by Sperry, Paul
The religious crime syndicate basically consists of four power centers, or families:
1. THE PALESTINE COMMITTEE is the Hamas wing that operates chiefly out of California, Texas, Illinois, and Washington DC. Prosecutors believe CAIR is its mouthpiece and its lobbying arm in North America. With the federal bust of the Holy Land Foundation, which served as Hamas’s fundraising arm in America, CAIR is now the marque front group within this family, and investigators believe CAIR founding chairman Omar Ahmad of Santa Clara, California, is its masul. He’s a Palestinian refugee like many CAIR operatives, whom investigators consider his naquibs.2
2. THE SAFA GROUP is the Saudi wing made up of more than one hundred business and charitable front groups operating mainly out of Northern Virginia (along the so-called Wahhabi Corridor, just outside DC), as well as Georgia. Before he was sent to prison, Alamoudi controlled the group, along with Jamal Barzinji, who remains at its helm. Safa provides financial and intellectual capital for the cause, while also controlling a vast real estate portfolio. (See Figure 14.1 timeline chronicling Saudi money flows to Safa.)
3. ISLAMIC CIRCLE OF NORTH AMERICA is the Pakistani wing based out of New York. ICNA recently merged with the Alexandria, Virginia-based Muslim American Society, setting up shop in a neighboring suburb. MAS organizes prayer and youth camps at Brotherhood mosques across the country. It also conducts ideological training and indoctrination of new recruits, urging jihad, martyrdom, and the creation of Islamic states in the “evil” West. In addition, MAS works with two political fronts based in California to register Muslim voters and groom Muslim candidates for public office.
4. ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA is the founding “nucleus” for the movement in North America, declassified Brotherhood documents confirm. Operating out of both Indiana and Washington DC, it controls campus recruitment, evangelism, banking and investments, and the dispensing of fatwahs for the Brotherhood. Through a subsidiary trust, it also owns and controls the lion’s share of the major mosques in America. Sayyid Syeed, Muzzamil Siddiqi, Jamal Badawi, and Bassem Osman are said to act as the main bosses of this family.3
The heads of the various families galvanize around five fundamental goals:
1. Supporting Palestinian terrorists and seeking Israel’s destruction;
2. Gutting U.S. anti-terrorism laws;
3. Loosening Muslim immigration;
4. Converting Americans to Islam, with a special focus on Hispanic immigrants and black inmates and soldiers (attractive white Christian women are another prize conversion); and
5. Infiltrating the government and institutionalizing Shariah law in America.
It is no coincidence, investigators say, that Brotherhood leaders have avoided identifying their institutions with the governmental system of the United States, opting instead for territorial recognition. This speaks volumes about not only the respect they hold for their adopted country, but also their broader ambitions.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ‘NORTH AMERICA’
You’d be hard-pressed to find the words “United States” or “USA” or even “U.S.” in the names of their organizations. You commonly find, instead, the geographic term “North America,” as in: the Islamic Society of North America, Islamic Circle of North America, Islamic Assembly of North America, Fiqh Council of North America, Islamic Medical Association of North America, and so on. Other Brotherhood groups contain the phrase “North American,” as in: the North American Islamic Trust and North American Imams Federation.
That’s because the Muslim Brotherhood’s ultimate goal is to conquer the entire continent of North America for Allah, and fold its nations into a global Islamic nation, or caliphate.
The Brothers believe Islam is a territorial religion. According to their creed, the whole earth belongs to Allah and he has given it to Muslims. As their writings indicate, they believe this land is theirs, and does not belong to you or the United States government. And as slaves of Allah, they are conscripted to conquer it in his name—by hook or by crook.
CLOAKED IN SECRECY
Like the Cosa Nostra, members have been sworn to secrecy and speak in code, referring to the Brotherhood generically as the “Group” or the “Movement.” Also, “special work” is code for “military work,” or jihad, which the West knows as terrorism.
“We resort to secrecy,” al-Noman stresses, but only among kaffirs, not internally. Sworn members know the identities of the General Masul and the masuls.
They follow a similar omerta as the Sicilians when it comes to law enforcement: keep silent about subversive activities and crimes, and never cooperate with the police. Many wives are left in the dark. Those who know things are ordered to keep quiet about them.
New members take an oath of loyalty to the Brotherhood, reciting its credo: “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.” They also swear to “sacrifice all that one has for the sake of raising the banner of Islam.”4
Members are required to pay 3 percent of their income per year, with the money going to travel, propaganda materials, conferences, and of course, the jihad.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
To ensure secrecy and compartmentalization, the Brotherhood uses family members to hold important, interlocking positions within different fronts. These family members, in turn, often are related to Hamas or Brotherhood figures overseas.
Take the leadership of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation.
Founder Mousa Abu Marzook is related by marriage to convicted Holy Land officer Elashi and is a cousin of convicted Holy Land co-founder el-Mezain. Marzook is deputy political chief for Hamas and wanted by U.S. authorities. Before leaving the country, he was a masul in the U.S. Brotherhood and sat on its shura council.
The incestuousness runs deeper. Holy Land officer Akram Mishal, also a fugitive, is a cousin of Hamas leader Khalid Mishal. And Mufid Abdulgader, a top Holy Land fundraiser now serving twenty years in prison, is Khalid Mishal’s half-brother.5
The children and other close relatives of Brotherhood leaders also serve in leadership roles at ISNA, the Muslim Students Association, and the Fiqh Council, among other front groups. Some leaders’ children intermarry. For example, the oldest daughter of Sayyid Syeed, an ISNA founder and its current DC chief, is married to a relative of Brotherhood boss Jamal Barzinji.6
Barzinji’s brother, meanwhile, heads Amana Publishing, which prints copies of the Quran and other texts the Brotherhood uses for evangelizing. Another Barzinji family member runs a charitable front in Herndon whose bank accounts recently were closed by Wachovia due to suspicious activity.
The firstborn of founding Muslim Brotherhood members are typically groomed to replace them. “Like father, like son,” Sadler says.
The pioneer of the U.S. movement is sixty-nine-year-old Ahmed Elkadi. Both his father and father-in-law were early Brotherhood leaders in Egypt.
The firstborn son of the late Mahboob Khan, another founding father of the Brotherhood movement in America, has been a consultant to CAIR and served on committees at ISNA.7 Suhail Khan infiltrated the U.S. government as a White House staffer, and most recently, the Transportation Department as a senior official.
It’s worth noting that CAIR founder and key Brotherhood boss Ahmad has three sons.
‘SECURING THE GROUP’
The Brotherhood has devised strict security measures to keep its illicit activities outside the scrutiny of law enforcement, while at the same time monitoring what it calls “outside dangers” such as “the CIA, FBI, etc., so that we find out if they are monitoring us [and] how can we get rid of them,” according to Brotherhood boss Zeid al-Noman. 8
As documented in earlier chapters, CAIR as well as ISNA have accomplished this through their outreach meetings with law enforcement.
“This is what is meant by securing the group,” al-Noman is recorded as saying.
Investigators say Brotherhood bosses have hire
d security firms to sweep their offices for bugs, and have ordered foot soldiers to take advanced training in wiretap detection. They also are known to shred documents after board meetings and maintain incriminating documents in off-site locations.
They’ve also targeted critics for countersurveillance.
A Brotherhood charter seized from al-Arian’s home calls for establishing a unit “to watch the individuals who oppose the Movement and the Islamic actions—to watch them, monitor them, and make files on them.”9
As detailed earlier, making files on enemies and critics is something CAIR does all too well.
CUL-DE-SACS AND PIPE STEMS
Investigators have taken note that, like mob bosses, suspected Muslim Brotherhood leaders go to great lengths to thwart law enforcement surveillance.
For example, most of them live or have lived on cul-de-sacs, including Ahmad, Nihad Awad, Alamoudi, Irfan Totonji, Abdullah bin Laden (Osama’s nephew), Hamza Yusuf, Ihsan Bagby, Mohamed Nimer, Mousa Abu Marzook, Esam Omeish, Abbas Ebrahim (bookkeeper of felonious Brotherhood investor Soliman Biheiri), as well as Elbarasse, whose home eventually was searched by FBI agents, yielding the trove of Muslim Brotherhood documents.
Many have built their homes on pipe stems spoking off from cul-de-sacs. Pipe stems are narrow, secluded roads that often slope down away from cul-de-sacs, making it difficult for law enforcement to conduct stakeouts since homes typically cannot be seen from the street.
Brotherhood leaders al-Alwani, Jamal Barzinji, Yaqub Mirza, Fakhri Barzinji, and Hisham Altalib have all listed addresses on or near the same pipe stem off of Safa Court in Herndon, Virginia.
“They make it harder for us to do trash covers,” a method of surveillance where investigators search garbage for evidence, veteran FBI agent Guandolo says. “They don’t put cans on the street, but on the long driveway back off the street.”
He says many Brotherhood leaders have installed motion-detector security lights—and “this was before 9/11, so they’ve been protecting themselves from surveillance for a long time.”
Their mosques also put up defenses against surveillance.
After Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center became the focus of federal investigations after the first World Trade Center bombing, mosque leaders planted a tall, thick row of evergreens along the street. After 9/11, when it was learned that some of the hijackers prayed at the so-called “Row Street mosque,” FBI agents secretly cut the hedge back so they could spy on activities there. (The mosque reported the tree damage as a case of anti-Islamic vandalism.)
The mosque, whose deed is held by a Muslim Brotherhood bank, has its own phalanx of armed guards patrolling the perimeter of the grounds.
THE MILITARY BRANCH
A Brotherhood charter seized in the raid on al-Arian’s flat and translated from Arabic provides for the establishment of a supersecret “Security and Military” branch to, among other things, purchase “arms” for export and for use at training “camps” inside the U.S. Another function: developing “tools” for “spying operations.”10
Other documents reveal paramilitary camps have been set up in Oklahoma, Missouri, and other states, where the Brothers conduct firearms and other weapons training. They’ve also frequented shooting ranges in Georgia, Virginia, New York, and other states, while setting up clubs to learn “self-defense techniques” like the hijackers learned.11
‘OUR DAR AL-ARQAM (SAFEHOUSE)’
Like mob bosses, Brotherhood leaders conduct much of their business behind closed doors. Only the Muslim mafia’s hideouts are religious sanctuaries, not topless bars or butcher shops. Mosques serve as “fronts for Brotherhood work,” leaders reveal in their writings.12
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 brotherho
od 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.