Hamas’s centrality to the Brotherhood’s overall strategic plan makes perfect sense given the Brothers’ unending obsession with reclaiming “Palestine” for the ummah. As we learned in Chapter Three, driving the hated Jews into the sea and once again raising the banner of Islam over “Al Aqsa” has been at the very core of the Ikhwan’s existence from the beginning. A memo prepared by Hamas’s political bureau in 2000 explained:
Hamas is the intellectual and dynamic successor of Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood) in Palestine, whose foundations were laid down in the 1930’s and 1940’s when Ikhwan branches were founded in Yaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Gaza. . . . The role of the Ikhwan reached its zenith in Palestine during the participation of the brigades of the Ikhwan volunteers from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq and the battles against the Zionist gangs on the eve of [Israel’s founding].
32
The Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch continues that legacy today. It’s not uncommon to see banners and posters displayed in Gaza featuring the images of Hamas leaders next to that of Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s founder.
33
Hamas makes no secret about its affiliation with the Ikhwan, and vice versa.
In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, the ties between Hamas and the various Brotherhood satellites across the Middle East and North Africa have only strengthened. In January 2012, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh embarked on a tour of the region that included five days in Tunisia hobnobbing with that country’s newly elected Muslim Brotherhood government. When Haniyeh landed at Tunis-Carthage Airport, he was greeted by hundreds of hardcore Islamists chanting, “Kill the Jews—it’s our religious duty.”
34
The ruling Ennahda Party, which is Tunisia’s Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the incident even though some of its members were among the chanters.
35
Ennahda had no objections, however, when Haniyeh appeared before a crowd of five thousand in a Tunis stadium a few days later and called on all Arab Spring revolutionaries to join Hamas in fighting Israel. Some in the crowd wiped their feet on the Star of David as chants of “Death to Israel,” “The Tunisian revolution supports Palestine,” and “The army of Mohammed is back,” cascaded throughout the stadium.
36
Such scenes were rare in Tunisia—where some 1,500 Jews still live—before the revolution that swept Ennahda into power. Sadly, those beleaguered Tunisian Jews might have to get used to a frightening new normal. Because wherever the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, the ideology of its deadliest creation, Hamas, is sure to follow.
CHAPTER SIX
THE TURKISH MODEL: CALIPHATE ACCOMPLI
“D
o people know that the world’s most influential Islamist lives in the Pennsylvania mountains?”
“I doubt it,” my cameraman whispered back to me. “But we’d better keep our voices down.”
Wise advice. We were in the middle of a guided tour of the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center, which resembles a large ski lodge but is actually the global headquarters of the Fethullah Gülen movement, led by the charismatic Turkish cleric of the same name.
Our earnest young guide happily chatted us up as we toured the idyllic surroundings, which included a duck pond, picnic tables, and several modern living quarters, some still under construction, that would house Gülen devotees from around the world who came to visit. He explained that he, like others we saw walking the grounds of the site, had left a stable life in Turkey to follow Gülen to the twenty-five-acre spread in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, about a two hour drive northwest of Philadelphia.
“I’d love to interview the ‘Master Teacher,’” I told him, referring to Gülen by the English version of the name (“Hocaefendi” in Turkish) his followers had given him. “Is he available?”
“Oh no,” our guide answered. “He is here but is unable to meet with you. He is not feeling well. I’m sorry.”
I was disappointed, but not surprised, given that the reclusive Gülen rarely grants interviews. Plus, I had left numerous messages at the Retreat Center prior to our trip up from Washington, D.C., and had received no response. The powers-that-be likely thought I would just go away and stop bothering them. Perhaps that’s why the group of Turkish men manning the front entrance seemed so surprised when I showed up to the mountain compound with two videographers in tow.
Yet from the outset, we received the kind of polite treatment that has become a hallmark of Gülenists in the United States in their interactions with those outside the movement. The young men we encountered at Gülen headquarters were casually dressed with no flowing, Salafi-style beards or outward signs of Islamist tendencies. As he led us around the state-of-the-art facilities, our guide talked proudly about his academic career in the States and how the Gülenists frequently engaged in interfaith dialogue with local Christians.
If you think it all sounds a bit too perfect, you’re getting warm. I was drawn to the Poconos not by visions of leafy walking paths and free Turkish delight, but to try to get a handle on Fethullah Gülen’s true intentions. Michael Rubin, a respected scholar of the Middle East, has compared Gülen to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, warning that if “Hocaefendi” were to return to Turkey, as has been rumored from time to time, he’d likely be greeted by the same type of fanatical masses that hailed the arrival of Iran’s notorious tyrant. “Istanbul . . . may very well look like Tehran 1979,” wrote Rubin. “As Khomeini consciously drew parallels between himself and Twelver Shiism’s Hidden Imam, Gülen will remain quiet as his supporters paint his return as evidence that the caliphate formally dissolved by Atatürk in 1924 has been restored.”
1
Frank Gaffney, a former assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan administration, has said he believes Gülen “envisions himself being the next Caliph,” and is running “a Muslim Brotherhood kind of operation, stealth jihad” from the Poconos. “I would venture there isn’t one member of Congress today who has ever heard of [Gülen’s] name,” Gaffney added. “Let alone understands what he is up to.”
2
And Gülen is up to quite a lot. The imam oversees a multi-billion-dollar global empire that includes a network of schools, media outlets, think tanks, businesses, and charities. According to the
Wall Street Journal
:
[Gülen’s] Followers have established hundreds of schools in more than 100 countries and run an insurance company and an Islamic bank, Asya, that its 2008 annual report said had $5.2 billion in assets. They own Turkey’s largest daily newspaper, Zaman; the magazine Aktion; a wire service; publishing companies; a radio station and the television network STV. . . . Helen Rose Ebaugh, a University of Houston sociologist and author of “The Gülen Movement” . . . says followers donate up to one-third of their income to independent Gülen-linked foundations.
3
Gülen’s followers number between three and eight million worldwide and are spread over six continents. But his home country of Turkey remains the main power base for his
cemaat
, or Islamic civil society movement. It’s estimated that Gülenists make up some 80 percent of Turkey’s federal police force,
4
and they control a significant chunk of the nation’s judiciary and overall bureaucracy. Much like the Muslim Brotherhood, many of Gülen’s followers are well-educated professionals: businessmen, journalists, teachers, and intellectuals. Next to the ruling Justice and Development Party (or AKP) and the military, the Gülenists are Turkey’s third major power broker.
When AKP—led by Islamist firebrand Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s current prime minister—ascended to power in 2002, it empowered the Gülenists even more, working hand-in-hand with them to Islamize Turkey and weaken the secular state that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk built after disbanding the Turkish-led Ottoman caliphate in 1924. As we’ll see, the AKP has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, and although there are no formal links (and Erdogan is a fiercely independent actor), the party is, in many ways, an MB satellite organization. The AKP’s strategy has included decimating and demoralizing Turkey’s so-called “Deep State,” described by Istanbul-based writer Claire Berlinksi as, “a secret coalition of high-level figures in the military, the intelligence services, the judiciary, and organized crime,” which had helped maintain Turkey’s secular regime after Ataturk’s death in 1938.
5
The dual rise of Erdogan and Gülen has helped turn the Deep State on its head, with the Turkish military—which had long been the fierce guardian of Ataturk’s secular legacy—finding itself increasingly targeted under AKP rule. Several leading current and retired military officials, along with other critics of Erdogan’s regime, including journalists, now sit in Turkish jails, thanks to trumped-up charges—pushed by Gülenists who dominate Turkey’s national police and judiciary—of plotting a coup against Erdogan’s government.
6
So who exactly is Fetullah Gülen, and how did he wind up in the United States? Born in 1941 in a small village in eastern Turkey, Gülen became a state-licensed imam at the age of seventeen after studying under Sufi clerics.
7
He was an ardent follower of the teachings of Said Nursi, a hugely influential Turkish Islamist who spent eleven years in prison for condemning Ataturk’s secular vision. Nursi died in 1960, but Gülen furthered the controversial preacher’s ideas and began calling for an Islamic revival in Turkey (much like the Muslim Brotherhood has done in Egypt and elsewhere).
8
Over the years, the
Wall Street Journal
reports, Gülen, “built a national organization of Islamic study and boarding halls, gaining support of many wealthy Muslims but at times running afoul of the law.”
9
In 1971, Gülen was arrested after a military coup in Turkey.
10
He was convicted the following year by the Izmir State Security Court, according to Turkish media, of “attempting to destroy the state system and to establish a state system based on religion.”
11
Translation: he wanted to turn Turkey into an Islamic state governed by sharia. Gülen eventually received a pardon and never served time in prison, although some of his followers were jailed during Turkey’s secular, pre-Erdogan era for allegedly attempting to infiltrate the Turkish military.
Despite this dubious track record, Gülen’s supporters hail him as an Islamic reformer and brilliant visionary. He’s been publicly lauded by both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State James Baker, and President Obama visited a Gülen charter school in Washington, D.C.
12
Gülen met with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1998.
13
His movement (he calls it Hizmet), which stresses education, interfaith dialogue, and the merger of Islam and science, has seen Gülen become an almost messianic figure to his followers, as Dr. Ariel Cohen, a Middle East analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., explained to me in a 2011 interview.
“It’s not just a religious movement; it’s the ‘Fetullah Gülen movement.’ They call themselves that,” said Cohen. “So it is, you can say, a cult. It is a highly personalized movement.”
He added, “This is clearly the world according to the Koran, the world according to Islam, the world according to Fetullah Gülen. But what he’s talking about is not the caliphate, is not the sharia state. He calls it the New World Islamic Order.”
As with all stealth Islamists, something sinister lurks beneath Gülen’s “moderate” surface. French-Turkish scholar Bayram Balci has written that the Gülen movement, “serve(s) to accomplish three intellectual goals: the Islamization of the Turkish nationalist ideology; the Turkification of Islam; and the Islamization of modernity.”
14
The push to “Islamize modernity” is also quite popular among a certain powerful Islamist group whose initials are “M.B.”
Much like the Brotherhood, Gülen and his followers employ the termite-like approach of eating away at societies gradually from within in order to establish Islamic states. Gülen laid out this approach clearly in a private sermon to his followers that was secretly videotaped and leaked to a leading Turkish television network in 1999. His remarks sparked an uproar when they hit the air:
You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers. . . . Until the conditions are ripe, they [Gülen’s followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria, . . . like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt.... The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it.... You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey.... Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence ... trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here, [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.
15
One can imagine a young Hassan al-Banna delivering a nearly identical speech in a Cairo back room during the 1930s.