The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (16 page)

Read The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy Online

Authors: Erick Stakelbeck

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

But not the Brotherhood. As our old friend Tariq Ramadan is fond of saying, Islamists must “Islamize modernity”—be realistic, recognize the unique conditions on the ground today and somehow make the quest for a caliphate ruled by sharia more palatable to modern sensibilities. And hey, when it comes to packaging evil, old ideas of Islamic conquest in a new, creative way, ijtihad could come in quite handy. Most important, it would allow the Brotherhood and its scholars to essentially set the tone for global Islam and become the ultimate authority on all things sharia-related (some would say the MB’s spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, already fills that role on his wildly popular weekly program on Al-Jazeera). This would greatly enhance the Ikhwan’s despotic goal of speaking for all the world’s Muslims and controlling how Islam is interpreted and practiced throughout the globe. In other words, Islam would be whatever the Brotherhood’s braintrust tells you it is.
3) The Brotherhood’s satellites in the Islamic world have embraced the political process, running in—and winning—elections; its operatives also actively lobby Western governments and have access to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and Brussels. This makes sense: like other totalitarian movements, Islamism must first seize political power—and keep it for good—before it is able to realistically implement its utopian goals. In short, the Brotherhood views politics as a necessary evil used to attain absolute power.
Many Salafists, though, disdain politics as a manmade abomination, a domain reserved only for secularists and infidels, where Allah has no say. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and a good number of Salafists consider the Brothers to be sellouts for participating in the political game and playing by the
kafirs
’ rules. Al-Zawahiri even wrote a book, called
The Bitter Harvest
, that fiercely criticized the Ikhwan on that count.
For many Salafists, Qutb’s strategy of jihad, insurrection, and overthrowing both secular or insufficiently Islamist Arab rulers and Western Crusader governments is the only acceptable way to obtain power— forget taking it slow or working through the system. But that may be changing. In Egypt, even the notorious Gamaa Islamiya—the Blind Sheikh and Zawahiri’s old organization—is now playing the political game. The toppling of secular Arab regimes throughout the region has left chaos and power vacuums aplenty—and the Salafists want to capitalize.
And they’re moving quickly. In June 2012, a Gamaa Islamiya member named Hani Nour Eldin received a visa and participated in “high-level” meetings at the White House and State Department along with a group of his fellow Egyptian parliamentarians. Gamaa Islamiya, or the Egyptian Islamic Group, is a State Department–designated terrorist organization. Eldin himself was arrested in 1993 on terrorism charges after a shootout erupted between Gamaa Islamiya members and security officials at an Egyptian mosque. Yet he somehow secured a visa and was welcomed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Go figure.
At his meetings with senior Obama administration officials, Eldin reportedly asked that Gamaa Islamiya spiritual leader Omar Abdel-Rahman, the notorious “Blind Sheikh,” be transferred to Egyptian custody as a “gift to the [Egyptian] revolution.”
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Rahman, beloved by al-Qaeda and Salafi/jihadis worldwide, is currently serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a 1995 plot to bomb New York City landmarks.
It’s tempting to think that Eldin’s White House and State Department visits were just egregious, unintentional oversights—bureaucratic bungling of the worst kind, yes, but nothing more than an unfortunate mistake that was quickly corrected. The truth, however, is much worse. When members of Congress later pressed Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano about Eldin’s D.C. adventure, she was coldly indignant, saying the Egyptian jihadist had been vetted by three different U.S. government agencies and that “no derogatory information was found.” In other words, this was no blunder, no mistake. Eldin, a member of a violent terrorist group that has worked closely with al-Qaeda, was welcomed with open arms into the halls of power by the Obama administration. But that’s not all. According to Napolitano, in the future, the Obama administration will “continue to have visitors to [America] that the State Department and others feel are useful to bring to the country, to have discussions moving forward, who say they’re members of a political party that in the past has been so designated [as a terrorist organization]. ”
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Perhaps these visiting jihadi dignitaries can peruse the copy of Thomas Jefferson’s Koran that President Obama likes to show off at annual White House Iftar dinners. According to Obama, the fact that our third president owned a Koran is “a reminder... that Islam—like so many faiths—is part of our national story.”
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What Obama neglects to mention is that Jefferson owned a Koran in order to learn the ideology behind the Muslim Barbary pirates who were plundering American and European ships along North Africa’s Mediterranean coast. In 1805, after he became president, Jefferson sent U.S. Marines onto “the shores of Tripoli,” where they routed the pirates in America’s first-ever military confrontation with Islamists.
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For some reason, Obama neglects to mention that important little fact. As for Jefferson, if only today’s Western leaders possessed a shred of his intellectual curiosity and honesty about the Islamist enemy we face, Hani Nour Eldin and his ilk would be welcomed to America wearing handcuffs.
Islamists, very much including the Muslim Brotherhood, seek global domination and the subjugation of anyone opposed to their totalitarian aims. Of course, Muslim Brothers will never say that in English.
But if you let him, Anjem Choudary will happily wax poetic about the Islamists’ true goals all day long, and with a British accent to boot. In my 2011 book,
The Terrorist Next Door
, I first introduced readers to Choudary, a forty-something Salafi firebrand who’s been dubbed “Great Britain’s Most Hated Man.” Choudary and his followers—some of whom have been arrested on terrorism charges—regularly hold rallies in London calling for the downfall of the British state and the institution of sharia law in the UK. I interviewed him once again in an East London park in June 2012 to get his views on Islam in Britain and the so-called Arab Spring.
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Choudary, never camera shy, had much to say:
Choudary:
Al-Qaeda believe in fighting the people who are occupying our land and eventually taking the authority and implementing the sharia. In that, they are absolutely correct. And we believe in the same thing. It’s just that we live in the West.... Britain is Dar Al Harb [The Land of War]. Because they are, you know, anathema to God’s law. They’re not implementing it, they’re violating its sanctity—and therefore, this is war against Allah and his messenger. But we are not allowed to actually fight them here at the current time—
 
 
Stakelbeck:
Not at the current time. Will there be a time?
 
Choudary:
Well, you know Erick, we are not like the Christians. If you hit me on the left cheek I’m not going to give you my right cheek. I’m going to defend myself. So at the moment we are propagating Islam peacefully. But if they attack us we have the right to defend ourselves.
 
Stakelbeck:
What if they don’t attack? . . . Then would there be a cause for offensive jihad?
 
Choudary:
If we have enough authority and we have enough power, then we are obliged as Muslims to take the authority away from those who have it and implement the sharia. Now, I hope that can come in a very peaceful way. I hope we can do that in a way where there is no bloodshed.
He “hopes,” but he certainly isn’t making any promises. With this exchange, Choudary articulated perfectly what the Muslim Brotherhood believes. Only, a Brotherhood spokesman wouldn’t be caught dead uttering it on camera, least of all in a Western media hub like London. Therein lies a major difference between the Ikhwan and Salafists like Choudary. It came as no surprise, then, when Choudary, like his fellow Salafi, Sheikh Abu Adam, criticized the Brothers’ tactics:
Stakelbeck:
One group that has really benefited from the Arab Spring is the Muslim Brotherhood. What are your thoughts on the Brotherhood?
 
 
Choudary:
The Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, over the last seventy to eighty years, have changed, they’ve split, you know, they have different factions. You have people like Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman [the Blind Sheikh], and even from there, people like Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, who believe in jihad, who believe in the pure form of the sharia. On the other hand you have people who believe in democracy . . . these are also within the realm of the Muslim Brotherhood.... Those who we have in charge in Egypt now are not calling for the pure form of sharia. What we find, in fact, is that they are trying to please the masses to get into power. And that is not Islam.
To Choudary, the Brotherhood’s participation in the Egyptian political process was an affront that would invariably lead to a watered-down version of sharia. Yet the fact remained that the Brotherhood’s stealth strategy had helped it wrest control of the Arab world’s most populous and important country. Choudary bristled when I suggested the Muslim Brotherhood’s blueprint for power was superior to the Salafists’:
Choudary:
Our purpose in life is to please [Allah]. So if people are going to do that by you know, just trying to achieve a temporary objective in this life and by any means necessary, even if it is not according to the traditions of the prophet [Mohammed], then they’re not getting reward for that action. And in Egypt, for example, they must implement the sharia. The apostate regime of Hosni Mubarak before them needed to be removed—and we could have used force to remove them.
 
You can just picture an Obama administration official—like, say, self-professed foreign policy guru Joe Biden—listen to the preceding exchange and think to himself, “Hmmm. These Salafists sure are a violent, unpredictable bunch. And with their big beards and man-dresses, the optics are just all wrong for a Western audience. No way can we do business with them. They look like terrorists! Which, uh, I guess a lot of them are. Anyway, the Brotherhooders participate in politics, wear suits and trim their beards. They even speak English. And a lot of them have gone to school here. Oh, and most important, they are
not
blowing anyone up! At least not yet. Although I guess their Hamas brothers are over in Gaza. But they’re just killing Israelis, so no harm to us. The right-wingers say they’re bad but I say malarkey! I think we need to push these Muslim Brothers in a big way. They could be the answer we’re looking for in the Muslim world. This could be a big bleepin’ deal!”
Contrary to our elites’ rosy view, the Muslim Brotherhood has been steeped in violence and radicalism since its beginnings, right down to its official logo, which features a Koran with two crossed swords and the Arabic inscription, “Make Ready” underneath. As if the swords weren’t enough, “Make Ready” refers to Sura 8, verse 60 of the Koran, which states:
Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of God and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom God doth know.
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Needless to say, you won’t be seeing any Jesus Fish magnets next to the MB logo on car bumpers in Cairo.
From their incendiary emblem to their official motto—which, remember, reads in part: “Jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”—Hassan al-Banna and his Society of Muslim Brothers laid down the jihadi gauntlet from the very outset. Today, nearly a century after the Brotherhood’s creation, both logo and motto, tellingly, remain unchanged.
That’s one reason why it was so stunning—and infuriating—to hear the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, portray the Brotherhood as an Egyptian version of the Peace Corps in his now infamous February 2011 Congressional testimony about the MB. At the time, the so-called Arab Spring was in full swing, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was on the verge of being overthrown and the U.S. government and the American people were eager to glean more information about Mubarak’s likely successor, the Brotherhood. Enter Clapper—America’s top intelligence official—who sat before his microphone, glanced at his notes and proceeded to describe the Ikhwan as a “largely secular” organization that has “pursued social ends” and a “betterment of the political order.” He also claimed that the Brotherhood “has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam” and has “no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”
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Mind you, he did so with a straight face. Although administration officials immediately tried to walk back Clapper’s preposterous comments and douse the firestorm they created, President Obama’s continuing Brotherhood-friendly policies suggest the beleaguered DNI merely stated the views of his superiors in the White House.

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