US and Brotherhood: Required ban before catastrophe falls

Hesham al-Naggar

Relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the United States have reached a moment of enlightenment.

The intellectual elite in the US has just realized that the Brotherhood is a radical organization whose narrow-minded ideology feeds terrorist activities (1). This is why a revision is being made in the light of developments in the Middle East and the Arab region since 2011.

This revision especially focuses on the benefits relations with dynamic Islam will bring the US. The belief is that this dynamic Islam has caused untold damage to American influence and interests (2) and even strengthened the standing of US rivals.

The question now being asked within US intellectual circles is about the reasons why the US’s plan to use dynamic Islam has backfired, turning it into a source of danger to the US society itself. Once a tool for serving US interests in the Middle East, the Brotherhood now penetrates US institutions and strengthens its presence in them (3).

Relations between the US and the Brotherhood have developed in a way that looks a lot like the way relations between the group and Egypt developed in the past years. This is especially so when it came to using relations with the Brotherhood to serve the interests of other political forces (4), attempts by the Brotherhood to control the Egyptian society and then the phase in which the group was outlawed. The group was outlawed after its plan to manipulate the whole society and turn the whole Egyptian state into part of the Brotherhood organization (5) was uncovered.

The Americans should have learned a lesson from the record of the Brotherhood in Egypt, the country where it first appeared. If they had learned this lesson, the Americans would have banned this group early on. The Brotherhood’s plan is to reach power at the right time or at least manipulate those in power (6).

Belated action

It took the US a long time to take action against the growing presence of the Brotherhood inside the American society. The former US administration used incorrect excuses to market its policy of building an alliance with dynamic political Islam. This administration tried to claim that the Brotherhood was different from other radical organizations (7).

The strategy of the former US administration was based on reaction to terrorist attacks, not on getting to the organizational and intellectual roots of terrorism. It did this, because it did not have the necessary vision for dealing with terrorism.

Those managing the file of dynamic Islam in the Barack Obama administration did not realize that the Muslim Brotherhood uses jihadist factions that are mere ideological offshoots of it. They did not realize either that the Brotherhood uses all other forces that open to it in order to achieve its final goal (8).

The Americans did not understand that for al-Qaeda and Daesh, the Brotherhood is the maestro. The Brotherhood leads these movements in playing a unified musical note. They cannot do anything without it either. The Brotherhood mainly engineers extremism, masterminds it and also sells it. The group defines the responsibilities of this extremism and ensures its renewal everywhere in the world. It then plans the way it will reap the fruits of this extremism alone (9).

It is important to ask now about how the current US administration can rescue the American society and its institutions from Brotherhood manipulation. The Brotherhood prepares for an open confrontation that aims at coercing the American society to succumb at the end to its vision. The administration of incumbent President Donald Trump has a real test ahead of it. Will he translate his statements, in which he did not make any distinction between the Brotherhood and Daesh, into an action that protects the US against a soft radical invasion (10)? Will the American president rescue the US from the illusions propagated by some people about the Brotherhood being a peaceful and moderate group that believes in democracy? Will he protect the US against plans to hammer out a partnership with the Brotherhood and against claims that the activities of the group pose no danger to the American society (11)?

If it designates the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization, the current American administration will have done an achievement. This is no longer about protecting the world from terrorism. It is now about protecting the American society from plans by the Brotherhood to manipulate the western world as a whole.

Diverse methods

Statements by former Central Intelligence Agency director John O. Brennan about the Brotherhood divulge the enormity of Brotherhood penetration of US institutions. Brennan wanted to explain the Brotherhood’s understanding of “jihad” at an address to a conference organized by an international center for strategic studies in 2014. He described the Brotherhood’s concept of jihad as a “moral struggle” that is “peaceful” at heart. In this, he said, this concept was different from violent Islamist terrorism (12).

This is how some people deceive the American public by making assuring statements about the Brotherhood. The fact is that the Brotherhood has a long-term project, it formulated since its emergence in Egypt, which aims first and foremost for manipulating the whole world.

One of the leaders of the group, namely Saleh Ashmawi, described the members of the Brotherhood as the soldiers of the call for Islam who will turn things in Egypt upside-down.

“They will then do the same in the rest of the Islamic world,” he said. “The members of the Brotherhood will then fight the infidels until they either convert to Islam or pay Gezia (Islamic tax) (13).”

Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna said the mission of his movement was to fight materialism until it gets out of the land of Islam.

“We will not stop there,” al-Banna said. “We will even go to its den, invade this den and fight it there (14).”

The Brotherhood changes its alliances and strategies as it sees fit and in the light of the challenges it faces. The end goal of the Brotherhood is always the same, but the methods the group uses to reach this goal can change or vary.

He explained that each phase of his movement’s plan has its own implementation tools (15).

Some people rule out the possibility that the Brotherhood might think of controlling a large country like the US. The fact is that some people believed the same in Egypt’s case. These people discovered that they were wrong when a plan for controlling the Egyptian society was found. The plan was written by senior Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shatter (16).

The plan, which was found in 1991, contains a comprehensive vision for the gradual control of the Egyptian state. The Brotherhood wanted to do this by penetrating the vital classes of the Egyptian society and its effective institutions. These as steps would have preceded full control on the state.

The plan pays special attention to Brotherhood presence among students, workers, professionals and businessmen. It also depends on penetrating influential state institutions that can make change. It lays special stress on presence in professional unions, universities, judicial bodies, the media and parliament (17).

Civilization jihad

The Brotherhood does not start with violent jihad. It establishes a parallel state as a first step. The same step also includes the creation of institutions that play the role of state institutions. The group calls this “civilization jihad”.

The group prepares for this by preparing and training its own militia, which is always a secret one. It only resorts to violent jihad to defend the parallel state it creates (18).

The Brotherhood wages its wars through other jihadist factions. It allows its militia to act only during the final stage, especially after completing the construction of its parallel entity within the state.

Civilization jihad can be defined as the pursuit for establishing an Islamic state through the creation of a popularity base by empowering the Islamist current in societies where this Islamic state is planned to be established. The group usually denounces violence at first (19).

To put it simply, the Brotherhood’s concept of civilization jihad means the creation of an iron organization that functions outside the framework of the law that governs the state where this organization is created. This organization is always modeled upon the state itself. In Egypt, the office of the supreme guide acts within the parallel state as the equivalent of the office of the prime minister, the group’s consultative council acts as the equivalent of parliament and the administrative offices of the group as the equivalents of the administrations of the various provinces (20).

This is how the organization becomes a state within the state. This is also how the organization maintains its civilization jihad. This helps the organization to be ready for the moment of empowerment. When this moment comes, the organization is ready to take over with alternative institutions to those of the state.

The Brotherhood delays violent jihad to the time when there is conflict. This conflict is sometimes inevitable because in any condition states usually tend to defend their own identity and social unity.

The organization had never done without its two pillars, namely its public and secret faces. Group founders considered its secret militia to be the factory of the group, whereas the public face is the thing the organization uses in dealing with the public (21).

Former Brotherhood leader Abul Ela Madi revealed in early 2010 that – unlike what the Brotherhood claims – the Brotherhood had never ceased the use of violence even after Sayed Qotb’s group was arrested in 1965.

Madi presented proof of the jihadist role the Brotherhood played in the Chechen Republic in the mid-1990s. He referred to statements by the fifth supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mustafa Mashhour in the mid-1990s, in which he said that the Brotherhood used to have a secret unit within the army that was ready to move to seize power (22).

This is how the group always turns from an ally of regimes into an enemy of the same regimes at the end. This specifically happens when the group finds out that its parallel institutions are in danger and that it has to move to protect these institutions.

Hassan al-Banna used to praise King Farouk of Egypt. Brotherhood members used to organize demonstrations in support of the king. Nonetheless, the Brotherhood turned against the king when it became powerful enough to do this.

The late president Gamal Abdel Nasser turned from friend to foe when the organization found that his regime would threaten the existence of its structure. The late president Anwar al-Sadat brought the Brotherhood back to Egypt’s political stage. He turned, however, into an enemy of the organization soon after the organization rebuilt itself and made new alliances against his regime.

The same thing happened with former president Hosni Mubarak. Nonetheless, the Brotherhood did not complete the road of the revolution to the end. The revolution made it necessary for the organization to have partners, the thing it is always hostile to. The Brotherhood wanted to take over power and keep it solely for itself. It tried to achieve this goal by putting its members in important positions after it won the 2012 presidential elections.

Egyptians rose up against the organization on June 30, 2013, when they discovered its falsity. This was why the group resorted to violence. It wanted to protect its structure which was in danger of collapse.

When it is in danger, the Muslim Brotherhood allows its security agencies to start operating. The group contains what is known as the “Invitation Security Agency”. This is the intelligence agency of the organization, which is responsible for collecting information. The group also sets its different cells into action. This especially happened in 2014 (23) when the terrorist groups Hasm and Lewa al-Thawra came into being.

Empowerment plan in US

US Senator Ted Cruz was precise and correct when he included a document by Brotherhood leader Mohamed Akram al-Adloni on the empowerment of the Brotherhood in the US in a bill he suggested to the US Congress on designating the organization as a “terrorist” one in 2017.

Al-Adloni is a member of the Brotherhood’s Consultative Council and one of the organization’s most outstanding leaders in the US. He is a Palestinian Islamist.

On May 22, 1991, al-Adloni issued a document on the strategic objectives of the Brotherhood in North America.

Cruz cited al-Adloni as saying in the document that the Brotherhood’s work in the US was tantamount to jihad that aims at eradicating the western civilization and destroying it from within (24).

Titled “Strategic Objective of the Brotherhood in North America”, al-Adloni’s document was found in 2004 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided a home in Virginia.

The document, which was written by al-Adloni himself, like Khairat al-Shatter wrote the Brotherhood’s empowerment plan in Egypt himself in 1991 (25), contained the long-term empowerment plan which was launched by the Brotherhood’s Consultative Council in 1987. It talks about the future of political Islam in the US ten years later.

According to the document, the Brotherhood’s empowerment in North America would be achieved through the presence of a stable and effective Islamist movement that is led by the Brotherhood.  This movement, the document says, has to defend the interests of Muslims both at the local and international levels. It has to unify the work of all Muslims and present Islam as an alternative, it says. It adds that this movement also has to offer support to the idea of establishing the international Islamic state, regardless of where it will be established.

The project for the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US is similar in many aspects to the one that caused the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt.

The Brotherhood started the implementation of its project by launching a number of charities and social projects and founding organizations affiliated to the Brotherhood everywhere in the US. It also managed important mosques through pro-Brotherhood preachers.

It sought to achieve its empowerment through a number of effective organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America which runs most mosques and Islamic centers in the US. The organizations also include the North American Islamic Fund. These organizations have their own branches in Canada.

Around 29 other organizations work under the umbrella of what the FBI described as the “International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood” which was founded in the 1980s (26).

The Brotherhood uses these organizations in implementing the goals of the civilization jihad plan on the road to forming the institutions of its parallel state.

Muslim Brotherhood organizations encouraged the alienation of Muslims in the US and fed the feelings of rebellion within Muslims against US laws under the pretext that these laws are against Islamic law.

This opens the door for demand for the presence of educational; social; cultural, and judicial systems for Muslims. The Brotherhood will, of course, control these systems. The presence of these systems brings the Brotherhood steps close to forming its parallel state (27).

The organization uses the freedoms, dialogue of religions, cultural change and diversity within the American society to talk about a radical Islamic model to replace the tolerant values of the US.

By coming to the fore and claiming to represent the Muslims of the US, the Brotherhood aims to have the ability to influence the results of American presidential elections.

The organization, at the same time, finances extremist groups and terrorist entities in preparation for potential armed confrontations (28). The Brotherhood’s record shows that it cannot found its parallel institutions without taking the necessary measures to protect these institutions.

Before Ted Cruz submitted his bill in Congress, Michele Bachmann, a representative of the Republican Party in Congress, submitted a bill in July 2014 for designating the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization.

Bachmann said the group continued to support and finance jihad and spread extremist versions of the Islamic religion. She added that group leaders were main contributors to attacks around the world through proxy organizations. Bachmann quoted writing by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna in which he encouraged his organization’s members to stage jihad. The resolution, which was written in 19 pages, specified a large space to explanations by al-Banna of the meaning of international jihad (29).

Analyzing opponents’ arguments

Influential research centers, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, used to publish studies to warn against the ramifications of branding the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization (30).

One of the pretexts these centers used in warning against the move was that enlisting the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization would spoil relations between the US and Turkey, an important ally for the US. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, these centers said, depends on the Brotherhood in consolidating his rule.

These centers should have warned against the catastrophic consequences of an alliance with dynamic Islam. This Islam aims to undermine the regional allies of the US, including Turkey. They should have learned from the lessons of the past and given US policymakers information about the losses countries that tried to strike alliances with the same organization sustained.

Alliances between counties are always based on shared interests. Nonetheless, Ankara took international and regional peace and stability lightly. It did not care much about the interests of the US and cared only about serving its own interests. It also served the interests of all rival countries to the US (31). It invested heavily in all dynamic Islamist groups, without any regard to the fact that these groups threatened international security (32).

The course of developments in the Middle East region has shown that those who stage a real war against terrorism are those who most achieve their goals and protect their own gains. The same course has shown that those who oppose the dynamic Islamist project are those who impose their own agenda at the end of the day (33). The same powers win credible and honest allies.

These centers turned a blind eye to Turkish support of armed takfiri groups. This also made it easy for the US to turn a blind eye to Brotherhood activities in it. This is why it is important to view things differently from how US research centers see them.

These centers should have warned US policymakers against the consequences of maintaining an alliance with Turkey, one that tolerates Turkey’s position on the Brotherhood. This position prevents the US from dealing decisively with the activities of the group, ones that threaten the security and stability of the American society.

This is totally different from what some Western experts, who underscore the importance of the presence of strong relations between the US and Turkey, preach. In doing this, these experts gloss over Brotherhood activities aimed at empowering the group in the American continent. Those who strike alliances with dynamic Islam are the first to be harmed by it. Turkey, which has been struggling to convince Brotherhood backers that it can become the Brotherhood leader in the world, has turned into a one-man radical state that works to bring back Ottoman glories.

The fact is that freeing the Arab region from the claws of dynamic Islam makes it necessary for the activities of this dynamic Islam to be banned in the US. Banning these activities will make it easy for those fighting terrorism and extremism in the Middle East to achieve their goals.

Some studies claim that banning the Brotherhood in the US will encourage its members to join takfiri jihadist groups. As a claim, this proved to be wrong in the cases of Egypt; Syria; Libya, and other states.

The Barack Obama administration believed that by hammering out an alliance with the Brotherhood, the US could win other violent groups to its side. The Brotherhood believed, meanwhile, that it ought to have its own militias to be able to hold its own ground in its struggle against states and their military and security agencies. This way of thinking caused the US losses (34) in Syria where the Brotherhood proved to be similar to all jihadist and takfiri groups. The Brotherhood proved even more ready for corruption and conflict than all other groups (35).

The fact that some extremist groups have changed their name and were included in what came to be called “moderate opposition”, showed that the term “moderate” is illusory and is only used to serve specific political purposes.

Some research centers advocate the concept that the failure of the Brotherhood to reach power through elections only makes violence inevitable as al-Qaeda says. But this is only a Brotherhood mantra aimed at forcing everybody to accept the Brotherhood as it is, regardless of its violent ideology.

The Brotherhood supports an extremist type of thinking it tries to spread in the mosques it controls. It also tries to spread this thinking through its books and publications. It incites western countries against the US, describing it as a society of “infidels” that wages war against Islam “36”.

Some analysts claim that the designation of the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization would negatively affect the Muslims of the US and the gains they have made. In saying this, these analysts overlook the fact that Muslim communities are diverse and the fact that the Brotherhood is organized and has a loud voice does not mean that it is a representative of all Muslims.

Banning the Brotherhood will serve the best interests of Muslims in the US. It will help these Muslims integrate into the American society. It will also put an end to the force that makes other Americans feel aversion towards Muslims.

Conclusion

The American society waits for a time of decisiveness with the Brotherhood, especially after some powers, research centers and power centers deceived the US administration. They failed to provide this administration with full knowledge about the dangerous consequences of an alliance with the Brotherhood, the most dangerous organization in the world. They even gave the chance to this organization to spread its ideology in the American society.

The current US administration needs to do more than just brand some of the military arms of the Brotherhood, including Hasm and Lewa al-Thawra, as “terrorist” entities. The Brotherhood has not reached the stage of violent jihad in the US yet. It postpones this stage until it fully constructs its own structure inside that country.

The Donald Trump administration has decided to brand some of the organizations affiliated to the Brotherhood as “terrorist” entities. It yet has to crack down on the mother organization itself.

Former US national security advisor H. R. McMaster said in December 2017 that the US administration would assess each organization independently.

The Brotherhood, he said, is not a harmonious organization (37).

If it brands the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization, the US will deprive the group of maintaining the implementation of its project, namely the civilization jihad project.

By banning the group, the US administration will also criminalize the act of funding the group by American citizens. Brotherhood members will be banned from executing bank transactions. US authorities will also be able to deport whoever proves to have links with the Brotherhood (38).

Egypt’s belated action against the organization allowed it to penetrate all social classes and state institutions. This gave the Brotherhood the impression that its civilization jihad had already ripened and that it only had to reach power. Cairo did not designate the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization in December 2013 before the group and its allies turned to violence.

Egypt acted after it found the empowerment documents which were penned by Khairat al-Shatter in 1991 (39). The US too found the empowerment document which was written by Mohamed Akram al-Adloni in 1991.

References

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