The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (27 page)
Read The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy Online
Authors: Erick Stakelbeck
Tags: #Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism
Sultan’s chumminess with al-Qaradawi didn’t seem to faze the Muslim community back in Hilliard. If anything, it likely only enhanced his stature. During his time in town, Sultan was the religious director at the local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, and was also the resident scholar of the newly built Noor Islamic Cultural Center—a sprawling mega-mosque with Brotherhood connections located in the heart of quiet little Hilliard. Heck, he may have even been a regular at Al-Quds Market.
Basically, Sultan had become entrenched in the Hilliard Muslim community and even beyond, thanks to his role in local interfaith events. So when Poole returned to town and blew the lid off his popular new neighbor’s terror connections in a series of online exposés, the local mainstream media pounced. The
Columbus Dispatch
, in particular, seemed determined to discredit Poole’s meticulously researched pieces as the ravings of a Muslim-hating bigot. One
Dispatch
piece accused him of making “hostile assertions”—simply for stating the verifiable facts about Salah Sultan’s support for global terror.
2
Hilliard’s Muslim community dutifully piled on, defending their brother Sultan as a peaceful scholar and castigating Poole as a fear-mongering Islamophobe.
Columbus Dispatch
, in particular, seemed determined to discredit Poole’s meticulously researched pieces as the ravings of a Muslim-hating bigot. One
Dispatch
piece accused him of making “hostile assertions”—simply for stating the verifiable facts about Salah Sultan’s support for global terror.
2
Hilliard’s Muslim community dutifully piled on, defending their brother Sultan as a peaceful scholar and castigating Poole as a fear-mongering Islamophobe.
Thankfully, Poole has since been vindicated many times over for his revelations about Sultan. And it didn’t take very long. Shortly after the
Columbus Dispatch
published its piece portraying Poole as a right-wing extremist, Sultan appeared on Egyptian television and said of 9/11: “The entire thing was of a large scale and was planned within the U.S., in order to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world.”
3
Columbus Dispatch
published its piece portraying Poole as a right-wing extremist, Sultan appeared on Egyptian television and said of 9/11: “The entire thing was of a large scale and was planned within the U.S., in order to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world.”
3
Of course, the
Columbus Dispatch
conveniently chose not to report that maniacal little outburst. But Sultan was just getting warmed up. After leaving the United States, he ended up in Bahrain, where he hosted a television show that was eventually shut down by the Bahraini government for its radical message. A 2007
Los Angeles Times
article warned about the rise of “extremist” groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, within Bahrain and identified Sultan by name as a “controversial Sunni figure” that was making trouble in the country.
4
Columbus Dispatch
conveniently chose not to report that maniacal little outburst. But Sultan was just getting warmed up. After leaving the United States, he ended up in Bahrain, where he hosted a television show that was eventually shut down by the Bahraini government for its radical message. A 2007
Los Angeles Times
article warned about the rise of “extremist” groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, within Bahrain and identified Sultan by name as a “controversial Sunni figure” that was making trouble in the country.
4
Unfortunately, being removed from the airwaves in Bahrain didn’t slow down Sultan’s budding career as a multi-media mujahideen:
• In an interview with the official Muslim Brotherhood website following the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Sultan claimed that Jews assassinated President Kennedy and advocated that America become an Islamic theocracy.
5
• In a December 2008 appearance on Egypt’s Al-Nas TV, Sultan warned of the imminent destruction of the United States and promoted not only a notorious Islamic hadith calling for the extermination of the Jews by Muslims, but also the infamous
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
.
6
• During a March 2010 interview on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, Sultan invoked the blood libel claiming that Jews kidnap and murder non-Jews and use the blood to make Passover matzos .
7
• In yet another event broadcast on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, Sultan led a crowd in shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” cheering forest fires in northern Israel that claimed the lives of dozens of Israelis in December 2010.
8
• In an article published on the official Muslim Brotherhood website shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden, Sultan lauded the al-Qaeda butcher as a warrior who had “raised the banner of jihad for the sake of Allah” and had served a noble cause while at the same time questioning whether the arch-terrorist was really behind 9/11. He added that U.S. “terrorism” was greater than bin Laden’s.
9
• In 2011, Sultan appeared on Al-Jazeera openly calling for the murder of any Israeli citizen who enters Egypt—“tourist or not.”
10
And there you have it: the esteemed Islamic scholar, Salah Sultan—pride and joy of the Columbus, Ohio-area Muslim community and darling of the local Columbus media—in all his malevolent, America-hating, Jew-baiting glory. Around the time of my visit to Hilliard, Sultan agreed over email to conduct a phone interview with me, but later canceled. Clearly, he had much more important Brotherhood business to which he had to attend.
He’s now come full circle and is working for the government of Mohammed Morsi as Egypt’s Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs. It was a logical next step: Sultan was often seen by Morsi’s side while actively endorsing the latter’s campaign for president of Egypt in 2012. He also led a Muslim Brotherhood rally and gave a fiery speech in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during a live June 21, 2012, broadcast on Al-Jazeera, a few days before Morsi’s election victory.
11
11
No word on whether Hilliard’s very own Al-Quds Market catered the event.
Salah Sultan—clad in sports coats, button-down shirts, and slacks, beard neatly trimmed—is about as far as you can get from the typical American stereotype of an Islamic jihadist. With his business casual attire, middle-aged paunch, and receding hairline, Sultan looks like he should be selling insurance in Des Moines, not marching alongside Hamas in Gaza. Therein lies the genius of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brothers know full well that the typical, naïve Western view—including at the governmental level—is of bearded, turbaned Islamic terrorists hiding in caves, wearing suicide belts, and hijacking airplanes, or brandishing AK-47s as they mindlessly burn American flags in some Third World hellhole. Because, as Obama administration official Paul Stockton reminded us, “We are at war with al Qaeda, its affiliates, and adherents.”
12
Period. End of story. The Muslim Brotherhood? Why, they’re the
good
guys; they’re the
moderates
; they’re the people we can deal with. That’s the message the Obama administration has hammered home to the American people for five years through both its words and its policies.
12
Period. End of story. The Muslim Brotherhood? Why, they’re the
good
guys; they’re the
moderates
; they’re the people we can deal with. That’s the message the Obama administration has hammered home to the American people for five years through both its words and its policies.
Much to the Obama administration’s benefit—and the Brotherhood’s—far too many Americans are so blissfully distracted by the latest technical gadgetry, obsessed with social media updates, and riveted to the Kardashians’ every move that they just can’t seem to find time to pay a bit of attention to what’s going on “over there.” After all, the government will protect us, and President Obama is a righteous dude who really seems to care. He even got bin Laden, which means all that terrorism stuff is yesterday’s news, anyway. Now pass the nachos.
A disturbingly large chunk of Americans are becoming like facsimiles of the zombies that they’re busy shooting on their Xboxes and watching on their flat screens. Unquestioning, unknowing, and concerned only with their own well-being; trusting that the government will provide by raiding the bank accounts of the “one percent” and redistributing the money to everybody else; blindly believing in equality and forsaking any judgment that might be fill-in-the-blank-phobic. The result? Barack Obama is reelected. Oh, and Salah Sultan, a famously anti-Semitic Islamist operative, becomes the toast of Columbus, Ohio, in the heart of Middle America.
The Muslim Brotherhood has sized up the American public and its leadership and found it wanting. The Brotherhood realizes full well that for all the time Americans spend plopped in front of computers each day, there seems to be a troubling inability to type in a Muslim-sounding name and click “search,” should the need arise. Current protocol in U.S. governmental and educational institutions apparently requires that when a follower of the “Religion of Peace” wants a job, all due diligence must be thrown out the window. Likewise, poor, vulnerable American Muslims must be protected to the hilt, regardless of the facts, if accused of radicalism by bigoted conservatives.
This helps explain the various inroads made by a guy like Salah Sultan, who was defended to the bitter end by the
Columbus Dispatch
newspaper despite a virulent track record that was readily accessible on the internet for all to see. We’ve neutered ourselves as a society and succumbed completely to a suicidal brand of political correctness imposed by the leftist gatekeepers of the media, government, and academia. We’ve also just about dumbed ourselves down past the point of no return. And the Brothers know it.
Columbus Dispatch
newspaper despite a virulent track record that was readily accessible on the internet for all to see. We’ve neutered ourselves as a society and succumbed completely to a suicidal brand of political correctness imposed by the leftist gatekeepers of the media, government, and academia. We’ve also just about dumbed ourselves down past the point of no return. And the Brothers know it.
Sure, as long as that pesky Second Amendment is around and the American military machine is still chugging (on the cheap and itself degraded by administration-directed political correctness), we can defend ourselves at home and abroad and kill a lot of terrorists who outwardly seek to do us harm. And oh, those glorious drones!
But factor in an economy that is flatlining, and a people who are divided, and the United States, circa 2013, is clearly ripe for a massive enemy influence operation. The Ikhwan—always ahead of the curve—saw this day coming. In fact, they’ve helped hasten it over the past several decades by sending waves of well-groomed, eloquent operatives to the United States and Europe who now hide in plain sight, fully intent on hijacking Western civilization by building mosques, spreading their propaganda, and radicalizing fellow Muslims. Should they encounter resistance from their infidel hosts, the stealth Islamists’ first line of defense is to play the victim and plead for religious tolerance; once that approach is exhausted, they rush to their allies in the mainstream media to demonize their enemies as bigots and Islamophobes; and after that wears thin, they turn to their suicide-belted friends “from the old country” to wreak just the right amount of havoc to cower the weaker elements of a society into submission. Denial and deception—taqiya—are their weapons of choice, not guns and bombs, though they keep terrorism in reserve. The Brotherhood has turned this “double game” approach into a veritable art form.
So, if these “terrorists in suits” have blended in among us, even obtaining positions of influence in the halls of power, how are we to spot them? Terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino has written extensively about the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, and has identified seven common traits to these individuals and organizations:
1) History. The leaders of these organizations typically are directly tied to the various Muslim Brotherhood movements in their countries of origin. As Vidino puts it, “They may have changed their tactics in order to adapt to the circumstances, their thinking on many issues might have evolved, but rarely do organizations started by Brotherhood members lose the basic ideological imprint of their founders.”
2) Adoption of the Brotherhood’s methodology. The creed and religious slogans generally mirror those established by Hassan al-Banna, educational efforts are imbued with Brotherhood ideology, and members are organized in accordance with the system laid out by al-Banna.
3) Muslim Brotherhood literature is prominent at events/bookstores. Familiar authors are heavily represented, including al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Maulana Maududi, and more modern authors like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Tariq Ramadan (al-Banna’s grandson).
4) Frequent interaction with other Brotherhood organizations. This can range from shared events to press conferences and extend to the personal level as well, such as intermarriage between families of prominent leaders.
5) Financial ties. According to Vidino, “the Brothers’ financial interaction with the Arab Gulf elites has provided a bonanza.” While the Saudis have backed off funding the Brotherhood since the 1991 Gulf War, and especially since the onset of the so-called Arab Spring, other Gulf States, particularly Qatar, have picked up the slack in bankrolling Ikhwan institutions in the West.
6) Informal allegiance to Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Although he has been banned from entering the United States since 1999 for his support of Hamas, al-Qaradawi—the Brotherhood’s Qatar-based spiritual leader—is still looked to by many U.S. Islamic organizations as their chief Islamic jurist. Despite the travel ban, he even holds top positions in some of these organizations, including a role as chairman of the Muslim American Society’s Islamic American University. As Vidino puts it, “The Western Brothers play a crucial role in the global network led by al Qaradawi. It is evident that most of their networks and organizations refer to him rather than the [Supreme Guide] of the Egyptian branch. Though al Qaradawi may not be the pope of Sunni Islam, he unquestionably is the pope of the New Brothers and their Western branches.” Based on my conversations with individuals in the West who Vidino identifies as “New Brothers,” I can confirm that they revere al-Qaradawi and regard his pronouncements as the modern pinnacle of Islamic thought.
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