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Showing posts with label Muslim Brotherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim Brotherhood. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Nima Gholam : The Islamists of Sweden

The Islamists of Sweden

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  • It seems clear that Muslim civil society in Sweden has an ideological direction that is close to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, while they criticize the laws and measures that prevent Islamic terrorism.
  • The Islamic Association of Sweden (IFIS) writes on their website that they are members of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE). There are strong links between FIOE and the Muslim Brotherhood. When the United Arab Emirates decided to list the Muslim Brotherhood and all branches of the movement as terrorists, they also listed IFIS as terrorists.
  • The strength of the political influence of Sweden's Muslim civil society is evidenced by a 1999 agreement between the Muslim Council of Sweden and the Social Democrat party, that "Muslims' participation in social democracy will evolve so that: in 2002 there should be among social democratic elected representatives Muslims in 15 municipal lists, 5 county lists and on the parliamentary lists in at least five counties."
  • When a debate started in 2014 on making it illegal for Swedish citizens to travel to other countries to participate in jihad, the Muslim Human Rights Committee claimed that such a law would be racist. Furthermore, they argued that people who fought in jihad abroad were not even a threat against Sweden.
  • The greatest threat from Islamism comes not from the suicide bombers who carry out spectacular attacks, but from Islamists quietly infiltrating our democratic institutions and normalizing their ideas among us. It is a threat that must be recognized and addressed.
In Sweden, there are a number of Muslim organizations that together constitute what is known as "Muslim civil society" (Muslimska civilsamhället). What is important, when discussing Muslim civil society in Sweden, is their political influence, their ideology and their structure.

IFIS

One of the most important organizations in Sweden's Muslim civil society is the Islamic Association of Sweden (Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige -- IFIS), established in 1981. Some of the goals of IFIS, which you can read about on their website, are to "influence and form opinions on issues that concern the Muslim group and its interests in Sweden" and "increase participation, influence and representation of Muslims in public institutions and bodies". In other words, IFIS works as a lobby organization for Muslims in Sweden.
It is a lobby organization that has been successful.
Former IFIS chairman Abdirizak Waberi represented the second largest party, the Moderate Party, in parliament between 2010 and 2014, when this party was in government. When Waberi sat in parliament, he was a member of the defense committee, which decides the policies for the Swedish Armed Forces.
Waberi's time in parliament was a remarkable experience for many Swedes. In several interviews before 2010, Waberi said he believed in a literal interpretation of the Koran. In an interview from 2006, he supported the idea that men could have four wives. In another interview from 2009, he said that he does not shake the hand of a woman; that men and women should not dance with each other, and that he would rather live in a country with Islamic sharia law. After these interviews, clearly revealing that Waberi is an Islamist, and that he got to represent Sweden's second-largest party in parliament, apparently without Swedish media or anyone else providing scrutiny over his past statements.
Omar Mustafa, who took over as chairman of IFIS in 2011, after Waberi, was elected to the leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) in April 2013. Mustafa's election into the leadership of Sweden's largest party triggered a reaction in which the media actually started to write about IFIS operations. The media reported that shortly before Mustafa was elected to the SAP leadership, IFIS had organized a conference in Stockholm, where it had invited speakers with anti-Semitic views. When the media began to examine IFIS's operations more closely, Omar Mustafa was forced to resign from the Social Democratic leadership.
Despite the scandal around Omar Mustafa, IFIS continues to have a close relationship with both the largest party, the Social Democrats and the second largest party, the Moderate Party.

Mehmet Kaplan and "Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice"

Mehmet Kaplan is an example of how a person with origins in Muslim civil society can climb up into the Swedish government. Kaplan was secretary of the Swedish Young Muslims (Sveriges Unga Muslimer -- SUM) between the years of 1996-2000. Then he became the chairman of this organization, until 2002. Between 2005 and 2006, Kaplan was the press secretary for the Muslim Council of Sweden (Sveriges Muslimska Råd). In 2008, Kaplan founded the organization Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice (Svenska Muslimer för Fred och Rättvisa -- SMFR).
Kaplan was a member of the Green Party's leadership between 2003 and 2011. He represented the Green Party in parliament between 2006 and 2014. Between 2014 and 2016, Kaplan was Sweden's Minister of Housing.
After "alternative" media outlets in Sweden started writing about Kaplan's dealings with various kinds of extremists, the Swedish mainstream media started to examine Kaplan. In 2014, Kaplan had already been criticized for having compared the Swedish jihadists who travel to Syria to join groups such as ISIS, with the Swedes who had gone to Finland during WWII to defend Finland from the Soviet military aggression.
When the media began to examine Kaplan, it emerged that in the summer of 2015, he had participated at a dinner where the leader of the fascist Turkish organization, the Grey Wolves, was in attendance. The media also found that Kaplan for several years had held meeting with the Islamist organization, Milli Görüs. It then emerged that Kaplan in 2009 compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians with the Nazis' treatment of Jews.
Mehmet Kaplan was a minister in Sweden's government until April 2016, when he was forced to resign after revelations that he compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to that of the German Nazis' treatment of Jews. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Jan Ainali)

Kaplan also sat for several years on the board of an organization called Charta 2008, which defends dangerous jihadists and criticizes the war against terrorism.
When Mehmet Kaplan founded Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice (SMFR) in 2008, its "vision statement" stated:
"If you want to participate and influence the development of society, it is inevitable to become politically involved. Everything that is connected to power is ultimately linked to politics. Without power, it is not possible to create change. As an individual, organization and society, active players constantly seek power to get through various forms of changes, push through solutions to various societal problems, as well as the ability to express themselves about, as well as define, various societal challenges. One of SMFR's goal is to gain power to change the world for the better."
This "better" world is an Islamic world. In the same "vision statement", SMFR writes:
"Islam should be the starting point for SMFR's operations. It is on the basis of Islam where the main inspiration, commitment, drive, motivation, guidance and values will come from."
SMFR embodies its goal by writing in its program that Islam should be a natural part of Europe's cultural heritage. SMFR wants to work for a Swedish Muslim culture. In other words, SMFR works for the Islamization of Europe and Sweden.
SMFR is actively trying to realize their vision. The organization's spokesperson and secretary-general, Yasri Khan, was nominated for the Green Party leadership and would certainly have been elected into the leadership, before a journalist in April 2016 revealed that Yasri Khan did not shake hands with women.
Members of the Green Party, which sits in the government of Sweden, apparently knew Yasri Khan refused to shake hands with women, and yet they were helping to elect him into the party leadership. The Green Party spokesman and Sweden's Minister for Education, Gustav Fridolin, told the media:
"I knew about it. I had not realized how offensive some women think that it can be."
Fridolin's former press secretary is a woman named Anwahr Athahb. Only two years before Athahb became Fridolin's press secretary, she had been elected to the vice-chairmanship of SMFR. Before that, she was the secretary of the organization. In 2014, Athahb was one of the Green Party's leading candidates for the European Parliament. Her campaign-slogan was "The EU needs more Muslim women in Parliament".
Today, Athahb works at an Arabic talk show on Sveriges Radio, Sweden's national public taxpayer-funded radio broadcaster.
Muslim civil society's political influence is great, reaches all the way up to the government, and that it exists in almost all major parties in Sweden.
Because there are so many examples of Muslim civil society's political influence, it is not possible to include all examples in this article. But a final example may clarify how strong this influence is. Already in 1999, the Muslim Council of Sweden (SMR) signed an agreement with Sweden's Social Democrat party that:
"In the coming term, Muslims' participation in social democracy will evolve so that: in 2002 there should be among social democratic elected representatives Muslims in 15 municipal lists, 5 county lists and on the parliamentary lists in at least five counties."
There are few lobbying organizations that can get the largest party in Sweden to sign an agreement with such clear and concrete promises.

Ideology

The Islamic Association of Sweden (IFIS) writes on their website that they are members of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE). There are strong links between FIOE and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Besides IFIS's links to the Muslim Brotherhood through FIOE, IFIS often shows sympathy and support for the Muslim Brotherhood. In August 2013, IFIS held demonstrations in Stockholm in support of Egypt's former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who had been deposed. The entire Muslim civil society in Sweden criticized the military coup against Morsi. Yet, the same Muslim civil society never criticizes the Islamist regimes in Iran and Saudi Arabia. When the United Arab Emirates decided to list the Muslim Brotherhood and all branches of the movement as terrorists, they also listed IFIS as terrorists, because the authorities in the UAE assessed that this organization in Sweden was part of the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood.
When a debate started in 2014 on making it illegal for Swedish citizens to travel to other countries to participate in jihad, the Muslim Human Rights Committee (Muslimska Mänskliga Rättighetskommittén), one of the organizations within Swedish Muslim civil society, claimed that such a law would be racist. Furthermore, they argued that people who fought in jihad abroad were not even a threat against Sweden.
So when it comes to ideology, it seems clear that Muslim civil society in Sweden has an ideological direction that is close to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, while they criticize the laws and measures that prevent Islamic terrorism.

Structure

To understand the structure of Muslim civil society in Sweden, we need to look at Kapellgränd 10, in Stockholm, the official address for at least 15 different Muslim organizations, including the Stockholm Mosque. Muslim organizations such as IFIS, the European Muslim Rights Council, the Forum for Young Muslims, Sweden's Imam Council, the Ibn Rushd Educational Association and the Swedish Muslim Scouts, use this same address for their organizations. The bulk of Muslim civil society in Sweden is controlled from Kapellgränd 10. Thus, the structure of Muslim civil society appears quite centralized.
The centralization of Muslim civil society can also be seen in that a few people sit in the leading positions of different Muslim organizations. If, for example, you take the organization, Ibn Rushd, which is an Islamic educational association in Sweden, its chairman is Helena Hummasten, who was chairman of the Muslim Council of Sweden until 2014. The principal of Ibn Rushd is Omar Mustafa, who was chairman of IFIS until 2016. The development manager of Ibn Rushd is Mustafa Tumturk, who is also a board member of the Muslim Council of Sweden. Mohammed Fateh Atia, who is responsible for digital development in Ibn Rushd, has also been vice-chairman of the Swedish Young Muslims (SUM). These are just a few examples of how a handful of people have strategic roles in several organizations in Sweden's Muslim civil society.

Conclusions

Conclusions that can be drawn about Muslim civil society in Sweden include:
  • Muslim civil society has significant influence in almost all major Swedish political parties.
  • Muslim civil society's influence is strong enough that one of their representatives was a government minister.
  • Muslim civil society in Sweden is an Islamist movement with organizational and ideological links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Muslim civil society consists, on paper, of several organizations but in practice, it operates as a single organization in which a few people have the leading roles.
We have been talking mostly about Islamism as something foreign, not among us in the Western world. But the influence of Islamists, or extremist Muslims, in a Western country such as Sweden is large; there have been Islamists in the Swedish government and parliament, without the media or establishment even reacting.
The greatest threat from Islamism comes not from the suicide bombers who carry out spectacular attacks, but from Islamists quietly infiltrating our democratic institutions and normalizing their ideas among us. It is a threat that must be recognized and addressed.
Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. He is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö. Gholam Ali Pour is the author of the Swedish book "Därför är mångkultur förtryck"("Why multiculturalism is oppression").
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Sunday, April 2, 2017

Judith Bergman : The Muslim Brotherhood Swoops into Sweden

The Muslim Brotherhood Swoops into Sweden

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  • "Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees... It is time to realize that the new Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force... Something new -- The New Country". — Video advertisement; last sentence spoken by a young woman in a hijab.
  • Formal membership with a card and yearly subscription would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia -- and to bring about that state -- if necessary, by jihad.
  • It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is 'peaceful'. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.
A recent report has revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is well established in Sweden. The report -- written at the behest of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and commissioned precisely because of a lack of research on the MB in Sweden -- caused an outcry against the authors. Twenty Swedish academics, who specialize in Islam and Muslims, protested the report[1]. They called it "substandard work", which did not take account of "the extensive research available about Islam and Muslims in Sweden".
According to the report, the MB has been operating in Sweden since the late 1970s in the guise of a number of Muslim-Swedish organizations, all centered around the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFIS), which itself was established in the mid-1990s as an organizational front for the MB.
IFIS has founded other organizations in Sweden, among which are Islamic Relief, Ibn Rush, and Sweden Young Muslims (SUM). These have not only given the MB a dominant position within so-called 'Muslim civil society' in Sweden, but also enabled it to amass considerable Swedish taxpayer funds that have helped consolidate its position.

The authors of the report conclude that the MB's activists are "building a parallel social structure, which poses a long-term challenge in terms of Sweden's future social cohesion". The authors are being most diplomatic.
According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden promotes:
"...a system of 'cultural pluralism', where every minority group is on the same level as the majority group... The ideal is... that Sweden should be organized in different 'groups', each group having the right to practice its particular values. The Swedish population should, even though it is in the majority, be a group among other groups: all groups should have the same status".
The prevalent idea of multiculturalism, and the accompanying identity politics, thus play directly into the hands of the MB. A video ad from a charity backed by the Swedish government constitutes a particularly blunt example of this kind of thinking. In it, Swedes are told,
"Sweden will never be what it once was. Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees... It is time to realize that the New Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force... It is time to create a country together that is proud, inclusive and sustainable. Something new -- The New Country".
The last sentence is spoken by a young woman in a hijab.


There seems no reason for the hysterics among Swedish academics that the report appears to have provoked. In fact, they could easily fact-check the report simply by checking the website of the primary group mentioned in the report, the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFSI), which clearly states (at the bottom of the linked page) that it is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), generally acknowledged as an umbrella organization for local Muslim Brotherhood organizations from all over Europe.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2005, then-president of FIOE, Ahmet al-Rawi, said, when asked about ties with the MB, "We are interlinked with them with a common point of view. We have a good close relationship."

If Swedish academics purporting to study Islam actually followed news from the Middle East, they would also know that Egypt's former president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, when he became president of Egypt in 2012, included secretary general of the FIOE, Ayman Ali, on his presidential advisory board.

Not even Swedish academics should need further 'empirical' proof to see that the Islamic Association in Sweden's membership of FIOE constitutes de facto allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood. What Swedish academics are evidently ignorant of, however, is that the MB deliberately operates in a secretive manner. The UK government's experts, in their own review of the MB, published in December 2015, wrote that "from its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organised itself into a secretive 'cell' structure...This clandestine, centralised and hierarchical structure persists to this day".

That deliberately opaque and secretive way of operating appears intended to create precisely the confusion and ignorance on the topic, evidently enfolding those academics who ought to know most about this topic. The obfuscation also makes it hard for authorities to crack down on the MB. As Mohammed Akif, the former General Guide and supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a former head of its Islamic Center of Munich, explained about the MB in an interview in 2005:
"We do not have an international organization; we have an organization through our perception of things. We are present in every country. Everywhere there are people who believe in the message of the Muslim Brothers. In France, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) does not belong to the organization of the Brothers. They follow their own laws and rules. There are many organizations that do not belong to the Muslim Brothers. For example, Shaykh al-Qaradawi. He is not a Muslim Brother, but he was formed according to the doctrine of the Brothers".
Formal membership with a card and a yearly subscription, Swedish-style, would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam -- as tidy as that would 'empirically' make matters for Swedish academics.
The Swedish mainstream society would be wise to take this preliminary report extremely seriously, and not discard it. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia -- and to bring about that state -- if necessary, by jihad. It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is 'peaceful'. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.

Historically, the Muslim Brotherhood has spawned other terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda -- which, in turn, has spawned ISIS.
The Swedish headlines in March have been filled with news about the return of 150 ISIS fighters to Sweden. A Swedish minister has already said that they should be "integrated back into society".

The Swedes would do well to pay attention to the influence of extremist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, or the long-term result might not be what many Swedes would like.
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
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Thursday, March 30, 2017

Tom Quiggin : What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?

What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?

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  • A variety of groups ascribe to the Islamist objective of imposing their politicized beliefs on others. Included in these are ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, the largest and best organized of all the Islamist groups is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the well-spring from which the Islamist ideology flows.
  • The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, stated that "It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet."
  • A bill, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz, to have the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist group would have far-reaching impact, and be the single greatest blow stuck against Islamist extremism in the USA.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood operating in the U.S. made it clear 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."
  • The North Atlantic Islamic Trust, according to former FBI Agent Robert Stauffer, "served as a financial holding company for Muslim Brotherhood-related groups." This money was wired into the U.S. from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia and Libya.
Muslims living in the United States likely have little to fear from the Trump Administration and the 115th Congress. By contrast, Islamists living in the United States have grounds to be worried.
A bill introduced by Senator Ted Cruz to have the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist group could have far-reaching implications, many of which have received little public attention. The bill, if acted upon, would be the single greatest blow stuck against Islamist extremism in the USA. It would also have far reaching impact in Canada and elsewhere.
Islamists are those who have the desire to "impose any interpretation of Islam over society by law." A variety of groups ascribe to the Islamist objective of imposing their politicized beliefs on others. Included in these are ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, the largest and best organized of all the Islamist groups is the Muslim Brotherhood. They are the well-spring from which the Islamist ideology flows. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, stated that "It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet."
The emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its founder, Hassan al-Banna.
The Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United States made it clear 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."
The producer of the memorandum from which this statement is derived was Mohamed Akram (A.K.A. Mohammad Akram Al-Adlouni). He is now the Secretary General of al-Quds International, the international think tank of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Today, according to a 2015 report, Mohammed Akram Adlouni is the General Secretary of the Al Quds International Foundation, a Special Designated Global Terrorist entity, accused by the U.S. Treasury Department of financing Hamas. The Treasury Department notes:
"Hamas's leadership runs all of the foundation's affairs through Hamas members who serve on the Board of Trustees, the Board of Directors, and other administrative committees. All documents, plans, budgets, and projects of Al-Quds are drafted by Hamas officials. Several senior Hamas officials, including Specially Designated Global Terrorists Musa Abu-Marzuq and Usama Hamdan, served on Al-Quds' Board of Trustees. Representatives at an Al-Quds conference were told to consider themselves unofficial ambassadors for Hamas in their respective countries."
The chairman of the board of trustees of the Al Quds International Foundation is identified as Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leadership figure of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.

The Senate Bill - S.68

Senate Bill S.68, would not only have the effect of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity, but it would also list three Muslim Brotherhood front groups: The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).
CAIR has already been identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, founded to advance the cause of Hamas, and it was listed as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates in 2014. CAIR functions as the public relations and legal arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and it regularly launches lawsuits against those who speak out against extremist Islam. Its designation as a terrorist group would severely damage the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
ISNA was the first of the major Muslim Brotherhood groups formed out of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), itself formed by Muslim Brotherhood adherents. Its loss would undermine the Muslim Brotherhood on multiple levels.

The Major Impact

The most important issue in Bill S.68 may be the inclusion of the NAIT – the North American Islamic Trust. Formed in 1973, it can fairly described as a waqf, which is the Islamic finance equal to a trust or endowment fund.
The property and cash holdings of the NAIT have never been made completely clear. CAIR itself stated that the NAIT holds the title of some 27% of the 1200 mosques in the USA. The NAIT website states that it "holds the title of approximately 300 properties." This means that the Muslim Brotherhood controls a large number of mosques and other properties in the U.S. where the message of the Brotherhood is spread.
Former FBI Agent Robert Stauffer led a 1980s investigation into the NAIT, including its role in the ideological takeover of moderate mosques. At that time, he assessed that the ISNA received millions of dollars from the NAIT, which he says "served as a financial holding company for Muslim Brotherhood-related groups." This money was wired into the U.S. from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia and Libya.
Like CAIR and ISNA, NAIT would have its assets frozen if it is designated as a terrorist group. This would include property such as real estate, as well as cash and other assets held in bank accounts. The responsibility for this would mainly fall to the Department of the Treasury, the Justice Department and the integrated inter-agency strategy known as National Money Laundering Strategy (NMLS).
In addition to stripping the Muslim Brotherhood of its assets, Bill S.68 would also have the effect of silencing the extremist voice of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., along with its extensive network of collaborators. The financial inflow from other countries would be stopped (think Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey), while funding to Muslim Brotherhood front groups in other countries would be halted as well (think Canada).
This bill would be a most helpful first step in countering what seems to be on the part of many a purposeful global jihad.
Tom Quiggin, a court qualified expert on terrorism and practical intelligence, is based in Canada.
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Judith Bergman : The Muslim Brotherhood: Peddling Sharia as Social Justice

The Muslim Brotherhood: Peddling Sharia as Social Justice

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  • Human Rights Watch, an organization that is supposed to look out for victims of human rights abuses, not abusers of human rights is begging US decision makers not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood -- which, if it had its way, would take away everyone's human rights and substitute them with sharia law -- a foreign terrorist organization.
  • "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope". — Muslim Brotherhood motto.
  • Conveniently, Hamas -- which according to article two of its charter, is "one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine" -- is, it seems, working on a new charter. The new charter would declare that Hamas is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its always having been so. That way, is the Muslim Brotherhood's "narrative" of newfound "nonviolence" suddenly supposed to become believable?
Gehad el-Haddad, official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), is on a mission to rewrite the terrorist and radical history of the MB. He seems to be doing this for the consumption of naïve Americans. These seem only too willing to believe -- in the name of tolerance, diversity and trying to be non-judgmental -- that an organization whose ultimate goal is the supreme reign of Islamic sharia law everywhere -- if necessary through violent jihad -- could possibly value anything even approximating equality and the rule of (non-sharia) law.
"We are not terrorists," wrote el-Haddad in a recent article in the New York Times.
"The Muslim Brotherhood's philosophy is inspired by an understanding of Islam that emphasizes the values of social justice, equality and the rule of law... We believe that our faith is inherently pluralistic and comprehensive and that no one has a divine mandate or the right to impose a single vision on society... Nothing speaks more to our unequivocal commitment to nonviolence than our continued insistence on peaceful resistance, despite unprecedented state violence".
The "faith", which el-Haddad avoids naming, is Islam. The very essence of Islam, as sanctioned in the Quran and the hadiths, however, seems to be the belief in a divine mandate to impose the single vision of Islam on the world -- if necessary, through violent jihad. Its motto is:
"Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope".
Even dawa, the Islamic call to conversion, or proselytizing -- as explained by the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, host of one of Al Jazeera's most popular programs, Sharia and Life, which reaches an estimated 60 million viewers worldwide -- is an Islamic summons for the non-violent conquest of non-Muslim lands. As Qaradawi told a Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in Toledo, Ohio, in 1995, "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da'wa."

Qaradawi, in a recording from 2007, says that the aim of this "peaceful" conquest consists mainly of the introduction of Islamic law, sharia. According to Qaradawi, sharia should be introduced in a new country gradually, over a five-year period, before implementing it in full. Sharia includes the end of free speech under "blasphemy laws"; the oppression of women, including women being worth half as much as a man in court and inheritance; polygamy, and the persecution of Jews (Qaradawi advocates killing all of them). Qaradawi has explained in TV recordings how sharia also includes chopping off hands for theft, killing apostates and homosexuals, as well as beating women as a means of "disciplining" them.

The New York Times, ostensibly concerned with "fake news", evidently has no qualms about lending its pages to such straightforward propaganda as El-Haddad's piece on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to a recent report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the MB recently launched a lobbying offensive in the United States to charm decision-makers in the Trump administration and Congress to give up on the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2017, re-introduced on January 9, 2017, by Senator Ted Cruz.

According to the MEMRI report, the Muslim Brotherhood's lobbying efforts include:
"Launching a widespread informational media campaign, including the hiring of U.S. lobbying and legal firms, outreach to the press in the U.S., and dissemination of informational content aimed at improving its image in the West, particularly in the U.S."
The purpose is "to convey that it is not a terrorist organization, but rather an ideological movement whose methods of operation are peaceful".
Human Rights Watch, an organization that is supposed to look out for victims of human rights abuses, not abusers of human rights, also jumped on that bandwagon. Human Rights Watch is begging US decision makers not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood -- who, if they had their way, would take away everyone's human rights and substitute them with sharia law -- a foreign terrorist organization.

The MEMRI report also cites former MB official Tareq Abu Al-Sa'ad's claim that, as part of its efforts to improve its image in the U.S., "the MB relies on specific American families who are members of the MB and have close ties to the U.S. administration... to contact human rights organizations to help improve its image in Washington".

Conveniently, Hamas -- which according to Article Two of its charter, "is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. The Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times..." -- is, it seems, working on a new charter which would declare that Hamas is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite always having been so. That way, is the MB's "narrative" of newfound "nonviolence" suddenly supposed to become believable?

The Muslim Brotherhood evidently considers the West filled with utter dupes, willing to take anything at face value that is served up to them. One can hardly blame them. The West has swallowed whole the propaganda of Islam as a "religion of peace". Why should the US not buy the equally false idea that the MB is a non-violent, pluralistic, social justice movement?
According to the MEMRI report:
"Evidence of the lobbying moves could be seen in comments by a London-based MB official, Mohamed Soudan, who said in late January that the Muslim Brotherhood was speaking to American politicians, State Department officials, members of Congress, and academics, in order to explain the nonviolent history of the movement since its establishment in 1928".
Left: The emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood. Right: While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington in January 2015, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby flashed the organization's four-finger "Rabia" sign.
Also according to the MEMRI report:
"On February 5, the Saudi website Elaph reported that the MB had signed a contract with an American lobbying firm, paying it $4.8 million to help it establish ties with Trump administration officials in order to improve its image in U.S. media. According to the report, the contract included organizing meetings with Trump administration officials, submitting documents on Egyptian government mistreatment of the movement and its members, publishing articles in American media, and providing platforms for MB officials in the American print and TV media. Elaph added that elements close to the Obama administration had helped the movement sign the contract with this firm, whose officials include figures close to Obama's election campaign and to Hillary Clinton. According to Elaph, the firm employs dozens of former White House and State Department staffers who have extensive ties to members of Congress and political and strategic research centers in the U.S".
Is anyone doing anything substantial to counter the Muslim Brotherhood's lobbying offensive in the United States?
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
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Monday, March 27, 2017

Judith Bergman : The Muslim Brotherhood: Wellspring of Terrorism

The Muslim Brotherhood: Wellspring of Terrorism

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  • The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt released an official statement calling on its supporters to "prepare" for "jihad", in January 2015.
  • "The Muslim Brotherhood at all levels have repeatedly defended Hamas attacks... including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians." — UK government expert review of the Muslim Brotherhood, December 2015.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood not only funds one of the most virulent terrorist groups, Hamas, but there is barely any daylight between the various leaderships of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Hamas.
  • Most of the terrorists who later founded al Qaeda were rooted in the MB. Osama bin Laden was apparently recruited as a young man to the MB, whereas Ayman al Zawahiri joined the MB at the age of 14 and went on to found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ),"an organization that.... holds many of the same beliefs as the MB but simply refuses to renounce violence inside Egypt" — Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood believes today what it has always believed: that a caliphate, where sharia law will rule, must be established through jihad. Refusing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization would be a grave mistake, playing straight into the strategy of the Brotherhood and, once more, revealing to the world the extreme gullibility of the West.
The Trump administration is considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a foreign terrorist organization, and Human Rights Watch is outraged.
"Designating the Muslim Brotherhood a 'foreign terrorist organization' would wrongly equate it with violent extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and make their otherwise lawful activities illegal," said Human Rights Watch. The press release went on to repeat the old claim that "...the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt officially renounced violence in the 1970s and sought to promote its ideas through social and political activities".
Adding its voice to the Muslim Brotherhood's apologists, the New York Times wrote:
"A political and social organization with millions of followers, the Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago and won elections in Egypt after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Affiliated groups have joined the political systems in places like Tunisia and Turkey, and President Barack Obama long resisted pressure to declare it a terrorist organization."
For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has pushed a specific public narrative, intended exclusively for Western consumption. Just how extremely effective the MB has been was demonstrated in 2011, when then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, unbelievably, claimed that the MB was "... largely secular... has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam...They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt...there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence".
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al-Banna made jihadist violence a focal point of his movement. He wrote, "Death is art" and "Fighting the unbelievers involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam." The MB inducts members into its deliberatively secretive and opaque network with the pledge that "Jihad is our way" and "Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
It is, in fact, difficult to overstate the importance of the MB in promoting and spreading jihad in the 20th century and onwards[1]. As the UK government's expert review of the MB, published in December 2015, concluded:
"[The Muslim Brotherhood's] public narrative -- notably in the West -- emphasized engagement not violence. But there have been significant differences between Muslim Brotherhood communications in English and Arabic; there is little evidence that the experience of power in Egypt has caused a rethinking in the Muslim Brotherhood of its ideology or conduct. UK official engagement with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood produced no discernible change in their thinking. Indeed even by mid-2014 statements from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-linked media platforms seem to have deliberately incited violence".
The UK review goes on to say:
"The Muslim Brotherhood at all levels have repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians. The Muslim Brotherhood facilitate funding for Hamas. The leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, its Jordanian counterpart and Hamas are closely connected. There are wider links with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates throughout the region and senior Muslim Brotherhood figures and associates have justified attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan".
In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood not only funds one of the most virulent terrorist groups, Hamas, but there is barely any daylight between the various leaderships of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan and Hamas. (According to article two of the Hamas Charter, "The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times").
The indictment could not be more damning.
Another terrorist group rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood is Egyptian terrorist group Jamaat al-Islamiyya. This group came into existence, conveniently, when it broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood, after the latter denounced the use of violence in the 1970s. Creating a new terrorist organization was a brilliant strategy, which allowed for the Muslim Brotherhood to polish its image as a peaceful organization, leaving the dirty terrorist work to so-called "offshoots" or proxies. Indeed, Jamaat al-Islamiyya used the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood's chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, as an ideological basis. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted and jailed in the United States as the perpetrator of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, was the spiritual leader of Jamaat al-Islamiyya.
The New York Times itself featured a lengthy article called "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror" about Sayyid Qutb in its magazine in March 2003, stating that he was "...the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx... their guide". Most of the terrorists who later founded al Qaeda were rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden was apparently recruited as a young man to the MB, whereas Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the MB at the age of 14 and went on to found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, "an organization that holds many of the same beliefs as the MB but simply refuses to renounce violence inside Egypt", according to The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). It subsequently merged with bin Laden's organization. The lead hijacker of 9/11, Mohammed Atta, was also a member of the MB. The list goes on.
"The objective, then, is to strike terror into the hearts of God's enemies, who are also the enemies of the advocates of Islam..." — Sayyid Qutb, chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s.
In January 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt released an official statement calling on its supporters to "prepare" for jihad:
"It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom."
The statement also quotes at length the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, disproving the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood has broken with its violent past:
"Imam al-Bana prepared the jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers and the second [Supreme] Guide Hassan al-Hudaybi reconstructed the 'secret apparatus' to bleed the British occupiers."
After the official statement was released, Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), stated:
"Muslim Brothers have been committing violent acts for a very long time. Under [Egypt's former president, Mohamed] Morsi, Muslim Brothers tortured protesters outside the presidential palace. After Morsi's ouster, they have frequently attacked security forces and state property... But until now, the official line from the Brotherhood was to support this implicitly by justifying its causes, without justifying the acts themselves. So the Brotherhood's open call to jihad doesn't necessarily mean a tactical shift, but a rhetorical one."
Terrorism expert and national security reporter Patrick Poole added:
"It [the call for jihad] invokes the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist past, specifically mentioning the 'special apparatus' that waged terror in the 1940s and 1950s until the Nasser government cracked down on the group, as well as the troops sent by founder Hassan al-Banna to fight against Israel in 1948. It concludes saying that the Brotherhood has entered a new stage, warns of a long jihad ahead, and to prepare for martyrdom... What remains to be seen is how this announcement will be received inside the Beltway, where the vast majority of the 'experts' have repeatedly said that the Brotherhood had abandoned its terrorist past, which it is now clearly reviving, and had renounced violence,"
There is nothing peaceful, lawful or democratic about the Muslim Brotherhood. It believes today what it has always believed and openly stated: that a caliphate, where sharia law will rule, must be established through jihad. Refusing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization would be a grave mistake, playing straight into the strategy of the Brotherhood and, once more, revealing to the world the extreme gullibility of the West and its boundless willingness to believe anything the Muslim Brotherhood throws its way.
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
[1] As Fereydoun Hoveyda writes in his book, The Broken Crescent: The "Threat" of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism:
"...aspiring terrorists from all over the world poured into Egypt... to learn from al-Banna's men the art of eliminating the enemies of Islam. While training terrorists and directing murders, Sheikh Hassan denied involvement in the assassinations and attacks, using what Shiite clerics called ketman (holy dissimulation). Indeed, deceiving infidels was admitted by all Muslims, and Shiites even extended the dissimulation to other Muslims when the security of their 'cause' was at stake".
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