The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (15 page)
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Authors: Erick Stakelbeck
Tags: #Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism
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But as Sheikh Abu Adam led us into his personal office in the basement of his apartment building, all was sweetness and light. He politely informed us that his bodyguards would be filming our interview to ensure that the Sheikh wasn’t misquoted in my report. Then our conversation turned to his travels to Pakistan and other jihadi hotspots where he says he preaches against terrorism. He showed us video clips of himself in Pakistan’s tribal regions, supposedly debating Taliban and al-Qaeda types and arguing against violent jihad. The Sheikh says his anti-terrorism work has drawn the ire of other Salafists and earned him death threats (hence the bodyguards).
“I try to convince them to leave jihad, to leave radicalism, to leave bomb attacks,” he told me. “There are more and more radicals every day, also in Europe.”
The Sheikh swears he isn’t one of them. Needless to say, I wasn’t buying it. For starters, all Salafists must support the idea of violent jihad. Remember, these are strict Koranic literalists who take every verse from Islam’s holy book, including the infamous Verse of the Sword, which exhorts Muslims to “Slay the unbelievers wherever [Muslims] find them,” quite literally. That doesn’t mean all Salafists personally engage in violence or jihad. That isn’t the case—although the movement’s venomous anti-Western, sharia-fied ideology and lengthy track record of terrorism could certainly lead you to believe otherwise. It does mean, however, that all true Salafists, being the harshest of fundamentalists, must at least agree in principle with the numerous exhortations to violence against non-believers found throughout the Koran and Sunnah and regard these verses as open-ended and applicable to the modern day. Otherwise they wouldn’t be Salafists.
That’s why it came as no surprise when, during our interview, Sheikh Abu Adam showed me a recent letter he had received from the Bavarian government that identified him as—bingo—a radical Salafist and anti-Semite. I asked the Sheikh why German authorities would say such things about him and the Darul Quran mosque in Munich, where he is lead imam.
“I don’t know!” he answered, seemingly dismayed. “All of my students, all—I don’t have any exception—they are fighting against terrorism and they are very integrated in the society. All of them are very kind, loving people. They laugh. They communicate with all people.”
A Bavarian television crew found something far less benign when it visited the Darul Quran mosque in 2011. It seems the Sheikh was presiding there over sharia courts operating outside of German law.
8
He told the German daily
Der Spiegel
that he encourages his followers to settle conflicts at the mosque, rather than going to German police, and that his judgments are “fairer than the [German] government’s.”
9
Considering that the average female Darul Quran attendee is clad in an all-encompassing
niqab
garment where only the eyes are visible, one can guess which way his judgments usually go when it comes to, say, marital disputes.
8
He told the German daily
Der Spiegel
that he encourages his followers to settle conflicts at the mosque, rather than going to German police, and that his judgments are “fairer than the [German] government’s.”
9
Considering that the average female Darul Quran attendee is clad in an all-encompassing
niqab
garment where only the eyes are visible, one can guess which way his judgments usually go when it comes to, say, marital disputes.
Coincidentally, that same
Der Spiegel
article described the Sheikh as someone who “teaches a reactionary kind of Islam ... doesn’t believe in separating religion from the state, and rejects moderate branches of his religion.” But never fear, slippery Islamists: when right-wing meanies start asking tough questions, the
New York Times
has your back. The journalistic stalwarts at the
NYT
, manipulated repeatedly since 9/11 by Islamists great and small, ran a laudatory 2010 profile of the Sheikh titled “Munich Imam Tries to Dull Lure of Radical Islam.”
10
As of this writing, the
Times
has yet to publish a follow-up conceding that it may have been wrong about the Sheikh, even with the sharia court controversy coming to light. To the liberal mind, when a guy like Abu Adam says he is a moderate who opposes violence he must be taken at his word, with no further background checks or research required. Doing anything more would be rank Islamophobia. After all, why would this kindly gentleman doling out chicken and rice to visiting journalists lie?
Der Spiegel
article described the Sheikh as someone who “teaches a reactionary kind of Islam ... doesn’t believe in separating religion from the state, and rejects moderate branches of his religion.” But never fear, slippery Islamists: when right-wing meanies start asking tough questions, the
New York Times
has your back. The journalistic stalwarts at the
NYT
, manipulated repeatedly since 9/11 by Islamists great and small, ran a laudatory 2010 profile of the Sheikh titled “Munich Imam Tries to Dull Lure of Radical Islam.”
10
As of this writing, the
Times
has yet to publish a follow-up conceding that it may have been wrong about the Sheikh, even with the sharia court controversy coming to light. To the liberal mind, when a guy like Abu Adam says he is a moderate who opposes violence he must be taken at his word, with no further background checks or research required. Doing anything more would be rank Islamophobia. After all, why would this kindly gentleman doling out chicken and rice to visiting journalists lie?
For a while, the German government also seemed to accept the
Times
’ narrative of Abu Adam as tenderhearted peace activist. According to the Sheikh, his lectures on non-violence at various venues around Deutschland had the support of German officials, with whom he was apparently in regular contact. But the Sheikh’s activities caught the attention of authorities for a different reason in late 2010, when he was arrested for brutally beating one of his three wives, reportedly breaking her nose and shoulder and inflicting several cuts and bruises.
11
He allegedly yelled misogynistic Koranic verses as he pummeled her and refused to allow German police to enter his apartment. The wife—who was reportedly beaten for telling the Sheikh she wanted to live a more Western lifestyle—ultimately declined to press charges, but not before the Sheikh spent almost three months in jail. He maintains that she acquired her injuries after taking a fall in their apartment.
12
He also has a bridge he’d like to sell you somewhere in Egypt.
Times
’ narrative of Abu Adam as tenderhearted peace activist. According to the Sheikh, his lectures on non-violence at various venues around Deutschland had the support of German officials, with whom he was apparently in regular contact. But the Sheikh’s activities caught the attention of authorities for a different reason in late 2010, when he was arrested for brutally beating one of his three wives, reportedly breaking her nose and shoulder and inflicting several cuts and bruises.
11
He allegedly yelled misogynistic Koranic verses as he pummeled her and refused to allow German police to enter his apartment. The wife—who was reportedly beaten for telling the Sheikh she wanted to live a more Western lifestyle—ultimately declined to press charges, but not before the Sheikh spent almost three months in jail. He maintains that she acquired her injuries after taking a fall in their apartment.
12
He also has a bridge he’d like to sell you somewhere in Egypt.
As we wrapped up our interview, the Sheikh lamented the fact that German officials had turned against him—or in other words, wised up. Although the unabashed polygamist and his large brood receive generous welfare benefits from the government, he said he was unsure whether he would stay in Germany.
“I’m sacrificing myself and my family and my scholars because of you and then you write that I am radicalized?” he vented. “I’m fighting against the terrorists!”
Interestingly enough, one Islamic supremacist group the Sheikh does truly seem to oppose is the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time of our meeting, he had just returned from Egypt. As he and his bodyguards escorted us to our car, I asked his thoughts on that country’s new Ikhwan overlords.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not a religious group. They are a political group,” he answered. “They are dangerous.”
Dangerous indeed. But not for the reasons Sheikh Abu Adam had in mind.
As we’ll see shortly, the Sheikh’s negative view of the Ikhwan has absolutely nothing to do with the MB’s declared endgame of a global caliphate ruled by sharia and everything to do with tactics. Indeed, if ideology were the determining factor, the Muslim Brotherhood and hardcore Salafists would be virtually indistinguishable. Both Islamist blocs seek a worldwide caliphate governed by Islamic sharia law. Both support violent jihad against the infidel and have engaged in it frequently. Both wish to see the state of Israel wiped off the map and both view the United States as a hated enemy. Let’s also remember that the writings of seminal Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb—not to mention those of Hassan al-Banna—have inspired legions of Salafi-jihadists over the past several decades, including the founding leadership of al-Qaeda.
The Brotherhood admittedly has its roots in Salafism and the two factions desire the same endgame, so it comes as no surprise that they have collaborated frequently through the years. According to Islamism expert Gilles Kepel, the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s, in which Osama bin Laden and many of his future al-Qaeda soldiers played a major role, was one prime example:
In Afghanistan all the different factions within the Islamist movement . . . found common ground under the banner of armed jihad. The ultimate success of the jihad in Afghanistan dealt serious blows not only to the communist world, but also helped to silence Ayatollah Khomeini’s claim to hegemony in the Muslim world after the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979. By the end of the 1980s, therefore, the Brothers and other Islamist radicals who were in Afghanistan were convinced that the sky was the limit. The Brothers had invested heavily in Afghanistan—sending university students, doctors from their medical associations, money, weapons—and they cherished their part in the victory.
13
As terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino writes in his 2009 book,
The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West
, a group of top Brotherhood leaders returned to Afghanistan a few years after the Soviet withdrawal to bask in their victory—and promise an even greater one to come against the Great Satan:
The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West
, a group of top Brotherhood leaders returned to Afghanistan a few years after the Soviet withdrawal to bask in their victory—and promise an even greater one to come against the Great Satan:
. . . Swiss authorities found a videocassette with images of a 1993 trip to Afghanistan made by a group of senior Brotherhood leaders to congratulate Afghan Islamist leaders on their victory against the Soviet Union. The group was led by the future [Supreme Guide] of the Egyptian Brotherhood, Mustafa Mashour. . . . Mashour, a widely respected leader who had spent most of the 1980’s in Germany, gave a speech that was not supposed to circulate beyond Brotherhood circles. He started by praising the Afghans for their victory and said that jihad must continue to liberate other occupied Muslim lands, from Palestine to India and Chechnya.
But Mashour did not stop there. “I will assure you,” he said, “That as the Soviet Union has fallen, so will America and the West succumb, with the help of God. ”
14
[emphasis added]
Mashour’s last statement is a helpful reminder that the Obama administration is funding and arming—to the tune of billions of dollars annually—an organization that wishes to see America destroyed. Taxpayers, rejoice.
As the Afghanistan model shows, there’s nothing quite like the prospect of jihad against the infidel and a global caliphate to convince Islamists to put aside petty differences. We’re seeing that play out once again today in Egypt, where the Brothers and various Salafist parties control the bulk of the parliament and have struck up an alliance to advance their shared goal of an Islamic state.
“Remember that when Morsi claimed dictator’s powers in November 2012, he called on the Islamists to help back the regime against the protestors,” MB expert and investigative journalist Patrick Poole told me in a January 2013 interview. “If there is any difference [between the Brotherhood and Salafists] it is one of degree, not of kind. Think division of labor, much like the ‘social’ and ‘military’ wings of Hamas. The Salafis are the shock troops that the MB call in when they need help—and then when the Brotherhood comes under pressure from the West they supposedly ‘crack down’ and reign in the Salafists. But the MB couldn’t survive without the Salafis.”
In addition to their strategic differences on the timing of jihad and violence—which we’ll explore in greater detail shortly—there have been three main areas where the Brothers and the Salafists have not always seen eye-to-eye over the past few decades. Mind you, as Poole said, these differences are narrowing every day thanks to the Islamist ascendance triggered by the so-called Arab Spring, which has brought the MB and Salafists even closer together:
1) Salafists tell the truth. In fact, the Janus-faced Sheikh Abu Adam and his double game are a rarity among the Salafist breed. They are generally very open and up front about their desire for a global caliphate comprised of sharia states that will confront Israel and the West. The Brotherhood, on the other hand, has mastered the Islamic pastime of taqiyya—deception—working stealthily and incrementally to accomplish the very same aims as the Salafists. On the rare occasion that a Brotherhood official does slip up and share details about the movement’s very immoderate goals, the Ikhwan, always protective of its “moderate” image in the West, quickly issues a denial, clarification, or retraction. It’s a much more furtive brand of Salafism—and undeniably effective.
2) The Salafists strictly oppose any and all modern innovation (or
ijtihad
) in Islam and believe the answers to all of life’s issues can be found in the faith’s sacred texts, as interpreted by Muslim scholars during the roughly four-hundred-year period that began with Islam’s founding in the seventh century and ended around the tenth century AD (when the so-called “Gates of Ijtihad” closed). Therefore, any new interpretations or independent judgments—known to most non-Muslims as, um, “freedom of thought”—are harshly condemned by Salafists.
15
ijtihad
) in Islam and believe the answers to all of life’s issues can be found in the faith’s sacred texts, as interpreted by Muslim scholars during the roughly four-hundred-year period that began with Islam’s founding in the seventh century and ended around the tenth century AD (when the so-called “Gates of Ijtihad” closed). Therefore, any new interpretations or independent judgments—known to most non-Muslims as, um, “freedom of thought”—are harshly condemned by Salafists.
15
The Brotherhood, though, has a sly take here. Like their Salafist kindred spirits, the Brothers are Koranic fundamentalists whose interpretation of sharia includes subjugation of women, stoning, et al., and is medieval to the core. Yet Western Brothers I’ve interviewed have spoken favorably of reviving ijtihad for the present day and the Brotherhood’s English-language website features several articles in support of the notion. On one hand, this is no surprise. Western Brothers in particular must cope with the technological advancements, permissiveness, and democratic nature of the societies in which they live. True, the freedom found in Europe and the United States is anathema to the Brothers’ backward agenda. But as we’ll see, it is frequently used to their advantage. The Brothers realize that what worked for Islamists in seventh century Medina doesn’t work in ultra-secular, twenty-first-century Madrid or even modern-day Morocco, for that matter. Today’s average Joe-hammed in the West faces challenges, cultural norms, and attitudes that his desert-dwelling predecessors did not, a fact that many diehard Salafists seem to disregard.
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