The Muslim Brotherhood’s Duping of America

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | April 20, 2007

Making the Muslim Brotherhood a major player in Middle East politics seems to be one of the few subjects on which both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree. Neither the State Department nor the White House commented after U.S. House Majority Leader Stanley Hoyer met in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentarian leader, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni. Hoyer and el-Katani discussed recent developments in the Middle East, and the “Brotherhood’s vision.”

This meeting took place just one day after the conclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood 5th Cairo Conference: The International Campaign Against US & Zionist Occupation, in which delegations from Hizbollah and Hamas took part. The participants cheered as Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Mahdi ‘Akef declared, “the devil Bush and his allies were now the ones sowing terror and aggression worldwide.”

Akef’s rant, translated from Arabic by MEMRI, blamed Bush for

“sending American youth to die by the thousands …at the expense of the poor in the U.S. and across the world.” His statement sounds similar to the claim of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that “The president’s policies have failed, and…[he] endangers our troops and hurts our national security.”

Continue reading “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Duping of America” →

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Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part III

By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 20, 2007

In this concluding Part 3 of my rejoinder to Nixon Center Fellows Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke’s article, “A Response to Patrick Poole’s “Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood‘,” I cover the following points:

1) The very un-moderate statements of the so-called “moderates” they identify within the Muslim Brotherhood;

2) I take note that many of the reformists within the Brotherhood, many of whom served in the organization’s leadership, left a long time ago (1996) to form the Al-Wasat (“Center”) Party, frustrated by the radicalization and ideological lockdown within the Brotherhood;

3) I respond to their accusation that US foreign policy is responsible for Islamic radicalization in the Middle East;

4) I document my previous claim that the Brotherhood has engaged in vote rigging and rampant financial fraud in their administration of the professional syndicates in Egypt, as well as observing that the sole piece of evidence they cited in their response on this point was subject to some suspicious editing on their part;

5) I directly challenge their claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been implicated in the violent and fatal attacks against the Coptic community in Egypt by citing a report published by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in addition to reports issued by the Coptic community and articles in the Egyptian press;

6) I revisit the events surrounding the military demonstration by Muslim Brotherhood youth cadres at Al-Azhar University this past December, which prompted the current government crackdown on the organization, as evidence that the intentions of the Brotherhood are not entirely peaceful;

7) I observe that their characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in France, the UOIF, as a “moderate” organization is directly contradicted by recent studies published by their own organization, the Nixon Center, and that most careful researchers have concluded that France’s policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood has been a catastrophic failure and fueled Islamic radicalization — the same policy Leiken and Brooke demand the U.S. implement.

The previous parts to this rejoinder can be found here:
Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 1
Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 2

Muslim Brotherhood — Leiken and Brooke
To begin the concluding Part 3 of my rejoinder to Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, I would quickly point out to FrontPage readers that the Muslim Brotherhood is now featuring their response to me on the official Ikhwan website, and promoting it on their home page.

Leiken and Brooke’s Muslim Brotherhood “Moderates”

Following up on a point I made in Part 2 in my rejoinder to Leiken and Brooke was how virtually all of the “reformists” they claim that they have spoken with in the Muslim Brotherhood over the past year have gone unnamed. We realize the reason that the “many members” of the Brotherhood that Leiken and Brooke spoke with during their Magical Muslim Brotherhood Mystery Tour remain unidentified — to prevent “armchair/internet intellectuals” like me from conducting follow-up research on these alleged “reformists” and “pragmatists” that are supposedly proof of their so-called “Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.”

In their response to my original criticism, they tacitly identify one of these figures:

“Many high-level figures in the Brotherhood take a pragmatic view of Israel. As one explained to us ‘we may not like it, but we have to accept the fact that Israel exists and is not going anywhere. We must start from this point’.”

When following the link they provide, we arrive at an interview conducted by anti-war activist and Christian Science Monitor columnist Helena Cobban with Dr. Abdel Monem Abul-Futouh, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Council and the head of the Brotherhood-controlled professional syndicate, the Arab Doctors’ Association.

Following the publication of Part 2 of my rejoinder, I was reminded by my colleague Alyssa Lappen, Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy, of the review she gave several months ago (“Islam’s Useful Idiots” The American Thinker [October 23, 2006]) to “pragmatic” statements previously made by El-Futouh, such as these quotes given to the New York Times where he expresses his preference for a “Hezbollah-Iranian agenda” over an “American-Zionist one”: Continue reading “Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part III” →

Show Me the Money and I’ll Show You the Agenda

By Andrew Cochran
Terrorfinanceblog | April 10, 2007

I’m trying to determine why senior U.S. government officials or Congressmen continue to entrust their precious time to those with an extremist or Islamist agenda when they’re searching for “moderate Muslims” with whom to hold a dialogue. It still happens all too often, even years after the 9-11 attacks (I have another example about which to post soon). And I have to conclude that too many government officials around the world and experts are still trusting what they hear from a foreign leader or long-standing Islamist, instead of watching what they actually do. My golden rule, probably due to my experience as a CPA and consultant, is simple: see how the Islamists and their supporters (or their opponents, for that matter) spend their money, and stop trusting what they say.

Analyses of the Muslim Brotherhood illustrate this point perfectly. Douglas Farah took issue with the Foreign Affairs article by the Nixon Center’s Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood,” starting a mini-debate here and on the Nixon Center site (see Doug’s last post on it). But look at the angle each party takes in their analysis: Leiken and Brooke barely mention how MB leaders spend their money; it’s all about “expressions of confidence that it would honor democratic processes.” Yes, there is some discussion of “a painstaking educational program,” but nothing about the directions for the “big money.” To the contrary, Doug’s method is to follow the money. Everything he writes on MB, from his recent piece on Sudan to his 2006 analysis of the MB’s international financial network, focuses on the cash flow. Lorenzo Vidino explores the financial angle in his April 6 post, “The Muslim Brotherhood in Holland,” discussing how the MB has worked in Europe since World War II. Other articles in the debate break down along this fault line – see Alyssa Lappen’s response to Nick Fielding, in which she cited MB’s financial support for terrorism, while Fielding discounted or ignored such instances.

I recently mentioned to a senior Congressional staffer that “if you show me the money, I’ll show you 80% of the agenda.” He corrected me – “it’s 90%.” And he’s certainly right in the CT world, in the U.S. and abroad. Find out where a group gets it money and where it spends it, and you’ll know the group’s agenda.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Propaganda Offensive

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | April 2, 2007

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is heightening its U.S. propaganda offensive in advance of the 2008 presidential elections, taking advantage of the political uncertainty and opposition to the current Administration’s defense policies against radical Muslim terrorist organizations and states.

Incredibly, “Hear Out the Muslim Brotherhood,” an op-ed in the Boston Globe on Sunday March 25, portrayed the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as a reforming tool to promote democracy and stability there and throughout the Middle East, and praised the MB for “surviving” decades of oppression by previous Egyptian regimes.

However, a referendum on March 26, 2007 in Egypt banned “the creation of political parties based on religion.” The MB, the biggest opposition group boycotted the vote and later criticized the results because of low voter turnout.

The MB, which is illegal in Egypt, Libya and Syria, operates in at least 70 countries. It is busy preparing the ground to establish Islamic global dominance, successfully using Western democracy to legally inject itself into the political process, while using the free media to portray the Brothers as reformers and protesting any attempt to limit their subversive activities. Indeed, even the Wall Street Journal agrees that in Egypt the MB “has become something of a default opposition.” Criticizing Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak for the latest crackdown on the MB, the Journal declared, “Not even a modern-day Pharaoh can forbid people from gathering in mosques.” Continue reading “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Propaganda Offensive” →

What Ails Mainstream Journalism

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 22, 2007

Why do otherwise thorough reporters lose their professional skepticism when covering the Middle East and Islam? This peculiar journalistic phenomenon has puzzled me since I began covering the Middle East and Islam, in lieu of the investigative financial reporting work I had done for most of my career. Indeed, it largely motivated my personal professional shift.

An informal conversation with a part-time journalism professor recently gave me important clues. Our professional dialogue was private; therefore, it would be a gross violation of trust to identify this person in any way, excepting to note that the professor lived and reported from the Middle East for a time and now teaches how to cover current-day religious affairs and relations at a major university.

The professor’s classes often cover reporting on the Islamic community in the U.S. today. Therefore, I was keenly interested to determine the professor’s familiarity with sacred and historical texts that motivate modern Islamic activity and dogma.

In financial reporting, it goes without saying that one cannot write a major investigative piece on a corporation, industry or economic issue without first reading a great deal. For public companies, this requires extensive review of all Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings—recent annual reports (10-Ks, or F-20s for foreign firms), quarterlies (10-Qs), and changes to business strategy (8-K) or ownership (13-D). A good sleuth also consults the filings of major competitors and customers, in addition to interviewing as many of them as possible.

Only after laying this groundwork will the thorough reporter contact executives at the subject corporation.

A similar procedure—research first, interviews later—applies to private companies. Before 1995, Fidelity Investor chairman Edward C. Johnson III (Ned Johnson) rarely if ever spoke to reporters. Therefore before requesting an interview, I read everything available on the giant money management firm—and talked to more than 140 industry analysts, consultants, competitors, former and then-current Fidelity employees, and so on. The resulting September 1995 Institutional Investor cover story was subsequently emulated by Fortune, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

Likewise, for a May 1989 Forbes report on the world’s largest private textile firm, Milliken & Co., which had never previously been profiled, before asking the secretive magnate Roger Milliken for an interview, I spent six weeks filling more than 12 notebooks with every shred of data I could gather from every available source. The late Senator Strom Thurmond, then 86, for example, sent me to Florida U.S. Representatives Sam Gibbons, who, in turn, described Milliken as “a protectionist hog, H-O-G.” And former President Richard M. Nixon replied to an interview request in writing.

Of course, not all my financial stories required so many advance interviews, but a large number did. This point is not boastful. Indeed, without intensive advance work, interviewing hard-to-get, controversial, evasive or famous sources would be wasted opportunities or completely fruitless.

Such exhaustive reportage has often helped to expose corporate, Wall Street or other financial corruption. Similarly, investigative journalists have similarly raked corrupt politicians over the coals.

But when it comes to interviewing Muslim community or religious leaders, mainstream reporters are little inclined to submit them to tough or probing questions. Frequently, the U.S. media present leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim American Society (MAS), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), or Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as civil rights “activists,” “soft-spoken,” “regular guys” to be taken at face value, “moderate,” “really respected,” and so on. Continue reading “What Ails Mainstream Journalism” →

Australia’s Meathead Mufti

By Alyssa A. Lappen

American Thinker March 16, 2007

Far from bowing to rising clamor for his deportation, the controversial Mufti Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali is taking on the political establishment. Al-Hilali outraged Australians last fall by describing women as “uncovered meat,” and in January compounded their furor when he claimed that Muslims had more right to the country than the “Anglo-Saxon” heirs to Australia’s convict ancestors. On March 12, al-Hilali spokesman Keysar Trad brazenly baited politicians to stop using Muslims as a “political football.”

In October 2006, after al-Hilali’s misogynist sermon at west Sydney’s Lakemba mosque, Prime Minister John Howard criticized him and other politicians demanded his dismissal and deportation. Egyptian-born al-Halali has been in that position before, however: after spewing anti-Jewish hatred at the University of Sydney in 1988, deportation proceedings began. But under Muslim pressure, in 1990, Australia granted him citizenship.

Al-Hilali certainly follows recent radical custom. In Iraq, Islamic radicals have slain at least 20 women for living (and dressing) as liberated women. In 2005, a Spanish judge sentenced Mohamed Kamal Mustafa to 15 months in prison for writing, “blows [to a disobedient wife] should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body.” And in March 2003, Saudi Arabian religious police trapped 890 girls and women in a burning school rather than let them out in “improper dress.” At least 15 girls died.

In Status of Women in Islam the “greatest” current-day Islamic scholar, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi derides any woman with “free rein to assert herself, promote her personality, enjoy her life and her femininity… mix with men freely, experience them closely where they would be together and alone, travel with them, go to cinemas or dance till midnight together.

“Actually, the “women are meat” motif is apparently Islamic tradition. Second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (634-644) stated, “innamaa al-nisaa’ laHm `alaa waDam illaa maa dhubba `anhu” (Women are only meat on the butcher’s block, except for any parts that have dried up), according to a 1937 reference by Islamic scholar Georges Vajda to a medieval Arabic text. [1]

Likewise, from Cairo in January, al-Hilali laid claim to Islamic historical and cultural supremacy, prompting Australian leaders to urge al-Hilali not to come back. He stated on Cairo Today TV that Muslims with “deep roots in Australian soil [from] before the English arrived” had more right to Australia than Anglo-Saxons, who “arrived in chains.” (It wasn’t the first time, either: in 2004, he said that Afghan Muslims, not Capt. James Cook, discovered Australia.) Now, Al-Hilali also blames “racism” for the conviction and harsh sentencing of a Muslim gang rapist. His critics, he added, were racists, too.

Some Muslims rebuked him: Darulfatwa (Australia’s Islamic High Council) called al-Hilali an ill-respected, “divisive figure” and asked the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) running the Lakemba mosque to fire him. The Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations (FAIR) also sought “sending [al-Hilali] out to an early pasture.”

But Melbourne Sheik Fehmi Naji warned leaders against bullying Muslims; and spokesman (and Islamic Friendship Association president) Keysar Trad dismissed al-Hilali’s latest outrage gaucherie as “a slip of the tongue.”

Meanwhile, the British Undercover Mosque documentary broadcast west Sydney Global Islamic Youth Centre imam Sheik Feiz Mohammed despising infidels as filthy, dirty, disbelieving “kaffirs,” and ridiculing Jews as “pigs.” They’d found him, in the Islamic DVD “Death Series,” urging young Muslims to be holy warriors, and their parents to “Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom.”

To top it off, 450 Muslims packed a January Hizb ut Tahrir Khilafa conference in Sydney’s southwest Lakemba area, where Indonesian radical Ismail Yusanto urged “all the sons and daughters of Islam” worldwide to impose “the divine order of Islam,” take “responsibility for effecting political change in the Muslim world to manifest universal brotherhood”–and wage jihad for the establishment and defence of a universal Muslim state headed by one religious leader.

Clearly, Al-Hilali (and cohorts) subscribe to the belief succinctly expressed by Osama bin Laden–“The earth belongs to Allah and thus only Allah’s rule should prevail all over the earth.” They hold Muslims (believers) to be superior to others–and believe Islam should rule the world. As Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris opined on Palestinian TV on May 13, 2005, “We ruled the entire world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again.”

Like it or not, Al-Hilali and friends simply follow Islamic scriptural doctrine, which establishes the “divine,” i.e. unchallengeable notion (Qur’an, 3:110) that Muslims are “best community that hath been raised up for mankind…,” that most Christians and Jews “are evil-livers” and that all land belongs to Allah, [2] like a mosque (masjid), which can never revert to private ownership.[3]

After migrating to Lebanon, in 1982 during its civil war, al-Hilali traveled down under on a tourist visa; he later refused to depart. In September 1988, reports a web archive of Australia’s Counter Intelligence-Counter Espionage-Counter Terrorism, he recited traditional lessons from Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the world’s leading Islamic institution, to Muslim students in Sydney:

“The Jews struggle with humanity is as old as history itself; the present continuing struggle with the Islam[ic] nation is a natural continuation of the Jews enmity towards the human race as a whole.
“Judaism controls the world by secret movements as the destructive doctrines and groups, such as communism, libertinism, Free Masons, Baha’ism, the Rotary clubs, the nationalistic and racist doctrines.

He continued, Jews attempt “to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding.”

Al-Hilali subsequently pretended to be chastened: On November 15, 2001, at a September 11 memorial with Buddhist, Christian and Jewish leaders, he opposed terrorism, killing and wars. And in November 2003, he coyly labeled Australia “our compassionate mother,” criticized criminals among Sydney’s Muslims and admonished them to “love this country or leave it; shape up or ship out.”

But at a Sidon, Lebanon mosque in 2004, al-Halali said “September 11 is God’s work against oppressors,” praised the hijacker “pilot who reached his objective without error..,” lauded the global “war on infidels” and heralded the “true buy” who, “despite his mother’s objections,” welcomes the jihad imposed on him to be martyred.

Fast forward: Last November, the same AFIC that named al-Hilali mufti in 1989 to thwart his deportation, formed the National Imams Council following his Meat Head gaffe, ostensibly to independently decide his fate. Who is AFIC president Ikebal Patel kidding? In February, rumors of al-Hilaly’s pending dismissal proved false with LMA president Tom Zreika’s announcement that the board would let him stay at Lakemba mosque until the contrived AFIC-NIC meeting in early April.

With the al-Hilali camp’s latest political announcement, Australia’s radical Muslims have also announced their strategy to again leverage multiculturalism and Western guilt for their advantage. This time, they’re fighting Christians along with the politicians: Christian Democratic Party leader, Rev. Fred Nile, called Monday for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration to Australia, in favor of Christians fleeing Islamic persecution–which not incidentally goes largely uncovered, in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Pakistan.

But failing a massive Christian campaign on the issue, Muslim pressure again looks ascendant in Australia, and al-Hilali highly unlikely to be sent packing for good. After all, the country’s parliamentary multicultural affairs minister recently assured the public that a government-sponsored Islamic center will produce moderate imams.

NOTES:

[1] Georges Vajda, “Juifs et Musulmans Selon Le Hadit” [“Jews and Muslims According to the Hadith”] Journal Asiatique 1937, Vol. 229, pp. 57-127, included in (upcoming) Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: from Sacred Texts to Solemm History (2007, Prometheus).

[2] Qur’an 16:41: “And those who became fugitives for the cause of Allah after they had been oppressed, We verily shall give them goodly lodging in the world, and surely the reward of the Hereafter is greater, if they but knew;”

Quran, 57:2: “To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: It is He Who gives Life and Death; and He has Power over all things.;” Qur’an 59:7: “That which Allah giveth as spoil unto His messenger from the people of the townships, it is for Allah and His messenger and for the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, that it become not a commodity between the rich among you. And whatsoever the messenger giveth you, take it. And whatsoever he forbiddeth, abstain (from it). And keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is stern in reprisal.”

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 53, Number 392: Narrated Abu Huraira: “[The Prophet said to the Jews], “If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle.”

Abu’l Hasan al-Mawardi, (d. 1058), “Chapter 12: “The division of fay [property taken from infidels without battle] and the Ghaneemah [property taken by force],” and Chapter 13: “The Imposition of the Jizyah [head tax on unbelievers] and the Kharaj [land tax on unbelievers],” and “Chapter 14: The different statuses of the regions,” al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), 1996 Ta-Ha edition, pp. 207-251. In any case, all confiscated property is “taken from the nonbelievers as a way of exacting revenge.” (p. 207) According to al-Mawardi, second Caliph Umar ibn al- Khattab stated that he had “discovered what is good in that which Allah has given me authority over by means of three thing: fulfilling a trust [to Islam], taking by means of force, and ruling by what Allah has revealed; surely I have only found the good in this wealth by three things: that it is taken justly, that it is distributed justly [to Muslims and to benefit Islam], and that it is prevented from being spent on unjustified things….” (p. 251);

Ralph W. Brauer, “Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography,” (1995), American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 85, Part 6, pp.65- 69;

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal anti-Discrimination List, Witness statement of John Mark Durie, 3 Oct, 2003;

Abul Ala Maududi, (founder of terrorist group Jamaat-e-Islami), “The Islamic Concept of Life;

“The Truth,”(“The present ‘system’ whereby all are forced to be ‘subscribers’ and all are forced to pay whatever is demanded is to now cease as man is awakened from their ‘sleep of ignorance’ and are enlightened by their Allah. There will be no more land taxes as all land belongs to Allah not man.”) http://www.dar-es-salaam.org/web/hell.htm, p.22.

[3] Thomas P. Hughes, “Masjid,” Dictionary of Islam, 1895, 1994 reprint, Kazi, pp.329-332: “The Muslim law regarding the erection and endowment (waqf) of Masjids, as contained in Sunni and Shi’ah works, is as follows: According to the Sunnis: ‘…as soon as [a property-owner] separates [the masjid] from his property and allows even a single person to say his prayers in it, his right to the property as a mosque ceases…. delivery of it is made to the Qazi or his deputy….. Abu Yusuf was of the opinion that the property in a Masjid never reverts to the original appropriator….” [taken by Hughes from the Hidayah, vol. ii, p. 356] The Shi’ah law regarding the endowment of the Masjids, or land for the benefit of Masjids, does not differ in any important particulars…..” (pp. 331-333)