by Sperry, Paul
“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics,” he says.
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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.
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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 breathtak
ing. 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 days 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
Al-Timimi even cheered the Columbia space shuttle disaster, calling it a “good omen” for Muslims because it was a blow to their “greatest enemy.” He also said the U.S. “should be destroyed.”
This high-profile “moderate” is also now behind bars for soliciting terror and treason.
LIE AND DENY
When confronted with tough questions, the Brothers are trained to lie and deny. Case in point: the Muslim American Society, or MAS, a key Brotherhood front based just outside Washington.
After the Chicago Tribune ran an exposé linking MAS to the Muslim Brotherhood, MAS spokesman Mahdi Bray issued a denial: “MAS is not the Muslim Brotherhood.”9
Never mind that the Tribune got an exclusive interview with Ahmed Elkadi, who confirmed that he is not only the founding godfather of the U.S. Brotherhood but one of the founding incorporators of MAS.
Bray suggested Elkadi had lost his marbles. “In addition to the reporter’s inaccuracies, the primary source used for the article was Dr. Ahmed Elkadi,” he said in a column. “Dr. Elkadi suffers from dementia and his cognitive faculties were seriously impaired when the Chicago Tribune interviewed him.”10
Nice try. A magazine published by MAS has praised Elkadi as a great Muslim in the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founding fathers in Egypt.
And one of the secret Brotherhood documents the FBI recently declassified confirms that MAS is controlled by the Brotherhood. It tasks MAS, as well as CAIR (which has also denied Brotherhood links), with defeating “Zionist infiltration” and raising the banner of Palestinian jihad.
“Confrontation work plan: The activation of the role of (MAS) to educate the Brothers in all work centers, mosques, and organizations on the necessity of stopping any contacts with the Zionist organizations and the rejection of any future contacts,” says the five-page memo issued by the Palestine Committee of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.11
The second-in-command of the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood hesitated when asked by the media about the mother group’s ties to MAS. “I don’t want to say MAS is an Ikhwan [Brotherhood] entity,” Mohammed Habib says. “This causes some security inconveniences for them in a post-September 11 world.”12
Why? What does it have to hide? Could it be that, despite claiming to be moderate and patriotic, MAS is preaching anti-American insurrection?
Look no further than its training materials, which assert Muslims have a duty to help form Islamic governments worldwide and should be prepared to take up arms to carry that out.
‘INVADE WESTERN HEARTLAND’
Investigators say this “revolution ideology” is taught to Muslim teens by MAS’s tarbiya department. Tarbiya is the process of indoctrinating young or new Muslims.
One passage in its tarbiya guide states that Western materialism and secularism are evil and that Muslims should “pursue this evil force to its own lands” and “invade its Western heartland,” until all the infidels shout “Allahu Akbar!”—Allah is great.13
It exhorts the faithful to “wage war,” investigators say, so that the United States is “wiped out” and only the law of Allah—Shariah—operates in the land.
The syllabus for the MAS training course, which runs nine months, includes works by radical founding fathers of the Brotherhood movement such as the late Egyptian “martyrs” Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, both of whom preached violent jihad, martyrdom, and world Islamic domination. (See Figure 15.1.) On its Web site, MAS describes al-Banna as “the founder and leader of a great Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.”14
MAS, which has fifty chapters across the country, also runs a Detroit-based correspondence college called Islamic American University, whose former chairman is Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egypt-born spiritual leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar-based al-Qaradawi is barred from entering the U.S. due to his praise for suicide bombers, fatwahs authorizing attacks on U.S. soldiers, and ties to charitable fronts for terrorism. He vows that the Brotherhood will “conquer America,” and he says his dream is to die a martyr killing Jews.
No wonder MAS has decided to conceal its Muslim Brotherhood affiliation.
An undated internal memo instructs MAS leaders to be evasive when asked about the Brotherhood by outsiders. And if the topic of terrorism is raised, they’re told to say that while they’re against “terrorism,” they believe jihad is among a Muslim’s “divine legal rights” to be used to defend himself and his brothers and to spread Islam.15
WHO IS ESAM OMEISH?
MAS had been run by Esam Omeish before he stepped down as president this year to run for the Virginia state assembly. Just two years earlier, Omeish was forced to resign from a state immigration commission after a video surfaced showing him championing violent jihad and martyrdom before a crowd of Washington-area Muslims.16
Omeish officed right next door to convicted al-Qaida financier Alamoudi in a nondescript professional building in Alexandria, Virginia. His brother Mohamed Omeish and Alamoudi were partners; the two shared the same office.17
As a board member of 9/11 mosque Dar al-Hijrah, Esam Omeish personally hired the imam—Anwar Aulaqi—who helped some of the Saudi hijackers prepare for their “martyrdom” attack on the Pentagon.18
The $5 million mosque was built with financial help from the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy in Washington.19 It opened its doors one year before MAS opened its doors just a few miles away.
According to court records first revealed in the 2005 book Infiltration, Omeish put up his home as bond collateral to help spring from jail terrorist suspect Elbarasse after he was arrested allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bridge for attack.20 It was Elbarasse’s home that FBI agents raided, uncovering the secret Brotherhood archives.
Elbarasse, a founding member of Dar al-Hijrah, also attended t
he infamous secret Hamas meeting with Brotherhood bosses in Philadelphia. He had opened a joint bank account with Hamas leader Abu Marzook around that time.
Both Elbarasse and Omeish, a surgeon, show up on CAIR’s internal list of financial “supporters.” In another document, CAIR lists Omeish among its “Recommended Community Leaders.”
Omeish, who lives in a home not far from MAS, has counted as a neighbor the former bookkeeper for Brotherhood banker and terror financier Soliman Biheiri.
But “MAS has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Omeish insists. “The Brotherhood does not exist as far as we know in the United States.”21 Uh-huh. And Omeish is, as he calls himself on his campaign Web site, just a “community organizer” like Obama.
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MUSLIM MAFIA HALL OF SHAME
“The Noble Quran appoints the Muslims as guardians over humanity and grants them the right of dominion over the world in order to carry out this sublime commission. It is their duty to establish sovereignty over the world.”