The Muslim Brotherhood--Not Our Friends

Interesting medium-length essay here on the Brotherhood. That's the umbrella organization for most Muslim activities here in the US--and they are not the good guys. Dreher wrote the article, but quotes Husain Haqqani extensively.

As you may know, the major US Muslim organizations were named by the government as unindicted co-conspirators in the terror fundraising trial. Why? Because, as government evidence showed, and as people who pay attention to this stuff know, CAIR, ISNA, MAS, the MSA and other leading Muslim organizations in the US have their roots in the international Muslim Brotherhood -- Islamists who seek a worldwide Muslim state

...I participated in a Hudson Institute conference on the Muslim Brotherhood and its influence in the United States. One of the presenters was Husain Haqqani, a Muslim scholar who is also an anti-Islamist. He gave a history of how the Muslim Brotherhood established itself in the US, and took over Islam in America

(Begin Haqqani quotes)

Hassani summarizes the teachings of the American Muslim Brotherhood founder:

Addressing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, he writes: Always remember that you have two basic objectives: number one, that the Islamic country should be free from all foreign control, for freedom is the natural right of every man which can be denied only by an oppressive dictator; second, although the concept of freedom is very different (just in case anybody is wondering), in this free land, [the USA] a free Islamic government should be established, which should act according to the Islamic commands and enforce its collective system, declare its right principles as operative and popularize among the people its message which is based on wisdom

Uh-huh...

...Saudi Arabia had emerged on the global scene, and wanted to gain influence among the world's Muslims. Hermann Eilts, who was director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University and who used to be an Arabist in the State Department and served as ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia among other places, talked about how as early as the late 1940s, Hassan al-Banna and some of his closest associates used to travel to Saudi Arabia, which was not the Saudi Arabia of today. At that time, it was still coming out of the shadows of the early Saudi sort of Wahhabi non-modernist beginnings. And yet, Eilts claims that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in particular had ties with the Saudis, and the Saudi deputy finance minister at the time who happened to be from Sudan, was responsible for providing money for the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the influence that coincided with the American agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood. Consequently, all they had to do was persuade the Saudis that the European and American side of things was also significant and worth the investment

This part is key:

The fourth thing, which set the stage for what we are experiencing today, is the United States entering the Cold War. As it often happens, the U.S. was still trying to find its way in a complex world, and the people who were looking at that world were not necessarily fully aware of its complexity. A binary approach was adopted, designed to contain communism by preventing Muslim countries from emerging and newly independent Muslim countries from becoming friends of the Soviets. Essentially, anyone who could help in this project was deemed a useful partner.

As a result, the Saudis were becoming a key ally of the United States, while the Muslim Brotherhood were allies of the Saudis. So in the Cold War context, the Brotherhood was a 'good guy'

But, if you take seriously the agenda (above), the Brotherhood intends to overthrow the Constitutional order we have in this country.

...Putting it crudely, the Muslim notion at the time was- if you can give us a few dollars to help fight the commies, so much the better, guns can come later.

Said Ramadan set up the Islamic center in Geneva in 1961, and in 1962 Prince Faisal Abdul Aziz helped create the Muslim World League, also known as Rabita al-Alam al-Islamia, which is now based in Mecca. Looking at the founding fathers of the Muslim World League is helpful to our understanding of radical Islam today. The key places where radical Islam has flourished, are places where people linked to the Rabita came from. A few examples would be: Said Ramadan himself, Egyptian in origin, Abul A'la Maududi, Pakistani, Haj Amin al-Husaini, Palestinian, Sibghatullah Mujadidi of Afghanistan, Mohammed ibn Ibrahim al-Shehr, the Saudi Grand Mufti, and Abdul Rahman Yahya al-Iryani of Yemen. This was the basic formation.

...Once the Rabita came into being, it became a major funding source for radical Islamic projects all over the world...One of the first organizational structures to emerge in the United States, considering that the Muslim population was comprised of either young professionals or students, was the Muslim Students Association...

Not surprisingly,

While the American government at that time supported what it considered anti-communist crusaders, which they were, the lectures delivered in the US were about the impending clash between Islam and the West. Evidently, the Brothers were preparing for this clash down back in the 1970s. Maududi's writings and speechesin America are very strong on this, Nadwis, Qardawis, it's all about how the Westernized way of life is not going to be the salvation and Islamized - so instead of modernizing the Muslim world, we have to Islamize the modern world. That was the agenda

And, predictably, the State Department gurus think only in terms of money and comforts:

Even now, for example like Graham Fuller, who was head of Middle East analysis at the National Intelligence Council, even now he maintains that there is no clash of interest between radical Islam and the United States, and a State Department official said about the Taliban in 1995, "the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis... there will be pipelines and there will be an emir and there will be no parliament, and lots of Sharia law. I think the United States can live with that." So that was the attitude when the Muslim Brotherhood created the networks that have dominated the U.S.

Then came the politicization of Islam.

The Muslim community as a whole is very diverse. It includes people with Sufi background, Shi'as, etc. The emergence of the leadership ended up identifying the Muslim Brotherhood people as the leaders.

Second, the mosques and organizations all ended up, or most of them ended up under Muslim Brotherhood control.

The third impact was that the Muslim agenda ended up being defined by the Muslim Brotherhood, and this was a highly political agenda. Instead of Muslims like me who consider Islam their religious faith, this ended up being people who describe Islam as a political and social ideology, so Islam is ideology and Islam is faith, the distinction became blurred because of the way the organizational structure was created.

And the fourth was the marginalization of traditional Islam within the Muslim community of the United States, the kind of people who want to say their prayers but get on with the business of life, who want to have a relationship with God, but do not want to think of it as a political agenda. That's where the politicization came

So don't ask 'why the Muslims insist on prayer-times and special bath accomodations' in schools and airports.

Now you know why--and you know what the rest of the agenda is.