January 12, 2011
And the award for turning Islam into one of the fastest growing, most influential, and most intimidating religious movements in the world goes to… the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
The most recent victim of the global Islamic movement’s intimidation of free speech in Denmark is Lars Hedegaard, the President of the Danish Free Press Society and The International Free Press Society.
Lars Hedegaard
Denmark has been targeted by the MB after the 2006 publication of ‘Mohammed cartoons’ by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Following Sheikh Ali Al-Hudaify, imam of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina call "upon governments, organizations and scholars in the Islamic world to extend support for campaigns protesting the sacrilegious attacks on the Prophet,” the MB orchestrated mass riots in Denmark and across the world.
Responding to an interviewer question on Muslim “honor killings,” Mr. Hedegaard remarked, “They rape their own children.” He now stands accused by Denmark’s public prosecutor of “racism.”
Although Mr. Hedegaard further explained that he was not speaking about every single Muslim or even the majority, the prosecution is proceeding. His trial begins later this month.
The politically correct sensitivity of the Danish public prosecutor that led to Mr. Hedegaard’s prosecution and persecution seems to follow the cowardly public apology issued by the Danish daily Politiken on February 2010, for reprinting the cartoons in 2008. The newspaper’s mea culpa was obtained as part of the settlement with a Saudi lawyer representing 94,923 of Muhammad's descendants, who sued the paper for offending them.
Hedegaard’s legal troubles and Politiken’s cave-in are the casualties of the global propaganda offensive launched after 9/11, portraying the Muslims as victims of discrimination by Western societies. Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, this offensive drastically intensified after the publications of the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and Sweden.
Ironically, while Europe is obstinately ignoring or kowtowing the growing power of radical Islam and the MB, State Department communications revealed by Wikileaks in November and December 2010 show that Arab leaders in the Middle East have voiced increasing alarm at the spread of the MB’s radical Islamic worldview is spreading.
A March 3, 2008 cable quoted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali predicting an MB takeover in Egypt, where, he noted, the environment was “explosive.” This view was confirmed in a February 23, 2010 cable quoting the Qatari Emir, Hamid bin Khalifa al Thani, telling U.S. Senator John Kerry, “Everyone knows that Egypt has a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another cable revealed an allegedly reluctant association between MB offshoot Hamas and Syrian President Bashar Assad. Calling the terrorist group an “uninvited guest,” Assad insisted that “to be effective and active,” he nonetheless had to “have a relationship with all parties. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood, but we have to deal with the reality of their presence.”
The Muslim Brotherhood proudly touts these accomplishments on their official website, Ikhanweb.
The Wikileaks cables show that MB’s long-advertised aspirations of global control are materializing, fueled by Saudi and Gulf petrodollars and influence, with the complicity and tacit approval of the West.
Sayyid Qutb
The MB describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and together with MB’s most influential ideologues Sayyid Qutb , called for return to the earliest days of Islam as a model for society. MB is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would discriminate against women and punish nonbelievers. Its members and supporters founded and funded al Qaeda, Hamas, and other radical Muslim terror groups, as well as Muslim student organizations on six continents, including one “of the largest college student groups in the United States.”
The case of the Egyptian exiled Doha based, 85 year-old MB spiritual leader, Yusuf Qaradawi, amply demonstrates how a well-funded Islamist demagogue who openly calls for violence against Americans, Israelis, and Jews, has managed nonetheless to secure a reputation in the West as a moderate thinker.
A prolific writer, who for decades holds the directorship of Qatar University'sSeerah and Sunnah Centre, Qaradawi is hailed as one of the leading modern Islamic scholars. He is the founder of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and was twice offered the leadership of the MB. He rejected the offers, explaining in 2004 that he could not commit to “any movement which might constrain my actions, even if this is the Muslim Brotherhood under whose umbrella I grew and which I so defended.” In 2006 he clarified that the although the MB consider him “their Mufti” but that he “prefer[ed] to be devoted to the entire nation.” Qaradawi was banned from entering the U.S. in 1999.
Adhering to the MB ideology, which calls on the Muslims to rid themselves of non-Islamic rule, Qaradawi has advocated suicide bombing as “martyrdom in the name of God,” and the killing of American and coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, he issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from buying or even advertising American or Israeli products. Qaradawi issues many fatwas on his popular website www.qaradawi.net; on another website he helped found in 1997, IslamOnline, as well as on his al Jazeera prime-time television program, ash-Shariah wal-Hayat, “Shariah and Life,” allegedly reaching 40 million viewers. Wikileaks cables confirmed that Qatar uses the Doha-based al Jazeera as “a useful tool” to advance its political agenda.
Another recent example of the Qaradawi-Qatari partnership to increase Islamic influence and expand its reach is found in the Qatar Foundation’s Education City, a multi-billion mega-complex housing a combination of Qatari and prestigious American institutions.
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
The Qatar Foundation was established by Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar in 1995, and is currently headed by his wife, Shikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned. American universities lured to Qatar by massive financial incentives include Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Virginia Commonwealth, and Cornell. For instance, the Qatar Foundation covers the costs of A&M at Education City, and pledged $750 million to the branch of Cornell’s medical college. Qatar continues its effort to attract additional prominent American and European academic institutions.
Education City is now home to the Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal, an Islamic Studies think tank whose establishment is aimed to “highlight the middle path propagated by Qaradawi.” In the 2009/2010 academic year the Qatar Foundation awarded five graduate scholarships in Qaradawi’s name for applicants studying Islamic Studies with a specialty in Contemporary Fiqh (Islamic Law). In 2009, Qaradawi was on a roster of prominent Middle Easter figures who lectured to American students participating in “Journalism Boot Camp,” a program affiliated with Columbia University, the University of Qatar, and the American University of Cairo.
Clearly, Qaradawi’s ubiquitous presence in Qatar and its rapidly growing Education City, is not dissuading American institutions of higher learning from exposing American students to Qaradawi’s poisonous influence.
Qatar’s substantial financial and ideological support for Qaradawi, helps to promote the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda. In February 2009, Qaradawi thanked Qatar “for having accepted me and allowed me to do my work on an international scale. I have never faced any obstacle in expressing freely whatever I wished.”
Qatari money and academic ties provide but one of many means for the spread of Muslim Brotherhood influence, which is becoming pervasive in the Western world, which allows the burgeoning network of Islamic organizations and charities to operate.
In order to understand the scope of MB operations in the West, one must first understand the organization’s long-term planning and methods to secure their growth. MB’s founder Hassan al-Banna, understood that financial strength was critical for the organization’s success, weapon to undermine the infidels — and “work towards establishing an Islamic rule on earth.”
After the 1973 successful use of Middle East oil as a weapon against the West, rising oil revenues encouraged MB leaders to formalize al-Banna's vision. In 1977 and 1982, they convened in Lugano, Switzerland, to chart a master plan to co-opt Western economic “foundations, capitalism and democracy” in a treatise entitled “Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy,” also known as The Project. MB spiritual leader al-Qaradawi wrote the explicit document, dated 1 December 1982.The 12-point strategy includes diktats to establish the Islamic state and gradual, parallel work to control local power centers . . . using institutional work as means to this end. To achieve all these to spread fundamentalist Islam required “special Islamic economic, social and other institutions,” and “the necessary economic institutions to provide financial support.”
Anwar Ibrahim
But Islamic banking was slow to catch on until 1993, when Anwar Ibrahim—then Malaysia’s finance minister, and current opposition leader—helped to introduce the newly invented “Islamic Banking windows” into conventional banks. This measure helped familiarized potential customers with and built confidence in the unknown Islamic banking system. Indeed, it proved central to the development of the global Islamic finance industry. Anwar constant support and advocacy of Islamic rule led Qaradawi, his friend and business partner, to join the list of prominent Western leaders who publically defend the Malay politician, who is on trial for sodomy and corruption charges, which he denies.
Anwar and Qaradawi share substantial business ties: in 1996, Anwar licensed company headed by Qaradawi and transferred it to Malaysia. The company, Majestic Global Investment is Kuwaiti fund management business. Both Anwar and Qaradawi serve on the board of the MB affiliated, Virginia based International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), which Anwar helped to found.
The IIIT, which has been under extended federal investigation for ties to al Qaeda and Hamas, advertises two of Qaradawi’s books, and has published literature describing the hurdles it faces in its planned takeover of the U.S. and Canada.
Qaradawi and Anwar share ties to Oxford University. Qaradawi is a trustee of the university’s Center for Islamic Studies, while Anwar was a lecturer at Oxford’s St. Antony’s College.
Another Western media darling, Tariq Ramadan, who is prominent advocate of the MB agenda, found a permanent house at Oxford’s St. Antony’s College. Ramadan, Hassan al Banna’s grandson, was banned from entering the U.S. until January 19, 2010, when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, issued an executive order allowing his entry to the country. Clinton who pressured the Malaysian government on behalf of Anwar, considers him a reformer and an exemplary moderate Muslim.
One can only wonder why despite the readily available damning information and renewed attention on the MB and its affiliated groups the U.S. as its allies are laying the welcoming carpet to some of the most effective MB actors.
First published in FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is the Director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy. She is an expert on terrorism and corruption-related topics such as terror financing and narco-terrorism. She has helped to change New York state law, when the Libel Terrorism Protection Act (pdf) was passed. Similar laws have been passed in other U.S. states, and a federal law known as the SPEECH ACT which was signed by the president in August 2010, follows the same principle - that First Amendment guarantees should protect authors and publishers against foreign libel judgments from countries with poor free speech protections.
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