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The Muslim Brotherhood

Keith Pavlischek

June 12, 2008

The Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Modern World at the Hudson Institute publishes a fine journal called Current Trends in Islamic Ideology. They have done us a particular favor by devoting the most recent issue to an examination of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Zeyno Baran observes in her article "The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network," "Washington D.C. has suddenly become very interested in the Muslim Brotherhood. American policymakers are debating whether to engage non-violent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood network, both inside and outside the United States, in the hope that such engagement will empower these "moderates" against violent Wahhabi and Salafi groups such as al-Qaeda." But according to Baran and other contributors to this volume, this notion is based on the false assumption "that ‘moderate' Islamist groups will confront and weaken their violent co-religionists, robbing them of their support base." To the contrary, the writers show masterfully how the Muslim Brotherhood is anything but "moderate."

The Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna. It was a grass-roots Islamic reform movement dedicated to the gradual, comprehensive, bottom-up transformation of individuals, families, society and the state. Al-Banna describes the transformative vision of the Muslim Brotherhood as follows:

A Muslim individual, Muslim family, Muslim nation, Muslim government and Muslim state should be able to lead Islamic governments, should be able to unite the dispersed Muslims, should be able to regain their honor and superiority, and should be able to recover their lost lands, their usurped regions and their occupied territories. Then it should be able to raise the flag of Jihad and the call towards Allah until the entire world is benefited by the teachings of Islam.

The Brothers would seek to accomplish this mass transformation through recruitment and education, and through the creation of alternative social and economic institutions. The Muslin Brotherhood quickly expanded throughout the Middle East.

According to Hillel Fradkin in "The History and Unwritten Future of Salafism," it is necessary to know the history, ideology and goals of the Muslim Brotherhood before one can begin to comprehend the worldwide Islamic movement variously known as Islamism, Salafism, radical Islam and militant Islam. Unfortunately, according to Fradkin, the history and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood has not "stood in the foreground of discussion and reflection."

How do we account for this neglect? For one thing, according to Fradkin, other elements of the Islamist movement have hogged the limelight. Al Qaeda, for instance, has become a household word after 9/11, standing as the symbol for all forms of Islamic terrorism. The term "Wahhabi," that particularly austere and virulent strain of Islam exported throughout the world from Saudi Arabia, has also taken up weight in common public discourse.

The Muslim Brotherhood has also escaped scrutiny in part because it does not operate under that name in the Islamic world, in Europe, or in the United States. Of the Muslim organizations in the U.S., such as the Muslim Student Association (MSA), Muslim American Society (MAS), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), none bear the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, and indeed, when pressed, try vigorously to skirt the label. It should be noted that the terrorist organization Hamas is the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

For these reasons, according to Fradkin, our thinking has tended to become "al-Qaeda- and Wahhabi-centric." This is "deeply regrettable because there is no other organization more fundamental to understanding the Islamist movement of today. There is no other organization that can match the Brotherhood's length of history, staying power and extent of influence."

The Muslim Brotherhood can be distinguished from Al Qaeda and associated terrorist movements in two fundamental ways. The first concerns what Fradkin calls the "efficacy and propriety of [violent] jihad." Al Qaeda and associated movements are, of course, clearly in favor of violent worldwide jihad, while the Brotherhood is only partially supportive. The Muslim Brothers are not, generally speaking, supportive of terrorist attacks in America and Europe, but they do support (violent) jihad against American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanastan, and they are violently opposed to Israel.

Secondly, the Muslim Brothers are more open to using the electoral process to achieve their goals, while Al Qaeda is irredeemably hostile. This willingness to use electoral processes is related to the Brotherhood's sympathy toward a more "gradualist" approach to Islamization.

Here is the crux of the issue. Because they are more willing to pursue this gradualist strategy and tend to be less supportive of terrorist tactics outside the Dar al Islam, we might be tempted to label the Muslim Brothers as "moderate". We should resist this temptation. For as Hudson's volume makes clear, however much more "moderate" they may be than Al Qaeda (in a tactical sense), the Muslim Brothers are not interested in embracing the "Western" notions of freedom of speech, freedom of association, or freedom of the press or freedom of religion. To the contrary, as one of the authors, Israel Elad Altman summarizes, "The Brotherhood was founded with the expressed purpose of establishing the sovereignty of sharia (Islamic law), uniting Muslim lands, liberating them from all foreign presence, and eventually spreading Islam worldwide."

To attain that goal, however, the Brotherhood has been willing to speak the language of democratic procedure -- a particularly appealing strategy when confronting authoritarian Arab regimes. That's why, according to Israel Elad Altman, "The Brotherhood's engagement in the political process has been accompanied by the embrace of a new, pro-democracy narrative in which the movement claims to seek the creation not of a religious state, but of a "civil state with an Islamic source of authority." In some countries, the Brotherhood's embrace of electoral politics has also led to the formation of political parties. That sounds fine, until it becomes clear that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood means to deny both Coptic Christians and women any opportunity to become a head of state. So this is what counts as "moderate Islam?"

In a Muslim majority regime such as Egypt, the choice seems to be between an authoritarian dictator such as Hosni Mubarak and the Muslim Brothers. The problem with the former is that such authoritarian regimes tend to produce an inevitable Islamist backlash against an unrepresentative oppressive regime, which will include growing sympathies (and even recruits) for Al Qaeda and other violent Islamist movements. Recognition of this problem forms the basis for the Bush Doctrine, or the "democracy agenda" of the Bush administration. However, the alternative to such authoritarian regimes seems to be the likely establishment of radical anti-Western, anti-Semitic, oppressive Islamist states. Imagine those regimes throughout the Middle East that have embraced the ideology of Hamas, and you'll get some sense of the dilemma. Choose your poison!

As Hassan Mneimneh writes in his article "The Islamization of Arab Culture," some argue that the Brotherhood's "bottom-up approach to Islamization, by focusing on the agency of the individual and society, works to prepare the way for democratic practice in an environment where top down Islamization is the norm." But this notion, he argues, "ignores the fact that -- with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia -- it is the Brotherhood's notion of Islamization that has generated and empowered more radical versions throughout the Muslim world. The evidence clearly suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood tends to promote, rather than to dilute, radicalism."

The problems associated with the Muslim Brotherhood aren't restricted to foreign policy, however. Several articles discuss the influence of the Brotherhood in the United States. Particularly instructive and alarming are Zeyno Baran's "The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network," Hasain Haqqani's "The Politicization of American Islam," and Rod Dreher's "Reporting the Muslim Brotherhood." Each of these articles should be required reading for all public officials even remotely responsible for policies related to homeland security or counter-terrorism. Rod Dreher's article is particularly illuminating for its devastating criticism of the media's utter fecklessness in investigating the infiltration of the American Muslim community by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dreher relates how a great "smoking gun" was revealed in a federal trial of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. This was the nation's largest Muslin charity until it stood accused of using the charity as a Hamas fundraising front. Exhibit GX-3-85, recovered in an FBI raid on an Islamist's house in suburban Washington, DC, was a 1991 "Explanatory Memorandum" prepared by a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, outlining the organization's goals for its American operations. Meeting the standards for admission into evidence at a federal trial, the document lays out the Muslim Brotherhood's plans to take control of the American Muslim community and ultimately prepare the way for a sharia state.

The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan [the Brothers] must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all 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 choose to slack.

As Dreher notes, "this sounds like something out of a lurid Hollywood conspiracy thriller." But, he continues, "its authenticity was not disputed by defendants in the Holy Land Foundation trial. They only said it was an old memo, and irrelevant today." Dreher however, calls our attention to the opinion of Army Lt. Col. Joseph Myers, a senior army advisor and former senior DIA official who said that the document "shows why the Muslim Brotherhood should be seen as a ‘threat organization' and that organizations mentioned in the document should be treated as part of its network." Those organizations include, as mentioned earlier, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

And yet, this has been almost entirely ignored by the media. Why, asks Dreher? "Short answer: fear of the charge of Islamophobia." Dreher then proceeds to elaborate from his own experience as a journalist working in the mainstream media. It's a depressing tale but essential reading. One particular passage is worth pondering:

....I believe that leaders from these Muslim Brotherhood-influenced organizations-CAIR, ISNA, MAS-are typically good at understanding the psychology of liberal American journalists, and know how to intimidate them. But it‘s also true that they know how to present a positive spin on themselves and their organizations. They adopt the language of civic engagement and civil society, and deploy it at every opportunity. One young Muslim activist in Dallas who embraces Said Qutb's message as spiritually enlightening is downright Tocquevillian in the language he uses in public. This is not entirely deceptive. The Muslim Brotherhood's general strategy is to work through the institutions of civil society to achieve the ultimate goal, which is an Islamic state. It is obviously un-American to decide that Muslim citizens are to be distrusted when they want to participate fully in the political and civic life of this country. The Brotherhood activists understand this, and make this public goodwill work to their advantage. Without informed journalists making meaningful inquiries about the ultimate goal of this or that Muslim group, critics can come across looking like bigots who want to disfranchise and disempower honest Muslim citizens.

It is vital that the public be able to tell the difference between Muslims who honestly and legitimately want to be part of American public life, and those who are using the laws and customs of this country surreptitiously to undermine, and ultimately destroy, them. But the news media, which is the institution best able to make that distinction, is failing to do its job.

In fact, we are acting like useful idiots for the Muslim Brotherhood, continuing to write uncritically about CAIR, ISNA, and these other organizations.

The problem here, of course, is not that the U.S. is in danger of becoming subject to Sharia law. The great problem is that the U.S. government and the press both continue to give pride of place to "gatekeeping organizations" like CAIR, ISNA, and the MSA which purport to represent the American Muslim community. As a result, those Muslims who would take a stand against the Islamists get shortchanged, not only by lazy journalists who find it easier to call the local spokesman for CAIR, ISNA or the MSA, but by government officials and bureaucrats, who assume that these Muslim Brotherhood front organizations speak for the entire Muslim community.

We should not confuse our enemy's propaganda with the real pulse of the movement. Indeed, we dismiss it to our peril.

I highly recommend the entire journal of Current Trends in Islamic Ideology to you. If you are interested in reading the periodical online, please click here.