Desantis Hearing Establishes the Muslim Brotherhood Must Be Designated as a Terrorist Organization – the Sooner, the Better
CSP
WASHINGTON, D.C.— It is no longer a question of whether the United States will designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. It is only a matter of when and how.
That’s the principal take-away from a congressional national security panel this morning that addressed “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Global Threat” and what the US should do about it.
“This hearing is an opportunity to discuss what the United States’ next step should be in combatting the Muslim Brotherhood’s threat,” said Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL), chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security of the House oversight committee.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is a militant Islamist organization with affiliates in over 70 countries,” DeSantis said. “There’s no question that the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliates are involved in terrorism.”
The historic hearing follows a June 28 Center for Security Policy Decision Brief that called on the Trump Administration to declare the entire Muslim Brotherhood and its fronts and affiliates as terrorist organizations.
“Thankfully the Trump Administration has discarded the Obama-era policy of treating the Brotherhood as a potential ally,” DeSantis said. “Now, the questions are focused on how expansive to make the terror designation, and whether it should be done through the State Department or Treasury Department.”
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a longtime associate of the Center for Security Policy, was one of the four witnesses who testified. He was the only Muslim witness, and made the case powerfully for Center-recommended policy of designating the entire Muslim Brotherhood and its fronts as terrorist entities.
In the course of his testimony, Dr. Jasser rebutted characterizations by the Brotherhood’s apologists and enablers of its critics as “haters” and “Islamophobes”:
Nothing would be more pro-Muslim than the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and its direct affiliates. Making the Muslim Brotherhood radioactive would allow the light to shine upon their most potent antagonists in Muslim communities – those who reject political Islam and believe in liberty and the separation of mosque and state.
He also discussed national security risks associated with failing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates as terrorist entities. One of them is censorship of jihadist terminology in U.S. government agencies. Dr. Jasser correctly observed that such censorship impedes analysts’ ability to protect the nation:
To think that these words and concepts, and others are off limits in the freest nation on earth, censored [in] our agencies, is just incredulous considering the growing threat we face today from violent Islamism. It smacks of a bizarre invocation of blasphemy laws in America. It is groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that have benefited from our refusal to discuss these elements of Islam and Islamism.
The three other witnesses – Hillel Fradkin of the Hudson Institute, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Daniel Benjamin of the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution – agreed to varying degrees that the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a threat. They recommended, however, more narrow terrorist designations of specific Muslim Brotherhood entities.
Chairman DeSantis observed: “It is clear that the Brotherhood constitutes a real threat to the national security interests of the United States. We can debate the best way to counter this threat, but simply ignoring the threat is not an acceptable answer.”
The Center for Security Policy has submitted a statement for the hearing record endorsing Rep. DeSantis’ assessment and laying out the factual basis for designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Center President Frank J. Gaffney urged legislators, executive branch officials, the media and the public at large to examine particularly compelling evidence of the threat the Brotherhood poses: Its 1991 Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America– a secret plan for “destroying Western civilization from within” written by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Mohammed Akram, and introduced by the federal government into evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation et.al. v. United States terrorism financing trial.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an existential danger to American freedom because its foundational supremacist Sharia law is diametrically opposed to the Constitution. There is no separation of mosque and state in sharia – the Muslim Brotherhood advocates a worldwide Islamic theocracy. The question regarding Muslims in America is whether or not they observe sharia, are apologists for sharia, or reject sharia. There are many Muslims who came to America for a life of liberty to escape sharia – there are many more who didn’t. 9/11 highlighted the difference and launched a population jihad against America that is trying to flood America with sharia compliant Muslims to make America part of a worldwide Islamic theocracy. Leftist/Islamist open borders policies are part of the effort. Sharia compliant Muslims are enemies of the state – Constitution compliant Muslims are not.
@ Abdul Ameer:
He actually says Islam needs to reform. He does not cover up for how many mosques teach about political Islam. He is not an apologist.
In fact when his movement sent out a flyer asking who would be interested in the reform movement to mosques in the USA he reported back how a very low number only had been interested in. I see nothing but positive in Zudhi Jasser, trying to reform Islam into something that would get along in a democratic country.
Beating up Jasser is counter productive. He is a proponent himself of calling out all those who support the jihadis.
It is much productive to spend time calling out the real enemies such as the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR. Spending time calling out a Muslim who works for reform and is a USA patriot who served in the military as a high ranking medical officer is only negative.
Zuhdi Jasser does two things — one good, and one bad. The good is that he vociferously opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, but the bad is that he misleads people into thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood does not represent true Islam. He presents himself as a devout Muslim, when his own religious community considers him to be just about an apostate and a traitor. When he says: “Nothing would be more pro-Muslim than the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and its direct affiliates. “, he is lying about Islam without actually using the term. When he says “pro-Muslim”, the ignorant public thinks he is talking about Islam, not Muslims. And, if he is talking about Muslims and not Islam, he is using Western, non-Islamic standards to say that marginalizing the Muslim Brotherhood is “pro-Muslim”. In our, non-Islamic, Western understanding of human rights, Moslems are the first victims of Islam.
When Jasser talks about all those Muslims “who reject political Islam and believe in liberty and the separation of mosque and state” he is lying again because, first of all, there aren’t very many of them, and, second, the ones who exist are, in fact violating the fundamental doctrines of Islam just like Jasser is. The public, however, will not understand, because Jasser does not tell them, that those liberty-minded Moslems are all violating the tenets of Islam.
So, yes, we need to go after the Muslim Brotherhood, but the mosques will continue to propagate Islam, itself, with all its jihadist doctrines and commands.