Part 2 of a series
Mike Scruggs
Hassan al-Banna started the Muslim Brotherhood with only six members in 1928. Ten years later the Ikhwan (the Arab word for “brethren”) had 200,000 members. By the end of 1948 and the birth of Israel, the Ikhwan had 2,000,000 members in Egypt, about 10 percent of the total population including women and children. The Brotherhood was established as a Muslim revivalist organization with the goal of bringing Egypt and eventually all Muslim nations back to the pure Islam of the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad. As purists, they also advocated expanding Islam over the whole world by peaceful or violent means, whichever is required.
Their clearly stated ultimate objective is to bring the whole world under Sharia (Islamic Law) and a single ruler and supreme judge of Sharia, a Caliph. The Caliphate has not existed since the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, and the secular Turkish reformer, President Kemal Ataturk, abolished it in 1924.
The Muslim Brotherhood embraces traditional Islamic fundamentalist Jihad, holy war against all who resist Islam. Spiritual Jihad, a concept embraced by far more deceived non-Muslim academics than Muslim imams, gets little attention in the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad. To the Brotherhood and almost all Muslims, Jihad means to impose Islam and Islamic Law by force. The Muslim Brotherhood has basically the same religious and ideological tenets as jihadist terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. In fact, Hamas was created by the Brotherhood as a Palestinian terrorist organization, and al-Qaeda’s leadership has been heavily influenced by them. There is even a cooperative relationship between the Brotherhood and the Shiite Hezbollah terrorists sponsored by Iran.
The most barbaric terrorist organization of all, the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh (Arabic), is a spinoff of al-Qaeda and has essentially identical goals with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the short time since U.S withdrawal from Iraq, ISIS has become the largest terrorist group in the world and is now independently wealthy. ISIS now controls $2.0 billion in annual oil income from Syria and northern Iraq. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has declared himself the new Caliph, having spiritual and governing authority over all Muslims worldwide. So far, ISIS has distinguished itself by the ghastly brutality of sawing people’s heads off with a knife. According to Oxford University Professor Harry G. Hutchinson, in an address to the Oxford faculty in July 2014, ISIS summarily decapitates Christian and Jewish men, women, and children for refusing to convert to Islam. They also rape uncooperative Muslim women and tell their rape victims they can only redeem themselves from this “disgrace” by blowing themselves up in the cause of Jihad. They shoot babies in the face to terrorize mothers and create widespread fear of resistance.
The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, al-Qaeda, and ISIS is in strategy and tactics. The Brotherhood’s strategy is to build their organization quietly until they are certain that they can overcome non-Muslim nations by a final thrust of violence. They make lavish use of the Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya (deception). Under this doctrine, blatant lies are permissible to deceive non-Muslims about the nature of Islam, Jihad, and Sharia. Taqiyya may be used defensively or offensively.
The Brotherhood advances in Western countries by living peacefully while their numbers are small and escalating their militancy and violence as they establish greater numerical presence and infiltration into the host society. They also advance through charitable organizations and benevolence to Muslim families. This is highly effective in both increasing political support among fellow Muslims and in convincing non-Muslims that their objectives are peaceful and benevolent. The Muslim Brotherhood mandate for America includes these words:
“Make every effort for the establishment of educational social, economic, and scientific institutions and the establishment of mosques, schools, clinics, shelters, (and) clubs.”
The Brethren create and make use of numerous front organizations to accomplish what they call “civilization” Jihad—the infiltration and eventual destruction of the host society. The first in North America was the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in 1963. MSA chapters all over the United States worked primarily on presenting Islam as an acceptable alternative to other religions. Their revolutionary ideology was never revealed to non-Muslims. Almost every Muslim organization in America was formed through the Muslim Brotherhood controlled MSA.
In 1973, Saudi members of the Brotherhood created the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) that funded and now controls more than 80 percent of the property owned by Muslim mosques, schools, and other Islamic organizations in the U.S. Along with huge sums of Saudi oil money come militant Wahhabi trained imams, textbooks, and jihadist literature. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was created in 1980 and is now the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in North America. Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into American government, educational, business, and religious institutions, and even U.S. intelligence services has increased at a rapid pace since then.
Many in the FBI and CIA had long been aware of this dangerous ongoing infiltration of American society by those who intended to destroy it. However, their reports were not well received by higher political leadership levels that continued to embrace a counterfactual understanding of Islam. There was a breakthrough in 2004, however, when The FBI’s Washington Field Office discovered a basement full of Muslim Brotherhood documents and plans in an Annandale, Virginia, home.
One of the documents discovered in the Annandale FBI raid was an explanatory memorandum on general strategic goals for the Muslim Brotherhood in America. It contains this revealing statement:
“The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process with all the word means. 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 Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
