The Muslim Brotherhood’s election victory indicates strong support for Islamism and for Sharia law. Sharia law does not tolerate free speech or protests against the government, and it exploits and suppresses minorities.  Muslim Brotherhood has expressed their goal to see the newly-formed government, “evolv[e] into a rightly guided caliphate.”

This naturally alarms Israel because the Brotherhood is closely allied with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for murdering hundreds of civilians, including Americans, in Israel. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s prime minister, has described his organization as the “jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face.” Haniyeh stated recently that “our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity.”

The parliamentary elections will soon be followed by a rewriting of the 1971 constitution which will take place prior to the presidential elections.  That will ensure that the power will reside in the Islamist-dominated parliament. In any case, most of the current presidential contenders have a similar agenda to the Brotherhood, calling for imposing Sharia law in Egypt and modifying the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

The 1979 peace treaty was negotiated by Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, and Israel is rightly concerned about whether the document will be honored.  Odds are slim, since the ruling military junta, The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) plans to put the Camp David accords on the ballot for a national referendum. The Brotherhood has vowed never to recognize Israel as legitimate.

As Islamists were swept into power throughout the Middle East, what was the White House doing? It was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Islamists. As the revolution in Egypt evoked Western fears (now proven to be prescient) of a Brotherhood rise to power, the administration dispatched Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to announce that the Islamist group was “largely secular.” The U.S. government provided election training to Egyptian Islamist parties.

The N.Y. Times reported that the Obama administration accepts the Muslim Brotherhood’s assurances that it will build a democracy that respects individual rights, free markets and free speech. On January 4, the administration began to “forge closer ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that once was received as irreconcilably opposed to U.S. interests,” the newspaper said.  The White House is giving the Brotherhood international legitimacy, based on the platitudes the latter expresses in English, while in Arabic it has demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and called for preparations for war against Israel.

At the same time, the White House has represented the Egyptian military as a pro-Western and secular force which will restrain Islamist elements. In reality, the Egyptian military has used deadly force against civilian protesters. In response to a Coptic protest in the Cairo neighborhood of Maspero, SCAF unleashed armored vehicles, which deliberately ran over protestors. Protestors were assaulted and beaten as Egyptian troops yelled “Allahu akbar” at those they called “Christian sons of dogs.”

These recent attacks by the military and their Islamist allies against Coptic Christians (who make up 10 percent of the 82 million Egyptians) give us a preview of what is to come when the Islamists impose Sharia law:

“The Islamists have been unleashed,” says Nasri, a Copt pharmacist who is hoping to leave Egypt.  “You’re talking about no rights for women.  No rights for Coptic Christians.  They’ll make us more of a minority.  It will be like living centuries ago.”

Red lights are flashing and sirens are blasting, but the Obama administration does not sense the threat. That is not for lack of information. EMET predicted early-on that the Brotherhood would take power and that the Egyptian military would not stand for democracy and minority rights. Unfortunately, President Obama believes that America’s role in the world is far too aggressive and arrogant in promoting democracy. As a result, he apologizes for our supposed failure to understand others, our alleged selfishness in pursuing U.S. interests instead of global interests and showing far too much concern for U.S. independence and freedom of action.

Perhaps Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sees the danger in Obama’s support for Egypt’s incoming government. Traditionally, Washington appropriates $1.3 billion a year to Egypt, plus additional support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Senator Leahy has sponsored a bill in the Appropriations Committee that calls for restrictions in military aid to Egypt. Leahy also calls for funds to be earmarked to promote democracy and limit military power there. The Egyptian military has lobbied aggressively against the Leahy legislation, and it upped the ante by raiding Western pro-democracy Non-governmental organizations.  According to The Washington Post, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also opposes these restrictions, and the State Department has proposed an additional billion dollars in debt relief, to provide funds for the Egyptian government’s “transition.”

The seismic wave of change in Middle East has swept Sharia advocates into power, and the Obama Administration has been a contributor to that outcome. Now, freedoms of speech and of minority rights are threatened. So is Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, which long has stood as the only democracy in the region. The White House has settled for the democracy of “one man, one vote, one time,” thus bringing even worse regimes to power than had previously ruled in the region. Who will take a stand and promote real democratic values?

With Republican Congressman Ron Paul coming in a close third in the Iowa presidential caucus, we must look seriously at his foreign policy views, particularly on the Middle East and Israel, and ask whether such views are suitable for a commander-in-chief charged with the security of the United States during a period of conflict with a determined Islamic enemy.

Much attention has been paid, since Paul’s strong showing in Iowa, to statements issued in Rep. Paul’s newsletter publications. Many of these newsletters contain material on domestic matters (such as race relations) that may be objectionable, but one of the most troubling statements on the foreign policy front relates to credence given to a conspiracy theory blaming the Mossad for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. From an April 1993 edition of the newsletter:

It was only a matter of a few days after the World Trade Center bombing before Mohammad A. Salameh was arrested. Is he guilty? Who knows? Recall that shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and accusations were made. Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.

This statement shows a susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking, which, while contrary to any good analysis, is particularly dangerous when considering the Middle East. The Arab world is fraught with all manner of ludicrous and delusional conspiracy theories about the Jews and Israel, and that a potential American Commander-in-Chief would give them any credence is deeply troubling. Even if, as Rep. Paul claims, he was not the author of the newsletters in question, then at the very least he hired and supervised, or failed to supervise, individuals who maintained these beliefs. Anyone who genuinely considers the possibility that Israel would intentionally bomb an American civilian building for the sole purpose of framing Islamic terrorists, cannot ever be an ally of or, indeed, even neutral in regards to Israel.

The other interesting element of the quote is the use of the word “retaliation.” The assumption that any act of terrorism committed by Muslims must be the result of U.S. behavior, and, therefore, justifiable is a hallmark of Paul’s policies and is deeply troubling. A perfect illustration occurred in Paul’s remarks during the December 15th Iowa Republican debate. “… [T]o say all Muslims are the same is dangerous talk,” he stated. “They don’t come to kill us because we are free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean that’s absurd.”

Of course all Muslims are not the same. No one is suggesting that they are. Paul’s claim that Muslims want to harm us “because we are bombing them” ignores the reality that Islamists have deeply-held religious and ideological beliefs that mandate jihad against non-believers, the spread of Sharia, and the dominance of an Islamic caliphate. We know this because not just Islamic terrorists, but Muslim jurists, thinkers and policy-makers say so routinely, as evidenced by a wide collection of Arabic-language video and transcripts available from translation services like MEMRI.

Ironically the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police recognizes better than does Rep. Paul the reality of jihadist motivations, writing in a 2006 report summary, that Switzerland was both home to, and a target for, Islamist terrorists.

Furthermore, which Muslims exactly does Paul claim the United States bombed prior to the 1993 “retaliation” bombing?

Paul blames Israel for much of the faults of the Middle East and, according to former Paul staffer Eric Dondero, has privately expressed his wish that Israel not exist. Dondero writes,

He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the American taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

Paul has attempted to create the impression that his stance on Israel is motivated not by anti-Zionism, but, rather, by a principled position on independent national sovereignty. He points to his voting against condemning Israel for the 1981 Osirak reactor bombing, and claims that our “interference” with Israel is to their detriment. Said Paul in a November presidential debate in Washington,

We interfere with them when they deal with their borders. When they want to have peace treaties, we tell them what they can do because we buy their allegiance and they sacrifice their sovereignty to us. And then they decide they want to bomb something, that’s their business, but they should, you know, suffer the consequences. When they bombed the Iraqi missile site, nuclear site, back in the ’80s, I was one of the few in Congress that said it’s none of our business and Israel should take care of themselves.

EMET believes that a close American-Israeli security alliance is to the benefit of both nations, but we understand that one could make the opposing argument that Israel is burdened by its American alliance in good faith. However Paul’s stance is disingenuous, as evidenced by his remarks on the House floor on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza that began in December 2008. Paul claimed that Hamas was “encouraged by and really started by Israel,” much as he blames the U.S. for the rise of Al Qaeda. In interviews with Iranian state television, Press TV, he described Gaza as a “concentration camp.” Far from wanting to free Israel to see to its own national security, Paul seizes upon occasions when Israel acts to ensure its security, as in Operation Cast Lead, to condemn it and, by extension, the United States.

Paul prefers pat answers that blame America and Israel to conducting serious investigation of the motivations of our self-declared enemies. Indeed Paul’s belief in American-centric grievance terrorism denies agency to other countries and cultures. He refuses to take into account any historical, cultural or political developments prior to America’s rise to superpower status. Paul’s only solution is a return to American isolationism as a foreign policy.

Paul believes that if Washington ceases to support and ally itself with the Jewish state, then a large number of America’s problems with the Muslim world will disappear. But suppose that a President Paul initiated a foreign policy in which the U.S. government didn’t defend Israel in the United Nations Security Council, recognized “Palestine” as a nation, called on Israel to negotiate with that state, and stopped the sale of American weapons or technology to the Jewish state. Would these actions prompt the Islamist or Muslim worlds to reward us with better behavior?

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they would not, just by examining the past three years. President Barack Obama is markedly less supportive of Israel than was President George W. Bush. Obama made improved relations with the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy, as delineated in his Cairo declaration in 2009. Based on the Paul logic, positive results should come from the Muslim world, but we see no evidence of its becoming more supportive of the United States. Have the Palestinians been more willing to compromise? No. The Palestinian Authority seems to be approaching the even more extreme and radical group, Hamas, with which it now plans to merge. Also, the PA has unilaterally pushed for statehood recognition by the United Nations, an effort the Obama Administration has opposed. And has the rest of the Muslim world become more cooperative with the United States? Not at all. Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden until we found and killed him, and it continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia still produces textbooks and religious materials filled with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry. And Iran still pushes ahead with nuclear weapons production.

We have every reason to suspect, therefore, that the Middle East’s reaction to an even softer Ron Paul approach to diplomacy would be greater intransigence.

Paul pretends that this reality does not exist or that it does not matter. Osama bin Laden should not have been killed, under Paul’s reasoning. Iran is not trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, he claims, and if it were, that’s Teheran’s choice. “If I were an Iranian, I’d like to have a nuclear weapon, too, because you gain respect from them,” he told Iowans.

Paul’s foreign policy has a seductive attraction. If all the troubles America endures are because of her actions, then ceasing these actions is a cure-all. But this is simply not so. A retreat to some mythical isolationist foreign policy is as impossible as it is undesirable. It would cede regional hegemony to national and non-state actors who have their own innate motivations for wishing death to those they label “infidels,” and make the world, America, and Israel, infinitely more insecure.

At GMU Law, she was speaking by joint invitation of the law school’s Federalist Society and Jewish Law Students Association.  For her speech, there was a packed audience of over one hundred and fifty people, including law students, alumnae and other interested parties.  This did not include her private security team, the GMU Law security guards, and the Arlington police also in attendance.  Not surprisingly, her appearance at the law school drew rebuke from the “usual suspects,” including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which bills itself as a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization but has been criticized by a prominent U.S. Senator for its “ties to terrorism.”   CAIR unsuccessfully tried to pressure GMU Law School to disinvite her as “a notorious Islamophobe,” but the Dean eloquently defended Ms. Darwish’s right to speak on campus.

Ms. Darwish opened her lecture by telling the story of her coming to America and seeing the standard American employment sign that reads, “This organization does not discriminate against race, religion or gender,” which she found to be both shocking and inspiring.  She stated that “For the first time in my life, I felt free and equal to men under the law.”  This sign directly prompted her to reexamine her life, her religion, her ideology, and her prejudices, and – eventually – to change them.  More specifically, her re-evaluation led her to: 1) fully recognize the dangers of Islamic Sharia, especially to women, non-Muslims, and Muslim minority groups; 2) condemn the extreme anti-Semitism that had been ingrained in her by Egyptian propaganda; 3) acknowledge her own father’s complicity in terrorism; and 4) realize that as a native of the Arab world and a former Muslim she had a duty to publicize these injustices against her own people (both Egyptians and other Arabs).  As a result of her life changing relocation to the United States, Ms. Darwish – through her speeches, books, and blog posts – now seeks to educate Americans about human rights and Sharia law in the Muslim world.

In her GMU presentation, Ms. Darwish spent much time describing her prior life in Egypt – some 30 years, from the 1950’s through the 1970’s – under Sharia law.  In Egypt, Ms. Darwish’s father was a Fedayeen commander, an Egyptian intelligence officer who in the 1950’s organized terror attacks by Palestinian terrorists based in Gaza into Israel, which killed hundreds of Jews, including many civilians.  Her father was eventually killed by Israeli, making him a shahid, or a martyr to the Arab cause, and making Ms. Darwish the daughter of an Arab national hero.  But even with her privileged background, Ms. Darwish could not avoid observing some of the major problems in Egyptian Sharia society.  She saw the second class status of Muslim women; even her mother, the widow of a shahid, was treated second class by Egyptian Muslim men.  Ms. Darwish also described how she knew – from personal experience with friends and relatives – that Sharia law mandated that a woman’s word in court was only worth one fourth of a man’s, that married women were killed for adultery, and that honor killings and female circumcision were widely practiced.

Most chillingly, based on these rules, if a married Muslim woman is raped by a man who is not her husband, and she reports this without having other witnesses (especially men), than she could be put to death for her admitted adultery.  While in Egypt Ms. Darwish also first observed that Sharia mandated discrimination against non-Muslims, which in Egypt were mostly Coptic Christians.  The Egyptian Copts – who make up at least 10% of Egypt’s 80 plus million people – were prevented from obtaining good jobs, could not serve in high government positions, and were restricted in their worship.  (Although she did not mention it in her presentation, Ms. Darwish would have been particularly knowledgeable about the Copt’s because her first husband was a Copt.)

Since leaving Egypt in 1978, Ms. Darwish has come to recognize even more problems inherent in Sharia law in most Muslim countries.  There is the increasing physical attacks on (if not slaughter of) non-Muslim and Muslim minority sects throughout the Muslim world.  In Egypt, Islamic radicals (i.e., Islamists) have rioted, looted and destroyed churches, and killed thousands of Copts, all in just the past year.  There is also the problem of Sharia sanctioned racial slavery.  In Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf States, slavery against darker skinned peoples is often practiced with government acquiescence.  Further, there is the mandated death penalty punishment for apostasy and, oftentimes, blasphemy (almost always against Mohammed) as well, in the Muslim world.  In particular, Pakistan has become well-known for the latter.  As Ms. Darwish also noted, the Muslim world is now hoping to spread its ban on blasphemy to the non-Muslim world.

On a personal note, she mentioned that relatively recently she was put on a list by Iranian leaders of apostates and blasphemers to be killed.  There is the increasing problem of Islamist propaganda being spread in the West by Saudi and other monied Muslim interests, which result in an actual distortion of reality.  For example, Ms. Darwish specifically stated that she had never before heard of the word “jihad” being defined as “a personal struggle in devotion to Islam especially involving spiritual discipline” until she came to the West, and that in Egypt and other Muslim nations it is defined as “a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty.”  Finally, there is the expanding problem of anti-Semitism in Sharia law, which has led to the most crude and violent speech against Jews and Israel throughout the Muslim world, and directly prevents any peaceful conclusion to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  At one point in the lecture, Ms. Darwish played several clips from Egyptian television to demonstrate this fact.  In one particularly disturbing clip, a “beautiful child” (as she referred to him) recited the most despicable curses against Jews to the beaming approval of his Islamist teachers.

At the end of her two hours, Ms. Darwish took questions from students in the audience (GMU Law required this) and addressed the criticism of her appearance by CAIR.  To the credit of both the entire audience and of Ms. Darwish, there was no shouting, insults or other dramatics at this presentation, unlike in some of her other college appearances.   About two-thirds of the questions posed to her were hostile towards her and her positions.  Those asked by self-described Muslim students often challenged what they claimed were Ms. Darwish own lack of credentials or knowledge of Sharia.  Ms. Darwish was very polite in her responses, but she still strongly pushed back on the idea that she couldn’t speak about Sharia without being a “noted Islamic scholar,” especially since she could certainly speak as to what she saw and heard and experienced.  Ms. Darwish also concluded by lambasting her chief group critic CAIR because it does nothing to help Muslims in the Muslim world who are experience violence and persecution, but instead spends its time criticizing people in the West who merely criticize either Islam or certain elements of Islam.

According to reports, the army was joined in attacking Christians by gangs of Muslim men armed with knives and clubs. A young Copt told Reuters that the violence was reserved for Christians, and that Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were not attacked when they conducted similar protests.  Egyptian State-controlled media broadcasted calls for Muslims to take to the streets against Christians, even as the Prime Minister blamed “outside forces” a code word which usually implies alleged Israeli or American interference.

But in truth all the American “interference” is on the side of the Egyptian junta squashing protests and targeting minority Copts. The United States provides approximately $2 billion in military aid to Egypt every year, including for the purchase of armored vehicles like those turned on the Copts. Just two weeks the Egyptian government lodged a protest with the Obama Administration, after the Senate appropriations bill, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), included limitations on military aid, including requiring certification that the Egyptian government was respecting freedom of expression and other democratic norms. Secretary Clinton promised the Egyptians that the Obama Administration opposed the restrictions, according to the Washington Post. Following the clashes Sunday, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said the President urged “restraint on all sides,” as if there was some moral equivalence between peaceful protestors and those running them down.   Despite the violence the White House is pushing for the election to continue on schedule; an election which the well established Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to dominate. Even as the Obama administration opposes the Senate appropriations bill, which would provide money for democracy promotion in Egypt and impose limitations on the army, the Obama State Department has held high-level talks with members of the Muslim Brotherhood according to a State Department official last week.  This has occurred despite the Brotherhood’s own electoral alliance with Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiya, an affiliate of Al Qaeda involved in the first World Trade Center attack, and #11 on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Whether done by design or incompetence, one cannot help but believe that the Administration’s policy is on course to ensure the rise of an Islamist anti-Western, Egypt.

EMET has made numerous warnings that the military was far more likely to side with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups, than it was to support minority rights, democratic activists and peace with Israel. Despite this, the administration, and even some pro-Israel organizations have continued to lobby for military aid to Egypt to continue to flow uninterrupted, oblivious to the facts on the ground, motivated by a failed understanding of the dynamics at play within Egyptian society. The events that occurred Sunday, are not the first Egyptian Army outrage. As we have previously reported, the Egyptian Army has conducted virginity checks against protestors, attacked Coptic monasteries, and committed other reprehensible acts against civilians.

Unfortunately there is no reason to imagine that the Obama Administration will reverse course following the tragic events in Maspero. However Sen. Leahy’s appropriations bill, with its restrictions on aid, are the beginning of a sign that those in Congress are beginning to sit up and take notice. However it seems likely that if the administration is granted any leeway by the legislative branch, it will continue its disastrous policy of arming the Egyptian military while at the same time reaching out to Islamists within the Egyptian political process. The U.S. Congress should act immediately to halt all transfers of funds to Egypt for arms, and demand an immediate halt to outreach to the Brotherhood members and other Islamists in Egypt. That is the only course which will provide religious minorities or Egyptian secularists even a modicum of a chance to prevail against the Egyptian Islamist-military alliance.  Until that happens, U.S. Taxpayers will continue to find themselves funding these sorts of massacres in the streets throughout Egypt.

In an attempt to understand the events of that day, the immediate comparison was to Pearl Harbor., the starting point of America’s entry into the conflict which defined the 20th century. 9/11 had much to compare itself with Pearl Harbor after all. Both from the surprise nature of the attack, to the number of casualties, and the sheer rarity of an attack upon the American homeland. Perhaps the comparison also drew hope of a united America dealing an overwhelming and certain defeat to a determined foe. And perhaps it brought to mind the apocryphal quote from Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, that to attack America was, “to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

As the American people learned more about the foes that struck us that day, it became clearer that this was not a 20th century conflict. It was, simultaneously something both new and ancient. In western minds it conjured up images of a bold new threat. The risk was seen as one of asymmetrical warfare against shadowy transnational groups. But in the minds of our enemy there was nothing new about 9/11. This was ancient warfare, reborn. 9/11 was a razzia, a raid, into the heart of Dar-Al-Harb, the abode of war, the lands of the infidel. This was the same jihad in pursuit of the same age-old goal. They sought to impose a global Caliphate and the ultimate domination of Islam in the world. As the 9/11 Commission report made clear at the time, there was no method of modern statecraft which might appease this enemy. “[A]l Qaeda’s answer [to the question of what American could do to avoid such attacks] was, “America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture…”

As America became more familiar with this enemy ideology, they realized that it was not merely the held belief of a few hijackers, or even a few thousand terrorists spread across camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to billions in petro-dollars provided by Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia, it was the curriculum for generations of young men educated in madrassas from Indonesia to east Africa. It could even be found within Europe and the United States itself. Its adherents were inculcated in the belief in the righteousness of Jihad, in the status of non-Muslims as infidels and oppressors who must be fought. Among those brought up to believe America and the West were their mortal enemies, were citizens of nations that America thought to be friends and allies. The 9/11 investigation revealed the extensive role played by our so-called allies in financing this jihad war against the West. These facts were revealed to the American public despite the millions of oil dollars the Gulf nations were spending with America’s largest public relations and lobbying firms to convince the American people otherwise.

Even as the depth of the problem became more easily understood by the average American, American leaders were at pains to limit the public’s exposure to certain realities about the nature of the challenge before us. The phrase “the religion of peace,” has been used so often by politicians that it has come to be regarded as a mostly risible and ironic phrase. “Thereligionofpeace.com” for instance, is a website that tracks attacks by terrorists committed in the name of Islam since September 11, 2001, at a current count of 17,710 world-wide. But both the Bush and Obama administrations insisted that any question of the role of religious doctrine or ideology or how widely such ideology might be held, was a dangerous distraction and that outreach to Muslim communities at home and abroad would be the center-piece of the resistance to Al Qaeda, not understanding and countering the enemy’s doctrine.

However in 2004, in the basement of Ismail Elbarasse, were discovered the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The same Muslim Brotherhood whose principle ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, was featured in the 9/11 Commission’s explanation of Osama Bin Laden’s origins and intentions. The documents found there would later be used as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, perhaps the most important terrorism finance trial ever to take place, where several Muslim Brothers were indicted, and convicted of funding Hamas. The documents entered into evidence, and stipulated to by the defense, illustrated to the public a decades’ long “civilization-jihadist” program against the West, to be waged by the Brotherhood. As part of this campaign, the Brotherhood had created numerous front-groups. Now they were marked as unindicted co-conspirators for terrorism, in a federal court.

In the years since 9/11, it was these unindicted co-conspirators that had been sought out by the government as sensitivity trainers, and outreach partners for their anti-terrorism efforts. Even after 2004, despite the government’s knowledge, the Brotherhood remained responsible for certifying the chaplains of America’s prisons, and her military, and remained a close partner for reaching out to Muslim communities. A loud outcry from concerned citizens groups and a few astute lawmakers led to a few of these M.B. organizations being excluded. But federal departments soon were opening up new associations with other Muslim Brotherhood groups — which ironically were also were listed as unindicted co-conspirators for supporting terror organizations.

Since the arrival into office of the Obama administration, this matter of Muslim Brotherhood subversion, once worrisome, have now reached levels of the deepest concern. Administration officials now openly praise the brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization and have squashed future prosecutions against the Muslim Brotherhood and its support for terrorism.

Where once the 9/11 commission openly discussed Islamic history and Bin’ Laden’s ideological motivations, now there is only “violent extremism,” a shapeless meaninglessly vague threat. Where once some complained that the denotation “the War on Terror” was too vague and ill-suited, now there are only “overseas contingency operations” aimed at preventing “man-caused disasters.” These bland characterizations have not stuck with the American public however. Today, more than ever, the American people understand the depth of the threat from the theocratic political doctrine, Sharia, which unites Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and others that pose a threat to the American way of life.

The only way to judge the status of our struggle, is to ask whether Al Qaeda and those who share their beliefs, are closer, or further from their goals? We must say in fairness that they are closer. Secular regimes across the Middle East are in turmoil, and may yet be replaced by Islamic governments. Western academic elites proudly and publicly declare that the very totalitarian law which Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood would impose is neither threatening nor undemocratic. In western countries free expression about the nature of Islam, and those who commit terrorism in its name has been sharply curtailed. In the United States of America, cartoonists are censored, even sent into hiding, because they have violated some Islamic stricture against so-called blasphemy. What’s worse, the government has now partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (formerly Islamic Conference) and Muslim countries to institute global speech codes aiming to brand any critical statements, even those made by apostates or reformers of Islam, to be hate speech and therefore illegal.

Ten years after, we are not a sleeping giant anymore. The public is more awake now, certainly more aware now, of what is happening then it has ever been. We see far more clearly than we did that day in September. But yet we find that despite the awakening of the American people, the organs of our national power do not respond, do not take the appropriate action, despite the warnings. We are a giant suffering under a local anesthetic. A potent mixture of infiltration, subversion, and cowardly political correctness saps our national will. In whatever ways this conflict differs from modern wars of the past century, until America restores its “terrible resolve”, we remain no closer to resolution of this great conflict of the 21st century.

The lone wolf scenario is so frightening because all of the usual windows of opportunity for security and intelligence officials to become of aware of and interdict the plot are smaller in scope and narrower in time span.

Consider the timeline of a “normal” Islamist terror attack. Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s cause are radicalized and are encouraged or take it upon themselves to travel to areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or other places where AQ has successfully established training camps. Over a period of months the subjects receive intensive indoctrination in Islamist ideology, weapons training, bomb-making, terror tactics and other important terrorist skills.  When their training is completed they are released back into the world. New identities or travel papers may have been prepared for travel to their target countries. Reconnaissance may begin on selected targets and money may be transferred to the terrorists to keep them operational. The weapons for the attack must be acquired, prepared and  possibly tested before the terror attack can begin.

A good example of this sort of timeline is the attempt to bomb the New York City subway by Najibullah Zazi. Zazi traveled to Pakistan will several fellow Muslims in August of 2008 with the intention of joining the Taliban but was instead recruited by Al Qaeda and trained for U.S. operations. He returned to the United States in mid-January of the following year. Zazi became a member of an active cell of terrorist operatives and communicated with them — communications which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials were able to intercept. Zazi began researching bomb-making materials in June and began purchasing critical materials in August. He conducted tests in late August and early September. Then he drove to New York City where he became aware of FBI and police surveillance.  In a panic, he fled back to his home in Denver and was arrested. From recruitment to (failed) execution took slightly more than a year.

Consider in comparison the case of the 1993 shooting outside the Langley offices of the CIA, when Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani native, opened fire on a line of parked cars waiting to enter America’s intelligence headquarters. Kansi quickly killed two people and wounded three others before fleeing to Pakistan.  Kansi had resided in the United States since 1991. He had acquired the AK-47 automatic rifle with which he committed the crime through an ordinary gun store only three days prior to the shooting. The gun store owner later said that Kansi appeared unfamiliar with the weapon and had to be instructed how to assemble and disassemble it. It is unclear when exactly Kansi was radicalized, but when he was finally arrested in Pakistan in 2002, he claimed to have had “friends among the Taliban” and to have shaken hands with Osama Bin Laden. He told investigators that he wanted to strike at the United States for its “Pro-Israel, Anti-Muslim” policies.

With an unclear period of radicalization and only three days from acquiring the weapon to the attack, the time frame for law enforcement to discover and capture a “lone wolf” like Mir Aimal Kansi is too short.  Law enforcement had only two very brief chances to become aware of the lone wolf. Early during his radicalization before he had, in fact, committed any crime and during the time he acquired the weapon. In fact, Kansi had committed a crime by illegally purchasing a firearm since Kansi was not an American citizen and was thus prohibited from purchasing a firearm.  Still that crime took place only three days before the attack.

Not much to go on.

Even less so, in the North Carolina case of Reza Taheri-azar, a UNC-Chapel Hill student and Iranian immigrant who ran over 9 people in a rented sports utility vehicle selected for that deadly purpose. Fortunately no one was killed. Taheri-azar later told police that he wanted to, “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world,” and told the judge during his trial that he was “thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.” Up until the point Taheri-azar put his foot on the gas pedal instead of the brake he had committed no crime. What chance did law enforcement have of interdicting such an attempt?

Only during radicalization, when the attacker has been exposed to and internalized an Islamist worldview which encourages violent and murderous jihad, is there any chance to intercept such a plot before it is executed.

Perhaps a strategy which educated law enforcement and security officials on the nature of the Islamist ideology, its language, heroes and ideologues and its history and methods might prove a worthwhile endeavor. For instance, if that had been done, perhaps more attention would have been paid to Dr. Nidal Malik Hassan.  The Fort Hood shooter killed thirteen and wounded almost thirty more in a shooting rampage but not before he conducted a PowerPoint slide presentation for senior army doctors entitled, “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” which included Islamic justifications for suicide bombings and featured the common Islamist slogan, “We love death more than you love life.” In a Political Correctness-laden report, The Department of Defense’s follow up report on the attack made no mention of Islam or Nidal Hassan’s ideological motivations.

Recently the Obama Administration released its strategy to deal with the lone wolf threat.  Predictably, it proposed the exact opposite of what is needed. Instead, the recent Administration report, incomprehensibly and meaninglessly entitled, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, is a 4,600 word whitewash completely devoid of meaning or educational potential.  As Professor Daniel Pipes sums up the report:

Nature of the problem? “Neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic hate groups, racial supremacists, and international and domestic terrorist groups.”

Name of the enemy? The paper itself never mentions Islam or even radical Islam. In fact the report’s title, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, avoids the mention of the word “terrorism.”

Appropriate Federal law enforcement response? “Just as we respond to community safety issues [such as gang violence, school shootings, drugs, and hate crimes] through partnerships and networks of government officials, Mayor’s offices, law enforcement, community organizations, and private sector actors, so must we address radicalization to violence and terrorist recruitment through similar relationships and by leveraging some of the same tools and solutions.”

A decade after the attacks on 9/11, rather than create a policy that come to grips with the evolving tactics of the fanatical ideological enemy we are fighting, we now have a counterterrorism policy that refuses to even use the word “terrorism,” and treats perpetrators of terror attacks in the same vein as perpetrators of gang violence.

More than just incompetence is at work here.

While Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States was released in early August, its faulty assumptions read identically to those published by the Homeland Security Advisory Council in a report titled,  “Countering Violent Extremism Working Group” and published at about the same time last year.  Both reports are so similar that they utilize the same comparison between terrorism and gang violence and propose using community-policing to “stop violent behavior regardless of the motivation.”

Included, in that working group was the president of at least one Muslim Brotherhood front group, Imam Mohamed Maghid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (although he is not recognized in that capacity in the PowerPoint slide describing the working group’s members) and Mohamed Elibiary, who once shared the platform during a “tribute to the great Islamic visionary” the Ayatollah Khomeini, and who argued against describing the preeminent  radical Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, the late Sayyid Qutb, as either radical or dangerous.

In other words, the government has asked the very proponents of the ideologies that have radicalized  Western Muslims as well as leaders of organizations which have been named as unindicted co-conspirators for the funding of terrorism, to propose government policy for countering the inevitable “violent extremism” that results from the ideological beliefs which these people themselves apparently hold.

So deeply has our government involved our ideological enemy in our OODA loop that they are now effectively in control of nearly every stage of our decision-making process regarding counterterrorism. They are the advisors to whom our national authorities look for advice and direction in forming our national strategy. They are, according to a former FBI agent, inside members of the executive branch department responsible for implementing U.S. anti-terrorist policy. They encourage our security and law enforcement officials to work alongside community organizations — which they themselves control. And they control the public relations organizations and “civil rights” groups which then heaps praise upon the Administration for following their advice.

The lone wolf threat helps to encapsulate the reality that the greatest threat is not from bombs or guns or rented sports-utility vehicles.  It is a threat springing from a violent belief system — a radical ideology. Our law enforcement and intelligence officials must be given the tools to recognize the signs of that belief system as it manifests itself in human actors. That is the only counter-terror strategy with a hope of success against a lone wolf or against any terror attack. This system can be analyzed and understood. The violent Koranic citations, the hadiths and Sharia jurisprudence which forms the foundation upon which ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and Anwar al-Awlaki build, can be read and understood. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission Report did exactly that, albeit in a limited and imperfect way.

The tragic question many asked that fateful day on 9/11 was, “Why did they do this to us?” A decade later, thanks to our government’s inability to name our adversaries or call out their ideology, the wolves in sheep’s clothing within our own government have us moving even further away from an answer.

Unfortunately, that is not how it works in today’s politicized world of homeland security and defense.

Take for instance the case of Abdel Rahman al-Amoudi. Al-Amoudi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.), and was identified as such in the Holy Land Foundation trial documents. He was the founder of the American Muslim Council, an Islamic advisor to the Clinton White House, a Democratic and Republican fundraiser and a State Department lecturer.  As an advisor to the Department of Defense, the Muslim Brotherhood through the organization he founded was given the responsibility for training our Muslim military chaplains. Al-Amoudi donated $20,000 dollars to help conservative activist Grover Norquist establish the Islamic Institute. In addition, Al-Amoudi worked with Sami-al-Arian, another M.B. member, to get then Presidential Candidate George W. Bush to commit to ending the use of secret intelligence evidence at deportation proceedings.

Then, in 2003  the lights came on.

Al-Amoudi was arrested in 2003 at Heathrow Airport with hundreds of thousands of dollars provided by Libyan President Moammar Qaddafi. He was caught on audiotape calling for acts of terrorism and claiming to support the terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas. In court, he pled guilty to financing terrorism (including funding Al Qaeda) and of conspiring with Libya to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince (they failed). The court sentenced him to 23 years in prison.

In another dramatic 2003 arrest, Sami al-Arian was also caught and charged. He pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to assist the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a specially designated global terrorist.

In 2007, federal prosecutors filed charges against the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas based Muslim charity and front for the terror group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. During the trial, prosecutors released hundreds of pages of documents; the entire archives of the North American Muslim Brotherhood. It included the lists of names and phone numbers of Brotherhood members in the U.S. There were organizational charts and a full strategic memorandum calling for a “Civilization-Jihad process,” in addition to plans for a “Grand Jihad” to sabotage America from within. Documents listed member organizations, including some of the most influential Muslim organizations in America, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  After an initial mistrial, the Federal government won its case in late November 2008.

But then, nothing happened.

The exposed agents of Grand Jihad did not run for cover when the lights came on. With a few exceptions, their American government contacts did not cut them off or treat them as pariahs even though they had been thoroughly tainted with terrorist associations, with plots for sedition against the United States and to establish a global caliphate. Secondary prosecutions that had been planned were suddenly scuttled to avoid political embarrassment. Major news organizations continued to call on the members of known Muslim Brotherhood organizations to get their opinion on all things Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood still provides the FBI with Muslim outreach and the DOD is still provided with Muslim Chaplains through ISNA.

Even more astounding, last week the Department of Justice filed papers to cut short al-Amoudi’s 23 year sentence. Why? Since the documents are under seal, we do not know. The judge in the case canceled a hearing scheduled for last Friday, deciding instead to make the determination based solely on already filed paperwork. In order to get a shortened sentence, the filing would require that al-Amoudi had already provided substantial assistance to the prosecutor’s office.  But it’s difficult to say what such assistance could have consisted of.  With the revelations available in the Holy Land Foundation documents, and considering that Al-Amoudi has been in prison for the past nine years, it’s questionable what cooperation he might have been able to provide at this juncture which would motivate prosecutors to release him.

This raises the very serious question of whether his release may not be political. This is especially true as the Obama administration in recent months has expressed increased acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, including Secretary Hiliary Clinton’s assurance earlier this month that the U.S. now “welcomes dialogue” with the Brotherhood.

If al-Amoudi is indeed released, it would represent a tremendous success for the Brotherhood. They will have successfully survived the aftermath of al-Amoudi’s arrest and the revelations of the Holy Land Foundation trial. Their operation to penetrate and influence the United States will have been so successful that they will have quashed the proposed secondary prosecutions expected from the Holy Land Foundation and also extricated a major M.B. organizer from prison — despite his crimes. This will certainly embolden them to attempt to free others, including Sami al-Arian, who has long been a cause célèbre for the M.B. and their fellow travelers on the radical left. With the Obama administration having now legitimized the Muslim Brotherhood as acceptable partners abroad, it has made them acceptable partners domestically as well — their call for “Grand Jihad” notwithstanding.

What can be done?

As President Ronald Reagan once reportedly said, “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”

If our intelligence and security agencies and the media refuse to see the danger and will not make Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated persons and organizations persona non grata, then the American people will be forced to do it for them. When television news shows and newspapers give face time or column space to M.B. fronts like CAIR, these TV networks and newspapers must hear from their audience.  Legislators willing to hold hearings and draw attention to the danger of the Muslim Brotherhood should be publically praised, as for instance Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who this week has announced a third set of hearings on Muslim radicalization in the U.S.  Those who hold hands with M.B. fronts however, and defend them, must have it known that their disdain for American security will be made an issue when they face election challenges. We must then keep the pressure on our legislators to insure that they also hold the unelected bureaucrats accountable.

Unfortunately, in dealing with “influence” operations of the size and scope of the one being run by the Muslim Brotherhood, there is no easy answer. When exposed, their response is not to flee, but to counter-accuse, to manipulate, and burrow deeper and to use our American process against itself.

We must also double our efforts and know that there will never be a silver bullet for the Muslim Brotherhood’s “civilization-Jihad” or for radical Islam in general. It forces us to always remain vigilant. Perhaps this administration will succeed in freeing al-Amoudi, but we must not allow such a setback to keep us from identifying, exposing, and arresting the next al-Amoudi.

What was perhaps most ironic was our government’s decision that, despite being repeatedly told by the administration that Bin Laden and his cohort represented a false — indeed perverted version of Islam, we provided him with a full Islamic burial ceremony — although at sea. Did the large swathes of the Islamic population take righteous offense that a mass murderer and terrorist was treated as an honorable member of the Muslim faith, and granted the same ceremony which U.S. Muslims who serve in our own military enjoy?

Of course not.

From Pakistan, to Indonesia, and from the Gaza Strip to right here in America, statements of support for Bin Laden arose. “A Muslim and Arab Holy Warrior,” said Hamas leader Ismail Haniya of Bin Laden.  Fatah and the Palestinian Authority were little better, despite hurried attempts by Mahmoud Abbas to defuse these statements by issuing reversals in English. Fatah supporters joined with Hamas partisans to march through the streets in support of a Palestinian unity agreement, while wielding images of Bin Laden. On the Palestinian Ma’an website Fatah’s military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade called the death of the “sheikh” and “Shahid” Bin Laden “a catastrophe” for the “Islamic nation” in their Arabic announcements. In the English version of the same story however, Palestinian news ironically reported, “Palestinian reactions to the announcement that the Al-Qaeda leader had been assassinated were mixed.”

In Egypt the “largely secular” (according to the incomprehensible analysis of Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper) Muslim Brotherhood protested the killing as well, and condemned the United States for associating “Islam” with “terrorism.” Yet it is Muslim Brotherhood leaders who have honored Osama as “a sheikh,” a “martyr” and a “Jihad-fighter.” Hundreds of Egyptians rallied in favor of Osama on the streets of Cairo, an act which likely would have been impossible under Mubarak’s rule, and just another rewarding result of our failing Middle East policy.

Pakistan’s reaction was perhaps to be expected. A majority of Pakistanis polled were saddened by the death of Bin Laden. Thousands rallied in support of Osama, a hundred of thousand purchased posters of the terror mastermind. Pakistani lawmakers offered Bin Laden funeral prayers, as our so-called ally has been attempting to pay high-powered D.C. Lobbyists to help cloud the fact that Bin Laden was sheltered there for nearly 5 years. And in terrorist hot-spots like Somalia and Sudan, support for Bin Laden comes as no surprise.

But what happened in Indonesia, the largest-Muslim country, which we are repeatedly reminded practices a “tolerant and moderate Islam?” Protests and support for Bin Laden broke-out there as well.  Our NATO ally, previously secular Turkey, saw protests raging throughout the country. The same happened in the Philippines, which is far removed from what we are told are the real cause of Islamic terrorism: the petro-tyrants, Zionists, or other geo-political concerns. In Kuwait, which American soldiers went to war to liberate from the clutches of Saddam Hussein, a female columnist romantically speculates what it might have been like to marry a mass murderer, in the way teenage girls’ dream of boy-band singers:

“I dreamed of being Osama’s companion there, where the utmost danger lurks, so I could clasp his galabiya, stained with the blood of martyrdom, to my bosom, so I could be his companion as he [counted] the burdensome seconds, waiting to join the convoy of [his martyred] comrades and friends…”Osama, the knight who dismounted from the horse of worldly pleasure, donned a [cleric's] turban, gripped a Kalashnikov, and entered the tunnel from which there is no return. From there I saw his stature reach to the heavens, as he recruited the knights in response to the voices of the women of Islam, whose honor has been violated and whose strength is gone, and who cry out [to him], ‘Osama!’…

Even in Britain and the United States, Bin Laden received praise and support. In the United Kingdom, British Muslims honored Osama , and called for revenge against the United States and the United Kingdom. The British press, ever helpful, explained that these Muslims were “Bin Laden Supporters” to differentiate them from the crowd of British working-class youth shouting “U.S.A, U.S.A,” which were labeled “extremists.”

In the United States, the front organizations of the international Muslim Brotherhood, which make up the most influential Muslim groups in the country, were more cautious about their statements, but even so the veil slipped. The M.B.-linked Muslim American Society issued a press release entitled, “Agreeing to Disagree about the death of Osama Bin Laden”, which referred to the mass murderer as a visionary who loved children.  Former Fiqh Council of North America member Salah Soltan said openly on the Muslim Brotherhood website that Bin Laden’s terrorism was “in defense of Islam.” Soltan is an advisor to Bahrain’s “Islamic Affairs” Ministry.

This “tiny minority of [Muslim] extremists”, we should now know if we did not before, is neither tiny nor an insignificant minority. We ignored it when we were told that 1/4^th of American Muslim youth supported suicide bombing in some instances. We ignored it when we learned that 40% of British Muslims sought to live under Sharia law. And, while support for Osama Bin Laden as an individual was not always high, support for his cause, the imposition of Sharia law and Islamic government, has remained high.  Large percentages in many Muslim countries continue to favor Sharia punishments like stoning adulterers, the cutting off hands for thieves, and the execution of apostates who leave Islam, and a not insignificant number support suicide bombings, “in defense of Islam.”

It is long since past time for us to stop pretending that support for terrorism, and indeed for jihad against the West in all its forms, is an aberration that sprang forth wholly unaided from the mind of Osama Bin Laden. As though Al Qaeda, like S.P.E.C.T.R.E in the old James Bond films, is an organization dedicated to villainy solely for its own sake, and without any ideological goal or intent.

No, Al Qaeda, and its fellow Islamic terror groups, are sharks swimming in a sea of like-minded individuals. And until we come to accept that, no matter how many more Bin Ladens we successfully terminate, we will not succeed against this foe.

Now that mystery has been solved. It appears that secondary prosecutions against Muslim Brotherhood members, including CAIR national founder Omar Ahmad were planned, but scuttled after intervention from political appointees from the Obama Administration, according to Department of Justice whistleblowers speaking to investigative reporter Patrick Poole:

It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions…There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning…But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that the prosecutions could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still this administration’s interfaith allies… It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on “material support for terrorism” when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts.

The response from the Obama Administration has been to point out that secondary prosecutions also did not take place under the Bush administration which is true. But as Poole’s source makes clear, that decision came because of the  original mistrial verdict obtained in the first HLF trial. The guilty verdict in the retrial was not returned until November 24, 2008, and sentences were not handed down until May of 2009. Needless to say, November 25^th to January 20^th, 2009 is not much time to prepare prosecutions against numerous individuals in a complicated terror finance trial.

Of course the M.B. infiltration into the U.S. government is a problem that started well before the Obama Administration. This point was raised by administration officials in the press and it is absolutely true. The Muslim Brotherhood began its operations in the United States with the founding of the Muslim’s Student’s Association (MSA) in 1963. Brotherhood organizations became involved with terrorism and law enforcement sensitivity issues under President Clinton, and M.B. members participated in interfaith and counter-terrorism “out-reach” under President George W. Bush. As Poole’s source notes:

Let’s not forget that during the Clinton administration we had one of al-Qaeda’s top operatives in America — Abdurahman Alamoudi — organizing iftar dinners at the White House! He is the same person who stood beside President Bush right after 9/11…Then we had [CAIR Executive Director] Nihad Awad advising Al Gore’s aviation security commission back in the late 90s. We said absolutely nothing even though we had him on our wiretaps five years before at a major Hamas meeting in Philadelphia. Nobody from DOJ or the FBI said a goddamn word because CAIR was advising every single federal agency dealing with terrorism at the time.

There has been no administration, Republican or Democrat, which has acted responsibly on the issue of the M.B.  But the issue has gotten substantially worse under the Obama administrations for two reasons. The first, is simply time. As relationships and appointments made by previous administrations have matured, it has advanced Muslim Brotherhood members to high levels, and made Federal agencies wholly reliant on M.B. sources for outreach and knowledge about Islam and the Islamic community under the Obama Administration.

But, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, the second reason the situation has gotten progressively worse, is due to an explicit Obama policy of active engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood  that began after President Obama’s Cairo speech, and continues to this day.  Again, according to the DOJ whistleblowers:

Obama-administration officials have airbrushed the Muslim Brotherhood, portraying fundamentalist radicals who seek to vanquish the West as “largely secular moderates” with whom our government should be working cooperatively. The President invited the Brotherhood to his Cairo speech, even though at the time it was a banned organization in Egypt — and even though only a few months earlier the HLF trial proved the existence of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to actively instigate sabotage in America while promoting Hamas’s mission to destroy Israel.

Those who have opposed the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood have found themselves under attack and slandered by the Brotherhood’s lobby and fellow travelers. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was politically brutalized by accusations, led by CAIR and other M.B. fronts, after his hearings on Muslim-American radicalization. Political allies of the present Administration, including members of King’s own committee joined in, attempting to paint genuine concerns for American national security as “Islamophobia,” even though all of those testifying to radicalization problems were themselves Muslims. One witness, Mr. Melvin Bledsoe, even lost his son to radical Islam, when Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad opened fire on a recruiting station in Arkansas, killing one service member and wounding another. Despite these attacks, Rep. Peter King has continued to fight the good fight, publicly submitting a letter to the Department of Justice asking questions about the failure to prosecute M.B. members.  CAIR pounced on Rep. King’s letter, calling it retaliation for its opposition to his recent hearings on radicalization in the American Muslim community.

With Rep. King’s weight added to the questions regarding the circumstances, Attorney General Eric Holder was forced to come out and issue a statement almost a week after the initial story broke. Holder attempted to describe the refusal to prosecute as being made by, “career folks looking at the evidence,” a claim almost immediately retracted and clarified by DOJ spokesmen, who admitted that the decision makers were indeed political appointees.

The work done by reporter Patrick Poole, and the courage of his sources in coming forward is extraordinary, but it will all be in vain if there are no political changes. The time has long passed when politicians, legislators, national security and law enforcement officials should be allowed to maintain contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood and their front organizations without penalty.

While Frank Gaffney, whose Center for Security Policy’s report “Shariah: The Threat to America,” detailed information about the Muslim Brotherhood and its infiltration efforts, has labeled these failures to disassociate from the M.B., “Misprision of a Treason” a federal felony.   At the very least, there must be political and career consequences for those who associate with the Muslim Brotherhood and their fronts.

To do this requires an informed American public unwilling to accept the excuse that “The former administration also did it too!” The American public must demand that legislators use their powers of oversight and subpoena, to drag these Brotherhood agents of influence, and those who knowingly cooperate with them, into the light. Until then we will continue to see officials covering up for and standing together with the Muslim Brotherhood, and against the interests and security of America.

This is in keeping with the religious principles of Judaism. It says in the Talmud that “We are to respect the law of the land”. In our synagogue, as in most others throughout the United States, before we say the prayer for the survival of Israel, we say a prayer for the survival of the United States.

We would like to believe that all religions are equal, that they all want peace, and that no true believer wants religious hegemony, or would ever kill in the name of G-d.

However, the facts necessitate us to conclude differently.

Nina Shea, of the Center for Religious Freedom conducted a study in 2006,  replicated in 2008, where she  went into fifteen randomly selected Islamic schools on our shores, stemming from New York to California, and found that they all had a Wahhabaist curriculum.

Among the alarming findings were  that Jews are discussed in violent terms, blaming them for virtually all the “sedition” and wars of the modern world; the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is taught as historical fact, and all current events are related back to that as the root cause; the instruction selectively highlights violence against Jews, while the selections of the Koran and hadiths, (sections that explain Muhammad’s life) that counsel tolerance are  ignored; the teaching that Jews and Christians are the enemies of “true”  believers.

Jihad is defined as a “religious obligation”, and as “wrestling with the infidels by calling them to faith and battling against them.”

It is no wonder that a Valedictorian of the Islamic Academy of Northern Virginia sent President George  Bush a note, threatening his life.  He obviously had learned his lessons well.

Last May, Attorney General  Holder was asked at a House Judiciary Committee about three recent terrorist attacks: The Fort Hood Shooting in November 2009, by Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major of Palestinian descent who opened fire on his fellow serviceman , killing 13 and wounding 29 others;  the Underwear Bomber, Omar Farouk Abdulmattalub, a Nigerian who boarded a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009, attempting to blow it up by hiding explosives in his underwear, and the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shazad, who had attempted  to detonate a bomb in the middle of Times Square,  in the middle of the Christmas season.

Unfortunately, we did not hear cries of outrage from imams across the world when these atrocities had been attempted. Why is that?

Moreover:  When asked if these actions night have been the result of incitement within radical Islam, Mr. Holder, replied, “There are a variety of  reasons why I think these people have taken these actions.”

Obfuscating, whitewashing and sweeping the obvious under the rug will not keep American citizens safe. This is the very reason why we have a Homeland Security Committee, which was created shortly after September 11.

Chairman King is serving the American people well  by holding hearings on this issue. We assume that all immigrant populations come here with respect for the values of this great nation.

Some, however use our constitutional freedoms as a smokescreen behind which to hide. They actually have contempt for American civilization, feel that our freedoms have made us an immoral and corrupt civilization. Many Islamist believers truly believe that they are here to help create a world-wide Islamic caliphate. They see their role here as “dawa”(conversion to Islam).

It is also extremely important for Westerners to understand the concept of “Takia”, within Islam, which means the ends justify the means. It is considered not only acceptable, but actually a good deed, within Islam to lie for the sake of Allah.

As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “We in the West make a great mistake when we transpose our values onto the rest of the world.”

Thank You, Peter King.