Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America
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They also serve as recruiting centers. The Brothers invite prospects to come to the mosque and join a small prayer group—or usra, Arabic for “family”—where they evaluate their loyalty and commitment to the cause.
These Islamic centers are key nodes in the network. They also serve as “beehives,” planting the “seed for a small Islamic society” in every city, according to Brotherhood strategy papers. The mosques will “prepare us and supply our battalions in addition to being the ‘niche’ of our prayers.”13
Dar al-Hijrah, the 9/11 mosque in the Washington suburbs, is the spiritual headquarters for the Muslim mafia in America.14
Other key hubs: the Bridgeview Mosque in Chicago; MCA Islamic Center and Masjid an-Noor in Santa Clara, California; Orange County Islamic Society in Garden Grove, California; Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York; the Islamic Center of Tucson, Arizona; and ADAMS Center in Sterling, Virginia, where former General Masul Ahmed Elkadi lives.
The imams of these centers play a vital role not just as spiritual leaders in the movement, but also as recruiters and organizers.
In their internal documents, the Brothers refer to the United States as “our Dar al-Arqam”—or safehouse—because of the protections it affords them to freely practice their faith. (Interestingly, influential Brotherhood imam Ali al-Timimi ran a radical storefront mosque in Northern Virginia by that name before he was sent to the slammer for soliciting treason against the United States.)
It’s also clear from FBI wiretaps of secret meetings that the Brotherhood views America as a pushover. As Shukri Abu Baker put it, America represents “a safe place for the Movement.” Another major Brotherhood figure, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, adds that “in America, we have a legal slack, or an atmosphere of freedom.”
Unlike the Sicilian mafia, the Muslim mafia is harder to penetrate, investigators say, because it is shrouded by a major religion. Fearing accusations of religious bigotry, Washington is still reluctant to aggressively prosecute it.
RATS AND SNITCHES
What’s more, it’s harder to infiltrate the group with informants or undercover agents due to its cryptic language, religious rituals, and initiations.
The Brothers also are very careful about whom they recruit. Even immigrants from Muslim nations have to be nominated by the usra, and then only a naquib can submit a name to the masul, who then does a thorough background check. Members swear allegiance to the Brotherhood, and are conditioned to sacrifice everything to protect it. And only trusted members can get into the group’s inner circle.
One memo cautions leaders to be careful about “moles” and leaks and other internal security problems. It counsels them to take care in screening potential recruits to avoid revealing too much information. If the recruit asks whether the leader is a Brotherhood member, the leader should respond, “You may deduce the answer to that with your own intelligence.”15
Additionally, it advises using dead drops when dealing with associates, in case they are arrested and confess to what they know. Dead drops use a hidden location such as a tree or a bridge inside a park for secretly passing cash, weapons, or information between members without requiring a meeting.
Few leaders have been ratted out. “Unlike the mob, you can’t flip these guys,” says an FBI special agent who investigated the Alexandria, Virginia-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth and other Brotherhood fronts. “They don’t care if they go to jail.”16
He explains they’re viewed as “martyrs” for the cause if they’re locked up, attaining a higher status within the Brotherhood.
It took the FBI decades to infiltrate the mafia. “It’s ten times harder to infiltrate [Brotherhood] groups than the mob,” says veteran FBI agent John Vincent, who investigated major Brotherhood figures in Chicago.17
PH.D. MOBSTERS
Veteran investigators say they have never faced a more disciplined adversary. They are a lot smarter than mobsters. They are well-educated professionals, including clerics, scholars, doctors, and engineers. In fact, many of the top Brotherhood leaders in America have Ph.D.s or M.D.s.
The crime bosses of the ummah underworld are not the suburban goombas depicted on HBO, hanging out at the Bada Bing. While they also launder money, extort, threaten, lie without shame, and conspire to do murder, the members of this mafia, this brotherhood of faith, are not rough around the edges or right off the boat. Many are American citizens fluent in English and highly articulate. They appear sophisticated, even genteel, giving them a veneer of legitimacy that makes them more dangerous.
But make no mistake: These are thugs who, at their core, are really no different than mobsters. They, too, beat their women and pay to have people killed. These same mild-mannered religious leaders have been arrested for domestic violence and bankrolling terrorism.
And some have long rap sheets. Take Mahdi Bray, the head of the Muslim American Society’s political arm in Washington. He’s a three-time felon and an ex-con who’s done serious time, according to police and court records unveiled by Washington-based IPT News.18 Prior to joining MAS, founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Bray was the political director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, or MPAC. He recently led a Brotherhood campaign to raise $30,000 to help pay for lawyers to free al-Qaida agent and would-be presidential assassin Ahmed Abu Ali, who is serving a life sentence.
FBI agents who have listened in on the private conversations of Brotherhood bosses say they talk about murder as if they were ordering pizza.
“These guys talk about jihad and murdering Jews like the mob talked about killing—totally casual, like they were ordering pizza,” an FBI official in Washington says.19
He recalls one prominent American Muslim leader expressing his approval of synagogue bombings in a room with other Brotherhood leaders. “And this is a skinny guy with coke-bottle glasses,” the official says. “He’s a scholar.”
He says the Brotherhood and al-Qaida share the same goals but use different methods to achieve them.
“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics,” he says.
* * *
TIMELINE OF U.S. MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MILESTONES
1960s
New wave of Arab immigrants floods America’s campuses, particularly at large Midwestern universities in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Some students belonged to the Brotherhood in their homelands and want to spread its ideology here.
1962
“Mother group” in Egypt agrees to start movement in America with financial help of Saudi-based Muslim World League.
1963
Muslim Students Association (MSA) founded in U.S.
1973
World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) founded.
1973
With massive funding from Saudis, North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) formed as investment vehicle for Brotherhood, acquiring title to more than three hundred mosques and schools in the U.S.
1981
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) founded.
1981
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) founded.
1983
SAAR Foundation, part of the Safa group, incorporated with massive funding from Saudis, including $3.4 million in start-up cash.
1984
Ahmed Elkadi made General Masul, or godfather, of Brotherhood in America.
1985
International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) incorporated (part of Safa group), developed with $25 million from Saudi Islamic Development Bank.
1985
Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) founded with Saudi money, but does not enroll students for another decade.
1987
Hamas formed as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood—with stated goal of destroying Israel. Effort led by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, head of Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip.
1988
Mousa Abu Marzook, member of the U.S. Brotherhood’s shura
council, helps organize Hamas, goes on to become its deputy political chief.
1988
Some two hundred Brotherhood leaders trained in U.S.
1989
Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) founded.
1990
American Muslim Council (AMC) formed.
1991
Network of more than thirty Brotherhood front organizations now established to spread Allah’s law and raise money for terrorists. Secret strategy paper produced and circulated among leadership.
1991
Brotherhood boss Abdurahman Alamoudi creates the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC) to promote Muslim chaplains into the U.S. military.
1991
Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center established in Washington suburbs with Saudi embassy backing.
1992
Muslim American Society (MAS) co-founded in Washington suburbs by Elkadi and two other top Brotherhood leaders, Jamal Badawi and Omar Soubani.
1993
Defense Department certifies AMAFVAC as one of two organizations to vet and endorse Muslim chaplains.
1993
Top U.S. Brotherhood leaders meet with Hamas leaders in secret Philadelphia summit, hatch plot to funnel millions to Hamas suicide bombers, families through charity.
1994
Brotherhood leaders also meet with Hamas operatives in Oxford, Mississippi.
1994
Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) incorporated.
1994
CAIR incorporated.
1995
Elkadi replaced as General Masul, or godfather, of the Brotherhood.
1997
GSISS opens, trains most of Muslim chaplains in U.S. military (now also known as Cordoba University).
2000
Second (al-Aqsa) Intifada begins, resulting in series of horrific Hamas suicide bombings of Israeli civilians and seventy-seven deaths, including three Americans.
2000
SAAR Foundation dissolved, renamed Safa Trust.
2001
Al-Qaida attacks America, triggering terror financing probes of U.S. Muslim charities and nonprofits.
2002
Federal agents raid dozens of Brotherhood fronts tied to Safa group.
2004
Brotherhood godfather Alamoudi sentenced to twenty-three years in prison for plotting terrorism.
2005
Omar Ahmad steps down as CAIR’s chairman of the board.
2005
Federal agents discover Brotherhood manifesto, trove of secret strategy papers during search of DC-area home of terror suspect and Brotherhood leader Ismail Elbarasse.
2006
Brotherhood boss Sami al-Arian pleads guilty to terror conspiracy charges.
2007
CAIR and dozens of other Muslim groups named as unindicted co-conspirators in HLF terror trial.
2008
Several Brotherhood leaders convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in Holy Land Foundation trial.
2009
Ahmad, named as an individual co-conspirator, leaves CAIR.
* * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FAKING OUT THE INFIDEL
“I swear by Allah that war is deception. We are fighting our enemy with a kind heart. Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.”
—U.S. Brotherhood leader Shukri Abu Baker, recently sentenced to sixty-five years in federal prison for supporting terrorism1
THE TERRORISTS IN SUITS are adroit at manipulating politicians and the media through skillfully parsed propaganda. Bluntly, they’re good liars. As their manifesto says, mastery of deception is key to the success of their conspiracy to support terrorism and infiltrate and destroy the American system from within.
Of course, they couldn’t do this out in the open. So they set up benign-sounding nonprofits and charities to “camouflage” their traitorous activities.
During their secret meeting at a Philadelphia hotel, the Brotherhood leaders were recorded plotting ways to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charity. During their talks, they used the code word Samah—Hamas spelled backward—to mislead authorities.
“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” Shukri Abu Baker was recorded as saying. “We are fighting our enemy with a kind heart…. Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.”2
The organizer of the secret Hamas summit was Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s founding chairman. Adding to Abu Baker’s point, he compared the deception needed to fool the infidels with the basketball move known as the “head fake,” whereby a player fools the opponent guarding him into going a different direction in order to clear a path to the goal.
“He makes a player believe that he is doing this while he does something else,” Ahmad said. “I agree with you.…Politics is a completion of war.”3
Ahmad counseled using obfuscatory language when, for instance, talking about Israel “to the Americans” in order to couch the group’s extremist views.
“There is a difference between you saying, ‘I want to restore the ‘48 land,’ and when you say, ‘I want to destroy Israel,’” he remarked.
Ahmad also suggested recruiting more skilled propagandists “whom we could dedicate for the work we want to hide.”4
The Islamist head fake has worked all too well over the past few decades. Blind acceptance and validation of Muslim leaders with questionable sympathies and loyalties hardly missed a beat in Washington, even after 9/11.
Many were invited to the White House and Congress. The head of the FBI spoke at their conferences, calling them “mainstream” and “moderate.” Many gullible officials still confer legitimacy on them.
But what these Brotherhood leaders tell official Washington and what they tell Muslim audiences are often two entirely different things. The degree of deception is breathtaking. Among the standouts:
SAMI AL-ARIAN
A White House guest of both Presidents Clinton and Bush, he assured his hosts he was both peace-loving and patriotic. “I am a very moderate Muslim person,” he said. “I also condemn violence in all its forms.”5
All the while, al-Arian was secretly running a U.S. beachhead for Palestinian terrorists. In a speech at a Cleveland mosque, he once thundered: “Let’s damn America, let’s damn Israel, let’s damn their allies until death.”6
He’s now a convicted terrorist. At his sentencing, the U.S. District Court judge slammed al-Arian as a “master manipulator,” adding: “You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie.”
ABDURAHMAN ALAMOUDI
This supposed pillar of the Muslim community also went from the White House to the Big House. But not before developing the Pentagon’s Muslim chaplain corps and acting as a goodwill ambassador for the State Department.
He, too, strongly denounced terror. “We are against all forms of terrorism,” he claimed. “Our religion is against terrorism.”
Privately, however, he raised major funds for the terrorist group al-Qaida and was caught on tape grumbling that Osama bin Laden hadn’t killed enough Americans in the U.S. embassy bombings. Like al-Arian, he proved to be an expert in the art of deception, known in Arabic as taqiya or kitman.
ALI AL-TIMIMI
A noted imam and native Washingtonian, he also put on a moderate face in public while secretly plotting against the U.S. The internationally known scholar had government clearance—and even worked for former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card when he was at the Transportation Department—and was invited to speak on Islam to the U.S. military.
Publicly, the imam denounced Islamic violence. “My position against terrorism and Muslim-inspired violence against innocent people is well known by Muslims,” he said.7
But privately, a darker picture emerged. Five da
ys after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he called them “legitimate” and rallied young Muslim men at his DC-area mosque to carry out more “holy war” and “violent jihad.”8