerful and immediate impact on his followers, as Küentzel recounts:
These notions struck a deep chord, at least with the “troops of God,” as the Muslim Brothers liked to be known. Whenever their cohorts marched in close formation through the streets of Cairo, their voices rang out with this song: “We are afraid not of death but we desire it.... How wonderful death is.... Let us die in redemption for Muslims” followed by the chorus; “jihad is our course of action.... And death in the cause of God our most precious wish.”
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Contrary to his grandson Tariq Ramadan’s silver-tongued spin, violent jihad and “death for the sake of Allah,” as alluded to in the Brotherhood’s founding motto, were the foremost pillars of Hassan al-Banna’s worldview. The MB architect expounded further on his Art of Death teachings in a long essay called “On Jihad.” It contained al-Banna’s most authoritative comments on the topic, and he made his stance abundantly clear throughout, beginning with the title of the preface: “All Muslims Must Make Jihad.”
Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modelled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore, Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success and felicity in the world to come.
Those who can only find excuses, however, have been warned of extremely dreadful punishments and Allah has described them with the most unfortunate of names. He has reprimanded them for their cowardice and lack of spirit, and castigated them for their weakness and truancy. In this world, they will be surrounded by dishonour and in the next they will be surrounded by the fire from which they shall not escape though they may possess much wealth. The weaknesses of abstention and evasion of jihad are regarded by Allah as one of the major sins, and one of the seven sins that guarantee failure.
Islam is concerned with the question of jihad and the drafting and the mobilisation of the entire Umma into one body to defend the right cause with all its strength than any other ancient or modern system of living, whether religious or civil. The verses of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Muhammad (PBUH) are overflowing with all these noble ideals and they summon people in general (with the most eloquent expression and the clearest exposition) to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.
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No gray areas there. Al-Banna’s message is clear, unambiguous and direct: jihad against the infidel is not only glorious; it is a virtual E-ZPass to heaven and absolutely mandatory for each and every Muslim. He goes on to cite numerous Koranic verses and hadiths that support his glowing view of jihad and martyrdom, as well as quotes from various Muslim scholars. And in case you thought that by “jihad” he meant spiritual striving or internal cleansing—as the Tariq Ramadans of the world would have us believe today—al-Banna makes clear in “On Jihad” that he disagrees with that notion completely, referring to it as “unsound teaching.” He then closes the essay with a rousing call to arms:
My brothers! The ummah that knows how to die a noble and honourable death is granted an exalted life in this world and eternal felicity in the next. Degradation and dishonour are the results of the love of this world and the fear of death. Therefore prepare for jihad and be the lovers of death. Life itself shall come searching after you. . . . You should yearn for an honourable death and you will gain perfect happiness. May Allah grant myself and yours the honour of martyrdom in His way!
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Hassan al-Banna: jihadist. Not a moderate. Not a pragmatist. Not a reformer, unless you count reform as returning to the bloody norms of the seventh century Arabian desert. Not misunderstood or misinterpreted. Not an anti-colonialist freedom fighter defending oppressed Muslims and not a man of peace, as some of his modern apologists, both Islamist and leftist, would have us believe. The real Hassan al-Banna was essentially an old-fashioned Islamic jihadist, only better educated, more eloquent, and dressed up in modern clothes. He was no scholar in any realistic sense of the word and, like the founders of other totalitarian movements, was a visionary solely for the new and diabolical methods he used to spread his message, build his organization, and gain power. Al-Banna’s main accomplishment was updating and repackaging the time-tested Islamic supremacist ideology of jihad and conquest for the restless Muslim masses of his day, much to the continuing detriment of all mankind. The heritage of the organization he conceived and its various terrorist offshoots tell the story. Memo to the Obama administration: there is really no nuance here. It is very black and white. The Muslim Brotherhood has never disavowed its jihadist founder and continues to subscribe to his violent teachings today; they remain the bedrock upon which the organization functions and the reason for its very existence. And from the beginning, no one has borne the brunt of al-Banna’s devilish legacy more than Israel and the Jews.

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