Muslim Mafia

by Sperry, Paul

  The first section of this book reveals how the Council on American-Islamic Relations functions as a dangerous front organization. More alarming, however, is that CAIR is part of an organized crime network in America made up of more than one hundred other Muslim front groups. Collectively, they are the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The following section exposes the inner workings of the mob-like Brotherhood, and outlines its broader conspiracy of infiltrating the American government and “destroying Western civilization from within.” For the first time, the constellation of dots in this sinister conspiracy are connected, and connected convincingly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: TERRORISTS IN SUITS

  “Allah is our goal; the Prophet is our guide; the Quran is our constitution; Jihad is our way; and death for the glory of Allah is our greatest ambition.”

  —Muslim Brotherhood credo

  FORTY YEARS AGO, radical Muslim immigrants began organizing in America and developing a criminal underworld that largely escaped federal law enforcement scrutiny. They incorporated nonprofit organizations with benign-sounding names and told anybody who asked they were simply forming a social network or “cultural society” for Muslims.

  But in the wake of 9/11, Washington allowed skeptical case agents to start connecting the dots, and they began to see a lot of overlap in the operations of the Muslim groups and their leaders, and a lot of suspicious activity, confirming the hunches of veteran counterterrorism investigators.

  Although the groups appear independent of one another, many of them co-mingle funds and even share the same staff and office space. For example, some forty active Muslim charities and businesses have operated at one time or another out of the same office building in Herndon, Virginia. And several others have been headquartered in the same non-descript office park in Alexandria, Virginia, in the shadow of the nation’s capital.

  Both nexuses are located within Fairfax County. “There’s only three degrees of separation between international terrorism and what happens in Fairfax County,” observes a senior Fairfax County Police Department detective. “Our society here is totally infiltrated by the bad guys.”1

  Investigators also discovered the groups have interlocking boards of directors. One leader, Abdurahman Alamoudi, sat on the boards of no fewer than sixteen Islamic organizations, including CAIR. Many of the leaders live next door to each other on private, secluded streets.

  “When we started to really look at this thing, we found it’s all the same people. It’s all the same guys,” says an FBI official in Washington.2

  Investigators also confirmed that many of the groups were laundering terrorist-bound funds through a maze of shell companies and fronts. They even used religious charities and think tanks as cover to carry out their illicit activities.

  Soon federal prosecutors realized they were dealing with a vast criminal conspiracy and began to look for ways to roll up the entire network of bad guys.

  Their first big break came a few years ago with the search of one of the leaders’ homes in Annandale, Virginia, following his arrest on suspicions he had cased the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and other bridges for possible terrorist attack. There, in a sub-basement of suspect Ismail Elbarasse’s basement, agents uncovered a stash of secret manifestos, charters, and other documents revealing the depth of the conspiracy.3

  After translating the Arabic-written papers into English, investigators realized they had seized the archives of the U.S. branch of the militant Muslim Brotherhood.

  GERM OF JIHAD

  Established eighty years ago in Cairo, Egypt, where the “mother group” is based (think Sicily), the Muslim Brotherhood is a secretive society that gave birth to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. It’s also the parent organization of al-Qaida. In fact, it is the germ of the entire global jihadist movement now threatening the West.

  Before joining al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Blind Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman, and other notorious terrorists were all adherents of the trans-national Muslim Brotherhood—or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, as it is known in Arabic. All remain members in good standing—including bin Laden.

  The Supreme Guide of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Akef, recently was asked: “Regarding resistance and jihad, do you consider Osama bin Laden a terrorist or an Islamic mujahid (freedom fighter)?”

  Akef’s answer: “In all certainty, a mujahid, and I have no doubt in his sincerity in resisting the occupation, close to Allah on high.”

  While the Brotherhood now claims to eschew violence against the government, it changed its tune only after Cairo jailed its leaders and banned the group as a terrorist front. The movement still operates semi-openly in Egypt, with some members serving in parliament. And it still supports violent jihad, if clandestinely, while reportedly maintaining a well-armed wing of thousands of trained fighters.

  Even in America, it has set up a network of front groups to underwrite suicide bombings carried out by Hamas and other terrorists—mass murders that Brotherhood leaders here have described as “beautiful,” according to covert FBI recordings.

  “The Muslim Brotherhood has figured that they can be successful promoting radical change from within the U.S. while supporting the armed struggle outside the U.S., primarily through fundraising and closely associated Palestinian terrorist organizations,” says former FBI Special Agent George Sadler, who after 9/11 investigated the Brotherhood from the bureau’s Washington field office.4

  While its secret writings call for conquering this nation through political infiltration and mass conversion, it does not rule out violent jihad when the time is right and all its “infrastructure” is in place and strong. To that end, the Brotherhood has set up jihad training camps inside America where its foot soldiers conduct paramilitary exercises, including firearms and other weapons training.

  In other words, despite recent attempts to slap a happy face on its movement, the Brotherhood is still an extremely dangerous and subversive organization, investigators and prosecutors agree. It has stated clearly in its recently declassified U.S. charter that it considers the United States to be its enemy.

  And the Islamist cult has spent the last four decades infiltrating America. Like a colony of termites, it has become deeply entrenched in our society, undermining it from within.

  THE SMOKING GUN

  One secret document found during the raid of Elbarasse’s home lays bare the Brotherhood’s ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover, replacing the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.

  Written by a U.S. Brotherhood boss, Mohammed Akram Adlouni, the strategy paper describes the group’s long-term goal of destroying the U.S. system “from within” by using its freedoms and political processes against it. It is a blueprint for stealth jihad. Under the heading: “The role of the Muslim Brother in North America,” it states:

  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 the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.5

  Jihad. Sabotage. Eliminate. Destroy. The miserable West. Sounds like the latest screed from Osama bin laden. But it’s from the Muslim establishment in America.

  The same eighteen-page document lists as confederates some thirty major Muslim organizations in America—all of which are considered “mainstream” and “moderate” by the media and many politicians, but are in fact U.S. franchises of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

  Many more Brotherhood front groups have been incorporated since the manifesto was written in 1991. (See Figure 13.1 for list.) It and other seized Brotherhood documents are smoking-gun proof that CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America—along with the Muslim Students Association, North American Islamic Trust, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, and the rest of institutional Islam in Ame
rica—were established with a markedly different purpose from what they publicly claim. And they’ve gone through decades of deceit to conceal their true identities and purposes.

  Their secret manifesto is “a clear threat statement of hostile intent,” says Pentagon terror expert Major Stephen Coughlin, “with stated objectives that overlap with al-Qaida’s.”6

  U.S. prosecutors entered the documents as evidence in the recent Holy Land Foundation terror trial. The chilling courtroom exhibits were unopposed by the defense, further attesting to their authenticity.

  Prosecutors outlined the broader conspiracy by listing the entities and individuals named in the Brotherhood documents as unindicted co-conspirators in the case. The government list totals more than three hundred.

  As it turns out, “every major Muslim group in the United States is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood,” veteran FBI agent John Guandolo says, who has spent years investigating the subversive group. It’s not just a loose network of people sharing a common ideology, he says, but a centrally controlled and directed insurgency.

  “It is a genuine conspiracy to overthrow the government, and they have organizations to do it, and they have written doctrines outlining their plan,” Guandolo adds.

  “And they’ve got our number.”7

  ORGANIZATIONAL JIHAD

  By that, the investigator means the bad guys have closely studied how America works and how it’s structured and have determined that it is built on institutions and organizations. America respects formal structure. So the Brotherhood constructed an elaborate covert as well as public organizational structure—a dual internal and external infrastructure that with few exceptions continues to function today.

  As CAIR boss Omar Ahmad bragged: “We can have as many organizations as we want,” no questions asked, thanks to America’s tolerant and pluralistic culture.8 The only thing the Brothers have to worry about, he advised, is covering up “orders” from abroad, as well as the “financial connections,” so that their organizations appear independent.

  “If you cover these two bases, you will find that you, as an American organization, can do whatever you want,” the FBI recorded Ahmad saying during his secret jihad summit in Philadelphia.9

  The more organizations, the more legitimacy, the Brothers agreed. And the more legitimacy, the more political cover to infiltrate the government and the more legal cover to protect the group from prosecution.10

  America’s democratic freedoms have allowed the Brotherhood to put up a tremendous front, behind which it hides its subversive and criminal activities. In fact, the Brotherhood privately refers to its own organizations as “fronts.”

  “The Brothers in Egypt don’t have fronts in the same broad way we have in America,” Zeid al-Noman, leader of the organization office of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, confides in one document seized by authorities. Though the organization is banned over there, it still operates relatively openly—something the Brotherhood is loath to do here, especially after 9/11.

  RELIGIOUS CRIME SYNDICATE

  The U.S. Brotherhood even set up a committee to study the legal aspects of establishing charities in America. The charities are critical because the Brothers have used them as a “side” or “facade,” as they put it in their writings, to launder illegal payments to terrorists.11 Most of their charitable fronts have been shut down, their leaders convicted. However, they continue to search for clever new ways of funneling cash to jihadists.

  The Justice Department earlier this year put away several Brotherhood leaders on conspiracy charges in the case against the Holy Land Foundation charity. Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, and CAIR founding director Ghassan Elashi were sentenced to, in effect, life terms for funneling millions to Hamas. Three other Brothers caught up in the investigation have also been imprisoned.12

  The government viewed the charity and its subsidiaries as a “criminal enterprise” as much as a terrorist front. Such federal racketeering and conspiracy laws are more commonly applied to mafia figures.

  A federal grand jury in Northern Virginia has been hearing evidence in another possible Brotherhood conspiracy involving the network of business and charitable fronts in Herndon known collectively as the Safa group.

  Brotherhood underboss Taha al-Alwani of Safa said he was bound by the “Brotherhood of faith” when he funneled money, wittingly or not, to Palestinian terrorists through fronts in Florida controlled by another Brotherhood underboss, according to court documents.

  “The matter of the financial support was never the basis of our relationship, for our relationship added to the Brotherhood of faith,” Al-Alwani wrote Sami al-Arian in a letter, referring to at least $50,000 Safa transferred to the now-convicted terrorist.

  He reiterated that they shared “the same objectives,” and that “all of your institutions are considered by us as ours.” Al-Alwani is an unindicted co-conspirator in the al-Arian terrorism case.13

  With each new indictment, the Muslim establishment in America looks more and more like a religious crime syndicate.

  * * *

  KEY U.S. MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD FRONT ORGANIZATIONS14

  Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

  Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)

  Muslim Students Association (MSA)

  Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA)

  North American Islamic Trust (NAIT)

  Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA)

  Al-Aqsa Educational Fund

  United Association for Studies and Research (UASR)

  Islamic Association for Palestine in North America (IAP)

  Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)

  Baitul Mal Inc. (BMI)

  International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT)

  Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA)

  Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers (AMSE)

  Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)

  Islamic Free Market Institute (Islamic Institute)

  American Muslim Council (AMC)

  American Muslim Foundation (AMC Foundation)

  Success Foundation

  Muslim American Society (MAS)

  Graduate School of Islamic & Social Sciences (GSISS, aka Cordoba University)

  North American Imams Federation (NAIF)

  International Islamic Forum for Science, Technology & Human Resources Development Inc. (IIFTIKHAR)

  Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS)

  Taibah International Aid Association

  International Relief Organization (IRO)

  African Muslim Agency

  Safa Trust

  SAAR Foundation

  Makkah Mukarramah Charity Trust

  Dar El-Eiman USA Inc.

  All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS)

  Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA)

  Global Relief Foundation

  Muslim World League (MWL)

  World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY)

  Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA)

  Happy Hearts Trust

  Islamic Academy of Florida

  Fairfax Institute

  American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT)

  International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations (IIFSO)

  American Muslims for Constructive Engagement (AMCE)

  American Muslim Armed Forces & Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC)

  Council of Islamic Schools of North America (CISNA)

  Islamic Media Foundation

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE ‘IKHWAN MAFIA’

  “These guys talk about murdering Jews like the mob talked about killing—totally casual, like they were ordering pizza.”

  —FBI official in Washington1

  INVESTIGATORS ROUTINELY COMPARE the Muslim Brotherhood to the mafia, the secret Sicilian terrorist society. Like mobsters, the Muslim Brothers operate an underworld of ille
gal activities conducted under the cover of fronts with legitimate-sounding names.

  They launder money through construction companies such as BMI, Inc., and tax-exempt charities such as Happy Hearts Trust.

  “They’re all part of the same organized crime family, like the Mob,” says FBI agent Guandolo, who worked several years in the Washington field office’s counterterrorism division and is familiar with the the bureau’s ongoing investigation of the Brotherhood.

  “If you’re a capo, I know you’ve killed somebody. I know you’re involved in racketeering and crime. And I know you’re a member of a major crime family,” he says. “If you’re a board member of one of these Brotherhood groups, I know you’re an enemy of the United States.”

  For that matter, the Brotherhood is known within Islamist circles as the “Ikhwan mafia,” because of its highly organized structure, centralized control, and covert operations. Like the mob, it has its own internal bylaws, security, and military infrastructure. A network of front groups, cutouts, and shell companies shield its criminal activities from the authorities.

  A shura council controls the U.S. movement. It’s made up of the heads of the various crime centers—the godfathers—and is led by a supreme don called a general masul. The council directs regional underbosses, or masuls, who in turn give orders to capo-like figures known as naquibs. The naquibs control the front groups, and train the field commanders, or ikhwans, who are sworn members, according to Brotherhood documents declassified by the government.

  The ikhwans, in turn, recruit associates—the foot soldiers—at mosques, Islamic conferences, and college campuses to provide the next generation of leadership and keep the organization growing.

  They also provide the muscle for the group. At “Ikhwan camps,” young soldiers conduct jihadist training activities. Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was drawn to violent jihad in Kuwait after joining the Brotherhood at age sixteen and attending its desert youth camps. Convicted CAIR official Royer, who led a group of young Virginia men in jihadist training, is an example of Brotherhood muscle in America.