My friend and colleague Patrick Poole, who was the first U.S.-based journalist to report on The Project, summarized the tactics, techniques, and goals it set for the Brotherhood:
• Develop a comprehensive hundred-year plan to advance Islamist ideology throughout the world
• Network and coordinate actions between like-minded Islamist organizations
• Avoid open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to display the appearance of “moderation”
• Infiltrate Muslim organizations to realign them to meet Muslim Brotherhood goals
• Establish financial networks to fund work of converting the West
• Conduct surveillance, obtain data, and establish databases to store such information
• Establish a media watchdog system to warn Muslims of “international plots fomented against them”
• Build extensive social networks of schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations dedicated to Islamist ideals
• Engage committed Muslims in all Western institutions, including in government, NGOs, private organizations, and labor unions
• Create autonomous “security forces” to protect Muslims in the West
• Keep Muslims living in the West “in a
jihad
frame of mind”
• Support jihadist movements throughout the Muslim world through preaching, propaganda, personnel, funding, and technical and operational support
• Make the Palestinian cause a wedge issue for Muslims
• Instigate hate campaigns against Jews and reject any discussion of conciliation or coexistence with them
• Create jihad terror cells within Palestine
• Link the terrorist activities in Palestine with the global terror movement
22
In short, more than thirty years ago the Brotherhood laid out a strategy to put up a false front of peace, coexistence, and cooperation to the Western world, while acting covertly to subvert those same ideals— and to a large degree they have succeeded. In 2004, for instance, the Dutch Secret Service observed how the MB worked in the Netherlands:
Radical branches of the Muslim Brotherhood employ covert Dawa strategies. Rather than confronting the state power with direct violence, this strategy seeks to gradually undermine it by infiltrating and eventually taking over the civil service, the judicature, schools, local administrations, et cetera. Apart from clandestine infiltration, covert Dawa may also be aimed at inciting Muslim minorities to civil disobedience, promoting parallel power structures or even inciting Muslim masses to a revolt.
23
As Poole notes, The Project lays out the global strategy the Muslim Brotherhood has followed for decades, yet it has been ignored by the media:
One might be led to think that if international law enforcement authorities and Western intelligence agencies had discovered a . . . document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the oldest Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by Islamists for more than two decades, that such news would scream from headlines published on the front pages and above the fold of the
New York Times
,
Washington Post
,
London Times
,
Le Monde
,
Bild
, and
La Repubblica
. If that’s what you might think, you would be wrong.
24
And it gets worse.
CIVILIZATION JIHAD
Suppose, during a previous era, that U.S. authorities were able to obtain documents containing a comprehensive list of Soviet front organizations operating inside the United States. Suppose these documents not only provided a list of all the major players seeking to destroy America from within and subvert it to communism, but also laid out specifics on how they would go about doing so. Imagine striking this mother lode in 1948, as the Cold War was heating up, or finding a similar treasure trove on Nazi infiltration as Hitler’s war machine was beginning its catastrophic march in 1939. This would have been a landmark intelligence breakthrough, heralded by the U.S. government as a game changer that would, in the long run, help preserve American freedom and liberty, not to mention an untold number of American lives.
What if I told you the U.S. government has such documents in its possession today? Except these documents don’t concern great enemies of the past, like the Soviets or the Nazis. Rather, they expose the nefarious activities on U.S. soil of America’s next great enemy: the Muslim Brotherhood. Wouldn’t you want the government to take decisive action against the organizations named in these documents and inform the American people?
Well, brace yourself. The government does indeed have such documents in its possession. But rather than shutting down the groups named within and prosecuting their leaders for sedition, it has rushed headlong to embrace them.
The man behind the most revealing of these documents is Mohamed Akram Adlouni, a former top U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leader connected to the Hamas network who has worked out of Lebanon in recent years. Akram’s name appeared in multiple exhibits presented as government evidence in the landmark Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial (which saw several American Brotherhood operatives convicted for funding Hamas).
According to court documents, Akram was the head of planning for the senior Muslim Brotherhood network in America and held other key positions within the organization, including a place on the U.S. Ikhwan’s Shura Council.
25
In short, he’s no mere bit player on the fringes of the MB universe; rather, he was a very important cog in the American Brotherhood before returning to work for the movement in his native Middle East, where he remains a key Ikhwani today.
One of the exhibits showcased by prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial was a document authored by Akram in May 1991. Called, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” it was directed to Akram’s fellow MB leaders and played a decisive role in forging the long-term vision of the organization in North America.
26
The memo lays out a multi-pronged plan to wage a new kind of warfare from within the United States—not one waged with bombs or bullets in classic terrorist style, but a covert war of deception fought in the media, in the courtrooms and classrooms, in our political institutions, and throughout our civic life.
27
In the introduction to the memo, Akram expands on principles previously agreed upon by Brotherhood leaders in 1987. He outlines a plan of “settlement” whereby the Muslim Brotherhood would infiltrate American society. Akram urges that “the Movement must plan and struggle to obtain ‘the keys’ and the tools of this process in carrying out this grand mission as a ‘Civilizational-Jihadist’ responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslims and—on top of them—the Muslim Brotherhood in this country.”
28
Surely, by “Jihadist” Akram means someone engaged in a spiritual struggle to become a better person. Or not. He explains that Muslims’ “Civilizational-Jihadist responsibility” involves nothing less than waging a covert war from within:
The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist” process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.
29
Never fear, Islamists: when it comes to jihad, Akram and the Brothers are anything but slacking. Akram goes on to say that the most important elements in waging this “grand jihad” against Western Civilization will include, “a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’, the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”
30
Meaning that this war from within will not be primarily conducted through violent means—although terrorism is always an option—but that the Brotherhood intends to destroy our civilization from the inside incrementally.
The Brothers’ stealth strategy includes gaining and exercising influence in the media, government, and educational circles; building mosques across a wide geographical area and establishing self-segregating Islamic enclaves; forging alliances with the political Left; and engaging in a mass media blitz to reshape the national conversation (and public policy) when it comes to Islam, Israel, and the broader Middle East.
This methodical strategy of infiltration, co-optation, and deception had already been articulated in The Project and adopted by the international Muslim Brotherhood leadership in the early 1980s. The reason Akram’s strategic memo is so significant is that it expands upon The Project to detail how the Brotherhood’s gradualist plan would be implemented in the United States.
Perhaps even more important, the Explanatory Memorandum included a comprehensive list of twenty-nine American-Muslim organizations that Akram enthusiastically identifies as the Brotherhood’s allies in this “Grand Jihad”:
A list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends [Imagine if they all march according to one plan!!!]
1- ISNA = ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
2- MSA = MUSLIM STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION
3- MCA = THE MUSLIM COMMUNITIES ASSOCIATION
4- AMSS = THE ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM SOCIAL SCIENTISTS
5- AMSE = THE ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS
6- IMA = ISLAMIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
7- ITC = ISLAMIC TEACHING CENTER
8- NAIT = NORTH AMERICAN ISLAMIC TRUST
9- FID = FOUNDATION FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
10- IHC = ISLAMIC HOUSING COOPERATIVE
11- ICD = ISLAMIC CENTERS DIVISION
12- ATP = AMERICAN TRUST PUBLICATIONS
13- AVC = AUDIO-VISUAL CENTER
14- IBS = ISLAMIC BOOK SERVICE
15- MBA = MUSLIM BUSINESSMEN ASSOCIATION
16- MYNA = MUSLIM YOUTH OF NORTH AMERICA
17- IFC = ISNA FIQH COMMITTEE
18- IPAC = ISNA POLITICAL AWARENESS COMMITTEE
19- IED = ISLAMIC EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
20- MAYA = MUSLIM ARAB YOUTH ASSOCIATION
21- MISG = MALASIAN [sic] ISLAMIC STUDY GROUP
22- IAP = ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE
23- UASR = UNITED ASSOCIATION FOR STUDIES AND RESEARCH
24- OLF = OCCUPIED LAND FUND
25- MIA = MERCY INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION
26- ISNA = ISLAMIC CIRCLE OF NORTH AMERICA
27- BMI = BAITUL MAL INC
28- IIIT = INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC THOUGHT
29- IIC = ISLAMIC INFORMATION CENTER
31
Representatives from at least one of these groups, ISNA, advise the FBI and have strolled the halls of the White House. Indeed, Akram’s lengthy list of Muslim Brotherhood fronts and associates includes virtually every leading American-Muslim organization except Obama administration favorites the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)—all of which were created a few years
after
Akram wrote the Explanatory Memorandum. These groups have aggressively muscled their way to the front of the pack of American Islam and, with help from the U.S. government and the mainstream media, have seized a virtual monopoly over any discourse emanating from the U.S. Muslim community. Which means a large chunk of the media-appointed, “moderate” Muslim spokespeople that you see flashing across your television screen each day are little more than pawns of the Ikhwan.