The Muslim Brotherhood's American Goals

I wrote about the Muslim American Society in "The Islamic States of America?" and how it seeks to replace the Constitution with the Koran. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross takes this further today in "MAS's Muslim Brotherhood Problem," where he looks closely at the MAS Minnesota website and notes that it calls on members to fulfill their "duties as outlined in the Message of the Teachings by Imam [Hasan] Al-Banna." Gartenstein-Ross then takes a look at The Message of the Teachings and finds that it instructs Muslims that they must work on reforming their government

so that it may become a truly Islamic government. … By Islamic government I mean a government whose officers are Muslims who perform the obligatory duties of Islam, who do not make public their disobedience, and who enforce the rules and teachings of Islam.

Al-Banna also instructs that Muslims should "Completely boycott non-Islamic courts and judicial systems. Also, dissociate yourself from organisations, newspapers, committees, schools, and institutions which oppose your Islamic ideology." Al-Banna also condones in this book spreading Islam with violence: "Always intend to go for Jihad and desire martyrdom. Prepare for it as much as you can."

The universality of Islamic law comes up repeatedly. MAS requires adjunct members to read To Be a Muslim by Fathi Yakun, which states that: "Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Adjunct members also must read Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, which makes jihad a central obligation of Muslims.

Comment: Those of us who watch the growth of radical Islam in the United States tend to focus on the noisy organizations like CAIR, MPAC, and ISNA. The Muslim American Society, which claims 53 chapters and 10,000 members, tends to go about its work quietly; it is none the less dangerous – and perhaps more so – for that. (May 25, 2005)

Aug. 1, 2007 update: In "Finally, The Smoking Gun," Douglas Farah examines one of the exhibits presented by the prosecution in the Holy Land Foundation case currently taking place in Texas. The document in question is a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum by Mohamed Akram, dated May 22, 1991, titled "Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America." It outlines the Muslim Brotherhood's plan to convert the United States into a Muslim country. Farah considers it "the smoking gun of the Ikhwan's long-standing efforts to destroy the Western world."

Akram writes:

• The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. 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 their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated ad God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. …

• Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.

Akram then goes into detail about the Muslim Brotherhood's role in achieving this goal:

As for the role of the Ikhwan, it is the initiative, pioneering, leadership, raising the banner and pushing people in that direction [the Jihadist process]. They are then able to employ, direct, and unify Muslims' efforts and powers for this process. In order to do that, we must possess a master of the art of "coalitions," the art of "absorption" and the principles of "cooperation." … We must say that we are in a country [i.e., the United States] which understands no language other than the language of the organizations, and one which does not respect or give weight to any group without effective, functional and strong organizations.

Anticipating criticism that this U.S. focus distracts from establishing a global caliphate, Akram replies, first, that "The success of the Movement in America in establishing an observant Islamic base with power and effectiveness will be the the best support and aid to the global Movement project." Second, he points out that the global Muslim Brotherhood movement has not "succeeded yet in distributing roles to is branches, stating that what is needed from them as one of the participants or contributors to the project to establish the global Islamic state. The day this happens, the children of the American Ikhwani branch will have a far-reaching impact and positions that make the ancestors proud." The document concludes with a list of groups the MB should coordinate, including Islamic Society of North America, Islamic Circle of North America, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. (The Council on American-Islamic Relations did not exist in 1991.)

Farah comments on this document, noting

the breadth of ambition, the conviction of ultimate success and the care with which the campaign we see today was being thought about 16 years ago. So is the the clarity of the ultimate objective of ending our years as a functioning democracy, built on the rule of secular law, minority rights and freedom of religion, press etc. The infiltration of the government by members and sympathizers, the coordinated role of the organizations in pursuing specific objectives, the recruitment of the best and the brightest into the movement, and other objectives are far advanced, perhaps further than the author could have imagined in so short a time.