The Muslim Brotherhood: From Egypt to Michigan

As Egypt and surrounding Arab states convulse in upheaval, much attention is being focused on the Muslim Brotherhood and the prospect that it may ultimately seize power as these despotic regimes collapse. As staggering as the events unfolding in Egypt is the fact that the Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist organization, still remains such an enigma after more than 80 years since its founding in Egypt by a schoolteacher as a movement seeking global Islamist hegemony, be it through terrorism or through culture-subverting influence operations.


It has a violent history in the Mideast (multiple assassinations and attempts in Egypt, where the MB was banned) and spawned the terror organizations Hamas and Jamaat al-Islamiya and was the mother's milk of ideological inculcation for al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind and Daniel Pearl executioner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.


And while we in the US are just now waking up to the Muslim Brotherhood's pull in the Arab world, we are still asleep to the dangers posed by the Brotherhood right here in America and especially to Jews, since the MB's credo and operational planks are steeped in virulent, violent anti-Semitism, dating back to its links with the Nazis in the 1930s, collaboration between the then-Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Hussaini and Hitler, dissemination of Hitler's Mien Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and promulgation of Jewish genocide.[For a quick read and additional references on this widely documented demonic alliance, go here]  In fact, the MB's originating motivation in the US was to "support the terrorist operations of Hamas, the Brotherhoold's Palestinian branch," whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews. 

Others may be dangerously ignorant to the MB, but not you, TT readers.  Even as a brand new blog, we alerted you to the MB in our very first posts focusing on the alarming mission and extensive web of the MB.  As we informed you then, the strategic goal of the MB in America as articulated in its master plan "presents Islam as a civilization alternative and supports the Islamic State where it is." The MB document further elaborates that the role of the MB is "Civilization-Jihadist Process" whose work in America

is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civiliation 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.

The Brotherhood's worldwide tentacles reach deep into America, where it has operated largely underground since it established its beach-head here in 1963 under the aegis of the Muslim Student Association. "When compared to the Egyptian organization, there has been relatively little scrutiny of the network that is referred to here as the global Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan," notes the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, an outstanding web intelligence digest of MB activities worldwide.


In this country, according to a Chicago Tribune special report (now listed in our right column for frequent, future reference), the MB has

operated legally but covertly, mimicking clandestine fraternal organizations that operate on a nod and a secret handshake. Even today, few outside the Islamic inner circles from which it recruits know when, how often or where the Brothers meet to discuss the organization's abstract but pervasive goal: the creation of Islamic states throughout the world, including the U.S. ..

Once established, these MB mainline organizations and offshoots in the US began seeking legitimacy, often aided and abetted by the cover of interfaith dialog and partnerships (our local Jewish community included!)  "and have worked to influence and control the development of Islamic discourse and political activity in their respective countries," the Global MB Daily Report notes. "Less publicly, they are almost always associated with fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and support for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and often, Hezbollah."


The Tribune report, "A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America" written in 2004, is an indispensible chronicle of the Brotherhood's history and growing influence in the US.  "Documents obtained by the Tribune and translated from Arabic show that the U.S. Brotherhood has been careful to obscure its beliefs from outsiders." It is the success of the MB in shielding its extremist agenda under a cloak of "moderation" that has led many authorities on the MB to refer to its modus operandi as "stealth jihad." The Tribune report goes on to note:

While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic. The group also champions martyrdom and jihad, or holy war, as a means of self-defense and has provided the philosophical underpinnings for Muslim militants worldwide...Many moderate Muslims in America are uncomfortable with the views preached at mosques influenced by the Brotherhood, scholars say."

In an interview with a former MB member who said he defected becuase he couldn't support the MB's anti-American sentiments and its support for violence in the Middle East, we learn the Brotherhood's plan for achieveing Islamic shariah rule in this country: "It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office."


MB Migration to Michigan

Michigan played a central role in the genesis of the MB here in America, as the Tribune report indicates "in the early 1960s after hundreds of young Muslims came to the U.S. to study, particularly at large Midwestern universities, such as Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Some belonged to the Brotherhood in their homelands and wanted to spread its ideology here." It is no wonder, then, that some campuses of our institutions for higher learning have become hotbeds of anti-Israel, anti-Semitc animus, a theme to which we will be returning often in future posts.


In Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Muslim and Arab-Americans, the Brotherhood, its immediate affiliates like ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations), MSA (Muslim Student Assocation), Islamic Medical Association, Assocation of Muslim Scientists and Engineers, NAIT (North American Islamic Trust),  and their interlocking spinoffs are a pervasive presence in business, politics, law enforcement, academia, medicine, the arts and certainly, religious/interfaith affairs.


Largely in recognition of the state/local penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood and its unique dangers to the Jewish community, we started Talking Tachlis with backgrounders to bring our readers up to speed on the MB in time for the ISNA conference here last month featuring the controversial imam behind the  Ground Zero Mosque. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's plans for his Cordoba Initiative-spinoff mosques and Islamic Centers all across the country conform to the MB's operational playbook, entered into evidence during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial.

Huda School

Indeed, one such Islamic Center, the Huda School/Islamic Center in Franklin, Michigan is an MB-affilated enterprise, whose custodian NAIT (North American Islamic Trust -- one of the MB's allied organizations) is deedholder to between half to three-quarters of the mosques in America, according to a report in the Middle East Quarterly citing testimony before the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The AJC's terror expert Yehudit Barsky claims that 80 percent of US mosques have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence


The  MEQ report: quotes a Newsweek article indicating that over the years, authorities say  "NAIT money has helped the Saudi Arabian sect of Wahhabism—or Salafism, as the broader, pan-Islamic movement is called—to seize control of hundreds of mosques in U.S. Muslim communities." Further, according to the MEQ report, Saudi documents disseminated at U.S. mosques are telling America's Muslims that it is a religious obligation for them to hate Christians and Jews and warning that Muslims should not have Christians and Jews as friends, nor should they help them" and reminding Muslims of their "duty to eliminate the State of Israel."  .


The Huda Center has presented programs, attended by TT contributors, where speakers like Norman Finkelstein and the attorney for Michigan CAIR (another MB-tied organization) have engaged in gross distortion of facts and history to demonize Israel.


The Huda's contentious history in Franklin is not unlike the saga now playing out in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, as documented by AtlasShrugs blogger Pamela Geller. Her exhuastive reporting on this is instructive in understanding why a mosque/Islamic Center would even wage a battle over local opposition to locate in a community with little or no Muslim population.  The Muslim Brotherhood's manifesto for the US plainly explains the imperative for extending Islamic centers as the "axis" to become "the 'base' for our rise," the focal point of education, preparation and the "supply of our battalions."


As notes Andrew McCarthy, prolfic terror expert and former federal prosecutor who led the prosecution of a dozen Islamic militants convicted of the 1993 World  Trade Center bombing and plot to bomb other NY landmarks:

Quite the opposite of assimilation and toleration, the [Muslim Brotherhood's] memo envisions each Islamic center as a “seed for a small Islamic society” and a “House of Dawa.” Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, has proclaimed that dawa, the stealth form of jihad, is the method by which Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.”