(Analyst's note: Must read.)
On November 29, 2009, news broke that Switzerland's controversial referendum on banning minarets had been passed. Against all the expectations of psephologists, 57 percent of the vote had gone to changing the Swiss constitution to ban further construction of minarets. Only four minarets exist in the country, which has a population of more than 300,000 Muslims. This news was roundly condemned within Europe and beyond. The charge of racism was brought, and indeed, some of the posters used by the Swiss People's Party (SVP) were decidedly xenophobic. This party had started the campaign against minarets. They had been gathering names to a petition for three years. Under Swiss law, when a petition gains 100,000 names, a national referendum can be called.
The Vatican complained that the vote limited religious freedom. Iran, a country which automatically represses religious freedom, also joined the condemnation. Col. Gaddafi of Libya also declared that the vote would encourage terrorism. Over the last year Gaddafi himself has used a terrorist tactic, kidnapping two Swiss businessmen and holding them as hostages for more than a year. On September 23rd this year, Gaddafi even addressed the United Nations and demanded that Switzerland be abolished.
In Europe, opinions on the validity of the minaret ban appeared split between the left, who condemned the move as an Islamophobic and even racist attack upon Muslims' religious freedom, and the right who approved the ban as many perceive Islam's presence in Europe as a cultural "invasion." Ayaan Hirsi Ali has declared that the referendum was a vote "for inclusion and tolerance."
While taking part in online discussions about the Swiss ban, I wanted to look behind the headlines to see what additional factors may have engendered such resentments against Islamic expression in Switzerland.
The Gaddafi issue may have contributed to a climate of resentment. This involved a year-long vendetta that began on July 15, 2008 when Hannibal Gaddafi, the dictator's son, was arrested in Geneva with his pregnant wife Aline. The pair were charged with abuse of their servants and left the country shortly afterwards.
The Libyan affair involved the humiliating spectacle of the Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz going to Tripoli in August 2009 and apologizing. Even his public abasement did not bring the freedom of the Swiss hostages.
The oldest mosque in Switzerland is the Geneva Islamic Center in the region of Les Eaux-Vives. This was founded in 1965 by Said Ramadan, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. The center houses a mosque, bookshop and school (and minaret), and was built with Saudi money. It receives the staggering figure of $5 million (19 million Saudi Riyals) from the kingdom annually. In the week leading up to the minaret referendum, the Geneva mosque was twice vandalized with yellow paint.
The minaret vote is important, both for the 350,000 Muslims living in Switzerland, and for those who are concerned by social and political trends. The issue of the referendum can, however, be seen as a distraction from other more important events. Since October, it has been clear that the Islamist movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood has been engaged in a crisis of leadership.
The "Moderate" Muslim Brotherhood
Currently the Muslim Brotherhood has followers in 70 countries, so any changes in its leadership can have an effect upon the numerous societies and organizations where it has representatives. The current leader, or "Supreme Guide" of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and consequently the global movement, is Muhammad Mahdi Othman Akef. On October 27, 2009, the Egyptian Daily News reported that Mahdi Akef had tried to promote Essam El-Erian to the "Guidance Bureau," the top rung of the group's hierarchy.
The 56-year-old El-Erian is not regarded as particularly contentious as an individual. However, Mahdi Akef's attempt to bypass protocol, coupled with rumors that he did not intend to continue for much longer as the Supreme Guide, led to a crisis, related in part to issues of succession. Akef's deputy, Mohamed Habib, was briefly charged by the Guidance Council to carry out some of the Supreme Guide's powers. After the rancor, Mahdi Akef has announced on the MB's official website that he will continue to be the Supreme Guide for another year. This is a temporary measure. Over the next year there may be great upheavals in the movement.
The Muslim Brotherhood has made considerable inroads into Western societies, attempting to present itself as moderate, even though it has a sinister agenda. For some decades, Switzerland has been the base for the Muslim Brotherhood's European operations. Here too, the Muslim Brotherhood has been involved in Swiss banking operations, which have been declared by the U.S. Treasury to raise funds for terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood banking operations in Switzerland were closely tied to the activities of former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
Even though the Muslim Brotherhood supports terrorism carried out against Israel, senior political figures in the West have tried to make rapprochement with the group. On April 5 2007, Democratic congressman Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, met with Mohammed Saad el-Katatni in Egypt. Katatni leads the Muslim Brotherhood group in the Egyptian parliament. Though banned from partaking in the 2005 elections, Muslim Brothers posed as "independents" and gained 55 of the 454 seats in the parliament. May 2007, four U.S. congressmen also met with Mohammed Saad el-Katatni in Egypt. The congressmen were headed by David Price, Democrat, from North Carolina.
The Nixon Center published a document (in PDF format here) entitled "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood." Written by Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, the essay bizarrely used the example of certain events that occurred in Britain to suggest that Brotherhood organizations would become more amenable to government compromise as they grew. The authors appear not to fully understand the dynamics of British Islamism and British politics of appeasement. Hamas only gets mentioned in one paragraph, even though this terror group is directly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Perhaps the most contentious statement made by the authors is that "policy makers must learn to differentiate the Muslim Brotherhood from radical Islam." The Muslim Brotherhood IS radical Islam, no matter how it presents itself.
The Brotherhood in America
During the Clinton administration one Muslim Brotherhood representative, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was a frequent quest at White House iftar dinners. Alamoudi had founded influential organizations in America such as the American Muslim Council, and he was a president of the American Muslim Foundation. Alamoudi founded the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council. This body evaluated the Muslim chaplains who were to serve in the U.S. military.
Eritrean-born Alamoudi, who also raised money for Hamas, attended the Dar-al Hijrah Islamic Center mosque in Falls Church, Virginia when its imam was Anwar al-Awlaki. Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other members of the congregation were Hamas fundraisers. Maj. Nidal Hasan who would murder 13 people at Fort Hood on November 5th also attended the Dar-al Hijrah mosque. Alamoudi, who once stood in Lafeyette Park outside the White House declaring his support for terror groups Hamas and Hizbollah. In 2004, Alamoudi was jailed for 23 years after admitting illicit financial dealings with Libya and plotting the assassination of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz (now King Abdullah).
Anwar Al-Awlaki himself also has links to the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, where he now resides. He teaches at the Iman University in Sanaa, Yemen. This college has 5,000 students and is run by Abdul Majeed al-Zindani (Abd-al-Majid Al-Zindani). This fiery cleric, who uses prayer to "heal" AIDS victims, was designated as a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury in February 2004. He worked closely with Osama bin Laden and also the Kurdish terror group Ansar al-Islam, whose spiritual leader is Mullah Krekar (currently residing in Norway). Zindani is also the head of a group called the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (at-tajammu al-yemeni lil-islah). This is the Yemeni wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 1997 and 1998 while in San Diego, Al-Awlaki was vice president of the "Charitable Society for Social Welfare" (CSSW), the Yemeni branch of a charity
founded by Zindani. The CSSW was described as a front organization, used to support al-Qaeda.
In 2003, Al-Awlaki was invited to address the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). This group was founded in November 1997 by a leading Muslim Brotherhood member, Kemal el-Helbawy. One of the leading figures in the MAB is Mohammed Kassem Sawalha who, according to the BBC used to be a Hamas operative, active on the West Bank under the code-name Abu Abada. Sawalha has been a director of Interpal, a charity that ostensibly raises money for Palestinians, but was designated by the US for giving funds to Hamas.
The Muslim Brotherhood is connected to many organizations that operate in the West. In France, the UOIF (Union des Organisations Islamiques de France) is a political grouping of Muslim clerics that is widely seen as a front organization for the MB. In America, several front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood have been identified.
Douglas Farah and John Mintz, writing in the Washington Post, declared that MB members were involved in founding the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in 1963, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) a decade later (established as a corporation in Indiana on May 23, 1971), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in 1981.
NAIT and ISNA were both named as unindicted co-conspirators in the U.S. government's case against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation (HLF). Federal prosecutors had written that "numerous exhibits were entered into evidence establishing both ISNA's and NAIT's intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case." On November 24, 2008, HLF and five of its leaders were found guilty of providing material support to Hamas.
Hamas, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, supports terrorism. It was founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmad Ismail Yassin and Dr Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi. After carrying out numerous attacks against soldiers and suicide bombings against its civilians, Israel assassinated Yassin on March 22, 2004, following that airstrike with another that killed Rantissi on April 7, 2004. Rantissi had come under the spell of the Muslim Brotherhood while studying to be a doctor in Egypt.
The original list (pdf document) of unindicted co-conspirators connected with the HLF trial identifies Alamoudi (see above), Gaddor Ibrahim Saidi, Nizar Minshar, Raed Awad, Tareq Suwaidan as current or former Muslim Brotherhood members, along with ISNA, NAIT and also MAYA (the Muslim Arab Youth Association).
Two other organizations that have been influential in the United States have also been described in court documents as having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. In December 2007 (pdf document here) CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, was listed as "having conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists." Additionally, the Muslim American Society (MAS) was described in this document as being "founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States."
MAS was founded in 1993 in Alexandria in Virginia. Its leaders are Esam S. Omeish (above) and Souheil Ghannouchi. As pointed out by Patrick Poole, Mahdi Bray (who heads the MAS Freedom Foundation) had attended a rally in Egypt in February 2008. This rally was to support Egyptian Muslim Brotherhod members. Among the other Americans attending this MB rally were "peace activist" Cindy Sheehan and her campaign manager Tiffany Burns, and also former congressman Walter E Fauntry.
In September 2007, Esam S. Omeish was forced to resign from a Virginia state commission on immigration. His resignation happened after videos emerged in which he was heard supporting jihad in the Middle East. MAS gained some notoriety in 2007 when it appeared to support Muslim taxi drivers at Minneapolis/St Paul airport, who did not want to take passengers who had alcohol in their baggage. Further information on MAS, compiled by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, can be found in a PDF document here.
The front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood in America do not readily declare their associations with the Ikhwan.
An article from the Chicago Tribune from February 8, 2004 declared that the Indiana-based NAIT (which has Muslim Brotherhood associations) "would eventually hold the deeds to about 300 mosques." This figure would represent one in four of all mosques in America.
At the end of the same article (subscription required), the authors wrote of the Muslim American Society (MAS) as a "group with strong ties to the Brotherhood." The authors stated: "In an interview in Cairo, Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef said he and other Brotherhood members helped create the society and that it follows Brotherhood philosophy. The society said it is independent but influenced by the Brotherhood and other groups."
The Islamic Society of Boston was founded in 1982. One of its eight founding members was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was jailed for 23 years in 2004. The Boston Globe reported in October 2004 that the ISB had finally distanced itself from one of its trustees, Dr. Walid Fitaihi. This individual wrote in an Arabic-language publication that Jews were "murderers of prophets." Fitaihi had also declared that Jews committed "oppression, murder, and rape of the worshippers of Allah," and for this, they should be punished.
In March 2004, the Boston Herald had requested a response from the group, and on September 10, 2004 a response had been published. This had stopped short of being a full apology. When media bodies and individuals started to discuss the potential extremist links of some of the ISB's senior figures, the group responded with lawsuits. Fox Channel 25, the Boston Herald newspaper and 14 civilians were named in lawsuits filed by ISB. Eventually these were all dropped.
According to his 1998 to 2000 tax returns, one member of the Islamic Society of Boston's board of directors was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qadawi appeared in printed literature and a video, promoting the ISB, in 2002 and 2003.
The ADL, writing in July 2009, state that Qaradawi is also a chairman of the Islamic American University, even though he has been banned from entering the USA since 1999. This university, based in Southfield in Michigan, provides online courses and correspondence courses, as well as match-making facilities. Islamic American University grew from a MAS project.
The founder of the Islamic American University was Dr. Salah El-Deen Soltan who also founded the American Center for Islamic Research at Columbus, Ohio.
One of the fruits of Dr Soltan's research was the "discovery" that the 9/11 attacks were planned by Americans, using the movie "The Siege" as inspiration (Memri clip here - registration required). In this video, Soltan claims that Dr Al-Zindani, (the head of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood) is "known worldwide for his refinement, virtue, and broad horizons."
From 1984 until 1994, an Egyptian-born surgeon called Dr Ahmed Elkadi was the head of America's Muslim Brotherhood. This individual had once been a personal physician to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. He was also a president of NAIT. A decade after he stopped being a leader of the U.S. Brotherhood, Elkadi gave a candid account of the MB's activities to the Chicago Tribune of September 19, 2004 (subscription/purchase required).
Elkadi's departure from his position was abrupt and beyond his control. The head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi Othman Akef, said of the activities of Elkadi and his associates: "They have succeeded in saving the younger generations from melting into the American lifestyle without faith." Elkadi died of a massive stroke at Panama City in Florida on April 11, 2009. He was 69. His obituary in Islam Online, a website closely connected to Yusus al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A recent PDF document from the Hudson Institute, authored by Steven Merley, describes the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. The activities of Elkadi are described in detail up until his being removed from power in 1995. Merley states (p 41) that many of the US Muslim Brotherhood members who were active from 1988 to 1991 are still active in Brotherhood organizations.
Jamal Badawi is on the Executive Council of the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA). This organization, which Merley claims is a MB group, grew originally from the Muslim Students' Association (MSA). In 1980, this organization was called the Fiqh Council of the Islamic Society of North America, and became "The Figh Council of North America" in 1986. Shaikh Muhammad Hanooti is a FCNA council member. Patrick Poole states that Salah Soltan was in the FCNA in 2008.
Youssef Nada and "The Project"
One Egyptian-born Muslim Brotherhood member is mentioned in some detail in the Hudson Institute report by Merley. This man is Youssef Nada. He spent time in America in the 1980s, and fathered some of his children there. In September 2004, Douglas Farah and John Mintz wrote that during the 1980s, the Muslim Students Association "using $21 million raised in part from Qaradawi, banker Nada and the emir of Qatar, opened a headquarters complex built on former farmland in suburban Indianapolis."
Youssef Nada would form important relationships with Muslim Brotherhood members in Switzerland. He also would also work with Nazi sympathizers to create a Muslim Brotherhood Bank. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, his bank would draw the attention of the authorities, as it was believed to have channeled funds to al Qaeda. Youssef Nada lived in Campione d'Italia near Lake Lugano. Campione is entirely surrounded by the Swiss canton of Ticino yet is an Italian territory and tax haven. Though officially part of the Province of Como, Campione is under the jurisdiction of Swiss police.
Youssef Nada's villa was searched, and on November 7, 2001, manuscripts were retrieved. Among these documents, fourteen pages of scattered notes were found. These were typed in Arabic and bore the date December 1, 1982. No signature was given to the notes. Nada claimed not to know anything about them. The pages were placed in a police evidence archive along with other documents connected with Nada's bank dealings.
When the pages were translated, they revealed a succinct 12-point plan for world domination. The first page bore the heading "Towards a global strategy for Islamic politicization." It is now believed that the document was written by Said Ramadan, founder of the Geneva Islamic Center. Ramadan was a son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and had lived in Switzerland from the 1950s until his death in 1995. The 14 sheets of paper are now known as "The Project." The intense activities of the Brotherhood in Europe and America, extending MB influence even into the White House (with Alamoudi) show that the strategies of the Project are being followed assiduously.
In Part Two, I will describe how the Muslim Brotherhood began, and how Switzerland came to be chosen as a base from which to enact the organization's policies of expansionism into the West.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan is a British based writer and artist. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. He is currently compiling a book on the demise of democracy and the growth of extremism in Britain.
