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We will introduce and address the radical
ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood here due to the fact that they have
become a central issue in federal court proceedings now taking place in
Dallas, Texas. These proceedings involve what, until now, has been portrayed
as an Islamist philanthropic organization, The Holy Land Foundation.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the name of a
world-wide Sunni Islamist movement, which has spawned several religious and
political organizations in the Middle East, including Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, dedicated to the jihadi credo:
"God is our objective, the Quran is our
Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for
the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations."
It should be noted that al Qaeda’s number
two, Ayman al-Zawahri, joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age fourteen. It
should also be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The Muslim Brotherhood was conceived in 1928
by Hasan al-Banna, a 22-year-old elementary school teacher, as a
fundamentalist Islamic movement in the aftermath of the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire and the subsequent ban of the caliphate system. Al-Banna
believed that Islam was not only a religious dogma but an all-inclusive way
of life. Al-Banna based his fundamentalism on the tenets of Wahhabism,
supplementing the radically fundamentalist Islamic education for the
Society's male students with jihadi training.
As stated in the organization’s charter and
on its website, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to install an Islamic empire
ruled under Sharia Law and a Caliphate across the Muslim world and
ultimately the entire world, through stages designed to “Islamisize,”
incrementally, targeted nations. We can witness this very action taking
place in Europe today.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in
the United States since the 1960s. Its goals, both stated and as perceived
through their actions, have included propagating Islam and creating havens
for and integrating Muslims into the US. One of their main strategies for
achieving these objectives has been dawah or Islamic renewal and
outreach. In the 1960s, groups such as US military personnel, prison inmates
and African-Americans were specifically targeted for dawah.
The Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in
setting up numerous US front groups since the 1990s that should be regarded
as hostile and a threat to the United States, according to Stephen Coughlin,
a lawyer and military intelligence specialist on the Pentagon Joint Staff.
Islamist activists involved with the Muslim
Brotherhood have started organizations in the US including the Muslim
Students Association in 1963, North American Islamic Trust in 1971, the
Islamic Society of North America in 1981, the American Muslim Council in
1990, the Muslim American Society in 1992, and the International Institute
of Islamic Thought in the 1980s.
In a September 2007 memorandum, Coughlin
explains that many US Muslim aid and civil rights groups viewed as moderate
by the Justice Department and other government agencies are linked to the
pro-jihadi Muslim Brotherhood. The groups are also engaged in influence and
deception operations designed to mask their activities and the overriding
goal of their organization, that being the advancement of Islamofascist
doctrine within the United States.
In December 2001, the US Department of the
Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control joined the European Union in
designating the Holy Land Foundation as a Specially Designated Global
Terrorist group.
In July of 2004, a federal grand jury in
Dallas, Texas, returned a 42 count indictment against the Holy Land
Foundation. The charges levied against the organization included:
conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization,
tax evasion and money laundering. The indictment alleged that the Holy Land
Foundation provided more than $12.4 million to individuals and organizations
linked to the terrorist group Hamas from 1995 to 2001.
The ensuing trial has exposed a direct
connection between the Holy Land Foundation and the Muslim Brotherhood in
the release into evidence of several documents, one of these documents being
the "Ikhwan in America."
The “Ikhwan in America” is essentially a 20
point plan to replace the American Democratic Republic with an Islamist
State ruled under Sharia Law. This document reveals that the Muslim
Brotherhood engages in activities ranging from going to camps to do weapons
training (referred to as Special work by the Muslim Brotherhood), to
engaging in counter-espionage against US government agencies such as the FBI
and CIA (referred to as Securing the Group).
One key excerpt of this 20 point plan is as
disturbing as it is revealing:
"The process of settlement is a
'Civilization-Jihadist Process.' The Ikhwan must understand that their work
in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by
their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and
God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Recently, the Justice Department
participated in a conference held by the Islamic Society of North America in
Chicago. The ISNA, directly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, is one of 300
unindicted co-conspirator groups, including the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, named in the Holy Land Foundation indictments.
Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and
Congresswoman Sue Myrick of North Carolina wrote to then Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales to express their concern over the Justice Department's
attendance at the ISNA conference describing their participation as a "grave
mistake" as it would serve to legitimize a group with "extremist origins."
The Justice Department’s response was that its participation at the weekend
meeting was part of an "outreach efforts...to educate the public about how
the department works to protect religious freedom, voting rights, economic
opportunity, and many other rights."
When one reconciles this statement from the
“Ikhwan in America:”
“The Ikhwan must understand that their work
in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by
their hands...”
With this statement from the Justice
Department’s response to Congressmen Hoekstra & Myrick:
“...participation at the weekend meeting was
part of an "outreach efforts...to educate the public about how the
department works...”
One can successfully argue that the US
Justice Department was walking into – and continues to facilitate –
information gathering activities by an organization whose goal is to replace
the sovereignty and authority of the US Constitution with Sharia Law in
their quest for a global Caliphate.
The Muslim Brotherhood,
an ideologically radical and fundamentalist jihadi group, is, in essence,
the ideological association that binds all Islamist jihadi groups together.
It is global, it has massive financial means and it is targeting Western
Civilization. |