The quote about ‘friends and enemies’ has been attributed to Niccolò Machiavelli as well as Sun Tzu, though no published sources predate its use by "Michael Corleone" in the movie ‘The Godfather Part II’ in 1974. Quote history lesson aside it raises an important question, at what point in keeping your enemy close do they become a ‘Trojan horse’?
On October 12, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on President Obama to publicly condemn the anti-Semitic call for Jihad against Israel by the Muslim Brotherhood''s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie and to order the cutoff of all contacts with the organization until the threat is withdrawn.
Don’t anyone hold their breath.
The amount of articles, material and people speaking out on the ties between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are in the thousands. I have lectured and written on this too many times to count.
Obama demanded that the MB be present at his 2009 speech in Cairo, even though at the time the MB was an outlawed organization in Egypt. This was believed by many, including myself, to be the beginning of the end of Hosni Mubarak.
Shortly after taking office Obama selected Egyptian-Born US Muslim Dalia Mogahed as an advisor on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Dalia Mogahed is a devout Muslim and the first woman to wear a ‘hijab’ (head scarf) to work each day in the White House.
As was reported in ‘The Tablet’ back in April 2010,
The most important person shaping the Obama Administration’s Middle East message isn’t Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Dennis Ross, Joe Biden, or Rahm Emanuel. Rather, it’s a Cairo-born mother of two named Dalia Mogahed.
Mogahed has continually defended the Islamist organizations, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which have legally proven ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. ISNA grew out of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) another MB organization. ISNA completed a $21 million headquarters in Indianapolis using funds raised in part from Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR and ISNA were both unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terror financing case in US history. As explained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism,
Exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial showed that the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary, paid $30,000 to senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk and his wife, along with another $30,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, a school long known to be controlled by Hamas. Five former HLF officials were found guilty of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.
But the ties to the MB continue and continue much higher.
Recently reported in the Washington Post, Representative Michelle Bachmann and four other House Republicans wrote a letter asking the Department of Defense, the State Department, and other departments to investigate whether the US government is being infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood,
In particular they said that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “has three family members—her late father, her mother, and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position provides her with routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.”
In February 2010, President Obama appointed Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer, to be his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. His ties to the MB are numerous as well. According to an investigative report by Joshuapundit,
In October 2000 Mr. Hussain spoke at a conference sponsored by the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) and the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (CMCU). The AMSS was founded in 1972 as an outgrowth of the Muslim Student Association and has long been associated with the US Muslim Brotherhood.
In June 2002, Mr. Hussain was listed as part of a Congressional Staffers panel at the American Muslim Council’s (AMC) 11th annual convention. The AMC was headed at that time headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a leader in the US Muslim Brotherhood and currently imprisoned as part of a plot to assassinate the Saudi head of state, Crown Prince Abdullah. Other important leaders of the US Muslim Brotherhood such as Jamal Barzinji were also part of the AMC.
While at Yale, Hussain was part of the organizing committee for an April 2004 conference known as the Critical Islamic Reflections (CIR) group. Among the CIR sponsors listed on their web site was IIIT and the Fairfax Institute, the IIIT educational arm. IIIT is an important component of the US Muslim Brotherhood and three of the key IIIT/Fairfax leaders Jamal Barzinji, Hisham Al-Talib, and Yaqub Mirza; were also associated with what has been called the SAAR network (Safa Group), a network of Islamic organizations located in Northern Virginia that was raided by the Federal government in March 2002 and which, until at least mid-2007, had been the subject of an ongoing investigation. Also listed as a CIR sponsor was ALIM, most likely referring to the American Learning Institute for Muslims and whose list of instructors includes some of the most important leaders of the US/global Muslim Brotherhood including Tariq Ramadan, Jamal Badawi, and Taha Al-Alwani.
Even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not immune. Arif Alikahn, the former Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy Development is now a Professor of DHS and Counterterrorism at the National Defense University, Alikahn served as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety for the City of Los Angeles where he put a stop to the LAPD’s monitoring of radical mosques and madrassas where 9/11 hijackers received support. He is affiliated with MPAC, which has called the terrorist group Hezbollah a “liberation movement.”
Imam Mohamed Magid is a member of the Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism Working Group Member and currently the President for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have already been noted.
In October 2010, Secretary Janet Napolitano named Mohamed Elibiary to the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. Elibiary also has ties to the MB. He spoke at a 2004 conference in Dallas praising the “Great Islamic Visionary” Ayatollah Khomeini. More recently he leaked secret and sensitive intelligence documents to a media outlet in Texas.
Eboo Patel sits on the Obama Administration Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships along with Dalia Mogahed. Patel spoke at a MSA and ISNA convention, appearing with Tariq Ramadan the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, and with Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj was also named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and has defended the convicted WTC bombers. Wahhaj advocates the Islamic takeover of America.
Tarek Fatah, the Devout Muslim political activist and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress stated in August 2011,
“Instead of bringing victory over the fascist forces of the Muslim Brotherhood, we now recognize that their infiltration is right up to the American White House…”
My article from October 4, 2010 “Muslim Outreach” examined the fact that the Obama administration allowed someone with known ties to the terror group Hamas into top secret areas of the National Counterterrorism Center. That individual was Sheik Kifah Mustapha.
Yes, you guessed it… Kifah Mustapha has Muslim Brotherhood ties as well. As reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism,
Mustapha''s name appears on a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas financing trial, which ended with sweeping convictions in November of 2008. On this list he is identified as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood''s Palestine Committee.
I could go on and on with other examples, but you get the idea. It really is no surprise that Obama and his administration have such close ties to the MB, after all the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated in February 2011 that Egypt''s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement is “largely secular”.
Interestingly at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that same month FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that “elements” of the MB were already here in the US,
“Obviously, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood here and overseas have supported terrorism”.
So why point out the obvious, the MB is in the US and obviously has people at the highest levels. The point is this, for over a month now I have seen President Obama, the State Department, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and other administration officials lie and blame each other as well as the intelligence community for the failures that lead to the deaths of 4 Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya.
I recorded a video and uploaded it to YouTube less than 24 hours after the terror attack and explained “that you could bet your bottom dollar that Al-Qaeda was behind this”. I might add that the only part I got wrong was the manner in which the Ambassador and 3 others had been killed, only because the initial reports that came out stated they were “fleeing in their vehicle from the compound’. Nonetheless, I along with many other counterterrorism experts knew immediately that this was a pre-planned terror attack and it was Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda, you remember them right, perhaps 9/11 rings a bell? Al-Qaeda, you know the group that grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, yes, one in the same.
Muhammad Qutb is an Islamist author and teacher best known as the younger brother of the Egyptian Islamist thinker Sayyid Qutb. He is a supporter and promoter of his Sayyid’s ideas. Sayyid was leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and ''60s until his execution by the Egyptian government in 1966. He still is the MB ideological influence.
Muhammad Qutb fled to Saudi Arabia and became a well-known and respected teacher; two of his students were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In a 2004 video Osama bin Laden recommends one of Muhammad Qutb’s books to Muslims, “Concepts that should be corrected”.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “Mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks” according to the 9/11 Commission, he joined the Muslim Brother had the age of 16.
I have explained before that the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is,
Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.
It is a known fact that Al-Qaeda, Hamas and dozens of other off-shoot terror organizations grew out of the MB. Hamas identifies itself as the Muslim Brotherhood''s Palestinian branch.
So, the obvious question is why is the US not only allowing the MB to infiltrate some of the highest and most secure positions in the government, but supporting them as well?
The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration notified Congress that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but that was just part of the 1.3 Billion dollar package.
The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.
This of course came after the fact that the US had decided to formally resume contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group, you know, the one which does not recognize Israel. As reported in Commentary Magazine,
In a reversal of a five-year-old US policy banning contact with the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ordered American diplomats to resume contact with the Islamist group.
Clinton made the following statement at a news conference in Budapest:
“We believe, given the changing political landscape in Egypt, that it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful, and committed to non-violence, that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency.”
Well, Mrs. Secretary, I believe if you are going to recognize and fund the Muslim Brotherhood, you might as well cut out the ‘middle-man’ and just give the money directly to Al-Qaeda. After all, as I have said before, US tax payers’ dollars are funding their own demise.
Gadi Adelman is a freelance writer and lecturer on the history of terrorism and counterterrorism. He grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed. Since returning to the U. S., Gadi teaches and lectures to law enforcement agencies as well as high schools and colleges. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, Frontpage Mag, Family Security Matters and dozens of other sites. He can be heard every Thursday night at 8PM est. on his own radio show “American Akbar” on Blog Talk Radio. He can be reached through his website gadiadelman.com.