Jihad

Not only did the original "underwear bomber" Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri hide explosives in his rectum to assassinate Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef—they met in 2009 after the 22-year-old holy warrior "feigned repentance for his jihadi views"—but al-Asiri apparently had fellow jihadis repeatedly sodomize him to "widen" his anus in order to accommodate the explosives— all in accordance with the fatwas [religious edicts] of Islamic clerics.

A 2010 Arabic news video that is making the rounds on the Internet gives the details. Apparently a cleric, one Abu al-Dema al-Qasab, informed jihadis of an "innovative and unprecedented way to execute martyrdom operations: Place explosive capsules in your anus. However, to undertake this jihadi approach you must agree to be sodomized for a while to widen your anus so it can hold the explosives."

Others inquired further by asking for formal fatwas. Citing his desire for "martyrdom and the virgins of paradise," one jihadi, (possibly al-Asiri himself) asked another sheikh, "Is it permissible for me to let one of the jihadi brothers sodomize me to widen my anus if the intention is good?"

After praising Allah, the sheikh's fatwa began by declaring that sodomy is forbidden in Islam,

However, jihad comes first, for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is no wrong in it. For the overarching rule of [Islamic] jurisprudence asserts that "necessity makes permissible the prohibited." And if obligatory matters can only be achieved by performing the prohibited, then it becomes obligatory to perform the prohibited, and there is no greater duty than jihad. After he sodomizes you, you must ask Allah for forgiveness and praise him all the more. And know that Allah will reward the jihadis on the Day of Resurrection, according to their intentions—and your intention, Allah willing, is for the victory of Islam, and we ask that Allah accept it of you.

Two important and complementary points emerge from this view: 1) that jihad is the "pinnacle" of Islam—for it makes Islam supreme (based on a hadith, the formerly oral history of the life of Muhammad); and 2) that "necessity makes permissible the prohibited."

These axioms are not limited to modern day fatwas, but in fact, were crystallized centuries and ago agreed to by the ulema [Islam's leading religious scholars]. The result is that—because making Islam supreme through jihad is the greatest priority—anything and everything that is otherwise banned becomes permissible. All that comes to matter is one's intention, or niyya.

From here one may understand the many ostensible incongruities of Islamic history: Lying is forbidden—but permissible to empower Islam; intentionally killing women and children is forbidden—but permissible when performed during holy war, or jihad; suicide is forbidden—but also permissible during jihad, only then called "martyrdom."

Indeed, the Five Pillars of Islam—including prayer and fasting—may be ignored during the jihad. So important is the duty of jihad that the Ottoman sultans—who often spent half their lives on the battlefield—were not permitted to perform the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca.

More recently, these ideas appeared in a different form during Egypt's elections, when Islamic leaders portrayed voting as a form of jihad and justified anything—including cheating, which was deemed "obligatory"—to empower Islam.

According to these two doctrines—which culminate in empowering Islam, no matter how—one may expect anything from would-be jihadis, regardless of how dubious the effort might seem to us.

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Ironically, this mentality, prevalent throughout the Islamic world, is the same mentality that many Western leaders and politicians think can be appeased with just a bit more respect, well-wishing, and concessions from the West.

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, he is best known for his book,  The Al Qaeda Reader .  Mr. Ibrahim's dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Egyptian parents —has provided him with unique advantages to understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets.

If oppressed people fighting for their lives and freedom won’t get help from the U.S. and its allies, they’ll go somewhere else. That’s what’s happening in Syria right now.

RadicalIslam.org has been informed by a source operating in the region that has provided credible information in the past that hardline Saudi princes, sheikhs, tribal leaders and businessmen friendly to the Salafi Wahhabists are organizing the dispatching of fighters to Syria to assist the rebels. The Islamist coalition has reportedly bought and shipped anti-tank missiles to elements of the rebels and is now seeking anti-aircraft missiles.

The source said that the number of Saudi Wahhabists in Syria right now is estimated to be between 150-200 maximum, but up to 450 are on their way and another 450-500 are in Saudi Arabia preparing to embark on their trip. The sheikhs are also trying to recruit former members of the Saudi National Guard. The source said that Islamists in Qatar, home of Muslim Brotherhood theologian Sheikh Yousef Qaradawi and Abu Dhabi, are instrumental in the effort.

The account is substantiated by a report for the Weekly Standard by Jonathan Schanzer and Steven Miller on June 12. They report that three extremely popular Saudi clerics began raising money for the rebels after the May 25 Houla massacre and are directing money to bank accounts in the region and Europe and to the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society of Kuwait, an organization blacklisted by the U.S. as an Al-Qaeda front. The Saudi Royal Family distanced itself from the effort, speaking against “indiscriminate donations,” and the Saudi Grand Mufti criticized the clerics for taking fundraising out of the government’s hands and doing it entirely on their own.

The Saudis are also, on a smaller scale, facilitating the movement of Salafist fighters into Yemen in order to counter Iran’s increased covert support to the radical Shiite Houthi rebels, the source claims.

The fight against Al-Qaeda and like-minded Islamist terrorists is shifting to Mali, North Africa and Central Asia, the source said. Al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has reportedly allied with the Tuareg rebels in Mali and it continues to run a lucrative narcotics trafficking route from northern Nigeria to Spain through Morocco.

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Central Asia is expected to become a hotter battlefield as U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan. The source said that there is significant concern that Islamist jihadists are planning to reassert themselves in Afghanistan and then spread into Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and other areas of central Asia. Pakistani support for jihadists is expected to remain in place because many Pashtun military and intelligence officers have familial ties to the tribal areas where the jihadists have strongholds.

Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security Analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

The Hate Crimes Unit of the York Region police department (a suburb of Toronto, Canada) is investigating a complaint about anti-Semitic curriculum material being taught at the East End Madrassah, which operates out of the David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, a public high school in Toronto. The East End Madrassah is a Shi’ite Muslim school that is affiliated with the Islamic Shia Ithna Asheri Jamaat (ISIJ), which bills itself as a charitable Muslim organization dedicated to “worship, congregation, and community service.”

According to the organization’s website, its membership is “comprised primarily, but not exclusively, of Shia Muslims of Indian origin from East Africa.” The ISIJ’s Imam is Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi, a Shi’a Islamic scholar from a family of ‘ulama in Bihar, India who studied for ten years at the Hawza-e ‘Ilmiya-e Qom Iranian theological center in Qom, Iran.

It should come as no surprise, then, those sections in East End Madrassah textbooks which are drawing the most criticism for their references to jihad and Jew-hatred are drawn from two books published by organizations closely affiliated with the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. One of those Iranian textbooks is published by the Al Balagh Foundation, an Iranian publishing house dedicated to Islamic education.

Among Al Balagh’s publications is one called ‘Features of Islamic Education,” which enumerates among a list of educational objectives. “Creating a systematic Islamic thinking which leads people to conform in every thought and deed, according to the Islamic code.” [i.e., Islamic law or Sharia] Parents and educators are exhorted to “train your children in swimming and sharp-shooting ... because Islam greatly values, valour, struggle (jihad), military preparedness etc.”

Other objectionable sections in East End Madrassah textbooks come from a book published by the Mostazafan Foundation of New York, aka The Alavi Foundation.  This organization has been controlled by the Iranian regime in Tehran since the 1979 revolution, when it established the Bonyad Mostazafan “to centralize, take possession of and manage property expropriated” from the Shah by the Khomeini regime.

The New York City subsidiary was created through Iranian regime front groups in the late 1980’s and managed by a series of Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations. The Alavi Foundation was targeted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in November, 2009, with a civil complaint and a move to seize multiple Alavi Foundation properties on prosecutor allegations that the Foundation was channeling money through the Bank Melli, which is under U.S. Treasury Department sanctions for helping to finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program. 

At the beginning of the “Level 8” lesson taught at the East End Madrassah is a short acknowledgement, describing its content as “based on the Islamic Laws & Ethics series by the ISIJ Imam, Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi” and “material from www.madressa.net .” On the topic of jihad, here is what it says:

“Did Islam prevail by the force of the sword? As a matter of fact, through jihad, the Muslims have mainly meant to establish connections with the people who are under the oppressive rule of tyrants.”

Carrying forward with the theme that “jihad” establishes “connections” with people, the text goes on to describe a Jewish village that was conquered and seized after Muhammad ordered the notorious attack on the Jewish farming community at the Oasis of Khaybar in 629 CE, which left the survivors subjugated as dhimmis (until their final annihilation by the Caliph Umar several years later). Here is what the Toronto Madrassah text says about the village of Fadaq:

“Fadaq was a gift from the Prophet to Bibi Fatema, it was a village located at a two-day walking distance from Madina. It had been gifted [sic] to the Prophet by the jews after Khaibar.”

By way of further whitewashing the Muslim attack, the text explains that,

“…the treacherous Jews had vehemently opposed him and his Islamic call, evoking memories of their hostility to the previous Prophet, Jesus Christ (a), half a millennium ago. The crafty Jews entered into an alliance with the polytheist Quraish in a bid to stamp out Islam. They conspired to kill Prophet Muhammad [s] despite the fact that he was lenient towards them and had treated them kindly, hoping to convince them of Islam's truth.”

On the subject of sharia (Islamic law), the Level 8 lesson attempts to convince students that Islam is a tolerant system—so long as everybody submits to sharia.

Islam has a culture of its own, but leaves space to accommodate practices from other cultures, as long as they are within sharia.

As Andrew Bostom, scholar of Islam and Islamic history, points out in his own insightful article about the East End Madrassah curriculum, “The inculcation of jihadism and Islamic Jew-hatred remains an essential part of mainstream Islamic education for Muslim children.” Further, as Bostom has explained in earlier essays, deep-rooted animus towards Jews historically has been a defining feature of Shi’a Islam as practiced in Persia from about the 16^th century onwards.

The Shi’ite clerics of the period, to which the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers are modern-day successors, dominated “every department of human activity” from emphasis on the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews and others, including Christians, to the institutionalized enforcement of the jizya payment (blood tax demanded by Islam for the privilege of remaining alive and being permitted to practice one’s own faith) under the dhimmi regulations.   

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That Islamic supremacist notions about Jews, jihad, and sharia, published in accordance with orthodox Islamic doctrine, law and scripture should find their way into grade-school textbooks used in Toronto, Canada, is alarming and disgraceful. It is to be hoped that the serious manner in which the complaint about them, filed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is being treated by the Canadian authorities will help to alert Americans, Canadians and the West in general to the threat that faces all our societies from forces dedicated to the global imposition of Islamic Law.

Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at the Clarion Fund and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez began her career as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Considering Egypt’s presidential elections take place later this month, last weekend’s Islamist clash with the military could not have come at a worse time.

First, the story: due to overall impatience—and rage that the Salafi presidential candidate, Abu Ismail, was disqualified (several secular candidates were also disqualified)—emboldened Islamists began to gather around the Defense Ministry in Abbassia, Cairo, late last week, chanting jihadi slogans, and preparing for a “million man” protest for Friday, May 4^th.

As Egypt’s Al Ahram put it, “Major Egyptian Islamist parties and groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Calling and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—have issued calls for a Tahrir Square demonstration on Friday under the banner of ‘Saving the revolution.’ … Several non-Islamist revolutionary groups, meanwhile, have expressed their refusal to participate in the event.”  In other words, last Friday was largely an Islamist protest (even though some in the Western media still portray it as a “general” demonstration).

There, in front of the Defense Ministry, the Islamists exposed their true face—exposed their hunger for power, their unpatriotic motivations, and their political ineptitude.  For starters, among those leading the protests was none other than Muhammad al-Zawahiri, a brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a seasoned jihadi in his own right, who was only recently acquitted and released from prison, where, since 1998, he was incarcerated “on charges of undergoing military training in Albania and planning military operations in Egypt.”

Before the Friday protest,  Zawahiri appeared “at the head of hundreds of protesters,” including “dozens of jihadis,” demonstrating in front of the Defense Ministry.” They waved banners that read, “Victory or Death” and chanted “Jihad! Jihad!”—all punctuated by cries of “Allahu Akbar!”  Likewise, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—the group responsible for slaughtering some 60 European tourists in the 1997 Luxor Massacre—was at the protests.  Even the so-called “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood participated.

Two lessons emerge here: 1) an Islamist is an Islamist is an Islamist: when it comes down to ideology, they are one; 2) Violence and more calls to jihad are the fruits of clemency—the thanks Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) gets for releasing such Islamists imprisoned during ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s tenure.

As for the actual protests (which, as one might expect from the quality of its participants, quickly turned savage) this Egyptian news clip shows bearded Salafis wreaking havoc and screaming jihadi slogans as they try to break into the Defense Ministry, homemade bombs waiting to be used, and a girl in black hijab savagely tearing down a security barbed-wire—the hallmarks of a jihadi takeover.

More tellingly, jihadis in the nearby Nour Mosque opened fire on the military from the windows of the minaret; and when the military stormed the mosque, apprehending the snipers, all the Muslim Brotherhood had to say was: “We also condemn the aggression [from the military] against the house of God (Nour Mosque) and the arrest of people from within”—without bothering to denounce the terror such people were committing from within  ‘the house of God.”

It is worthwhile contrasting this episode with last year’s Maspero massacre, when Egypt’s Coptic Christians demonstrated because their churches were constantly being attacked.  Then, the military burst forth with tanks, intentionally running Christians over, killing dozens, and trying to frame the Copts for the violence (all of which was quickly exposed as lies).  Likewise, while some accuse the Copts of housing weapons in their churches to “conquer” Egypt, here is more evidence that mosques are stockpiled with weapons.

At any rate, what was billed as a “protest” was quickly exposed as Islamists doing their thing—waging jihad against the infidel foe.  Yet this time, their foe was the Egyptian army; as opposed to SCAF—the entrenched, and largely disliked, ruling military council—the Egyptian army is popular with most Egyptians.

As one Egyptian political activist put it, “The public doesn’t differentiate between Salafists, Wahhabis or Muslim Brotherhood any more.  They are all Islamists. They have lost support with the public, it is irreversible. Egyptians have seen their army and soldiers being attacked. It has stirred a lot of emotions.”  A BBC report concurs: “The army holds a special, respected place in Egyptian society, and as far as many Egyptians were concerned it was attacked, not by a foreign enemy, but by Islamists…. One soldier died in the attack. Egyptian TV also showed dramatic pictures of injured soldiers.”

The remarks of an Egyptian news anchorwoman as she showed such violent clips are further noteworthy.  In dismay, she rhetorically asked: “Who is the enemy? They [protesters] are calling for jihad against whom?  Are our soldiers being attacked by Israeli soldiers—or is it our own people attacking them?  Why don’t you go fight the Israeli enemy to liberate Palestine! Who are you liberating Egypt from?  This is unacceptable.  Do you people want a nation or do you want constant jihad—and a jihad against whom, exactly”?

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To place her comments in context: it is known that, in Egypt, jihadis are often portrayed as the “good guys”—fighting for Egypt’s honor, fighting to “liberate Palestine,” and so on—while Israel is portrayed as the natural recipient of jihad.  After Friday’s violent clash, however, Egyptians are learning that no one is immune from the destructive forces of jihad, including Egypt itself and its guardian, the military.  Two weeks before the presidential elections, perhaps Egyptians are also learning that an Islamist president—just like his followers on display last Friday—will bring only more chaos and oppression.  Time will tell.

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, he is best known for his book,  The Al Qaeda Reader .  Mr. Ibrahim's dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Egyptian parents —has provided him with unique advantages to understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets.

Anders Breivik, who went on a shooting spree in Norway last year, killing some 70 people, recently confessed his inspiration: Al-Qaeda, the jihadists par excellence of the modern world.

According to AFP, “The gunman behind the Norway massacres said he was inspired by Al-Qaeda as he took the stand Tuesday [4/17] at his trial…. he described himself as a ‘militant nationalist’ and, using the pronoun ‘we’ to suggest he was part of a larger group, added: ‘We have drawn from Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists. You can see Al-Qaeda as the most successful militant group in the world.’”

Not only was he “inspired” by Al-Qaeda, but his very tactics mirrored those of the jihadist organization.  According to the AP, Breivik testified “that he had planned to capture and decapitate” the former Norwegian Prime Minister, with the plan “to film the beheading and post the video on the Internet,” adding that “he was inspired by Al-Qaeda’s use of decapitation,” which he described “as a very powerful psychological weapon.”

In a globalized world where Islam has the lion’s share of acts of terrorism—where nonstop images of jihadists killing and beheading people have metastasized in the media, and thus the mind of the average person—discovering that Al-Qaeda is Breivik’s source of inspiration is, of course, not surprising.

But there is a more profound point here: Breivik is not the first non-Muslim to be “inspired” by Muslim notions; the Crusaders, for example, lived in an atmosphere thoroughly permeated and influenced by Islamic jihad.  Indeed, the very idea of Christian “holy war”—the use of violence and conquest in the name of Christianity—finds its ideological origins in jihad.

Emmet Scott, for instance, author of the new book Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited writes:

[I]n addition to some commentaries upon Aristotle, and a few scientific and technological concepts (which were not “Arab” inventions at all) Islam was to communicate to Europe a whole host of ideas and attitudes that were far from being enlightened.  Most obviously, the concept of “holy war” [or jihad], which Europe adopted (admittedly somewhat reluctantly) in the eleventh century, was entirely an Islamic innovation (p. xx).

Earlier, historian Bernard Lewis wrote,

Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation…. [F]orgiveness for sins to those who fought in defence of the holy Church of God and the Christian religion and polity, and eternal life for those fighting the infidel: these ideas … clearly reflect the Muslim notion of jihad, and are precursors of the Western Christian Crusade.

For all that, Islamic ideologies did not pervert the foundations of Christianity.  Lewis continues:

But unlike the jihad, it [the Crusade] was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory.…  The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule.… The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.

The point here is that the earliest manifestations of the sort of terrorism initiated by Breivik are Islamic in origin. For instance, the medieval Hashashin—the archetypal terrorists who gave us the word “assassin”—were a Muslim sect that pioneered the use of fear, murder, and terror for political gain as early as the 11^th century.

Even so, the media has inclined to focus on Breivik’s fascination with Christian historical groups like the Knights Templar—without bothering to explain exactly how a military order devoted to protecting Christian pilgrims inspired Breivik to murder innocent Norwegian children. As one historian put it, the original Knights Templar, a “very devout people,” would be “horrified” to be associated with Breivik.

Even more ironic, the Knights and Crusaders in general were frequently on the receiving end of the aforementioned Hashashin’s terror campaign; that is, far from being inspirations for terrorism, the Knights Templar bore the brunt of one of the earliest manifestations of Islamic terrorism. Even CNN’s Fareed Zakaria correctly opined that in Breivik’s distorted worldview, “the Knights Templar resembles nothing so much as Al-Qaeda.”

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In short, whereas Breivik’s goals may have been anti-Islamic in nature, his actions, those things which we are rightly judged by—in this case, terror, murder, and planned beheadings—were jihadist in essence.

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, he is best known for his book,  The Al Qaeda Reader .  Mr. Ibrahim's dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Egyptian parents —has provided him with unique advantages to understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets.

The Obama Administration and elected officials from both parties suffer from a profound misunderstanding of what the Muslim Brotherhood is. 

The State Department welcomes the Islamist group’s bid for the Egyptian presidency. It even told Customs and Border Protection not to conduct a secondary inspection of Brotherhood officials coming to the U.S., even though one of them was implicated in a child pornography investigation. Once in America, the Brotherhood delegation met with National Security Council officials. A spokesman defended the meetings because, in his words, it is “committed to democratic principles, especially non-violence.”

The claim that the Brotherhood does not advocate violence or terrorism is demonstrably false. It is only non-violent in Egypt because it would be counter-productive, but it supports violence in Israel and elsewhere. In September 2010, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badi, declared that Muslims are obligated to wage jihad against the U.S. and Israel and must commit to “raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life."

The Muslim Brotherhood has never once condemned Hamas or its terrorist actions. In fact, the Brotherhood is an unwavering supporter of Hamas and the terrorist group is one of its affiliates. Hamas even changed its name to define it as “a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine.”

The Muslim Brotherhood logo, (left). The Arabic word at the bottom of the circle is waidu, meaning “prepare,” and comes from the first word of Qur’anic verse 8:60, which tells Muslims to “Make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy.”   The Brotherhood's motto is: Allah is our objective, Muhammad is our Prophet, the Quran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration.                                     

The Vice Chairman of the Brotherhood’s political party in Egypt, the Freedom and Justice Party, says Hamas is a “resistance group” and that Egypt should host its offices. The Brotherhood’s website includes supporting “Palestinian resistance” as part of its platform. When Israel agreed to release over 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Brotherhood hailed it as a vindication of Hamas’ violent jihad. On November 24, top officials publicly called for attacks on Jews and a Brotherhood affiliate said Muslims must “revive the duty of jihad in all its forms.”

The Brotherhood is unflinching in its calls for the ultimate destruction of Israel. Former Supreme Guide Mehdi Akef says it will “resist them [Zionists] until they no longer have a country.” It flatly rejects a permanent two-state solution. Its most senior cleric, Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, below, is among the most influential supporters of violent jihad and suicide bombings, calling himself the “mufti of martyrdom operations.” He says that the Holocaust was a judgment upon the Jews by Allah and that he hopes Muslims deliver the next judgment. He turned down the Brotherhood’s request to become its Supreme Guide in 2004.

Brotherhood apologists are quick to point out that the group condemned the 9/11 attacks and has publicly clashed with Al-Qaeda and Iran. Their only difference is over strategy. The Brotherhood still considered Bin Laden to be a Muslim holy warrior and when he was killed, it honored “Sheikh Osama Bin Laden” and endorsed “legitimate resistance against foreign occupation.” Brotherhood officials regularly speculate that 9/11 was a Zionist conspiracy. As for Iran, Brotherhood officials went there last year and said Ahmadinejad is the “bravest man in the Muslim world.”

The Brotherhood’s participation in elections does not mean it is truly democratic. Qaradawi preaches "gradualism" towards the implementation of sharia-based governance. He is quick to point out that the Islamist definition of democracy is different than the West’s. He wants a “genuine type of democracy” that is “driven by the laws of sharia.”

Khairat el-Shater, the Brotherhood presidential candidate in Egypt who has won the affection of U.S. officials, says the same thing. “Sharia was and will always be my first and final project and objective,” he says. He met with the Salafists, the very people the U.S. hopes he will counter, and assured them that he’d create a council of clerics to review and approve all legislation. A translation of a concerning speech he gave on April 21, 2011 has been published. He said that the Brotherhood agenda is “restoring Islam in its all-encompassing conception,” “instituting the religion of God” and “Every aspect of life is to be Islamicized.”

How’d we get to this mistaken view of the Brotherhood? There are a few reasons.

Firstly, compared to the fiery rhetoric of Al-Qaeda and Salafist puritans, the Brotherhood does appear moderate—but moderate is a relative term. Condemnations of 9/11, use of Western-friendly language, pragmatic strategies of non-violence and participation in elections are mistakenly viewed as proof that the Islamists share our interests and values.

The second factor is the influence of Brotherhood front groups, Islamist apologists and efforts to marginalize anti-Islamist Muslim voices. Brotherhood fronts and allies earn the cooperation of government officials by casting themselves as the representatives of the Muslim community. This is a bi-partisan problem. Law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials are among those that have been won over, as well as major universities.

The U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, has a long history with Brotherhood groups. Azizah al-Hibri sits on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and says “Islamic fiqh is deeper and better than Western codes of law.” Her resume includes once having a top position with the American Muslim Council, a Brotherhood front and relationships with similar groups.

The person that most influenced President Obama’s speech in Cairo was Dalia Mogahed, left. She was appointed to the President’s Advisory Council of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is a close associate of John Esposito, one of the top defenders of the Brotherhood and its groups in the U.S. Mogahed is a staunch defender of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America; two Brotherhood fronts that the federal government says are tied to Hamas. When the government labeled them as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the terrorism financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, she said it was part of a “concerted effort to silence, you know, institution-building among Muslims.”

Another close associate of John Esposito is William Taylor, who now leads the State Department’s Office of Middle East Transitions. When Taylor was vice president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, it sponsored a conference organized by Esposito’s organization on April 28, 2010 that the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report described as “perhaps the largest public gathering of global Muslim Brotherhood leaders and U.S. government officials to date.”

Taylor’s office provided election training to the Muslim Brotherhood. He defended it by saying that the U.S. isn’t picking sides. “As long as parties, entities, do not espouse or conduct violence, we’ll work with them,” he said. He further said we “should not be afraid of” working with Islamists and “we need to…judge people and parties and movements on what they do, not what they’re called,” inferring that the fear of the Brotherhood is inspired by the inclusion of the word “Muslim” in its title. He positively compares the Brotherhood with the Ennahda Party of Tunisia, another so-called “moderate” party whose extremism is ignored.

The failure to understand the Brotherhood was on display during Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s embarrassing testimony to Congress. The factual errors in his statements, such as calling the Brotherhood “secular,” overshadowed the greater point he was trying to make: The Brotherhood is non-violent, democratic and should be seen as a partner. In January, he described it as a “moderate Islamist” group that can serve as a counter to Al-Qaeda.

At the same time, the Brotherhood and its allies marginalize competing voices within the Muslim community and pressures government agencies, especially those involved in counter-terrorism, to blacklist their critics.  In the process, these groups get influence over counter-terrorism training and law enforcement policies. For example, the Chicago Police Superintendent recently spoke at a fundraising banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

An example would be how the Brotherhood-tied groups are foaming at the mouth because Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, right, an anti-Islamist Muslim activist, was recently appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Jasser was previously nominated to the State Department Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy but was blocked at the last moment with no given reason. It’s safe to assume that these same groups were responsible.

This intelligence failure is the fruition of a decades-long Muslim Brotherhood campaign. And, like with other intelligence failures, we will one day look back and wonder how we could’ve gotten it so wrong.

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Ryan Mauro is a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and a frequent national security analyst for Fox News Channel.

This article appeared originally on The Institute on Religion and Democracy.