A recently published report by Egypt's Rose El-Youssef magazine identifies six American Islamist activists that are connected to the Obama Administration as Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.
The Dec. 22 story suggests that the influence of these six MB operatives is "tantamount to a turning point for the Obama administration from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood in the world as well."
The article was translated in full (read here) and separately summarized by John Rossomando of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (here). Founded in 1995, IPT is considered by many to be among the world's most comprehensive data centers on radical Islamic terrorist groups.
The following is from Rossomando's text:
The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
Alikhan is a founder of the World Islamic Organization, which the magazine identifies as a Brotherhood "subsidiary." It suggests that Alikhan was responsible for the "file of Islamic states" in the White House and that he provides the direct link between the Obama administration and the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.
Elibiary, who has endorsed the ideas of radical Muslim Brotherhood luminary Sayyid Qutb, may have leaked secret materials contained in Department of Homeland Security databases, according to the magazine. He, however, denies having any connection with the Brotherhood.
Elibiary also played a role in defining the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy, and the magazine asserts that Elibiary wrote the speech Obama gave when he told former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave power but offers no source or evidence for the claim.
According to Rose El-Youssef, Rashad Hussain maintained close ties with people and groups that it says comprise the Muslim Brotherhood network in America. This includes his participation in the June 2002 annual conference of the American Muslim Council, formerly headed by convicted terrorist financier Abdurahman Alamoudi.
He also participated in the organizing committee of the Critical Islamic Reflection along with important figures of the American Muslim Brotherhood such as Jamal Barzinji,Hisham al-Talib and Yaqub Mirza.
Regarding al-Marayati, who has been among the most influential Muslim American leaders in recent years, the magazine draws connections between MPAC in the international Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure.
Magid heads ISNA, which was founded by Brotherhood members, was appointed by Obama in 2011 as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security. The magazine says that has also given speeches and conferences on American Middle East policy at the State Department and offered advice to the FBI.
Rose El-Youssef says Patel maintains a close relationship with Hani Ramadan, the grandson of Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and is a member of the Muslim Students Association, which it identifies as "a large Brotherhood organization."
While the Rose El-Youssef article is largely unsourced, "ex-FBI agents who have investigated the Brotherhood's influence operations inside the U.S. confirm some of those named in the story have come under scrutiny," according to a separate published report by Investor's Business Daily thatspecifically identified Alikhan, Elibiary, Hussain, and Magid.
"The level of penetration (by the MB) in the last three administrations is deep," former FBI special agent John Guandolo is quoted as saying by IBD. "For this president it even goes back to his campaign with Muslim Brotherhood folks working with him then."
Guandolo says the MB has placed operatives and sympathizers inside the U.S. military, as well. The government has ID'd hundreds of Brotherhood and Hamas fronts inside the U.S. but has shut down only a few due to political pressures, according to Guandolo in the IBD report.
"The Muslim Brotherhood controls about 500 organizations that are overt NGOs (Non-Government Organizations)," Guandolo said. "That means they're running thousands of covert organizations we don't know about and nobody's monitoring."
Communications Confirm White House Sympathy with Brotherhood
In a follow-up piece published January 8, Rossomando exposes a chain of communications documenting that, "The Obama Administration repeatedly ignored and downplayed advance warnings that the Muslim Brotherhood would resort to violent and undemocratic tactics if it came to power" following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February, 2011. Below are but a sample of the many examples given by IPT and Rossomando of MB sympathetic communications uncovered:
For example, a Sept. 20, 2011 State Department cable obtained by the IPT reports on a Muslim Brotherhood representative telling the U.S. embassy in Cairo that the "MB (Muslim Brotherhood) was not the extremist organization the West feared."
Such assurances have been reflected in comments from Obama administration officials, including the Secretary of State and Director of National Intelligence.
In an April 15, 2010 cable, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson reported that Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie had "reaffirmed the MB was a non-violent" movement.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper similarly described the Muslim Brotherhood in February 2011 as "largely secular" and said that it "eschewed violence."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton listed the Brotherhood's alleged commitment to nonviolence as among the reasons the State Department planned to expand its contacts with the group in a June 30, 2011 statement.
Rossomando's source for much of the documentation is Michael Meunier, a Christian leader of the Egyptian opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the regime of President/Dictator Mohammed Morsi.
Last month Meunier publicly criticized "the Obama administration's role in helping the Muslim Brotherhood ascent to power in Egypt." Meunier said for some time, he and many other Christian leaders had been "publically and privately warning members of Congress and the administration of the danger the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) poses and about their desire to turn Egypt into a theocratic Islamic fascist country. Yet we were ignored."
Meunier traces the development of the cozy relationship between high ranking Democrats and the Muslim Brotherhood beginning even prior to the Obama Administration. In April 2007, while the Bush Administration refused to dignify the Brotherhood with a meeting, Steny Hoyer – then the Democrat Majority Leader of the House of Representatives – met in Egypt with Saad el-Katatni, the MB's parliamentary leader.
Once the Obama Administration was in place, the romance developed further. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Senator John Kerry, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and newly nominated to be Secretary of State, met with MB officials.
After Obama's new Ambassador Anne Patterson arrived in Cairo in July, 2011 as the new Egyptian government was being formed, "a stream of meetings, as well as public and private contacts followed," according to Meunier.
The Administration's bias was immediately apparent. Ambassador Patterson "seemed to favor the Brotherhood and the hard line Salafis at the expense of the secular players in Egypt," Meunier says diplomatically. "In fact, she has turned down requests for meetings from heads of political parties and other secular politicians, myself included, who oppose the Brotherhood."
"The MB used these high-level meetings to tell the Egyptian people that the U.S. is supporting them and does not object to their rule," Meunier said. "Many of us reached out to U.S. officials at the State Department and complained that the U.S. policy regarding the MB was putting the secular forces in Egypt at a disadvantage because it seemed to be propping (up) the MB, but our concerns were dismissed."
Rather than heed the advice and warnings of Christian leaders like Meunier that were seriously committed to fostering an infant secular democracy in Egypt following the 2011 revolution, the Obama Administration willingly acceded to the false assurances of the Brotherhood – an organization whose motto is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Meunier and his fellow Christian opposition leaders were not alone in warning about the Brotherhood. On February 10, 2011 as the Egyptian revolution raged, FBI director Robert Mueller testified before the House Intelligence Committee that“obviously, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood here (in the U.S.) and overseas have supported terrorism.” Hamas is the most infamous offspring of the Brotherhood.
At the same hearing, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis, and Counterintelligence, made the prescient observation; "I'm concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood is using peaceful protests in Egypt for a power grab, and our government doesn't seem to grasp their threat."
But, the warnings of Meunier, Mueller, Myrick and countless others didn't mesh with the political agenda already in place among the key players within the Obama Administration.
As a result Egypt, the largest nation in the Middle East with over 80 million people, is being transformed "into a theocratic Islamic fascist country," exactly as Meunier had warned.
On a larger scale, with the U.S.-Brotherhood relationship in Egypt as the obvious example, Islamists in Iran, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Afghanistan – and, yes, even in the United States – can only be encouraged by the thought of a second term for Barack Obama.