The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (36 page)

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Authors: Erick Stakelbeck

Tags: #Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism

BOOK: The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy
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It’s not difficult to see why Al-Tikriti has made such inroads among Western elites. Young (in his mid-forties), energetic, witty, and surrounded by a polite, well-groomed staff at his Cordoba Foundation offices, he is quite likable and outgoing. During our time together, it became clear that he was a seasoned speaker, disciplined with his messaging, and comfortable in front of a camera. He has spent most of his life living in Britain and is intimately acquainted with the local culture and customs (he spoke fondly of the country’s weather and football teams as we chatted off camera). Because of all this, Al-Tikriti is walking catnip for agenda-driven, mainstream media types eager to portray Islam in the most positive light possible, or for Western government officials desperate to find devout Muslims who “understand the Islamic street” yet are non-threatening—at least on the surface.
Al-Tikriti also proved irresistible to radical leftists who were seeking a Muslim partner to help front massive anti-Iraq war demonstrations in Britain in 2002 and 2003. When the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) wanted to add a Muslim presence to its lily-white, socialist- and communist-dominated ranks for the sake of “diversity,” it was impressed by Al-Tikriti and the Muslim Association of Britain organizing a large anti-Israel protest in London that attracted thousands of demonstrators (some of whom were waving the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah). Acceding to some sharia rules in order to form a partnership with the MAB seemed a small price to pay for adding Muslim allies to the coalition.
The seemingly unlikely pairing went on to lead several large demonstrations in London, with the MAB pushing the Palestinian issue alongside opposition to “Bush’s war.” According to the 2009 book,
The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West
, written by Italian terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino: “MAB leaders, who have often openly expressed support for Hamas, imposed as a slogan for the movement the dual statement, ‘No war in Iraq, justice for Palestine.’”
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They received no argument from the STWC, which heartily agreed with the MAB’s anti-Israel sentiments.
The STWC/MAB partnership—which drew hundreds of thousands of protestors to its events
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—was a seminal one for the budding Islamo-leftist axis in the West. The two sides capitalized on their momentum and deepened their relationship further by forming a new political party in Great Britain called RESPECT/The Unity Coalition that participated in national and European elections in 2005. The party ran on a platform of socialism, pro-Palestinian activism, and opposition to the Iraq War. Its candidates, which included Al-Tikriti, fared poorly overall, with only George Galloway—a Marxist who has traveled to Gaza to publicly embrace Hamas leaders—winning a seat in parliament.
While RESPECT has mostly fizzled, its formation and continued existence show that committed Islamists and radical leftists are ready and willing to put aside sharp differences—at least temporarily—to further their shared hostility to Western capitalism, Western power, and, at bottom, Judeo-Christian, Western civilization.
Of his efforts to sell Western governments on engaging the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Tikriti told me, “I think it’s a very, very valid strategy. I think it will work, and I think it will be in [the West’s] best interest.” But it’s hard to believe that Al-Tikriti or the radical Left have the West’s best interests at heart.
Anas Al-Tikriti is far from alone among prominent Islamists in his vocal support for Occupy Wall Street. Admiration for the OWS movement has been widespread among Islamic terror groups and non-violent Islamist organizations alike and cuts across Sunni/Shia sectarian lines.
IRAN
 
During an October 2011 address broadcast on Iranian state television, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei donned the turban of Occupy Ayatollah, calling the protests that had started in New York City and spread to other American cities a harbinger of the West’s demise. “They may crack down on this movement but cannot uproot it,” Khamenei promised. “Ultimately, it will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West.”
Not to worry, Mr. Ayatollah: our leaders are accomplishing that feat without Occupy’s help.
Khamenei also railed against “the prevalence of top-level corruption, poverty and social inequality in America” and the supposed “heavy-handed treatment of [Occupy] demonstrators by U.S. officials.”
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Because as we all know, Iran treats its demonstrators with kid gloves.
Khamenei’s statements were echoed by groups of Iranian university students who held pro-Occupy protests in front of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran (which hosts Iran’s U.S. Interests Section). The students—who were undoubtedly directed by the Iranian regime—shouted anti-capitalist slogans, waved placards declaring themselves part of the “99 percent” (the OWS rallying cry) and burned American and Israeli flags.
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Tehran University later hosted a contingent of U.S. college professors—including one Heather Gautney, a self-described “Occupy Wall Street activist” who teaches sociology at Fordham University—at a two-day conference supporting OWS. “I got the sense that they were trying to confirm impressions that they had, confirm things that they had read in the press,” Gautney said of her hosts.
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Or more likely, they were helping promote the Iranian regime’s propaganda, as when General Masoud Jazayeri, a top commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, told an Iranian state-run news agency: “The failure of the U.S. president to resolve the Wall Street crisis will turn this economic movement into a political and social movement protesting the very structure of the U.S. government. A revolution and a comprehensive movement against corruption in the U.S. is in the making. The last phase will be the collapse of the Western capitalist system.” Jazayeri called OWS an “American Spring,” comparing it to the uprisings surging across the Middle East and North Africa.
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Wishful thinking on Jazayeri’s part, as OWS eventually torpedoed itself amid spasms of rampant violence and debauchery by its adherents toward the end of 2011 and into 2012. If nothing else, though, his comments reflect how pleased the Iranians were to see the Great Satan and its infidel capitalist system under assault from within. In essence, the Occupiers were doing the Iranian regime’s dirty work for it. It’s no wonder Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly sought a meeting with Occupy leaders in New York during his 2012 trip to the UN General Assembly
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and gave a shout-out to “the 99 percent” during his speech at Turtle Bay.
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HEZBOLLAH
 
Given that the paramilitary terror organization Hezbollah was created by Iran and serves as the mullahs’ chief striking arm around the world, it comes as no surprise that the so-called “Party of God” was also on board with the Occupy movement. The Hezbollah website almoqa-wama. org ran glowing articles about OWS during the fall of 2011.
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Occupy DC reportedly returned the favor, flying Hezbollah flags (and those of al-Qaeda and Hamas) at one of its rat-infested encampments in the nation’s capital.
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That the Occupiers stood in solidarity with murderous terrorist groups should come as no surprise: one of the hallmarks of Occupy “zones” nationwide was their rampant violence. From Portland, Oregon, to Oakland, California, from Denver to Baltimore to New York City, OWSers clashed violently with police (and in some cases, each other) and had to be forcibly evicted from the tent cities they had set up. The situation in Oakland turned into near anarchy at times, as Occupiers ransacked the city’s downtown area, stormed City Hall, attacked police, and shut down a local port in a series of uprisings over a period of months.
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There were also several reports of women being sexually assaulted at OWS sites around the country.
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By the time the OWS protests had died down in early 2012, thousands of Occupiers nationwide had been arrested for various forms of criminal activity. Bet you didn’t hear about that on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, or other mainstream media news outlets that were busy lionizing the noble Occupiers while demonizing the Tea Party as dangerous, racist kooks.
Speaking of Occupy and terrorism, an organizer from Occupy Cleveland was arrested in May 2012 along with four cohorts (all of whom were also linked to the OWS movement) for plotting to blow up a bridge outside Cleveland as a supposed statement against the U.S. government. Columnist Rich Lowry correctly branded the Cleveland Five, “the left’s homegrown terrorists ... the pathetic sons of Occupy—rootless, underemployed, drunk on a sophomoric radicalism, alienated from the American system to the point of lawlessness.... If the Cleveland Five had been right-wing haters of the government, everyone in America would know their names by now. Instead, they’re a neglected sign of what nastiness lurks in Occupy’s fetid ideological stew.”
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Make no mistake: the so-called Cleveland Five are the type of dark, disturbed souls at the very forefront of the Occupy movement. Yet President Obama readily embraced OWS in the fall of 2011 when it was at its anarchic height. “We are on their side,” he told ABC News.
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Ever the class warrior, he also opined approvingly that Occupy “protesters [we]re giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how [America’s] financial system works.”
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Officials in the Obama White House even adopted Occupy’s “99 percent vs. the wealthy 1 percent” rhetoric.
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Just as violent Salafists are the Muslim Brotherhood’s foot soldiers in Egypt and elsewhere, ready and willing to crack heads to enforce the sharia agenda (and giving the Brothers plausible deniability in the process), the Occupiers played a similar “dirty work” role for the Obama administration. Along with labor unions and radicals like the New Black Panther Party, the Occupiers used violence and intimidation in an effort to push the administration’s class warfare agenda and divide Americans along class (and in the case of the Panthers, racial) lines in the run up to the 2012 election. If things got too hairy, “mainstream” Democrat politicians could always distance themselves from Occupy and rely on their media allies to not make a peep. The strategy clearly worked. From his perch in the Oval Office, Mr. Divide-and-Conquer himself looked on and smiled.
HAMAS
 
In September 2012, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top political leader, drafted a statement of Hamas support for OWS. It was supposed to be read by Haniyeh’s friend, the radical lawyer Stanley L. Cohen, at an Occupy protest coinciding with the start of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. According to the leftist, pro-Palestinian website Mondoweiss, Cohen ultimately did not end up reading the letter due to “extenuating circumstances.” The text of Haniyeh’s anti-American screed, however, was posted online and lined up perfectly with the unholy spirit of Occupy Wall Street:
I send the heartfelt greetings of the Palestinian people, as we salute you in your fight against the American military machine, against its secrets and lies, and against its vision of an American world order maintained through coercion and control. You bring your protest straight to the heart of the political system, there in Charlotte, and we are there with you in spirit, we Occupy Charlotte with you!
Gaza and the West Bank stand in solidarity with you, as we have stood against US military might for decades—we have been on the ugly receiving end of American policy for so long, fighting for our own freedom against Israeli and US control, that to know of your efforts gladdens our hearts....
Like you, we want a stop to the endless wars promoted or fought by the United States; no more attacks on the Muslim world by American troops! We Palestinians want people to know the truth about US power, and its dirty deeds exposed to the sunlight. Palestinians hail all those courageous truth-tellers and activists everywhere who have shattered the veil of secrecy, for making information public at terrible risk to themselves and their families, so that those who struggle for independence can know the truth.
Our struggle against Israel and its massive, high-tech military bought and paid for by US taxpayers will not be defeated.... Palestine will have justice, and it will need people of good conscience in America to stand up for us, and for the truth. Your presence and your voices there in Charlotte give American voters an alternative to the corrupt narrative of US power—you say, there is another way, there is another story, and you challenge the official secrets and lies of this government.
The American political process is now a global process—and we watch it from our corner of the world, waiting for some sign of change at the top. But meanwhile, it is the growing force from below that gives us hope. This movement is a global movement—our numbers are vast, we are legion, and we do not forget.
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