The number of Muslim Brotherhood alumni who have gone on to become top al-Qaeda leaders should be more than enough to convince any sane policymaker about the Ikhwan’s inherently radical, anti-Western nature. Virtually every major Sunni Muslim terrorist of the modern era started out with the MB before moving on to bigger and bloodier jihadi activities. And all were indelibly influenced by the violent, revolutionary theories of key Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., compiled this jaw-dropping list:
Partial List of al Qaeda and MB members
Osama bin Laden—There is evidence that bin Laden was recruited by the MB while studying as a young man in Saudi Arabia. As early as his high school years Osama may have been recruited by the MB. At King Abdel-Aziz University, Osama attended Mohammed Qutb’s lectures. Mohammed taught the same jihadist doctrine as his more infamous brother, Sayyid Qutb.
Ayman al Zawahiri—Zawahiri joined the MB at the age of 14 and quickly became [a] revered figure among his fellow Brothers despite his young age. Zawahiri founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), an organization that holds many of the same beliefs as the MB but simply refuses to renounce violence inside Egypt. Beginning in the 1980s, Zawahiri and the EIJ worked closely with Osama bin Laden. In the 1990s, the EIJ formally merged with bin Laden’s organization.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—KSM is the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. Before becoming one of the most infamous al Qaeda terrorists alive, he was a member of the MB in Kuwait.
Mohammed Atta—Atta, an Egyptian, was the lead hijacker for the 9/11 operation. Before that, he was a member of the MB.
9/11 al Qaeda cells in Hamburg and Spain—The al Qaeda cells in Hamburg and Spain at the time of 9/11 were run by men who were formerly members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB). Mamoun Darkazanli and Mohammed Zammar, who ran the Hamburg cell for 9/11, were both members of the SMB. Imad Yarkas, who led al Qaeda’s cell in Spain and was bin Laden’s key point man in Europe, was also a former member of the SMB. Some of Yarkas’ underlings were once members of the SMB as well.
Abdullah Azzam—Azzam was a key jihadist thinker, whose teachings helped launch the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Before he was assassinated in 1989, Azzam was a co-founder of both al Qaeda and Hamas. Azzam, who was one of Osama bin Laden’s spiritual mentors, was a member of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman—Rahman, who is known as the “Blind Sheikh,” was the spiritual leader of Gamaat Islamiyya. The organization’s roots are in the MB and, like Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, became its own jihadist group after the MB’s leadership decided to avoid using violence inside Egypt. The Gamaat became a core part of the al Qaeda joint venture in the 1990s, and al Qaeda even plotted to spring Rahman from prison after he was convicted of his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a follow-on plot against NYC landmarks.
Sheikh Abdul Majeed al Zindani—Zindani founded the Yemeni branch of the MB. He has been designated [a terrorist] by the U.S. Treasury Department for his decades-long relationship with Osama bin Laden, finding that he served “as one of [bin Laden’s] spiritual leaders” and recruited terrorists for al Qaeda’s training camps.
Hassan al Turabi—Turabi was one of the most prominent MB members throughout the 1990s. He founded the MB’s chapter in Sudan. From 1992 until 1996, Turabi hosted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Sudan. He has been dubbed the “Pope of Terrorism” in the European press because of his many ties to international terrorism.
The report concluded:
As can be seen from this partial list, there is a continuum between the MB and al Qaeda—not a sharp break. MB members move seamlessly into al Qaeda and al Qaeda-affiliated organizations. The reasons for this easy transition should be obvious. The MB, like al Qaeda, believes that Muslims should value death more than life (al Banna’s “art of death”). They both justify suicide bombings. They both hate the U.S. and Israel, depicting the world as enthralled in an imaginary conflict between “Zionist-Crusaders” and Muslims. And they both believe that the Muslim world should be united under a revitalized caliphate governed by Sharia law.
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If you should ever have the misfortune, as I often have, to come across a European bureaucrat or D.C. think tanker who asks why you oppose engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, simply hand them the above list. Really, what more needs to be said? The Brotherhood is the gateway, period.
Take a look at some of the hardened jihadists who’ve led branches of the Muslim Students Association, which was founded in 1963 by a group of Muslim Brothers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The MSA is the largest and most influential Muslim organization on North American college campuses today, with nearly six hundred chapters spread throughout the United States and Canada.
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Investigative journalist and MB expert Patrick Poole told me in a 2011 interview that the MSA is “the mother ship of all the Muslim Brotherhood front groups” in America.
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“The Muslim Students Association has been a virtual terror factory,” said Poole. “Time after time after time, we see these terrorists—and not just fringe members, these are MSA leaders, MSA presidents, MSA national presidents—who’ve been implicated, charged and convicted in terrorist plots.”
The dishonor roll includes al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011 after helping devise several terror plots against American interests, including the Fort Hood jihadi rampage and the failed Christmas Day Underwear Bomber scheme. Before moving on to become al-Qaeda’s most influential English-speaking mouthpiece, al-Awlaki served as president of the MSA at Colorado State University in the mid-1990s. Similarly, Omar Hammami, a leader of the al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia, was once president of the MSA chapter at the University of South Alabama. Then there is Abdurahman Alamoudi, who served as national president of the MSA during the 1980s. Alamoudi is now serving a twenty-three-year prison sentence for his role as a senior al-Qaeda financier.
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This roll call of Muslim Students Association alums-turned-global terrorists should come as no surprise. The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood–linked organization whose impressionable young members are steeped in the radical writings of MB luminaries like Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Abu A’la Maududi. It is no coincidence that the NYPD has compiled a list of twelve former MSA members—including the three mentioned above—who have been arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the U.S. or abroad.
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The Department, which correctly identified the MSA as an “incubator” of Islamic radicalism in a 2007 report, reportedly monitors MSA members at various colleges on the East Coast—and with good reason. There is indisputably a direct correlation between Muslim Brotherhood ideology and terrorist violence.
When the more restless Muslim Brothers tire of the organization’s patient, long-term approach, they simply leave and join violent Islamist groups with a jihad-now agenda. Many of these former MBers decry the Brothers’ willingness to work within the political system and consider the Ikhwan corrupted, even as they hearken back to Brotherhood luminaries Qutb and al-Banna, who re-injected into modern Muslim consciousness the idea of jihad to establish a global caliphate. As a matter of fact, don’t discount the very real possibility of rapprochement between the MB and the al-Qaeda wing of the Salafi movement.
For instance, on the day before his inauguration as Egyptian president in June 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi called for the United States to free the notorious “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, from an American federal prison where he is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a later plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
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Morsi repeated his call for the U.S. to free the Sheikh into Egyptian custody a few months later, vowing to do “everything in [his] power” to “secure freedom” for the al-Qaeda favorite and Salafi icon.
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Then, in a January 2013 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Morsi again said he wanted Rahman “to be free” and vowed to lobby President Obama on the terror kingpin’s behalf. “There could be things like visitation, assistance, his children, his family, assisting him,” Morsi told Blitzer. “He is an old sheikh and sick and blind. We need to respect that in this sheikh.”
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Poor guy. Yes, he plotted to kill thousands of Americans and has been a close confidante of al-Qaeda. But he’s old, frail, and blind, so all should be forgiven. Besides, he was just waging jihad against unbelievers as mandated in the Koran and Sunnah. Cut him some slack, people! Morsi and the MB’s affection for the Sheikh is obvious—they clearly consider this unrepentant terrorist a hero of jihad and an exemplary Muslim. Interestingly enough, reports began to surface during the second half of 2012 charging that the Obama administration was, yes, considering transferring the Sheikh to Egypt, where he would ostensibly finish out his prison term under the benevolent eye of Morsi and the Muslim Brothers
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(most likely in an extravagant villa on the Nile where he’s fanned and fed grapes). The White House denied the reports but the rumblings I’ve heard from intelligence sources suggest that the administration has indeed considered transferring the sightless terror mastermind out of American custody. It sounds unfathomable. Yet no one should be shocked. Remember, we’re talking about the Obama administration, led by a man who bowed deeply and reverently to the King of Saudi Arabia in plain view of other world leaders as cameras rolled. It’s pretty tough to appeal to a guy’s sense of shame after that kind of display.
As for Mohammed Morsi, as of this writing, he hasn’t seen his wishes granted yet regarding the Blind Sheikh. But don’t cry for ol’ Mo-Mo. He’s used his position as president to unilaterally release a number of convicted terrorists and jihadists from Egyptian prisons, including Mohammed Zawahiri, brother of the current top al-Qaeda kingpin. In fact, at least two thousand Islamists have been released from Egyptian custody since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
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Some of them were involved in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a violent episode in which the black flag of al-Qaeda was raised above the building. The newly released Mohammed Zawahiri was there and helped lead the charge.
Between his campaign to free the Blind Sheikh and his release of numerous hardened jihadists, Morsi is clearly extending an olive branch to Egypt’s Salafis, who, other than the Ikhwan, are now the country’s most potent force. And why wouldn’t he? The Muslim Brothers and the Salafi al-Nour Party not only dominate the Egyptian Parliament; the two sides, as we’ve seen throughout this chapter, share the same goals and ideology. If the Brothers can rein their more impulsive Salafi brethren in a bit, the latter can be used for street muscle at home and possibly even terror attacks abroad, assuming the Ikhwan decide to return to their violent ways and resume their long-running jihad against Israel. None other than Osama bin Laden seems to have been banking on that very possibility before he met his demise.
Documents seized in the raid of bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan reveal that he was well aware of the MB’s growing influence thanks to the so-called Arab Spring and was considering a sort of “if you can’t beat’em, join ’em” approach to the Brothers for the short term. He wrote:
... The movements calling for half solutions like the Brotherhood have witnessed a spread of the proper ideology among their membership in recent years, especially in the growing generations... it was mentioned in many of the media vehicles that there is a sizable direction within the Brotherhood that holds the Salafi doctrine, so the return of the Brotherhood and those like them to the true Islam is a matter of time, with the will of Allah.
So the Brotherhood was a “half solution” in bin Laden’s eyes, but that’s better than no solution at all. And besides, he argues, they’ll come around to al-Qaeda’s way of thinking soon enough. He went on to encourage Salafists to coexist peacefully with the Ikhwan for the time being:
It would be nice to remind our brothers in the regions to be patient and deliberate, and warn them of entering into confrontations with the parties belonging to Islam, and it is probable that most of the areas will have governments established on the remnants of the previous governments, and most probable these governments will belong to the Islamic parties and groups, like the Brotherhood and the like, and our duty at this stage is to pay attention to the call among Muslims and win over supporters and spread the correct understanding, as the current conditions have brought on unprecedented opportunities and the coming of Islamic governments that follow the Salafi doctrine is a benefit to Islam. The more time that passes and the call increases, the more the supporters will be of the people, and the more widespread will be the correct understanding among the coming generations of Islamic groups.
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In essence, bin Laden seems to have been saying that while the Brothers are no longer true Salafis in his eyes, they do unquestionably have the power, and are enforcing at least some semblance of Islamic government that AQ and its allies can eventually co-opt. Makes sense. But the Brotherhood is far too cunning and disciplined to be outflanked in the manner bin Laden suggests. From the MB’s inception, its members have prided themselves on always being one step ahead and on the cutting edge.