Tag Archives: Freedom and Justice Party

Top Muslim Brotherhood Adviser Gehad El-Haddad Worked For Bill Clinton – So did Huma Abedin

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During the closing session of the 2012 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, former President Bill Clinton failed to hold Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to account for the anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. incitement engaged in over the years by both Dr. Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Video (time 55:03) of the session shows that Mr. Clinton seemed about to ask Dr. Morsi about this incitement but ended up remarking only that the “fairly large” number of Jews in the audience were among those who wished him well and wanted him to succeed. Few if any in the audience could have realized that Bill and Hillary Clinton have had individuals belonging to both the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and to Saudi Islamists in their employ.

Gehad El-Haddad

Gehad El-Haddad

Two weeks ago, the Carnegie Europe in collaboration with the European Parliament hosted a conference in Brussels with a session on “Political Islam.” One of the featured speakers at the session was Gehad El-Haddad, billed as Senior Adviser, Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party and Executive Director, Nahda Project (Egypt). According to his resume, from August 2007 until August 2012 Gehad El-Haddad was the City Director in Egypt for the William J. Clinton Foundation. Among Mr. El-Haddad’s duties at the Foundation were representing the Clinton Climate Initiative in Egypt, setting up the foundation’s office in Egypt, managing official registration, and identifying and developing program-based projects & delivery work plans. Gehad El-Haddad later became a Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, a position he has held since May 2011. His resume also says that he is a Senior Adviser & Media Spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood as well as a Steering Committee Member of the Brotherhood’s Renaissance (Nahda) Project. Mr Haddad also served as the Media Strategist & Official Spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

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Huma Abedin

Huma Abedin

Disturbing as the El-Haddad family ties are to the Muslim Brotherhood and to the Clinton Foundation, Gehad El-Haddad is not the only individual employed by the Clinton family whose relationship to the Global Muslim Brotherhood should raise concerns. The New York Times reported on Thursday that long-time aid to Hillary Clinton Huma Abedin was working, among other side jobs, as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation while still employed by the US State Department.

Our predecessor publication was the first to report on the ties of Huma Abedin’s family to Saudi Arabian Islamists and which have since become part of the  political firestorm that began in 2012 when a group of House representatives sent letters to five federal agencies demanding investigations into alleged infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these ties center on the Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMM) edited by Human Abedin’s mother Saleha M. Abedin (aka Saleha Mahmood) and which has Brotherhood supporter and Saudi-funded Georgetown professor John Esposito on its advisory board. Huma Abedin was listed by the IMM Journal as an Assistant Editor from 1996 until 2008, a time period during which she was working for Hillary Clinton in various capacities including as a White House intern in 1996.

Read more at The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch

 

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Muslim Brotherhood Sets Up Militia to Enforce Rule

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 The Islamists are looking for alternative law enforcement methods now that the police cannot be relied upon to stand by President Morsi.

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Protests against the Muslim Brotherhood continue to rock Egypt without a word being said from the White House. Now, the Brotherhood and allied Islamists are taking a cue from their Shiite counterparts in Tehran and have announced they are setting up a civilian force with the power to arrest those they deem to be criminals.

The Muslim Brotherhood first hinted at setting up a militia on December 16 when Vice Chairman Essam Erian of its Freedom and Justice Party said it needed defenses in the wake of clashes. “They would have defended themselves in front of the presidential palace and killed the other [anti-Brotherhood] protesters,” he said.  At around the same time, Jama’a al-Islamiya threatened to set up a pro-Brotherhood militia to “protect private and public property and counter the aggression on innocent citizens.”

The Brotherhood and Jam’a al-Islamiya have announced their intention to set up a joint civilian police force with other Islamists. The Brotherhood and its supporters point to Salafi groups like Jama’a al-Islamiya as proof that they are comparatively “moderate.” This Islamist relativism is a defining feature of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. Yet, here we have the Islamists coming together for their common Sharia cause in recognition that their differences are nothing compared to those they have with the secularists.

Jama’a al-Islamiya says it will soon submit a draft law to Egypt’s Shura Council for approval and that the militia will be unarmed and supervised by the Interior Ministry. Those apprehended are to be transferred to military or official police custody.

Read more at Front Page

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The real Brotherhood reveals itself

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A Muslim Brotherhood supporter kisses a picture of President Morsi, who has revealed himself to be more totalitarian than many had hoped. (AFP photo)

By Michael  Weiss:

A nice sociological experiment would be to ask any child of average intelligence what he thinks a fit occupation is for a man who believes all at once that Jews are a subspecies who somehow maintain a monopoly on America’s sources of information, that commercial aircraft piloted by al-Qaeda agents did not destroy the Twin Towers on 9/11, and that everything one needs to learn about life is encoded in the original “Planet of the Apes” film. I might question your sample pool if your responses varied far beyond “squeegie-wielder” or perhaps “syndicated AM radio talk show host.” Yet it is remarkable the ease with which a whole intellectual-industrial complex has sprung up crediting the fitness of such a person for the presidency of the most populous Arab country.

In the last month, we have learned that Mohammed Morsi thought, as few as two years ago, that Jews, or “Zionists” as he likes to call them, are “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs”; that Egyptians ought to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” of them; and that a boycott was in order of all countries that support Israel, including the United States, which only provides Egypt with $1.5 billion in annual subsidies. When confronted with these comments from his not-so-distant past by a delegation of discomfited US senators, Morsi clarified that this was all a big misunderstanding, or rather a willful misinterpretation of what he’d intended. As one senator summarized the Egyptian president’s clarification, “Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this, and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably.”

As a certain force in the media that doesn’t view him favorably, I think I know what Morsi meant by this. What I don’t know is what the New York Times meant in its editorial on the subject, wherein it claimed that such statements, which were revealed after Morsi had arrogated to himself dictatorial powers leading to mass riots in Egypt, “raise serious doubts about whether he can ever be the force for moderation and stability that is needed.” What would confirm those doubts for the Times? And why is the presumption of “moderation” still bestowed on a man and an ideological organization that have worked overtime to prove the opposite about themselves, much as excuses are still made on their behalf?

The original definition of an intellectual was someone who grappled with the Jewish Question and came out on the right side. Today, it seems, that definition has widened to encompass defenders of those who don’t even know or care that such a question ever existed. Yet “apes and pigs” isn’t the half of it. Decades of tracts, sermons and observed behavior did little to prompt a serious investigation into the totalitarian nature of the Muslim Brotherhood by a truly impressive array of policymakers, journalists and academics, some of whom continue to resist the dawning of a new consensus by resorting to pure silliness: comparing Morsi to Abraham Lincoln, or reading in his “constitutional declaration” of November 22 – in which he obliterated judicial review of his executive powers and declared himself the sole steward of the Egyptian revolution – the lineaments of a committed democrat.

Consider first that becoming a Muslim Brother takes as long as becoming a fully licensed medical doctor or reaching Tom Cruise’s stature in the Church of Scientology – surely a sign of some discipline and ideological rigidity. Loyalty to the organization is absolute, with adherents giving an oath to “listen and obey.” Universities are considered fertile recruitment grounds, and those who do the recruiting like to initially avoid identifying themselves as members of the Brotherhood – until, that is, they feel they can trust their quarry well enough on first principles. (I’d pay good money to see campus evangelicals or Young Republicans try to dissimulate as anything but themselves.) Even those who seek out membership in the Brotherhood are severely vetted for the requisite religiosity.

There is a five-step process that starts by joining an usra, or “family,” which monitors your indoctrination and scrutinizes your private life for any sign of waywardness. The second stage involves rote memorization of swathes of the Quran and the texts of Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna. The third stage involves donating a portion of your income (usually between five and eight percent, admittedly below the going L. Ron Hubbard rate) to the organization. The fourth stage entails memorization of the entire Quran and the hadith and having your fealty tested with questions, the “wrong” answers to which might lead to your expulsion. The fifth and final stage gives you voting rights within the organization. The whole process can take between five and eight years. Joining the German Christian Democrats takes five to eight minutes.

The height of the Brotherhood hierarchy is a Politburo-like Guidance Office (Maktab al-Irshad) consisting of 15 senior-ranking Brothers, of which Morsi was one, and headed by a Supreme Guide. These members are put in charge of various departments ranging from education to recruitment to political policy, and the officers are elected by a Central Committee-like Shura Council of 100 Brothers.

If this structure seems inhospitable to dissent and self-criticism, then it’s because it is. One Brotherhood youth group that disagreed with the creation of the Freedom and Justice Party, believing that the organization was better suited to social and cultural outreach, was purged when it formed its own unaffiliated party. Voluntary resignation from the Brotherhood can lead to worse consequences, as 38-year-old Abdel Jailil el-Sharnoubi, an old acquaintance of Morsi and the former editor-in-chief of Ikhwan Online, discovered when men in masks shot up his car with submachine guns.

Read more at Now

 

Top Brotherhood Official Predicts Israel’s Destruction

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"Israel will be destroyed within a decade", says Dr. Essam el-Erian. Photo credit: Reuters

“Israel will be destroyed within a decade”, says Dr. Essam el-Erian. Photo credit: Reuters

IPT: by Joel Himelfarb

According to senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian, Israel “will be destroyed within a decade.” In an interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Erian said the 80,000 Jews who fled Egypt since Israel’s founding to escape violence and persecution should come back. He urged former Jewish residents of Egypt to “leave historic Palestine (i.e., Israel) and return to the land from which they came.”

“The Jews are occupying the historic Land of Palestine and are an obstacle to the Right of Return of the Palestinians,” added Erian, vice chairman of the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, majority leader in Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and an advisor to President Mohamed Morsi.

“The Jewish occupiers of this territory” can “go out to other places they consider best for them,” Erian said in the interview, translated by the newspaper Israel Hayom. “The Zionist ideology ended in failure and this project (Israel)” is “fated to collapse in coming years,” he said.

Erian blamed Israel for Arab nations’ weapons purchases and longstanding failure to democratize.

“The Zionist project in Palestine came to prevent the existence of democracy in the Arab countries, and to prevent the presence of Arab unity and development in the Arab region,” he said. “It came to deplete the wealth of the Arabs by making them stockpile weapons.”

“There will be no such thing as Israel; it will be called Palestine,” Erian stated. “We tell all those who came and occupied Palestine to return to their countries.”

Erian repeatedly has supported Hamas and likened Israelis to terrorists. In a July 2011 interview with journalist Michael Totten, Erian termed Hamas “a resistance group fighting for freedom and the liberation of their land from occupation.” He said their land “is occupied by the real terrorists (Israelis)” and that suicide bombings did not constitute terrorism because Hamas is fighting “for liberty.”

In a 2011 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Erian again called Hamas a “resistance group” fighting “for freedom and liberation of their lands.” He also said the West “must revise their knowledge about Hamas, [so] that war and terrorism will come to an end. And mixing cards and putting (designating) Hamas and other resistance groups among terrorist groups, this was a fatal mistake of the West.”

But Erian’s anti-Jewish slurs and advocacy for a terrorist organization haven’t been enough to deny him entry to the United States. The Egypt Daily News reported that he traveled this country last month with an Arab parliamentary delegation and was scheduled to participate in a hearing about the United Nations’ role in “peace building” and “conflict resolution” in the Middle East.

Who’s Who in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

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By Eric Trager, Katie Kiraly, Cooper Klose, and Eliot Calhoun

Given its growing control over key government institutions and its unmatched mobilizing capabilities, the Muslim Brotherhood will likely remain Egypt’s most consequential political actor for many years to come. But who are the men who make up this uniquely cohesive and secretive “society,” and what impact will they have on the country’s domestic and foreign policy?

 

Introduction

Since Hosni Mubarak’s February 2011 ouster, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as Egypt’s most potent political force. It won a decisive plurality in the winter 2011–2012 People’s Assembly elections and a majority in the January 2012 Shura Council elections, thus gaining control over both houses of parliament and the committee that is writing the next constitution. And in June, the group successfully campaigned to elect Brotherhood leader Muhammad Morsi as Egypt’s first civilian president.

Since taking office, Morsi has moved quickly to consolidate the organization’s power, appointing fellow Muslim Brothers to head key ministries and cracking down on media criticism of the group. His boldest moves came on August 12, when he sacked the generals who posed the greatest threat to his authority, promoted new generals who now answer to him, and issued a constitutional declaration that gave him full executive, legislative, and constitution-writing powers. Although Morsi and the Brotherhood may yet face challenges from non-Islamists, Salafists, former regime elements, and, perhaps, the judiciary, the group’s unmatched mobilizing capabilities and control over key government institutions will likely make it Egypt’s most consequential political actor for many years to come.

For this reason, it is worth taking a closer look at the individuals who make up the Brotherhood’s organizational and political leadership. After all, the group views itself not as a political party directed by a single chairman, but as a cohesive “society” that operates on the basis of internal consultation, or shura. Accordingly, its strategic and policy decisions will be guided not only by Morsi and Supreme Guide Muhammad Badie, but also by a team of longtime Brotherhood officials who will coordinate efforts across the various political bodies the group now dominates.
Who are these individuals? While the profiles in this compendium demonstrate that Brotherhood leaders come from many different educational and professional backgrounds, their stories illustrate three important points about the organization.

First, the Brotherhood’s leadership is composed almost exclusively of longtime members. Most were recruited during high school or college and, in many cases, served in top administrative positions within the Brotherhood’s nationwide structure before being promoted to the Guidance Office (the organization’s top executive authority) or nominated for political office. To some extent, this is typical of any political organization: veteran members tend to lead. But for the Brotherhood, having longtime members in top posts ensures that its leaders have all been vetted over the course of decades for their willingness to comply with the internal shura committee’s decisions. This does not mean that internal divisions are impossible, but the tight, time-tested circle in which decisions are made makes this highly unlikely. As a result, the Brotherhood maintains a unity of purpose that other Egyptian political groups have yet to achieve.

Second, in addition to their positions within the group, most Brotherhood leaders were active in important societal organizations under the Mubarak regime, serving on the boards of professional syndicates, heading labor unions, running religious charities, and/or participating in key social clubs. These positions enabled them to build their stature at a time when avenues for more direct political participation were often blocked. Such activity also helped the group expand its outreach networks, through which it gained popular support by providing social services and increasing its recruitment efforts.

Third, almost all of the Brotherhood’s top leaders were directly persecuted under the Mubarak regime, and many served time as political prisoners. To some extent, this enhances their unity, particularly among those who were imprisoned together. More important, it makes them unlikely to tolerate competing centers of power, since the Brotherhood’s ouster could invite a new era of repression against the organization.

Individual profiles suggest other important points about the Brotherhood as well. In particular, the group’s recruitment networks clearly have international reach, since three of its top leaders (including Morsi) came aboard while living in the United States. The Brotherhood’s internal promotion structure is also somewhat nepotistic, given that its top leaders frequently are related to each other through marriage or are professional colleagues. Finally, despite the fact that Brotherhood officials have never run a government ministry or wielded meaningful political power until recently, the group is confident that it has the expertise to lead Egypt because its members come from many different professional backgrounds.

This first installment of Brotherhood profiles examines top figures from the Guidance Office, the Freedom and Justice Party (the group’s political arm), the parliamentary leadership, and members of Morsi’s presidential office. These profiles will be updated as new information surfaces, and new ones will be added over time.

(Note: To see quotation sources and photographs for each individual profiled, download the PDF version of the compendium.)

Index:

  • Saber Abouel Fotouh
  • Salah Abdel Maqsoud
  • Saber Abdul Sadeq
  • Sabri Amer
  • Sheikh Sayyed Askar
  • Khaled al-Azhari
  • Muhammad Badie
  • Muhammad al-Beltagy
  • Amr Darrag
  • Essam al-Erian
  • Mahmoud Ezzat
  • Ahmed Fahmi
  • Ali Fath al-Bab
  • Mahmoud Ghozlan
  • Essam al-Haddad
  • Mahmoud Hussein
  • Saad al-Husseini
  • Hussein Ibrahim
  • Farid Ismail
  • Saad al-Katatni
  • Mahmoud el-Khodary
  • Hassan Malek
  • Muhammad Morsi
  • Mustafa Mosaad
  • Gen. Abbas Mukhaymer
  • Al-Sayyed Negidah
  • Subhi Saleh
  • Akram al-Shaer
  • Khairat al-Shater
  • Ahmed Suleiman
  • Muhammad Tousoun
  • Tareq Wafiq
  • Osama Yassin

Top Leaders

Muhammad Morsi

محمد مرسي

  • Born: August 1951
  • Position: President of Egypt; formerly member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Office, parliamentarian (2000–2005), and chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party
  • Education: Doctorate in engineering from University of Southern California (1982), master’s degree in engineering from Cairo University (1978), bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cairo University (1975)
  • Occupation: Engineer

Morsi was first recruited to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States while studying for his PhD in engineering at the University of Southern California. His children were born in California and are U.S. citizens. After receiving his doctorate in 1982, he taught as an assistant professor at California State University–Northridge until 1985.

He then returned to Egypt to teach at Zagazig University, where his colleagues included current Brotherhood deputy supreme guides Mahmoud Ezzat and Mahmoud Ghozlan. Some sources report that Morsi’s rise in the MB began in 2000, when he was elected as a member of the People’s Assembly and served as the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc leader from 2000 to 2005. After losing his parliamentary race in 2005 due to Mubarak regime forgery, he became leader of the Brotherhood’s political division. From 2007 onward, he was also the key point of contact between the MB and the regime’s repressive State Security apparatus (and, according to MB political leader Saad al-Husseini, between the Brotherhood and Hamas).

Morsi has been arrested at least twice: he was detained for seven months in 2006 after protesting alongside several judges who had been targeted by the regime, and again during the January 2011 uprising, along with several other Brotherhood leaders. Following the uprising, the MB leadership appointed him chairman of the newly formed Freedom and Justice Party. In April 2012, he was chosen as the group’s backup presidential candidate in the event that its initial candidate, Khairat al-Shater, was barred from running. When Shater was indeed excluded due to a previous conviction, Morsi became the MB’s presidential nominee. In the first round of Egypt’s presidential election, Morsi won 24.78 percent of the vote, securing his position in a runoff against Ahmed Shafiq in mid-June. On June 24, Morsi was declared president, having won 51.73 percent of the vote.

Read the rest at The Washington Institute

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Professors and Politicos Fooled by the Muslim Brotherhood

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by Cinnamon Stillwell Jul 27, 2012

Engagement with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is the consensus among elite opinion and certainly among the ranks of North American Middle East studies academics, the “experts” tasked with informing the public and, often, policy-makers on foreign policy in the region. Since the Egyptian revolution, these academics have whitewashed the Muslim Brotherhood, downplayed its Islamist agenda, and urged U.S. cooperation—a policy suggestion the Obama administration has clearly taken to heart.

Many have been shocked by the speed with which the Obama administration has pursued this policy of outreach. The current debate within Congress about the potential influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department—a deliberation that crosses party lines—demonstrates just how deeply the influence has spread.

The symbiotic relationship between the academic and political spheres came to the fore in April of this year. No sooner had representatives of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, met with White House officials than the same delegation was taking part in a panel discussion at Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) on April 4, 2012 (click here to watch).

That the Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director John Esposito—a notorious apologist for radical Islam and the moderator of the panel discussion—would host the FJP makes perfect sense. So, too, did the FJP representatives’ deceptive claims to uphold democratic rights, women’s rights, religious and political pluralism, and a pro-American foreign policy, even as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist philosophy, stated goals, and the words of its own members—when directed towards Arabic-speaking audiences—all indicate otherwise. In reality, the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal of establishing a global caliphate in which Sharia (Islamic) law reigns supreme remains unchanged. (In the U.S., as noted by Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes, this entails replacing the “Constitution with the Koran.”) The challenging question and answer period indicated that the audience at Georgetown was not entirely misled by the FJP’s façade of moderation, despite the fact that they were given a platform by a prestigious institution in the field of Middle East studies.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Obama administration, which seems determined to forget the lessons of the 1979 Iranian “Islamic revolution.” From the halls of academe to the corridors of power, the advice of “experts” can have far-reaching consequences.

Campus Watch Blog  

 

Obama’s New Middle East

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By Ben Shapiro at Front Page:

This week, President Obama’s Egyptian Revolution bore its first fruit: the election of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Mursi. Mursi, of course, is the same fellow who stated last month, “The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal. Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals.” Rallies for Mursi have included calls to make Jerusalem the capital of Egypt, and songs and chants about how his supporters are all affiliated with Hamas.

Yet upon his election, the Obama administration quickly congratulated Mursi. His election, said the Obama administration, was a “milestone in [Egypt’s] transition to democracy.”  Iran apparently felt the same way, celebrating this “revolutionary movement of the Egyptian people… in its final stages of the Islamic Awakening and a new era of change in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, up north, Syria and Turkey have engaged in a shooting war. Neither side is a paragon.  But after letting Assad have his way for the past several months, the Obama administration is getting ready to slip into that conflict too.  Yesterday, the White House announced that it would work with Turkey and NATO to hold Syria “accountable” for shooting down a Turkish jet. Surely, this will end well. Just as well as Libya, where Islamists, having their way cleared by Western jets, are poised to take over.

The entire Middle East is now an Islamist tinderbox. And it’s not as though Barack Obama didn’t see it coming. When he spoke in Cairo in 2009, he reportedly insisted that official invitations be distributed to the Muslim Brotherhood – one of the only acts in Egyptian history in which the Muslim Brotherhood was specifically included in the political conversation. Tunisia has gone Islamic. So has Libya.

And then there’s Iran. While the United States pretends to play hard-line with the mullahs, Vladimir Putin is making his presence felt in the region, visiting both American allies like Israel and enemies like Tehran. Russia and China are actively opposing the US’s Iran policy – and we don’t even have any coherent Iran policy to speak of. And, of course, the Iranian people remain under the thumb of religious fanatics who threaten Israel’s existence.

As for Israel, the Obama administration leaks secret after secret that would allow Israel to defend herself. Meanwhile, they put out feelers to Hamas, the terrorist group running Gaza, even as Hamas fires rockets into Israel proper on a daily basis.

So where does that leave America? Vulnerable to a form of economic and political blackmail that will be difficult to combat. With Israel vulnerable and America kowtowing to Israel’s enemies, Israel will be forced to parlay with third parties like Russia. With the Middle East in flames and the United States not knowing where to position itself, other countries, too, are seeking new friends.

When President Bush left office, Iraq was a fragile US ally, Afghanistan was still on the road to an anti-Taliban resolution, Israel was securing its borders, and Egypt was an American ally. Now, our allies in the region are lying prostrate as the United States stands by, doing nothing.

Was Obama ignorant that this would happen? Or did he promote it because he feels that America’s influence in the world is a net negative, because he is so anti-colonialist that he forgets that Islam is a colonizing religion in its own right?

IPT Exclusive: State Department Barred Inspection of Muslim Brotherhood Delegation

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by Steven Emerson
IPT News
April 9, 2012

The State Department broke with normal procedures last week when it ordered the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) not to conduct a secondary inspection on members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) on their way to visit government officials and think tanks in the United States.

This happened despite the fact that one member of the delegation had been implicated – though not charged – in a U.S. child pornography investigation, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has learned.

Abdul Mawgoud Dardery

According to senior enforcement sources and documents reviewed by the IPT, investigators had information tying Abdul Mawgoud Dardery to the pornography investigation that was based in Pennsylvania. He was the senior member in the four-person FJP delegation which held court with academic groups and met with senior officials at the White House and State Department last week. (For more on what they said, click here.)

The FJP recently won a plurality of seats in recent elections to determine makeup of the next Egyptian Parliament.

Before returning to Egypt, Dardery lived in the United States long enough to attain legal permanent residency, known as a green card. That status lapsed after he left the country for more than six months. The child pornography investigation took place during Dardery’s time here and was noted in his immigration file. It surfaced when CBP officials learned of his pending visit.

A U.S. official familiar with immigration procedures told the IPT that extra inspection is standard operating procedure when a foreign visitor has been tied to criminal or terrorist activities. “Secondary inspections” involve going through the visitor’s baggage and viewing the contents of computers and other electronic devices to search for evidence of illicit activity. Agents would typically search other members of the party to ensure Dardery did not hand off his computer equipment to an associate to avoid detection.

Read more…

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mendacious Charm Campaign in Washington

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Eric Trager at TNR:

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation in Washington last week to better understand how the Islamist group will govern Egypt. It was a noble attempt at promoting intercultural political dialogue—an engagement for which many in the American policy community, as well as academia, have long advocated. Yet the Brotherhood came to Washington with an agenda of its own: selling itself as a “moderate” organization to a highly skeptical American public. And it did so using one of the oldest sales tricks: It completely misrepresented itself.

In a certain sense, the Muslim Brotherhood’s representatives had no other choice. If they admitted, for example, that they intend to repeal the law that criminalizes sexual harassment—as one of their female parliamentarians declared earlier last week—they would have killed their chances at winning over an American public that embraces gender equality. Similarly, if the Brotherhood’s representatives used their time in Washington to reiterate their leaders’ calls for banning beach tourism, it would have destroyed any hopes of an American taxpayer-aided bailout for the nearly bankrupt Egyptian economy. And if they’d repeated their leaders’ 9/11 conspiracy theories, they would have been on the first plane back to Cairo, rather than invited for meetings at the White House and State Department.

Thus, the Brotherhood presented a version of its politics very different from the one that would be familiar to Egyptians. For instance, when asked about the organization’s plan to sink Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel by putting it to a referendum—which multiple Brotherhood officials have called for quite publicly—Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party MP Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery simply denied it. “No referendum at all concerning international obligations,” he told Ben Birnbaum of The Washington Times. “All our international agreements are respected by the Freedom and Justice Party, including Camp David.” Sondos Asem, editor of the English-language Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb, was only slightly less misleading. “We’ve reiterated our position towards both the treaty with Israel and all the treaties that have been signed by previous governments,” she said on CNN. “We are not willing to change any of these treaties unless if there is a massive popular will to change that.” Asem’s “unless” qualification seemingly went unnoticed, neatly buried under her pro-peace platitudes.

Read more…

Eric Trager is the Ira Weiner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Taqiyya from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s FJP delegation at Georgetown University

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On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University hosted a panel of members of the political arm of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The panelists included Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, a Freedom and Justice member of parliament from Luxor and a member on parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee; Hussein El-Kazzaz, an economic advisor for the Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party; Sondos Asem, the senior editor of the Freedom and Justice Party’s official website; and Khaled Al-Qazzaz, a foreign relations coordinator for the Freedom and Justice Party. Georgetown Professor John Esposito moderated the panel.
 
C-SPAN has a recording of the entire one hour and 15 min.event. Vlad Tepes has provided a 16 min. clip of the hard hitting question and answer segment showing some incredible taqiyya by the panel members. You can view the clip by clicking here.

Sondos Asem began by stating that the FJP delegation was in the U.S. to build bridges of understanding, given the important role of America in the region. All Egyptians suffered under Mubarak; 30 percent of Egyptians live beneath the poverty line, illiteracy is high, and there is deeply-entrenched corruption. The FJP stands by the revolution’s goals of freedom, dignity, democracy, and justice. Abdul Mawgoud Dardery continued, stating that Egypt’s revolution acted against dictatorship and corruption. It was not targeting an individual, but rather a whole regime. The FJP embraces a value system that views the family as the basis of a healthy society, Dardery said. The FJP’s faith system stands against extremism. On economic matters, the FJP supports private enterprise that promotes opportunity for all, and wants to see Egypt enter the global economy. The state should empower citizens, not control them. The FJP’s goal, Dardery said, is for all Egyptians to have access to clean water, food, schools, and hospitals. People should have no fear of speaking in opposition to the regime, and there should be a balance between society and government.

One questioner said the constitution should not be written by the majority party only, and that members of the Constituent Assembly, tasked with writing the new Egyptian constitution, should not come from within parliament.

Abdul Mawgoud Dardery replied that given the number of seats the FJP won in parliamentary elections, the FJP is actually under-represented in Assembly. Dardery also claimed that the FJP had taken a moderate position between two extremes – it was a good sign that both Al-Azhar’s representatives on the committee and the liberals were unhappy with the situation. Khaled Al-Qazzaz added that the process of selecting Assembly members was done democratically since all members were approved by parliament.

Another guest asked why the Muslim Brotherhood kept changing its position on issues, and pointed to the nomination of Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater for the presidency and their expulsion of former Brotherhood Activist Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh. Hussein El-Kazzaz replied that the FJP realized that if it governed poorly or violated their promises then it would be voted out of office. The reason El-Kazzaz gave for the al-Shater’s nomination was that the party had been in discussions with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), who told the FJP that their reign in Egypt ends with the parliament – they would have no more than a symbolic role in the government ministries and cabinet positions. Because the SCAF prevented the FJP from forming a coalition government, based on their success in parliamentary elections, the party decided to run for president to ensure they would not be forced out of the executive branch. Khaled Al-Qazzaz explained that Abouel Fotouh decided to violate an official policy of the FJP and Muslim Brotherhood at the time, that this was his choice to exercise his political rights, but that the FJP also had a right to enforce its policy. El-Kazzaz added that Egypt faced a “different reality” from ten months ago.Another question involved foreign funding for political activity, and whether the FJP would make the sources of its funding available and transparent. Al-Qazzaz replied that because of the Muslim Brotherhood’s huge membership and donations from outside the party, it did not have a funding problem. Al-Qazzaz added that while foreign funding of organizations such as nongovernmental organizations was allowed, it had to be completely transparent.

Dardery affirmed that the FJP would make the sources of its funding available to the public, and that the FJP supported freedom of information generally. When asked about what the FJP was doing to promote political activity among women, Sondos Asem replied that the party was not happy about women’s representation in the parliament, and claimed that the FJP fielded more female candidates than any other party. Part of the FJP platform was researching and addressing violations of women’s rights, Asem said.Another guest brought up the issue of discrimination against Christians, pointing out that in many Muslim-majority nations Christians were oppressed, their churches burned, and restrictions placed upon the building of houses of worship. Dardery replied that both Muslims and Christians suffered under the Mubarak regime, and said that 80 percent of the Coptic Christians who voted in Luxor voted for him.

He referenced the “Spanish experience,” when Muslims ruled the Iberian peninsula over a large Christian population at the height of the Islamic empire. Professor John Esposito asked about the FJP’s desire to establish an Islamic state, and what that would entail. Dardery answered, saying that the distinction between an Islamic state and a Muslim state was “academic.” An Islamic state welcomed non-Muslims, while a Muslim state was for Muslims only. Dardery added that the FJP wanted to apply Islamic Law “principles, which were concerned with outcomes, rather than “rulings,” which were limited in time and place. Dardery affirmed that the FJP did support lifting restrictions on building churches and other houses of worship.Responding to a similar question about the Islamic ”Caliphate,” al-Qazzaz said that there was a misunderstanding about what this term meant, and its meaning was closer to alliances like the European Union and the United States, which are based on common characteristics, values, and beliefs. Another question asked whether the FJP supported an individual’s right to criticize or doubt Islam. Dardery said that religion is a human choice, and that according to Islam one cannot impose that choice upon another individual. A party must be able to accept criticism in politics, which will be a constant reality. Dardery went on to say that the FJP’s goal was to present a “Muslim alternative,” and that the Egyptian experience in democracy was an experiment.

 
 
 
Abdul Mawgoud Rageh Dardery’s version of “Some of my best friends are Christian”:
 
 
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