Putin’s Dubious ‘Democracy’

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen

Washington Times | June 29, 2006

Russia launched another strike against democracy on June 15, when 14 Duma members, representatives of Russia’s five Duma factions, submitted amendments to ban any public political criticism by individuals and/or organizations, including demonstrations against the government.

This comes on the heels of an announcement of further restrictions on foreign oil companies by Russian Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 13. The new restrictions would consolidate Russia’s control of its energy and other resources.

Vladimir Putin’s government, fortified by massive oil revenues, seems determined to reverse what little democracy Russia achieved since 1991. “The transition has been from a one-party state to a one-pipeline state,” noted Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

It is about time for President Bush to take a look at Putin’s soul to understand the Russian’s version of democracy.

“Democracy should be adequate to the current status of the development of Russia, to our history and traditions,” claims Mr. Putin. Yet, Russia’s increasingly restrictive domestic policies, media control, mounting corruption and poor implementation of the rule of law challenge its democratic development and limit the progress of Russia’s free market.

“While Russia’s Constitution enshrines the basic principles of democracy, the current policies of the Kremlin are undermining them in practice,” concludes “Nations in Transit 2006,” a June 13, 2006, Freedom House report. In fact, Russia’s growing energy wealth is used not to strengthen democratic institutions but to fuel corruption.

Russian businesses paid $316 billion in bribes since 2001 — an increase of 70 percent, according to a report published by the Indem Foundation in 2005. And corruption is not limited to the business realm; Russian citizens are forced to pay bribes to receive basic services that the government is supposed to provide for free. Want your drivers license in the near future? Your passport ready before your flight takes off? Your marriage license? Pay up.

Indeed, Mr. Putin recognizes corruption as the major obstacle to economic growth. In his State of the Nation address on May 11, 2006, he noted, ” one of the most significant traits of our internal political life is the low level of trust of citizens towards specific institutions of government and big business.” On June 13, he elaborated by saying, “We have never ceased this fight against corruption and intend to carry it on permanently and to make it more strict, effective and consistent.”

But according to Kirill V. Kabanov, director of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, “In Russia it is always the case some people are found at the lower or middle level, while no one at the top is.” He sees Mr. Putin’s recent comments and the dismissal of some government officials for alleged corruption as “just a P.R. campaign and nothing more.”

Mr. Putin’s version of democracy seems to extend to Russian corporate understanding of free markets. Take the international conflict for control of Russia’s second largest mobile phone operator, VimpelCom, between Russia’s $20 billion-plus Alfa Group and Norway’s largest phone company, Telenor East Invest AS. Moscow-based VimpelCom trades on the New York Stock Exchange and apparently didn’t file official 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 or 2000 annuals with the Securities and Exchange Commission, thus, keeping its shareholders in the dark. Inquiries with the Securities and Exchange Commission yielded no results.

To approve major decisions, VimpelCom’s charter requires a majority of eight of its nine board members, a common Russian corporate safeguard against hostile takeovers. But since 2004, Alfa has been attempting to annul VimpelCom’s supermajority rule or otherwise gain control. In June 2005 the Russian Supreme Court ruled against Alfa. Yet on May 26, 2006, Alfa Telecom Ltd solicited proxies for VimpelCom’s June 23 annual shareholder meeting, alleging that Telenor is harming shareholder values. However, Telenor refuted these allegations. VimpelCom’s apparent lack of transparency seems to benefit Alfa Group’s global ambitions, which neatly coincide with Mr. Putin’s agenda.

To counter the mounting criticism of Russia’s growing repression of individual and corporate rights, control of the media, limitations on nongovernmental organizations and rising corruption and to ward off U.S. objections about Russia’s ascension to the World Trade Organization, Russia passed new laws corresponding with WTO regulations.

However, allowing Russia’s membership in the WTO at the time when corruption exceeds that of the Soviet era, will allow Russian companies — many state-controlled (directly or indirectly) — to use their vast fortunes to corrupt international businesses and enhance their and Russia’s fortunes while further impeding democracy. As former CIA Director R. James Woolsey put it, “Putin has taken things back, maybe not all the way to Ivan the Terrible, but to, say, Nicholas II on a bad day.”

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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Risky Russky Business

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 28, 2006

The West’s need for Russia’s energy and cooperation regarding Iran, Iraq, China, and the “War on Terrorism” will likely lower the standard demanded for a full membership in the G8 group, to allow Moscow’s ascendance to the rich nations’ club, at the St. Petersburg meeting in July.

“In the six years since he pledged to uphold democracy as a ‘dictatorship of law,’ President Vladimir Putin has increased the role of the police and security services in governing Russia and wielded the power of the courts for political ends,” says the Director of the London based Foreign Policy Centre, Stephen Twig. Indeed, according to the former director of Communist Romania’s intelligence service Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, while “the Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. Putin’s Russia has one FSB-ist (Federal Security Service) for every 297 citizens.

This huge increase in security personnel did little to control the rising corruption that plagues Russia. On the contrary; more state agents demand more bribes from Russian citizens and foreigners doing business in Russia.

In 2005 alone, Russian businesses paid an estimated $316 billion in bribes, about 20 percent the country’s GDP that year, according a report by the Moscow based Indem Foundation. And corruption is not limited to business; Russian citizens are forced to pay bribes to receive basic services that the government is supposed to provide for free. Want your driver’s license in the near future? Your passport ready before your flight takes off? Your marriage license? Pay up.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin recognizes corruption as the major obstacle to economic growth. In his State-of-the-Nation Address on May 11, 2006, he noted: “one of the most significant traits of our internal political life is the low level of trust of citizens towards specific institutions of government and big business.” On June 13, he elaborated: “we have never ceased this fight against corruption and intend to carry it on permanently and to make it more strict, effective and consistent.” But according to Kirill V. Kabanov, director of the National Anti-Corruption Committee: “In Russia it is always the case some people are found at the lower or middle level, while no one at the top is. He sees Putin’s recent comments, the dismissal of some government officials for alleged corruption, and the resignation of the prosecutor-general, as “just a P.R. campaign and nothing more.”

On June 15, 2006, Russia launched another strike against democracy when fourteen Duma members, representing Russia’s five Duma factions, submitted amendments to ban any public political criticism by individuals and/or organizations including demonstrations against the government.

“While Russia’s Constitution enshrines the basic principles of democracy, the current policies of the Kremlin are undermining them in practice,” concludes the June 13, 2006 Freedom House report, “Nations in Transit 2006.” In fact, Russia’s growing energy wealth is used not to strengthen democratic institutions, but to fuel corruption.

Vladimir Putin’s government, fortified by massive oil revenues, seems determined to reverse what little democracy Russia achieved since 1991. “The transition has been from a one-party state to a one-pipeline state,” noted Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

It is about time for U.S. President George W. Bush, to look again at Putin’s soul to understand the Russian’s take on democracy.

“Democracy should be adequate to the current status of the development of Russia, to our history and traditions,” claims Putin. Yet, Russia’s increasingly restrictive domestic policies, media control, mounting corruption and poor implementation of the rule of law challenge its democratic development and limit the progress of Russia’s free market.

Putin seeks to secure his state’s role in global energy markets, and further control energy production and prices. On March 1, Putin declared, that “global energy security” is the most pressing issue facing the G8 and the world.

In May 22, 2006 he announced a Russia-Kazakhstan venture to expand capacity at Orenburg’s natural gas refinery, for 50 percent Russian ownership in the facility. Reasserting Russia’s energy might, Putin aide Igor Shuvalov stated: “We are prepared to provide Europe with oil and gas on a long-term basis and we are taking on the role of the leader…We will continue our expansion whether our European partners like it or not.”

On June 13, 2006, Russian natural resources minister Yuri Trutnev announced further restrictions on foreign oil companies. The new restrictions, which would consolidate Russia’s control of its energy and other resources, resulted in harsh criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney, who accused Russia of using its energy resources “as tools of intimidation or blackmail.”

Nonetheless, the Russians pursue their own agenda. On June 21, the Russian Presidential aide organizing the July St. Petersburg summit announced: “Russia will not ratify the EU’s Energy Charter, which it signed in 1994. The Europeans dependent on Russian oil and gas argue that Russia should ratify the treaty, but judging from the way the negotiations are going, Russia is likely to get its way. Moreover, since “Russia is a very critical partner in Iraq, in North Korea, dealing with Iran,” according to the White House, chances are also good that the U.S. will not pressure Russia to make any significant concessions, thus playing into Putin’s hand.

The West’s growing criticism of Putin’s policies caused the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev to come to the rescue of the former KGB official now presiding at the Kremlin. Interviewed by The Times, on June 25, Gorbachev warned, “Russia is not anyone’s domain… The Presidents and Prime Ministers at the G8 can raise whatever they want. But the more it is seen that the West is putting pressure on, the more it will strengthen President Putin, because in essence his position is very close to the aspirations of the people.” Gorbachev went on to criticize the U.S. and the European Union for attempting to intervene in Russia’s internal affairs. He concluded: “we do not work according to a calendar set either in the White House or in the European Union. We have our own schedule.

To make Russia’s opaque markets more palatable to potential investors and to the Western political “partners” its leaders are meanwhile holding at arm’s length, Russia is now paying millions to the New York based PR firm, Ketchum. Considering Russia’s level of corruption, the PR firm faces a daunting task.

Putin, as G8 president for 2006, claims to rule a developing capitalist economy. But upon gaining power in 2000, Putin told Russian businessmen that “The state wouldn’t question whether they’d acquired their companies legally, as long as they started investing their profits at home rather than stashing them in foreign banks.” As for Russia’s political future, Putin declared: “The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as required.

Confronted with criticism over its increasingly restrictive policies, Russian Economics Minister German Gref boasts that direct foreign investment in Russia grew 100% in the first quarter of 2006 alone. Last year, in 2005, the London market for Russian global depositary receipts (GDRs) rose 166%, to $226 billion; “much of this activity was in shares of Russian companies such as Lukoil, Gazprom and Unified Energy Systems, according to Global Finance.

However, potential investors should beware. A recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations on “Russia’s Wrong Direction,” warns “that anyone can become vulnerable when the state bureaucracy, either at the president’s direction or merely with his support, decides to seize private assets. Western doubts regarding Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) reflect those concerns.

But the Russians do not seem to care. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on June 2, 2006 that Russia should retain control over strategic companies, according to Itar-Tass. Medvedev, a likely contender for the Russian presidency in 2008, admits the government is “not the most efficient proprietor.” However, he insists that Russia should control companies “vital for the country,” including defense, atomic energy and natural resource giants like Gazprom, whose board he heads. Indeed, on June 16, the Duma voted to grant monopoly on gas exports to a state owned company, which happens to be Gazprom.

Although Medvedev said that companies in other industries “can and must become private property,” he added that the government can “enlarge its role in certain companies for a certain period [whenever] necessary to put the companies in order.” Clearly, “private” in Russia does not really mean private.

Putin’s version of democracy and capitalism seems to extend to Russian corporate understanding of free markets.

Take the common fraudulent Russian business practice to force false bankruptcies, to effect hostile takeovers: according to Dr. Alexander Radygin, from Moscow’s Institute for the Economy in Transition, Russia’s corrupt legal system supports this practice. For example, companies that buy accounts payable and promissory notes of a targeted business – change identity. The “new company” then takes the unpaid bills to bankruptcy court, where it demands and obtains the assets of the targeted business. This is how 23 Moscow department stores were taken over.

This practice, as well as bribery, money laundering, and wire fraud, were allegedly also used by one of Russia’s largest conglomerates, Alfa -Eco, according to a federal racketeering lawsuit filed in New York’s Southern District, on June 8, 2006, by Bermuda-based IPOC (International Growth Fund). IPOC alleges that Alfa group and several of its representatives engaged in a variety of illegal activities to steal IPOC’s assets, defraud the U.S. Treasury, and American investors. The lawsuit further alleges, that Alfa and its representatives did this not only to enrich themselves, but also to control the Russian telecommunications market.

In addition to the RICO lawsuit, IPOC hopes to retrieve from the parent company, Alfa Group, a Megafon stake now worth $1.7 billion. This however, is not just another business dispute; the lack of transparency that characterizes Russia’s businesses has in this case alone led to at least 5 international arbitrations and several lawsuits and countersuits in six countries, without resolving who has rights to the shares.

The closely held $20 billion-plus Alfa-Eco seems to represent Russia’s business- ethic practices. It was founded in the Soviet Union in1988, during Gorbachev’s perestroika. “Its core business was computer sales, producing and selling devices for ecological control of products, tea production, as well as selling carpets and consumer goods.”

Today, the Alfa empire, has Russian, European, Asian, Caribbean and U.S. branches and offices managing companies in banking and finance, oil and gas, mobile telephone service, construction material, commodities, food processing and supermarkets. Its subsidiaries include Alfa Capital Markets, Alfa Bank, Tyumen Oil, Altimo, Perekriostok Group and countless others. Alfa’s Chairman Mikhail Fridman, 42, who was ranked by Forbes list of the richest No. 50, owns 40 percent. Alfa also “controls three international corporations that are publicly traded in the U.S.” VimpelCom, and Turkcell are traded on the NYSE, and Golden Telecom is traded on the NASDAQ.

To maintain good relations with the Kremlin, Fridman, who served as an economic adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, gathered around him central Russian figures past and present. Alfa President Pyotr Aven, for example, was trade minister in Yegor Gaidor’s 1992 government, and reportedly remains Putin’s close friend. Similarly, Leonard Vid, former U.S.S.R. First Deputy Head of the Gosplan central planning committee, was for at least five years Chairman of Alfa Bank’s Executive Board, responsible for legal divisions, interest committees and representation in Russia’s federal government and Central Bank.

To improve relations in Washington, and to advance its business opportunities in the U.S., the IPOC complaint alleges that the Alfa Group retained the services the prestigious lobbying firm Barbour Griffiths and Rogers and the PR services of Hill & Knowlton.

The IPOC lawsuit against Alfa Group is not the first one to allege that the Russian conglomerate engages in racketeering. On May 25, 2006 Norex Petroleum, a Cyprus company with Canadian shareholders, was granted permission to begin discovery against Alfa Group in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Norex charges that Alfa Group and its many affiliates wired millions through U.S. banks, created an illegal slush fund, avoided U.S. and U.K. taxes, and fraudulently seized the oil-producing assets of Norex’s Yugraneft subsidiary, through a Russian “court approved takeover”.

In Russia, such court “approved” takeovers, observes Alexander’s Oil and Gas Connections, “usually involve bribing regional judges to provide the necessary legal pretext to send in armed guards,” after which “oil and profits are pumped out to the new owner’s affiliated companies.” Those are among the allegations in a February 2002 Norex lawsuit against Alfa in New York. This, according to Norex, was done in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Alfa’s victims, Norex alleges, include Harvard University’s Endowment Fund and American owners of the Chernogorneft American Depositary Receipts (ADR) “terminated” in October 2003. Meanwhile, in June 2003, Alfa agreed to sell half of a new BP-TNK joint venture to British Petroleum for $6.75 billion, thereby allegedly defrauding other Chernogorneft investors. According to the Wall Street Journal, Fridman specifically asked Putin to approve the “multibillion-dollar deal that would give foreigners 50% of what would be Russia’s third-largest oil producer.

In addition, Norex alleges, that Alfa acted against U.S. interests by violating U.S. and international laws, through illicit oil trading with Iraq. Norex based its allegations “mostly on the UN Volcker commission report and the US Senate investigation findings regarding TNK, Crown, Alfa-Eco and some other related companies in the paying of kick backs to the Sadam Iraqi regime.”

According to a 1,000-page, September 2004 CIA report by Charles Duelfer, “The Iraqi embassy in Moscow assisted, among other deals, a Russian company called Alfa Echo in signing contracts for importing oil from Iraq.” After September 2000, Duelfer reports, all companies in the oil-for-food (OFF) program paid illicit “surcharges” to Iraq. Furthermore, the Volcker Commission reported to the United Nations that at least two Alfa subsidiaries conducted at least 15 transactions involving more than 100 million barrels of oil worth at least $2 billion dollars. Indeed, the committee wrote, “About 2.8 percent of the Iraqi oil exported under the Programme was sold through Alfa Eco, [which] was the fourth largest purchaser of Iraqi oil ….”

In one instance, Volcker reported, Alfa paid more than $300,000 in kickbacks for 10 million barrels of oil worth more than $249 million. In November and December 2001, Volcker data shows that Alfa paid at least three other kickbacks totaling $1.73 million. Of $2,351,880 in total Alfa oil trading kickbacks to Iraq, the Volcker commission reports, more than $2 million in cash was paid “through the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow.” Alfa transferred another $312,719 through other defendants in Norex’s complaint.

Illegal oil surcharges generated at least $229 million for Saddam Hussein, according to October 2005 testimony from Michigan Senator Carl Levin. But the oil-for-food program generated at least $1.5 billion in illegal payments on “humanitarian” goods. Here, too, the Volcker commission discovered illicit Alfa kickbacks on “humanitarian” shipments of milk, sugar, tea, detergent, wheat, rice, pulses, laboratory gases, measuring and control instrumentation, and other items.

Norex also alleges that Alfa illicitly traded oil-for-sugar with Cuba, thus violating the Helms-Burton Act (Trading With the Enemy Act), “in relation to their facilitation of payments to Cuba, through the sale of Russian oil, in exchange for Cuba’s provision of supplies to the Russian Federation and of facilities by which the Russian Federation could engage in covert surveillance of the United States (the “Oil-for-Sugar” and “Cuba Rez” Programs).”

In addition, Norex alleges, “the Illegal scheme included various Defendants (from the Alfa group) paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime through the United Nations’ corrupted “Oil-for-Food” program.”

If Norex and IPOC prove their cases against the Alfa Group and win in U.S. courts, the outcome could further impede already shaky U.S. relations with Vladimir Putin’s increasingly autocratic regime.

Radygin of Moscow’s Institute for the Economy in Transition describes yet another “standard” Russian method to separate rightful shareholders from their assets, helped by corrupt police. The MDM group hostilely took over Nevinnomysky Azot chemical company. It bought shares, bribed the Tax Police to have the company’s Director General arrested, convened an early shareholder meeting, and paid the police to block shareholders from the meeting. Large Russian companies also practice such methods. For example, Radygin says the Alfa Group used similar tactics to take over Rostov’s Taganrog metallurgical plant. They too, used police services and private security to control the plant.

The most radical steps to control Russia’s economy as well as its politics were taken by Putin when he imprisoned Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky and took his oil company Yukos, once Russia’s largest, away. Khodorkovsky is locked up in Siberia, and his company was auctioned by the state to Rosneft, the state owned company. Yukos is now asking to block Rosneft’s sale of about $10 billion in the Russian’s oil company’s shares. “There is a serious risk that the offering … would constitute the sale … of criminal property,” says the Yukos complaint. Indeed, global investors should consider the behavior of the Russian state behavior as well as that of its corporations as a stern warning of the kind of treatment foreigners can expect from Putin’s Russia.

To counter the mounting criticism of Russia’s growing repression of individual and corporate rights, control of the media, limitations on Non Governmental Organizations, and rising corruption, and to ward off U.S. objections about Russia’s ascension to the World Trade Organization, Russia passed new laws corresponding with WTO regulations.

Yet, on June 26, the Moscow daily Kommersant quoted Kremlin sources saying that the U.S. agenda at the G8 meeting is “to advance American business interests in Russia and to reach an agreement on Iran.” But Kommersant’s sources inside the Kremlin also cautioned, “Whether or not that works out will depend on the U.S. position on democracy, energy security and the situation in the CIS.”

Submitting to Russia’s demands will further weaken the U.S. efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney noted: “Specifically with respect to Iran, Russia is not our ally and is probably our enemy.”

Moreover, allowing Russia’s membership in the WTO at the time when corruption exceeds that of the Soviet era will not only weaken the credibility of the G8, but also allow Russian companies—many state controlled (directly or indirectly)—to use their vast fortunes to corrupt international businesses, enhance their and Russia’s fortunes while further impeding democracy.


All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 16, 2006

On October 28, 2005, [1] President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”

The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun), [2] also known as the Ikhwan, is a good example of what the President described and what he must protect us against.

The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for return to an original Islam. [3]

The Brotherhood is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would isolate women and punish nonbelievers. Its members and supporters founded al Qaeda, as well as one “of the largest college student groups in the United States.” [4]

The Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism, Juan Zarate, stated recently, “the Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us not because it deals with philosophical or ideological ideas but because it defends the use of violence against civilians.” [5] In fact, The MB 1982 secret plan, (the Project) recently exposed, instructs all members locally and globally “To channel thought, education and action in order to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” [6]

The Muslim Brotherhood has historically and continues to actively pursue the establishment of a Muslim regime that will serve as the basis to re-establish the Caliphate, not only by defending violence against civilians, The current leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Mahdi Akef, [7] “recently issued a new strategy calling on all its member organizations to serve its global agenda of defeating the West. He called on individual members of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide to not only join the “resistance” to the U.S. financially, but also through active participation” [8] In the MB Project (1982), Point of Departure [9] instructs members “To use diverse and varied surveillance systems, in several places, to gather information and adopt a single effective warning system serving the worldwide Islamic movement. In fact, surveillance, policy decisions and effective communications complement each other.”

In an interview to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat, [10] an international Arab newspaper on December 11, 2005, Akef stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview—the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.”

To that end, Akef said, “the Muslim Brotherhood… are an all-encompassing Islamic organization, calling to the adoption of the great religion that Allah gave in his mercy to humanity.” Meanwhile, according to its leader, the MB is busily cementing its ties: “We are in the global arena, and we preach for Allah according to the guidelines of the Muslim Brotherhood.” All the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the international arena operate according to the written charter that states that Jihad is the only way to achieve these goals [11]. “Ours is the largest organization in the world,” he said.

Akef emphasized, “A Muslim in the international arena, who believes in the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood is considered part of us and we are considered part of him.” [12]

In earlier interviews, Akef called the U.S. “a Satan that abuses the religion.” He said: “I expect America to collapse soon,” declaring, “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America.” [13] Although U.S. observers often view the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Hamas as less violent than al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood has long been actively supporting global jihadi efforts. “Prior to the U.S.-led attack on the Taliban regime, the Muslim Brotherhood actually had training camps in Afghanistan where it worked with Kashmiri militants and sought to expand its influence in Central Asian states, especially Tajikistan.” [14]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Muslim Brotherhood reacted to Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory as not merely as a local achievement, but “a victory of the Islamic nation in its entirety,” [15] and as an expression of the concept that “the path of Islam is the true solution.”

As the parent of all Sunni and many other Islamist terrorist groups, the MB, to deflect attention, uses its long-term strategy, known as “flexibility” [16] (muruna [17] in Arabic). This chameleon-like adaptation is tactical moderation with the ultimate objective of complete Islamization of society. [18]

Indeed, the MB’s 1982 project calls on members “To reconcile international engagement with flexibility at a local level.” [19]

Today, when the West focuses on Islamist terrorism, the MB usually refrains from publicly advocating violence. The MB’s 1982 Project, calls on its members “To master the art of the possible on a temporary basis without abusing the basic [Islamic] principles… we should not look for confrontation with our adversaries, at the local or the global scale, which would be disproportionate and could lead to attacks against the dawa or its disciples.” [20]

As stated on its charter and its website, the MB seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire, a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize [21] targeted nations by whatever means available.

A principal danger of MB activities is that they are hidden behind “religious” ideology. Moreover, this ideology dictates concealment (Kitman).[22] In fact saying, “we should keep hush-hush on things that are still in preparation.” This ideology controls every aspect of life and seeks to impose that control on everyone.

In the end, the MB intends to overthrow all secular governments and impose Islamic law (Shari’a) worldwide, and it is diligently pursuing this goal. In July 2005, former Kuwaiti minister of education Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab’i,[23] wrote in the Arabic London daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: “The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology.” Thus, on its website, [24] the MB advocates, “Establishing the Islamic government,” “Building the Muslim state,” “Building the Khilafah,” “Mastering the world with Islam,” [25]; however, this would necessarily deprive Americans of their First Amendment, rights.[26] The first clause in the Amendment states there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The First Amendment also upholds an individuals’ right to religious freedom. But as determined by its doctrine, the MB would exploit that right—along with First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly—to actively seek the imposition of laws that would deny religious freedom to everyone else.

Moreover, the MB guiding principles celebrate its major [and continuing] role in the struggle to liberate Muslims lands. The ikhwan’s bravery in the 1948 Palestine war has been recorded by all sides. The total number of volunteers from the ikhwan in 1948 numbered 10,000 from Egypt, Syria and other countries. In addition to participating in the battle to liberate Palestine, they served to raise the consciousness of Muslims all over the Islamic World and restore to them the spirit of struggle and dignity. The ikhwan have played a role in liberating Muslim lands from colonialist powers in almost every Muslim country. The ikhwan were active amongst Muslims in Central Asian Muslim republics since the ’70s, and their involvement can be seen recently in such republics as Tajikistan. More recently they had a major role in the struggle for Afghanistan and Kashmir. [27]

Clearly, the MB strives for Muslim supremacy, often violently.

The MB’s readiness to use violence was demonstrated in the U.S., in 1993 with the bombing the World trade Center in NYC. Exiled MB leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in U.S. prison for plotting this attack, also planned to blow up bridges and tunnels in Manhattan. [28] Since then, the MB affiliated groups in the U.S., focused their activities and agenda to condition American minds and behavior to create an Islamic foundation from which violence can spring when the time is right.

And future violence is all but guaranteed: In 2004, MB leader Mohammad Mahdi Akef publicly promoted “Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.” [29]

Actively promoting its radical religious ideology, the MB may well meet the definition of a “terrorist organization” under the Patriot Act, even though it has not been so designated by the U.S. government. The law stipulates “terrorist organizations to potentially include terrorist organizations not designated by the Secretary of State…. A group that is engaged in terrorist activities might not be designated as a terrorist organization because, inter alia, the group’s activities escape the notice of U.S. officials responsible for designated organizations as terrorist; the group has shifting alliances; or designating the group as a terrorist organization would jeopardize ongoing U.S. criminal or military operations.” [30]

Terrorist organizations are legally defined as groups of two or more individuals that have “committed, incited, planned, prepared, gathered information or provided material support for terrorist activities.” However, terrorist activity can in some instances include even “indirect” actions such as group membership and advocacy. [31]

In addition, the REAL ID Act of 2005 significantly expanded the legal definition “terrorist organization” as it pertains to U.S. immigration law. “Terrorist organizations” now include any group that solicit funds or memberships for either terrorist organizations or activities, or otherwise provide them material support. The definition now covers groups with subgroups engaged in terrorist activities, too. [32] As we discuss below, the MB has many such subgroups and has spawned many offspring—thus the MB and all its offspring now seem to fit these legal criteria.

The definition of “engaged in terrorist activity” was also broadened under the Real ID Act, to include belonging to, associating with, soliciting or recruiting for, or giving material support to a terrorist organization or even a single member, including non-designated terrorist organizations. Furthermore, if they so claim, the burden is now on aliens to prove that they could not reasonably have known that their actions supported a terrorist group. [33]

The Caricatures Riots

The riots following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in the then obscure Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, [34] in September 2005, should have surprised no one. In fact, the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe, in line with the MB agenda, were planted long before the cartoons were published.

In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and leader of Hizb ut Tahrir (a radical group that works to establish the Caliphate), Sheikh Issam Amayra, from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, called upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war, according to his sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.

Amayra’s sermon warned that: “…the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”

Amayra continued, “Afterwards the citizens of the Caliphate (which will be raised in Denmark) will wage war on Oslo, and after they change that city’s name to Medina [for the Arabian holy city] they will fight their neighboring Scandinavian countries in order to join their lands to the territory of the Caliphate. In the next stage, they will wage a holy war and spread the message of Islam to the rest of Europe, until they reach the original city of Medina. Then they will join both cities under the banner of Islam.”

Clearly, the riots in Denmark and throughout the world were not spontaneous, but planned and organized well in advance [35] by Islamist organizations that support the MB, and with funding mostly from Saudi Arabia.[36]

The MB and its offspring organizations employ the Flexibility strategy in the U.S. and wherever they operate. This strategy calls for a minority group of Muslims to use all “legal” means to infiltrate majority-dominated, non-Muslim secular and religious institutions, starting with its universities. As a result, “Islamized” Muslim and non-Muslim university graduates enter the nation’s workforce, including its government and civil service sectors, where they are poised to subvert U.S. law enforcement agencies, intelligence communities, military branches, foreign services, and financial institutions.

The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood: Part II

The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States

The MB planted its roots in the United States with its 1963 [37] establishment of the Muslim Student Association (MSA).[38] Since then, it has used political developments, especially in the Middle East, to advance its strategic agenda and recruit more like-minded people to the cause of Islamizing the U.S., which, being non-Muslim, constitutes a part of the Dar al Harb—the “Land of Warfare.” [39] In other words, it “is a country belonging to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam.”

This dogma, to which Muslims have adhered since at least the 9th Century, is based on the classical Islamic definition of non-Muslim territory. Egyptian MB spiritual leader Sayyed Qutb [40] expounded further on this ideology. Although he studied in the U.S. from 1948 to 1950 on a U.S.-funded scholarship, Qutb hated America and Western values. Upon his return to Egypt, he joined the MB and became its most influential ideologist and writer after MB founder Hassan al Banna. [41] The Egyptian government executed Qutb in 1966.

Following Qutb’s vitriolic criticism of the U.S., the MB made the U.S. a target for sedition. In the U.S. (as elsewhere), the MB utilizes its “concealment” strategy through “Political Activism”[42] and exploits U.S. “weaknesses” (istid’af)[43] at opportune moments. The organization also helped to establish mosques, Islamic schools, summer youth camps and prominent Muslim organizations, often with Saudi funds. According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune [44] investigative report, the MB has been “a major factor…in why many Muslim institutions in the nation have become more conservative in recent decades.”

Indeed, according to Lebanese-American Sufi leader Hisham Kabbani and Italian Muslim leader Sheik Abdul Hadi Palazzi, chief among the extremists controlling at least 80 percent of the more than 3,000 U.S. mosques is the Muslim Brotherhood, [45] or Ikhwan. According to the Tribune, the group even established a correspondence school called the Islamic American University (IAU), based in suburban Detroit, to train teachers and preachers. The IAU chairman and head of their board of trustees, according to MAS’ press release in May 2005, is well-known Brotherhood leader Yusuf Al Qaradawi an Egyptian graduate of Al-Azhar Theological Seminary [46] and the rumored MB international chief, who resides in Qatar and was banned from the U.S. in 1999. Sheikh Qaradawi proclaimed in 1995, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not by the sword but by our Dawa [proselytizing].”[47]

MB Network’s “Flexibility” in the U.S.

On its own website, the MB states its goals under the heading “Establishing the Islamic government.” The MB notes that: “Preparing the society is achieved through plans for: spreading the Islamic culture, the possible media means, mosques, and Da’wa [inviting others to Islam, an obligatory duty for Muslims], [48] work in public organizations such as syndicates, parliaments, student unions.” In stands to reason that the Brotherhood secretly cultivates new members at the mosques, madrassas and Islamic “Cultural Centers,” it has helped to create, providing these recruits with moral and financial support.

Today, the MSA advocates, in a Young Muslims of North America newsletter,[49] the collective obligations (fard) of all Muslims. “These include the spreading of the message of Islam (Da’wa), the establishment of the Islamic State (khilafah) and the defense of Muslim lands (jihad).” The Young Muslims of North America and the Alexandria, Virginia-based Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Department note that these are required by the Shari’a and in “some of the Islamic Movement’s texts on these subjects,” including “the key books of any of the following: [MB founder] Hasan al-Banna, [Pakistani MB role model] Abul A’la Mawdudi, [50] Ahmad ar-Rashid, Assam al-Bashir and [Al-Qaeda co-founder] Abdullah Azzam.” [51]

Brotherhood members rarely announce their affiliation, since they are sworn to secrecy when they join. But operating under the seemingly benign name of the “Cultural Society” to avoid detection, the American Muslim Brotherhood also created organizations such as the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA),[52] the North American Islamic Trust [53] (NAIT), the Islamic Medical Association [54] (IMA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) [55], and The Muslim American Society [56] (MAS) according to the Tribune, the Washington Post, [57] and the MAS website. [58]

With help from the late MB member, Isma`il al-Faruqi, the group also established the International Institute of Islamic Thought [59] (IIIT) based in Herndon, Va., which publishes books and pamphlets resting on MB educational theory. This thesis is actually a plan advocating the Islamization of virtually all fields, from Economics [60] and Science and Technology [61] to The Islamization of Knowledge. [62] In Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects, [63] the group describes the hurdles it faces in its planned takeover of the U.S. and Canada. IIIT even envisions historical revisionism to erase non-Muslim scholarly documentation of the past and replace it with an Islamist perspective. The Treasury Department’s Operation Green Quest [64] investigation also identified methods by which IIIT may have funded suspected terrorists. Furthermore, on the 2004 Form 990 filed with the IRS, the IIIT reported that it sent $17,849 to Rahim Ghouse, an Australian/Malay business associate of Yassin al Qadi, an al-Qaeda financier and a U.S. designated terrorist. The family refused to answer any questions about these and other funds regularly received from the IIIT. Moreover, the IIIT directors plead the Fifth Amendment on page 26 of the Form 990.

Other organizations that openly support the MB dogma include The American Muslim Council (AMC),[65] the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),[66] the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)[67], Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC),[68] Islamic Society of Orange County, (ISOC) and many others.

Many of these groups deny connections to or influence from the Muslim Brotherhood, but all of them mouth the same ideological goals, most often with the exact same words that appear on the MB’s own websites. The MAS website, for example, describes itself as “a charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational, not-for-profit organization”that seeks “an Islamic revival and reform movement that uplifts the individual, family, and society.” Moreover, the official MAS publication, the American Muslim, [69] posts on its website the biography and “appreciation” of MB founder Hasan al-Banna. The American Muslim noted in its first issue: “Created in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood became the first mass-based, overtly political movement to oppose the ascendancy of secular and Western ideas in the Middle East. The Brotherhood saw in these ideas the root of the decay of Islamic societies in the modern world, and advocated a return to Islam as a solution to the ills that had befallen Muslim societies.”

Furthermore, former MAS Communications Director Ismail (Randall) Royer [70], who also worked for AMC and CAIR[71], pleaded guilty [72] to helping other Muslims reach a Pakistani training camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a designated foreign terrorist organization and a MB offshoot.

The AMC, established in 1990, similarly advertises itself [73] as a “movement for political and civil rights” and “justice for all Americans.” The group also wants to increase “effective participation of American Muslims in the U.S. political and public policy arenas”—but only to promote the ultimate MB goal of establishing an Islamic state. Former AMC founder and director Abdurrahman Alamoudi, [74] now imprisoned for 23 years [75] for his role in a 2003 Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi (then Crown Prince) King Abdullah, demonstrated in January 2001 [76] just how strongly he and his group felt about U.S. democracy when he served as the AMC delegate to a terrorists’ “Jerusalem” Conference in Beirut, where he (and at least four other American Muslims) met with leaders from Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hizballah and Islamic Jihad [77] as well as such state sponsors of terror as Syria, Sudan and Iran. The conference drew up a statement advocating “Jihad (holy war) in all its forms.” It also stated: “America today is a second Israel.” Indeed, these Islamist terrorists have for years advertised that the war against Israel and the war on America are one and the same. In January 2001,[78] when these terrorist chieftains met at the Beirut conference[79], they issued a communique saying: “Destroy Israel … Boycott America.” It also called for “Jihad in all its forms and resistance” against Israel and urged a boycott of American goods, since “American products are exactly like the Israeli products.” [80]

Despite all this, the AMC has had considerable access to U.S. leadership, thereby lending the group a facade of legitimacy. In 1991 and 1992, respectively, Imam Siraj Wahhaj [81] and Imam Warith D. Mohammed, made the first Islamic invocations at the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, according to the AMC website. Alamoudi’s visits to both the Bill Clinton [82] and George W. Bush [83] White House received wide media coverage.

The Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia., is the major MB mosque for the Washington DC area. Its former chief cleric, Anwar Aulaqi, called [84] on the faithful “to become ‘shaheeds,” or martyrs, and “die in the sake of Allah.” The U.S.-born Aulaqi was educated in Yemen, and according to the 9/11 Commission report [85], he met on several occasions with two of the 9/11 attackers in San Diego.

MPAC openly supports MB progeny in its obituary for HAMAS founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin,[86] whom Israel eliminated in March 2004. The article, still posted on the MPAC website, bemoans the loss of this terrorist leader, who is described as a harmless invalid. Furthermore, as Steven Emerson reported in American Jihad, the MPAC cosponsored an October 28, 2000 rally in Washington DC to support the “Al-Aqsa intifada.” While AMC leader Alamoudi exhorted the crowd to cheer for HAMAS and Hizballah, MPAC political adviser Mahdi Bray “was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations.” MPAC senior adviser Dr. Maher Hathout, who also participated, later heralded the rally in an American Muslim article “as a marker of a ‘new era.” And in a 2003 position paper concerning counter-terrorism, the MPAC questioned [87] whether “alleged terror plots, such as those in Seattle, Buffalo, Portland, and Detroit, actually posed threats as serious as the government initially claimed them to be.” In two of those cases, the suspects had gone to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and train in their terrorist camps.

MB Infiltration into U.S. Academia

Even a random examination of political positions on U.S. university campuses reveals the very same ideology dominated by anti-American attitudes, often directed by MSA chapters or Middle East Centers and departments.

In February 2004, at an MSA West [88] conference at the University of California (Berkeley), Amir Abdel Malik Ali, the Oakland mosque imam, called for the establishment of an Islamic dictatorship [89] in the U.S., which would eliminate the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.

On September 7, 2005, Carnegie Endowment [90] for International Peace awarded Mustafa Khalfi a three-month fellowship, as part of his yearlong Fulbright/American Political Science Association Congressional fellowship. He is now in Washington DC, where he is “studying U.S. policy in the Middle East, with a focus on democracy promotion efforts.” Khalfi is the editor-in-chief of the Moroccan Islamist newspaper, at-Tajdid, [91] which in addition to printing pro-Islamist terrorist propaganda and anti-American articles, is raising money for HAMAS, and many other outlawed Islamist organizations, most of which are also offshoots of the MB, and are united under the umbrella organization “The Union of Good,”[92] which is represented by the London based Islamist organization Interpal. At-Tajdid, until February 2006, had a link directing its readers to the donation page of Interpal, which the U.S. Treasury department had identified in 2003 [93] as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for supporting HAMAS.

Yet Khalfi was not the first Islamist with an avowedly anti-western agenda to study at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Earlier, in March 2005, SAIS appointed Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister, as a visiting scholar at its Foreign Policy Institute. Ibrahim co-founded the Herndon, Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which according to the Washington Post, “was set up in the 1980s largely by onetime Brotherhood sympathizers with money from wealthy Saudis.” [94]

Ibrahim also strongly supports al-Qaradawi’s pro-Jihad doctrines. SAIS, however, recently lost Ibrahim to the newly renamed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal [95] Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, at Georgetown University, where he lectures “on several topics.” [96] It is ironic that this trustee of the World Association of Muslim Youth, which supports HAMAS and has been implicated [97] in funding al Qaeda and other Islamist organizations, has been assigned to teach Georgetown students “modernity in Islam, [and] interfaith understanding.” [98]

There are literally hundreds of similar examples of “Islamist thought at work” on U.S. campuses.

The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood: Part III

MB “Flexibility” Exposed

For its part, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been repeatedly linked to the MB-spawned HAMAS. According to investigative reporter Joe Kaufman[99] and counterterrorism expert Matthew Epstein[100], CAIR was founded in 1994 by former Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) officials Omar Ahmad[101] and Nihad Awad[102]. The IAP is “a front organization for HAMAS,”[103] says former FBI counterterrorism chief Oliver “Buck” Revell. In 2004, a federal court found the IAP jointly liable (with an alleged HAMAS fund raiser and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development) for $156 million in damages [104] for helping HAMAS to murder a 17-year-old U.S. citizen in the West Bank. After 9/11, CAIR was caught [105] raising funds for two HAMAS-linked fund raising “charities,” the Holy Land Foundation (HLF)[106] and the Global Relief Foundation.[107] In 2003, CAIR also received funds from the Brotherhood-linked IIIT, according to Daniel Pipes.[108]

CAIR’s former communications director and civil-rights coordinator was sentenced to twenty years in prison, on April 9, 2004, for “using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony,”[109] and attempting to join Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani offshoot of the MB and an al Qaeda- linked organization. In addition, he pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting three Jihadists to obtain training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan in order to fight American troops in Afghanistan. All of Royer’s activities occurred while working for CAIR.

Bassam Khafagi who was a founding member and President of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) was also community affairs director for CAIR when arrested in 2003, for founding and funding the Ypsilanti-based Islamic Assembly of North America, which the FBI suspected of financing terrorism. [110] According to a September 2003 testimony before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Khafagi headed IANA during the time senior al-Qaeda recruiter Abdelrahman Al-Dosari spoke at IANA’s 1993, 1994 and 1995 conferences.[111]

Finally, according to the Justice Department, Ghassan Elashi [112], who founded the Texas Chapter of CAIR and served as chairman of the Holy Land Foundation, a specially designated terrorist organization, was convicted [113] in April 2005, of knowingly dealing with HAMAS leader and designated terrorist Mousa Abu Marzook.

In light of the fact that many senior officials in the above mentioned organizations have been convicted for a variety of terrorists’ related offenses, one would expect that the organizations would be held responsible as well.

Several key CAIR affiliates have also made comments mimicking MB ideology. CAIR board member [114] Ihsan Bagby stated [115] in the late 1980s that Muslims “can never be full citizens of [the U.S.]… because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.” CAIR spokesman [116] Ibrahim Hooper told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4, 1993: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.” And CAIR chairman Omar Ahmad [117], said in July 1998, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

MB Success in Europe as a Model for the U.S.

While pursuing its goals in the U.S., the MB has conducted the same subversive program in Europe. In “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe,” in the Winter 2005, issue of Middle East Quarterly, researcher Lorenzo Vidino [118] documented:

“Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. [Its] ultimate goal [is] to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States. [119]

“Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe’s political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.

“These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood’s radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.

“When speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, however, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for HAMAS and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. The case is particularly visible in Germany, which retains a place of key importance in Europe, not only because of its location at the heart of Europe, but also because it played host to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood immigrants [to Europe] and is host to the best-organized Brotherhood presence…. “

Munich’s Islamic Center

“The Ministry of Interior of Nordrhein-Westfalen states that the Islamic Center of Munich has been one of the European headquarters for the Brotherhood since its foundation. [120]The center publishes a magazine, Al-Islam, whose efforts (according to an Italian intelligence dossier), [121] are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa. According to the interior minister of Baden-Württemberg, Al-Islam shows explicitly how the German Brothers reject the concept of a secular state.[122] Its February 2002 issue, for example, states,

“‘In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law. … Muslims should aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a separate jurisdiction for Muslims…. With ample Saudi financing, the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to become the voice of the Muslims in Germany.’

“In parallel to European Union integration efforts, the Muslim Brotherhood is also seeking to integrate its various European proxies. Over the past fifteen years, the Muslim Brotherhood has created a series of pan-European organizations such as the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, in which representatives from national organizations can meet and plan initiatives. [123] Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest pan-European impact has, as with the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland, been with its youth organization. In June 1996, Muslim youth organizations from Sweden, France, and England joined forces with the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth to create a European Islamic youth organization. [124] Three months later, thirty-five delegates from eleven countries met in Leicester and formally launched the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which maintains its headquarters in Brussels. [125]

“According to its official publications, FEMYSO is “a network of 42 national and international organizations bringing together youth from over 26 different countries.” FEMYSO proudly stated in 2003 that over the preceding four years it had become the de facto voice of the Muslim youth in Europe. It is regularly consulted on issues pertaining to Muslims in Europe. It has also developed useful links with: the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, the European Youth Forum, and numerous relevant NGOs at the European level.” [126]

MB Globalization

Aside from working through proxies noted above, the MB uses various global communications outlets to spread its ideology. Their website, “Muslim Brotherhood Movement Page (Hizb Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon),” boasts that it has established branches in “over 70 countries all over the world,” including: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Britain, Switzerland, Lebanon, Pakistan, Morocco, France, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Bangladesh.

Wherever the MB operates, its program calls for active subversion and proselytizing. In the U.S., its message is heralded through many additional websites carried by American Internet hosts. For example, ummah.net [127] carries Sheikh Al Qaradawi’s fatwa for boycotting Israeli and U.S. products. In the name of ‘resistance,’ Qaradawi has issued fatwas calling for the systematic killing of American servicemen in Iraq. The website Jannah.org, hosted by ENoor Creations, [128] in Lombard, Il., also carries Qaradawi’s book: The Status Of Women In Islam, in which he recommends, among other domineering practices, how to beat your wife—“lightly.” Qaradawi, [129] who publicly supports suicide bombing, and was the first to issue a fatwa allowing female bombers, also heads the London-based International Union [130] for Muslim Scholars, which on January 21, 2006, threatened to boycott Norwegian and Danish products due to the publication of caricatures of Mohammed. Qaradawi is also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research.[131]

On August 23, 2004, [132] the London Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi published an MB ad calling on all Muslims to resist the U.S. Coalition’s occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ad denounced the “the savage and destructive attacks of occupation, lead by the United States on Islam in general, and on Iraq especially… Spreading death, destruction and fear among its people in all its cities and villages.” The ad went on to say that “In view of these savage crimes implemented in Iraq and Palestine by the Ziono-American pact not only against the Arabs and Islam but also against humanity in general, these events are also forthcoming in Darfur Sudan.”

For this reason, Yusuf al Qaradawi in Qatar, Leader General of the Muslim Brotherhood League, the Egyptian, Muhammad Mahdi Akef—and ninety one other leaders of MB from countries such as Germany, India, Morocco, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Tajikistan, Yemen and others—signed a petition calling “upon our Islamic and Arab nations along with all the religious authorities and the liberation powers, wherever they maybe: to resist the occupation and its savage crimes in Iraq and Palestine; to offer our moral and material support to the honorable resistance, its prisoners and their families; to be patient, strong and steadfast until Allah is victorious and the land of Islam cleansed from the filth of occupation. And this is drawing near by the grace of Allah.”

MB Utilizing Democracy in the Middle East

The recent electoral victory of the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which won 88[133] seats, up from 15 in the 454-member Parliament, should not be celebrated as an indication of liberalization, democracy and freedom. Neither should the 80 seats [134] of the 132-seat Palestinian parliament won by HAMAS (“The Islamic Resistance Movement”)[135] – the MB’s Palestinian branch [136]. Both the MB and HAMAS are exploiting the U.S. call for democratization in the Middle East, using free elections to gain legitimate political power. Indeed, neither [137] organization has changed its charter; both [138] seek to create a global Islamic state, where life would be dictated by the Shari’a. In December 2005 [139], in a series of statements, MB leader Mahdi Akef [140], not only denied the Holocaust [141] and called for the demise of Israel (a “cancer”) from the Middle East, but also condemned the U.S. for forcing its will “with tanks and Hummer vehicles on the Iraqi people.” And like his Palestinian constituency the HAMAS, he reiterated: “we will not recognize Israel which is an alien entity in the region. And we expect the demise of this cancer soon…”

Although Article Two of the 1988 HAMAS Covenant reads: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” [142] until recently, HAMAS portrayed itself as a nationalist organization, especially in the West. Yet, its Charter has always announced its global agenda. In pursuit of that goal, HAMAS publishes its website in many languages including, English, Urdu, Farsi, Malay, Bahasha Indonesia, French and Russian.[143] A HAMAS website for children even calls for the “return” to Islam of Seville.[144]

To Mousa Abu Marzuk, Deputy Chief of HAMAS’ Political Bureau in Damascus, HAMAS’ triumph is an important springboard towards the establishment of the Caliphate. In a January 26 statement, following HAMAS’ victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, Abu Marzuk said that HAMAS, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is reaping the fruits of its efforts over the last six decades.[145] HAMAS was established in Palestine in 1936 (not in 1987, as many mistakenly think.)[146] Since then, the movement has carried out its political and social agenda, including Da’wa (“Prosetylization”) and Jihad.

Support of the Muslim/Arab World to the MB

A United Arab Emirates government-operated “charitable” organization (whose board includes the UAE president), Human Appeal International (HAI),[147] funds HAMAS and its “martyrs,” HAMAS terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families. The HAI’s modus operandi is to transfer money to the Palestinian Red Crescent Organization whose West Bank and Gaza branches are operated by HAMAS. They, in turn, distribute the money to HAMAS “charities.”

According to a detailed report on March 25, 2005, in the Palestinian daily Al Hayat al-Jadeeda, the UAE Friends Society transferred $475,000, through the UAE Red Crescent, to West Bank “charitable” organizations in Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem to distribute to the families of “martyrs,” orphans, imprisoned Palestinians and others.

The Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam [148] reported on March 22, 2005, that in 2004 the UAE Red Crescent donated $2 million to HAMAS “charities” to be distributed to 3,158 terrorists’ orphans.

On February 15, 2005, the HAMAS website [149] reported on funds transferred from HAI to two HAMAS front organizations in the West Bank, IQRA and Rifdah, which Israel had outlawed. And last July, Osama Zaki Muhammad Bashiti [150] of Khan Younis in Gaza was arrested as he returned from the UAE, for transferring funds of as much as $200,000 at a time to the Gaza HAMAS branch. The suicide bombing and attacks, including one mortar attack on Gush Katif, caused the death of 44 Israeli civilians [151] and dozens of injuries.

The UAE support of HAMAS is in line with the agenda promoted by the late Sheikh Zayed. His Zayed Center for International Coordination and Followup [152], founded in 1999 as the official Arab League think-tank, was shuttered under international pressure in 2003. It championed such Holocaust deniers as Thierry Meyssan and Roger Garaudy [153] and provided a platform for Muslim Brotherhood-inspired ideology, and anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish extremists such as Saudi economist Dr. Yussuf Abdallah Al Zamel, who blamed the war in Iraq on “radical Zionist and right-wing Christian” influence. Like HAMAS, and its parent organization, the MB, the Zayed Center also promoted the many versions of Jihad.

The Truth about the Muslim Brotherhood: Part IV

MB and Terrorist Groups

Among the many permanent, negative features of Shari’a is a system that subjugates and oppresses non-Muslims. It requires non-Muslims to convert to Islam or pay the jizya [154] tax, a form of extortion, creating a “contract” (dhimma) that “guarantees” the infidels’ lives and possessions. In a recent essay [155] Dr. Andrew Bostom quotes the Arabic scholar, E.W. Lane, who bluntly calls the tax on “free non-Muslim subjects …compensation for not being slain.”

The system’s “obligations” institutionalize discrimination (dhimmitude) that targets Jews and Christians. Others, like such Hindus, and Buddhists ostensibly have a choice to convert or to be slaughtered, although historically, they were often offered an even more degrading dhimma than the “People of the Book.” [156] These regulations prohibit dhimmis from possessing arms, ringing church bells, testifying in courts, building and restoring houses of worship while restricting many other civil rights as well. Like Nazi regulations, the Islamic rules also require non-Muslims to wear special, identifying clothes. These key features of the Shari’a and Islamic ideology are political, not merely religious.

Given that political subjugation of non-Muslims is built into Islamic law, and that the MB desires to return to “classical Islam,” it is not surprising that the organization was the fountainhead from which all Sunni terrorist organizations have flowed. Its offspring include Al-Qaeda,[157] HAMAS, [158] Palestinian Islamic Jihad, [159] Gamaat Islamiyyah, [160] the Philippine Abu Sayyaf group,[161] and the Algerian Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) [162]and Armed Islamic Group (GIA) [163]. Between 1992-1998, the Algerian terrorists murdered an estimated 200,000 people. [164] Today, according to Italian security agencies, and as reported by Kathryn Haahr-Escolano [165] of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, GSPC cells in Italy not only target Italy, but “employ a dual-track approach to planning terrorist attacks and provide support infrastructure—safe houses, communications, weapons procurement and documentation—to GSPC networks in other European countries.”

The ties of all these terrorist groups to the MB are evident from their identical strategies and overall Islamist agenda, and they often carry out joint operations. The MB even influenced Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [166] who developed the Iranian version of their ideology in the 1970s. Indeed, Khomeini adhered to the teaching of Egyptian MB leader Qutb [167]and followed the lead of Muhammad Navab-Safavi, [168] who was a guest of the MB in Egypt in 1953. [169] Navab-Safavi later formed the dreaded Iranian death squad, the Fedaiyon-e-Islam, or the “Soldiers of Islam.”

In Egypt, where the group was founded in 1928 and later banned, the Brotherhood worked under the Islamic doctrine of “concealment” (kitman) [170] in order to “Islamize” the country. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the MB collaborated with the Nazis. Hajj Amin al-Husseini,[171] the MB chief in British Mandate Palestine, strongly supported Arab links with the Nazis, particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where he backed the short-lived pro-Nazi regime of Rashid Ali al-Gailani [172] in 1941. In Egypt too, the MB orchestrated riots, occupied police stations and attempted coups d’etat. Following their failed 1954 attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser, [173] MB loyalists fled Egypt to the universities[174] of Saudi Arabia, where they were granted business monopolies to finance their future reemergence; in 1961 the sympathetic King Sa’ud [175] even funded their establishment of the Islamic University in Medina. In October 1981, an MB offshoot group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In the last decade alone, MB offspring including Gama’a al-Islamiya and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades repeatedly attacked Western tourists, killing hundreds and wounding many more.

Since the history of the MB is full of instigating civil wars and committing atrocities in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Algeria, their expansion and success elsewhere is destined to wreak more havoc and destabilize every nation in which they are allowed to operate freely.

Conclusion

The MB is a dangerous organization that spreads its tentacles throughout the world. Its goal is the establishment of the Caliphate ruled by Islamic law. Mostly Saudi and Gulf sources fund its activities.

Recommendation

The Muslim Brotherhood spawned and encouraged many Islamist proxies dedicated to the spread of Shari’a law around the world and the establishment of the Caliphate. In many countries it has also been linked to terrorist groups and activities. In others, its members support terrorist organizations verbally and financially. Moreover, in the U.S. as elsewhere it calls on its supporters to “To channel thought, education and action in order to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” Such form of government would deprive Americans of their rights as granted by the Constitution.

In the interest of preserving freedom in the U.S. while advancing it globally, it is time for our government to thoroughly investigate the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and consider designating it as a terrorist organization.

In the same vein, the U.S should not allow foreign donations to U.S. organizations and institutions from Islamic countries that prohibit religious freedom.
__________
Rachel Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., a member of the board of directors of the Committee on the Present Danger and Director of the American Center for Democracy and author of “Funding Evil,” authored this article with ACD Senior Fellow Alyssa A. Lappen. ACD Fellow Ilan M. Weinglass assisted with the paper.
***
Endnotes:
[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051028-1.html
[2] http://www.thewahhabimyth.com/ikhwan.htm. The MB is often referred to by its Arabic name—“Ikhwan.”
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12823-2004Sep10.html
[5] http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp
[6] http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=22416&p=1
[7] http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-01/14/article04.shtml
[8] http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief005-22.htm
[9] http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=22416&p=1
[10] http://www.aawsat.com/english/
[11] http://www.ikhwanonline.com/Procedure.asp
[12] http://www.ikhwanonline.com/Article.asp?ID=17600&SectionID=104
[13] “New Muslim Brotherhood Leaders: Resistance in Iraq and Palestine is Legitimate; America is Satan; Islam Will Invade America and Europe,” MEMRI Special Dispatch Series, No. 655, February 4, 2004,
[14] See British Intelligence document in Roland Jacquard, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 263-267.
[15] http://www.ikhwanonline.com/Article.asp?ID=17600&SectionID=104
[16]
[17] http://www.qatar.cmu.edu/~breilly2/US-Arab/
[18] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=43
[19] http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=22416&p=1
[20] http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=22416&p=1
[21]http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:fYJQKYYuukkJ:ummah.org.uk/ikhwan/+http://www.ummah.org.
[22] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1123996016204&pagename=IslamOnline-English-AAbout_Islam/AskAboutIslamE/AskAboutIslamE
[23]http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622536080&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[24] http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/
[25] http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/
[26] http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/
[27] http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/
[28] http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/algamaa.cfm
[29] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0409190261sep19,1,3910166.story?page=1&coll=chi-newsspecials-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
[30] Michael John Garcia, Margaret Mikyung Lee and Todd Tatelman, “Immigration: Analysis of the Major Provisions of the REAL ID Act of 2005,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress , Updated May 25, 2005, n. 86, pp. 21-22,
[31] Ibid, p. 22.
[32] Ibid. pp. 19-29.
[33] Ibid. pp. 19-29
[34] http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008829.php
[35] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21082
[36]http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/symposium/symposium200602070754.asp
[37] http://www.cpt-mi.org/WahabbiOragnziationsNorthAmerica.pdf
[38] http://www.msa-natl.org/
[39] http://www.secularislam.org/articles/wtc.htm
[40] http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/thesis/loboda/home.html
[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_al_Banna
[42] http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/
[43] http://www.dawoodi-bohras.com/perspective/quran_ethics.htm
[44] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0409190261sep19,1,3910166.story?page=1&ctrack=1&cse
[45] http://www.amislam.com/bush.htm
[46] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_Theological_Seminary
[47]http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp?pg=2
[48] http://www.dawanet.com/concepts/dawaduty.asp
[49]http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Z8v1JKfiwR8J:forum.ymsite.com/article.php?a=3+%22Living+
[50] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maududi
[51] http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=388
[52] http://www.myna.i-p.com/
[53] http://www.learningtogive.org/religiousinstructors/phil_in_america/islam_na.asp
[54] http://www.aldaawah.com/1885/indexe-astudy.htm
[55] http://www.isna.net/
[56] http://www.masnet.org/aboutmas.asp
[57] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12823-2004Sep10_4.h
[58] http://www.masnet.org/aboutmas.asp
[59] http://middleeastinfo.org/article4735.html
[60] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156564218X/qid=1137553455/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2317333-5985448?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
[61] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0912463422/qid=1137553455/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/103-2317333-5985448?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
[62] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0912463759/qid=1137551920/sr=8-9/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i9_xgl14/103-2317333-5985448?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
[63] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915957914/103-2317333-5985448?v=glance&n=283155
[64] http://www.treas.gov/rewards/pdfs/Green_Quest_Brochure.pdf
[65] http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6146
[66] http://www.mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=332
[67] http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=31956&theType=NB
[68] http://www.islamctr.org/
[69] http://www.americanmuslim.org/1biography1.html
[70] http://www.masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=33
[71] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9706
[72] http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/January/04_crm_030.htm
[73] http://www.amcnational.org/
[74] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16606
[75] http://www.ice.gov/graphics/news/insideice/articles/insideice_102504_Web4.htm
[76] http://www.minaret.org/beirutconference.htm
[77] http://www.acpr.org.il/cloakrm/clk109.html
[78] http://www.zoa.org/pressrel2001/20010621a.htm
[79] http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/23/164940.shtml
[80] The other American Muslims who attended were United Association for Studies and Research director Ahmed Yusef, former Islamic Association for Palestine president Yasser Bushnaq, Minaret of Freedom President Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad and American Muslims for Jerusalem chief Khalid Turani, reportedly to represent a coalition of American Muslim groups including CAIR, MSA, MPAC, AMC, ISNA, the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
[81] http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=716
[82] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/527616/posts
[83] http://lawnorder.blogspot.com/2005/08/terrorist-who-came-to-white-house.html
[84] http://ads.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34540
[85] http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch7.htm
[86] http://www.mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=664
[87] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16606
[88] http://msa-west.net/archiveofevents.php
[89] http://www.standwithus.com/news_post.asp?NPI=324
[90] http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=17424
[91] http://www.attajdid.ma/def.asp?codelangue=6&po=2
[92] http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/2_05/funds.htm
[93] http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js672.htm
[94] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12823-2004Sep10?language=printer
[95] http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/ai55/?PageTemplateID=75
[96] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090102308.html
[97] http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/winep/policy_2002/2002_673.html
[98] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20755
[99] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12470
[100] http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=910&wit_id=2574
[101] http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Omar
[102] http://www.pluralism.org/events/interfaculty2003/guest_bios/awad.php
[103] http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43805
[104] http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-12-09-slaying-suit_x.htm
[105] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13175
[106] http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/po3340.htm
[107] http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/key-issues/protecting/charities_execorder_13224-e.shtml
[108] http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2811
[109] http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040723-082950-9083r.htm
[110] http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000124.php
[111]http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/PressRel05/elashi_conv_part2.pdf .
[113] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C153402%2C00.html
[114] http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Ihsan
[115] http://www.meforum.org/article/388
[116] http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26545
[117] San Ramon Valley Herald, July 4,1998.
[118] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/
[119] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn2
[120] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn26
[121] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn27
[122] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn28
[123] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn71
[124] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn72
[125] http://www.meforum.org/article/687/#_ftn73
[126] ibid.
[127] http://www.ummah.net/worldaffairs/viewcafeature1.php?cafid=58&caTopicID=6
[128] http://www.enoor.com/
[129] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_al-Qaradawi#Biography
[130] http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-01/21/article06.shtml
[131] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council_for_Fatwa_and_Research
[132] al-Quds al-Arabi, August, 23, 2004, page 4. Translation from Arabic .
[133] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
[134] http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/13750339.htm
[135] In Arabic: Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=13
[136] http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/hamas.html
[137] http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/
[138] http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD109206
[139] http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=15237
[140] http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=15237
[141] http://www.middle-east-online.com/English/?id=15307
[142]http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622536080&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[143] http://www.palestine-info.com/
[144] http://www.spainherald.com/2414.html
[145] http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21082
[146] http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD109206
[147] http://www.arabdecision.org/list_cvs_3_12_8_1_3_4825.htm
[148] http://www.al-ayyam.com/znews/site/default.aspx
[149] http://www.palestine-info.info/arabic/palestoday/dailynews/2005/feb05/12_2/details6.htm
[150] http://washtimes.com/upi/20050906-092131-7470r.htm
[151] http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000478.html
[152] http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/zayed_center.asp
[153] http://www.freeman.org/MOL/pages/january-2006.php
[154] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
[155] http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5116
[156]Andrew G. Bostom, Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of non-Muslims, Pp 81, 174-176, 448, 457. Prometheus Books, 2005, Amherst, New York.
[157] http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes010928_1_n.shtml
[158] http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=167
[159] http://www.cfr.org/publication/8968/hamas_palestinian_islamic_jihad.html
[160] http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes010928_1_n.shtml [161] http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes010928_1_n.shtml
[162] http://www.osac.gov/Groups/group.cfm?contentID=1297
[163] http://www.osac.gov/Groups/group.cfm?contentID=1274
[164] http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050303-092139-4026r.htm ; http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles32.htm
[165] http://www.saag.org/bb/view.asp?msgID=24931
[166] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1603178.stm
[167] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyed_Qutb
[168] http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=279302
[169]http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:OEcEY4_CRL8J:www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/Boroumand.pdf
[170] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1123996016204&pagename=IslamOnline-English-AAbout_Islam/AskAboutIslamE/AskAboutIslamE
[171] http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqaxiscoup.htm
[172] http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9389174
[173] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamal_Abdel_Nasser
[174] http://i-cias.com/e.o/mus_br_saudi.htm
[175] http://i-cias.com/e.o/saud.htm


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Russia after dark

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | June 9, 2006

Confronted with criticism over its increasingly restrictive policies, lack of economic freedom and growing corruption, Russian Economics Minister German Gref boasts that direct foreign investment in Russia grew 100 percent in the first quarter of 2006.

But jubilant investors should beware. A recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations on “Russia’s Wrong Direction” warns “that anyone can become vulnerable when the state bureaucracy, either at the president’s direction or merely with his support, decides to seize private assets.” U.S. doubts regarding Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization reflect those concerns.

To make Russia’s opaque markets more palatable, Russia is now paying millions to the New York-based PR firm Ketchum. Considering Russia’s level of corruption, the PR firm faces a daunting task.

An October 2005 survey by the Russian think-tank Indem found such a large increase in the volume of business-related bribes that their total exceeded twice Russia’s federal budget. Russian corruption is symptomatic of problems, including “a neutered parliament, subservient (and sometimes intimidated) media and a suborned judiciary,” says Indem’s Georgy Satarov. Continue reading “Russia after dark”


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Russian roulette

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | June 1, 2006

On May 25, Norex Petroleum, a Cyprus company with Canadian shareholders, received permission to begin discovery against Alfa Group in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Norex charges that Alfa Group, the Russian conglomerate and its many affiliates wired millions through U.S. banks, created an illegal slush fund, avoided U.S. and U.K. taxes, and fraudulently seized the oil-producing assets of Norex’s Yugraneft subsidiary, thus violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), among other U.S. laws.

If Norex proves its case against the Alfa Group and wins in U.S. courts, the outcome could further damage already shaky U.S. relations with purportedly capitalist, democratic Russia. Meanwhile, global investors should consider Alfa Group’s alleged behavior as a stern warning of the kind of treatment foreigners can expect from Vladimir Putin’s increasingly autocratic regime.

Mr. Putin seeks to secure his state’s role in global energy markets, and further control energy production and prices. On March 1, Mr. Putin declared, that “global energy security” is the most pressing issue facing the G8 and the world.

On May 22, he announced a Russia-Kazakhstan venture to expand capacity at Orenburg’s natural gas refinery, for 50 percent Russian ownership in the facility. Reasserting Russia’s energy might, Putin aide Igor Shuvalov stated: “We are prepared to provide Europe with oil and gas on a long-term basis and we are taking on the role of the leader…We will continue our expansion whether our European partners like it or not.” Continue reading “Russian roulette”


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