FRANK GAFFNEY:Muslim Brotherhood Influence Operations and the Conservative Movement
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8494/pub_detail.asp
Muslim Brotherhood Influence Operations and the Conservative Movement
On Tuesday, you all received an e-mail from your fellow Board member, Suhail Khan. In it, he said he wants to “set the record straight” following several upsetting press reports – including a news article published by World Net Daily on 4 January 2011, an op.ed. by Paul Sperry in the New YorkPoston 11 January 2011and several related videos.
Suhail has attacked me and what he calls my “cohort” for expressing concerns about him, his family and his activities. Kahn’s comments provide what some would call a “teachable moment.” It is now imperative that each of you consider with care the actual facts of the matter so as to determine whether, as he claims in his e-mail, “the ACU has nothing to worry about.”
Let me say at the outset that, despite concerted efforts by Suhail and his supporters to portray this as a personal matter, that is not the case. It is a matter of national security, period. I will not respond to ad hominem attacks against me by him or others except to say they have no basis in fact. I trust that those of you who have known and worked with me for the past few decades will find such unsubstantiated calumnies discrediting not to their intended target, but to their perpetrator.
The issue before the ACU today is actually fairly straightforward: Has the conservative movement been subjected to a sustained and successful influence operation by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan)? I believe it is demonstrable that the answer is “Yes.” Indeed, were that not the case, it would be remarkable. After all, every other significant element of our polity – notably, our government, academia, the media, the Left, religious groups and the U.S. financial sector – has been assiduously targeted by the MB for the purpose of disinforming, manipulating or otherwise neutralizing it.
That is the conclusion of an important new book, Shariah: The Threat to America that was published by the Center for Security Policy in November. It was authored bynineteen eminent national security practitioners and other experts, including: a former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, a former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Ed Soyster, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy.
This group (which we dubbed “Team B II” in honor of a previous “exercise in competitive analysis” in 1976 that was much admired and utilized by Ronald Reagan) did not indulge in “conspiracy theories.” Rather, it drew extensively on the recognized authorities of Islam – the sacred texts, established traditions, scholarly consensuses, agreed interpretations and revered institutions – to lay bare an authentic conspiracy aimed at establishing worldwide the totalitarian, supremacist politico-military-legal program known as shariah.
Given your “need to know” whether the ACU and other elements of our movement have indeed been successfully targeted by the Ikhwan, I will have a complimentary copy of Shariah: The Threat to America sent to you. (Alternatively, you can find a pdf of the book right away at http://www.ShariahtheThreat.com.)
An Introduction to the Muslim Brotherhood
I urge you to read in particular the book’s lengthy section on the Muslim Brotherhood and its appendix, in which the MB’s strategic plan for America – an “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal,” dated 1991 – is reproduced in its entirety. This document was among the archives of the Ikhwan in the United States which were discovered by the FBI in a concealed sub-basement in a Northern Virginia home owned by a senior Brother/Hamas operative, Ishmael Elbrasse (currently an international fugitive after he jumped bail). In 2008, it was introduced into evidence by the Justice Department in Dallas in connection with its successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history.
The thrust of the Explanatory Memorandum – and, indeed, of the Muslim Brotherhood in America – is conveyed in its description of the MB’s mission as:
…A kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their [i.e., our] hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
The Explanatory Memorandum also provides a roster of more than two-dozen organizations under the heading “A List of Our Organizations and the Organizations of our Friends.” This roster includes virtually every prominent Muslim-American organization in business at that time, and the progenitors of several that were subsequently founded, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Another document found in the Elbarasse’s sub-basement also requires your review. It is entitled the “Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan” and it is reproduced at pages 124-125 of the Team B II Report. The following is a brief description of the phases of escalating violence, together with the MB author’s assessment of their status:
Phase One: Phase of discreet and secret establishment of leadership. This phase has already been implemented in this country.
Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities. It [i.e., the MB has] greatly succeeded in implementing this stage. It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government. Gaining religious institutions and embracing senior scholars. Gaining public support and sympathy. Establishing a shadow government (secret) within the Government.
Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers,
through utilizing mass media. Currently in progress.
Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach. It is aggressively implementing the abovementioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour. It has noticeable activities in this regard.
Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united.
With that background, and in the interest of genuinely setting the record straight, I wanted to share with you information about five topics: 1) the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of our movement; 2) Suhail Khan’s pedigree as a Muslim Brother; 3) the role he has played in the MB’s influence operation against conservatives; 4) an illustrative example of his efforts in this regard – prohibiting the use of “secret evidence”; and 5) Khan’s current, intensifying activities aimed at infiltrating and influencing the conservative movement.
1) How the MB’s Infiltration of the Conservative Movement Began
As you may know, it was 1999 when I first discovered how the Muslim Brotherhood intended to destroy conservatives from within, by our hand, as part of what its strategic plan calls “civilization jihad.” Shortly after the Center for Security Policy sublet office space that year from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a colleague brought to my attention myriad ties between an organization housed within ATR’s suite – the Islamic Free Market Institute (better known as the Islamic Institute or II) – and Abdurahman Alamoudi.
Even then, Alamoudi was known in law enforcement circles as one of the most prominent and influential Muslim Brothers in the United States. Today, he is known as a convicted jihadist terrorist and al Qaeda financier who is serving 23 years in federal prison on terrorism-related charges.
In the early 1990s, however, the Clinton administration saw fit to assign Alamoudi the responsibility for identifying, training and credentialing Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system. As is recounted in Shariah: The Threat toAmerica (pp. 124-130), the Brotherhood operative sought to ensure that, in the event Al Gore did not prevail in the 2000 campaign, Alamoudi’s access and influence at senior levels of the U.S. government would be undiminished. That was accomplished to a degree that must have exceeded his fondest dreams when he succeeded in founding and staffing the Islamic Institute with Grover Norquist as its first president and Suhail Khan as a member of its board of directors.
Here are a just a few of the indisputable facts concerning the connections between Alamoudi and other prominent MB operatives on the one hand, and the II, Norquist and Khan on the other:
• Alamoudi provided at least $20,000 in seed money in checks drawn on a Saudi bank account to start the Islamic Institute.
• Alamoudi’s longtime and trusted deputy, Khaled Saffuri, became the II’s first executive director.
• Saffuri was also made the Muslim Outreach Coordinator for the Bush 2000 campaign. In the course of the campaign, Candidate Bush met with both Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian, another prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure who was subsequently convicted of running Palestinian Islamic Jihad out of his professorship at South Florida University.
• After the election, Khan became a staff member in the Office of Public Liaison in the White House with responsibility for selecting, among others, which Muslims would be allowed access to the President and his team. By that time, Alamoudi had become politically radioactive for his public professions in 2000 of support for two terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah. But many of his Brothers and close associates in the Ikhwan’s American fronts were still afforded access to the White House – a practice that continues to this day.
2) A Son of the Brotherhood
One of the aforementioned videos shows Abdulrahman Alamoudi officiating at a June 2001 American Muslim Council (AMC) convention where Suhail Khan was presented with an award. In his welcoming remarks, the MB leader says with evident affection, in part:
We have with us a dear brother, a pioneer, somebody who really started political activism in the Muslim community. And somebody different. A young man, not old and grumpy like many of us, but a young man who pioneered from many, many young men and women who started political activism when it was a taboo for the Muslim community, no doubt about it.
When Suhail Khan started not too many people were aware that we had to do something. I am really proud to be with Suhail Khan. Some of you saw [him] in today the White House but, inshallah, soon you see him in better places in the White House. Inshallah. Maybe sometimes as vice-president soon, inshallah. Allahu akbar.
Suhail Khan is the son of a dear, dear brother who was a pioneer of Islam work himself. Many of you know his late father [Mahboob Khan] who was part of all kinds of work and…Suhail inherited from his father not only being a Muslim and a Muslim activist, but also being a Muslim political activist.
This statement is important for several reasons. It makes plain a longstanding personal connection between not only Alamoudi and the younger Khan, but also between the MB operative and Suhail’s late father. The latter was himself a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood who worked for many years with Alamoudi.
Relevant facts about Suhail Khan’s pedigree with the Ikhwan include the following:
• As Khan told an ISNA conference in 1999:
It is a special honor for me to be here before you today because I am always reminded of the legacy of my father, Dr. Mahboob Khan, an early founder of the Muslim Students Association in the mid-60s and an active member of the organization through its growth and development in the Islamic Society of North America.
The Muslim Students Association (MSA) was, of course, the first MB organization in America. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is today the largest Ikhwan organization in the United States and the elder Khan served as a member of its Majlis a’Shura (or governing council) (see: www.archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=63.) The memory of Mahboob Khan is held in such high regard by the Brothers of ISNA that they give an annual service award in his name.
• The elder Khan was also a founder (not to be confused with the imam) of three shariah-adherent mosques in California. Their degree of shariah-adherence can be found in the company kept by their congregations: The one in Southern California, the Islamic Society of Orange County, was the site of a fundraising visit in December 1992 by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, better known as “the Blind Sheikh.” The visit preceded by two months the first attack on the World Trade Center, which was masterminded by Rahman.
Then, according to a lengthy investigative report in the San Francisco Chronicle published in October 2001, two self-professed members of a terrorist cell recounted how, in 1995, they brought Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top Muslim Brotherhood figure who is now Osama bin Laden’s Number 2 in al Qaeda, to Mahboob Khan’s al-Noormosque in Santa Clara.
• It is instructive that Suhail’s mother, Malika Khan, is also active with a prominent Muslim Brotherhood front. She still serves on the board of directors of the California chapter of the Council on America Islamic Relations, an organization the federal government has tied to Hamas and that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation conspiracy.
• The years-long and prominent involvement of both of Suhail Khan’s parents with the Muslim Brotherhood is relevant to the present question insofar as he has neither acknowledged the truth about the nature of his parents’ roles in the Ikhwan’s civilization jihad nor disavowed them. To the contrary, in response to Abdurahman Alamoudi’s warm introduction at the 2001 AMC convention, Suhail said, in part:
…Abdulrahman Alamoudi [was among those who] have been very supportive of me and I want to give them thanks. Many of you, of course, knew my father. He was someone who dedicated his life to the community and I’ve always felt that I have to work in the same – those footsteps. That this is something that’s important for our country as Americans and it is something that I keep in my heart everyday.
• In another address to the ISNA annual convention in September 2001 – shortly before 9/11, Suhail Khan took evident pride in the leadership role his mother had played in a number of Muslim Brotherhood organizations:
She worked with her husband to establish organizations like the MSA, ISNA, CAIR, American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice. She worked hard toestablish an Islamic center in Orange County. She worked hard to establish anIslamic center and MCA in Santa Clara, and she still works hard today. And,inshallah, I work for my mother and I work for you. There’s a dream that isAmerica. And, inshallah, with your work and your help, we will make that dreama reality. Inshallah.
To carry on reading, download the whole pdf document here.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.Washington
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