The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch has identified a second professor at the US Naval Academy who is close to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and where Global Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi reportedly serves as a trustee. The GMBDW reported yesterday that Ermin Sinanovic, who is teaching a course at the academy on “Muslim World Affairs”, would also be teaching at two different venues for IIIT. Dr. Sinanovic was not alone however. In September 2008, US media reported that Dr. Akbar Ahmed would be joining the U.S. Naval Academy to fill a new chair for Middle East Studies and would be teaching courses, advising midshipmen and faculty, and assisting in research projects. According to his CV, Dr. Ahmed served as First Distinguished Chair for Middle East/Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy from 2008-2009.
Dr. Ahmed is a former Pakistan High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the UK and Ireland and currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC. He is frequently described as a prominent Islamic moderate who has received numerous awards and accolades. However, Dr. Ahmed also has a long association with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), established in 1980 by some of the most important figures in the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Dr. Ahmed’s association with IIIT appears to have begun with a relationship to Ismail Faruqi who Dr. Ahmed said appointed him to both IIIT and the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies, previously known as the Graduate School of Islamic & Social Sciences (GSISS), an organization once sanctioned to certify Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and also associated with the US Muslim Brotherhood. Dr. Ahmed writes:
Later from his base in Temple University, where he headed the Islamic Studies Department, [Dr. Faruqi] embarked on the serious and gigantic task of re-thinking the fundamental concepts of modern social sciences within an Islamic framework. He called it ’the ‘Islamization of Knowledge’. This was his vision and it became his passion. Towards this end he helped set up the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and, recently, the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies, both in the USA. (My name was placed on the faculty of the two Institutes thanks to him.)
Other close of ties of Dr. Ahmed to IIIT include:
Dr. Ahmed wrote a book published by IIIT and described by Ismail Faruqi as “the first of a series of works which the International Institute of Islamic Thought presents to the reader in fulfillment of its program for the Islamization of the sciences.” Dr. Ahmed was honored by IIIT in 2001, partially in consideration of his book.
Dr. Ahmed has been a member of the advisory board of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, the publication of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, another part of the U.S. Brotherhood and headquartered at IIIT .
Dr. Ahmed is also currently an adjunct scholar at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think tank whose other scholars include many individuals tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood including Louay Safi, a former Research Director at IIIT and important US Muslim Brotherhood leader and who will be one of Dr. Sinanovic’s co-instructors at the upcoming IIIT Summer Program.
None of these associations are mentioned in Dr. Ahmed’s most current CV.
A brief review of Dr. Ahmed’s positions on suicide bombings suggest that he has staked out a position similar to that of Tariq Ramadan, a global Muslim Brotherhood leader and grandson of the Brotherhood’s founder, with whom he has jointly signed lat least one letter. That is, while condemning such terrorism as “un-Islamic”, Dr. Ahmed attempts to contextualize the phenomenon, blaming it on social/political circumstances rather than religious incitement.
A 2007 newspaper article suggested that Dr. Ahmed was one of four Muslim-Americans that played a role in crafting a Department of Homeland Security memo urging employees not to use terms including ‘jihad,’ ‘jihadist’ or ‘Islamic terrorist’ in describing Islamic terrorists.
Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, is just one of many American universities who are “partnering” with the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a verified Muslim Brotherhood front group.
By Ryan Mauro:
In 1988, an FBI informant inside the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network warned that it had a front called the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). The IIIT leadership, the source reported, said they were in the first of six phases to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” Their current objective was to “peacefully get inside the United States government and also American universities.” And they have.
The source warned that the Muslim Brotherhood in America has “unlimited funds” and has “set up political action front groups with no traceable ties to the IIIT or its various Muslim groups.” The source’s identification of IIIT as a front is verified in a 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo. The Brotherhood itself lists IIIT as number 28 of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” working toward the Brotherhood’s self-defined goal, which it says is a “grandjihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
IIT’s Director of Academic Outreach from 1984 to 1994 was Sayyid Syeed, a founder and former secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Footage from 2006 shows him saying, “Our job is to change the Constitution of America” (you can view it inThe Grand Deception).
ISNA is also identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in the 1991 memo and was labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity by federal prosecutors. It was also designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. Syeed is now the director of ISNA’s Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances.
According to Islamic supremacist hate groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), no one would have any problem with Islam if it weren’t for bigoted non-Muslims who irresponsibly “link Islam to terrorism” – and this link, they claim, gives rise to acts of violence against Muslims. Hamas-linked CAIR and its allied groups have for years now been pumping out disinformation designed to “clear up misconceptions”about Islam and set the record straight. On its website Hamas-linked CAIR says that it was established in order to “promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America,” and declares that “we believe misrepresentations of Islam are most often the result of ignorance on the part of non-Muslims and reluctance on the part of Muslims to articulate their case.”
However, the cure offered by American Muslim groups may be worse than the disease. All too often these groups construct a “positive image of Islam” out of smoke and mirrors. Instead of dealing forthrightly and constructively with the concerns and questions that non-Muslims have about Islam’s relation to jihad terrorism, Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. are more interested in throwing sand in our eyes.
A quintessential example of this is a publication of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a Muslim Brotherhood group: “Q& A on Islam and Arab Americans,” which originally ran in USA Today and circulates widely. It’s a handy compendium of many of the chief claims that Islamic supremacists make in order to lull non-Muslims into complacency and confuse them regarding the nature of the jihad threat.
1. Islam means peace.The flyer notes that “the Arabic word for ‘Islam’ means ‘submission,’ and it derives from a word meaning ‘peace.’” Indeed, in Arabic, Islam and salaam (“peace”) share the same linguistic root, but this in itself is virtually meaningless. All sorts of words share the same roots, and can still have quite divergent meanings — such as the English word love and the related Sanskrit word lubh (lust). Noting the derivation of the word Islam in this brief information flyer can only be an attempt to lend credibility to oft-repeated claim that Islam is a religion of peace. But that idea glosses over Islam’s doctrines of war and subjugation, with the IIIT does not address and pretends do not exist.
2. “Jihad does not mean ‘holy war,’”says the IIIT. “Literally, jihad in Arabic means to strive, struggle and exert effort. It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression.”
This was a precursor to Hamas-linked CAIR’s deceptive and misleading “#MyJihad” campaign, which attempts to convince non-Muslims that jihad is about making friends and getting exercise. To its credit, the IIIT goes farther than Hamas-linked CAIR by mentioning the battlefield, and in this it is more accurate than CAIR’s preposterously innocuous farrago. Islamic theology distinguishes between the “greater jihad,” which involves “struggle against evil inclinations within oneself,” and the “lesser jihad,” which is hinted at here as “struggle in the battlefield for self defense or fighting against tyranny or oppression.” Still, left unmentioned is the fact that throughout history, Muslims have not stopped at self-defense or fighting against tyranny. Onemanual of Islamic law — certified as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community” by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious and influential Islamic institution among Sunni Muslims worldwide —calls jihad “a communal obligation” to “war against non-Muslims.” It is an obligation to make war upon “Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians” until they “become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” and to fight “all other peoples until they become Muslim.”
No comedy show, no matter how clever or winning, is going to eradicate the suspicion that many Americans have of Muslims. This is because Americans are concerned about Islam not because of the work of greasy Islamophobes, but because of Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; and Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and motivated by its texts and teachings — all in the U.S. in the last couple of years.
The fact that there are other Muslims not fighting jihad is just great, but it doesn’t mean that the jihad isn’t happening. This comedy show simply doesn’t address the problem of jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism.
As David Horowitz and I show in our pamphlet Islamophobia: Thoughtcrime of the Totalitarian Future, the term “Islamophobia” is a politically manipulative coinage designed to intimidate critics of Islamic supremacism and jihad into silence.
Claire Berlinski explains how Islamic supremacists from the Muslim Brotherhood devised it for precisely that purpose:
Now here’s a point you might deeply consider: The neologism “Islamophobia” did not simply emerge exnihilo. It was invented, deliberately, by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is based in Northern Virginia. If that name dimly rings a bell, it should: I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s particularly important because it was co-founded by Anwar Ibrahim–the hero of Moderate Islam who is now trotting around the globe comparing his plight to that of Aung San Suu Kyi.Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a former member of the IIIT who has renounced the group in disgust, was an eyewitness to the creation of the word. “This loathsome term,” he writes,
is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.
The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” One easy way to do that would be to guilt-trip non-Muslims into being ashamed of resisting jihad activity and Islamic supremacism, for fear of being accused of “Islamophobia.” I doubt these comics are aware of this program, but they’re useful tools for it.
“Muslim American comics’ tour and documentary,” by Tara Bahrampour in the Washington Post, December 27 (thanks to James):
Beware, America. The Muslims are coming, and they look and act suspiciously like you.
Sheesh. No one says they aren’t. This is just a straw man designed to demonize opponents of jihad.
Negin Farsad, an Iranian American stand-up comic from California, wears eye-catching mini dresses, curses liberally and has awkward sex talks with her mother (though hers sound more like alien encounters. Actual quote: “You had intergender flesh relations without the security of external safety product?”).
Then she has more to worry about from observant Muslims than she does from “Islamophobes.”
Such conversations, painfully private in traditional Muslim societies, are public fodder for Farsad and three other Gen X and Gen Y Muslim comics with whom she traveled to the deep South this past summer. The tour, which later extended to Western states and included other Muslim comics, will form the backbone of “The Muslims Are Coming!,” a documentary film about Islamophobia in America that Farsad is working on with Palestinian Italian American comedian Dean Obeidallah.
This is going to be the usual victimhood-mongering and deflecting of attention from the real causes of suspicion of Muslims in the U.S. Obeidallah contacted me and asked me to be interviewed for the piece, and assured me he would give me a fair hearing. But then he went on Twitter and called Pamela Geller a “Muslim-hater” — echoing the deceptive Islamic supremacist claim that fighting for free speech and equality of rights for all people is “hate.” His true agenda thus revealed, I bowed out of the interview.
The documentary, which includes interviews with comics such as Jon Stewart and Louis Black and commentators including CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, explores freedom of religion and what it means to be a minority in America.
Note the implication: that minorities have it so tough in America. No mention will be made, no doubt, of the far more precarious position of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim societies.
Muslim American stand-up comedy is a relatively new phenomenon, the domain of second-generation immigrants who are American enough to satirize the Muslim American experience, said Obeidallah, who lives in New York City.“We’re confident enough to do this,” he said. “An immigrant would be less confident to use comedy to try to challenge perceptions of who we are. We’re confident enough in being Americans and knowing what that means, that we can push against those who are exhibiting behavior which is less than consistent with the values of this nation.”
Note that in Obeidallah’s world, the people who are “exhibiting behavior which is less than consistent with the values of this nation” are those fighting for freedom and Constitutional rights, not Brotherhood-related groups dedicated to bringing to the U.S. elements of a legal system that denies freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims.
A major factor driving Muslim Americans toward comedy was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “There were no Middle Eastern comics before 9/11 that anyone knew about,” Obeidallah said. “The phenomenon really grew in the last 10 years, because of the [anti-Muslim] backlash.
There was no backlash, of course. Innocent Muslims are not being victimized in the U.S. Muslims live better here than in many Muslim countries. Obeidallah — clueless or complicit? You be the judge.
I think a lot of people in our community started doing it as a form of political activism.” As they started appearing on national television, he said, “it spurred other Middle Eastern comedians to get involved.” Now, he said, there are about 10 full-time professinals and a growing number of aspiring professionals.Going to the South, where anti-mosque demonstrations and anti-immigrant sentiment has made some Muslims feel unwelcome, the comedians hoped to break through some of the cultural walls that have arisen since Sept. 11.
The point was to see “how would people in the heartland take to us?” Obeidallah said. “Would we encounter angry people going, ‘Get out of here, you Muslims,’ or would they understand?”
Traveling through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, they gave free performances in cafes, community centers and theaters. They set up tables in public places, with scripture-related guessing games and the opportunity for people to “Ask a Muslim” anything they wanted.
“I could kind of like Muslims, but why do you guys like terrorism so much?” some asked. “What do you think of 9/11?” was another common question.
How horrible! They got asked uncomfortable questions! Oh, the “Islamophobia”!
On the whole, the public response was encouraging. While a few people drove by and yelled, “Go back to your country!” the one-on-one encounters tended to be positive.
Oh, the horror! They encountered some rude jerks! Almost as bad as being Christians in Nigeria, eh?
“Most people are more open-minded and not that concerned about Muslims,” Obeidallah said. “It’s really the fringe that’s driving that narrative.”Maysoon Zayid, one of the comics on the tour, said people were surprised to see that “I’m such a Jersey girl, I’m so accessible. . . . I think they are really surprised that I wasn’t this oppressed woman trying to convert people.”
The comedians acknowledged that they were unlikely to win the hearts of the most fervent anti-Muslim types.
“A show called ‘The Muslims Are Coming’ — people self-select to come see it,” Farsad said. “We’re never going to be able to touch the extreme haters. . . . We’re trying to affect the people in the middle, people with questions, the ‘persuadables.’ ”
Do Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah really want to eradicate “Islamophobia”? As long as Islamic jihad and supremacism continue, a comedy tour will never do the trick. But here is an easy way. They can call on Muslims in the U.S. to do these things:
1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively, sincerely, honestly, and in deeds, not just in comforting words, not just “terrorism,” but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that American and Israeli civilians are innocent people, teaching accordingly in mosques and Islamic schools, and behaving in accord with these new teachings.
3. Teach, again sincerely and honestly, in transparent and verifiable ways in mosques and Islamic schools, the imperative of Muslims coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, and act accordingly.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach sincerely against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively and honestly work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster
On September 25, the 23rd Arab-American Candidates’ Night Dinner was held in Virginia, attended by 46 Democrats and Republicans seeking office, with former governor and current Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine, as a major speaker. The dinner honored a top Muslim Brotherhood official affiliated with Hamas named Jamal Barzinji, an inconvenient and overlooked fact for Kaine’s campaign team.
Tim Kaine was the governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010 and then was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was on the short-list to become President Obama’s running mate. He is now running for Senate and will likely face off against former Senator George Allen, who narrowly lost his seat in 2006 to Senator Jim Webb. Democratic Senator Mark Warner also senta videotaped message to the conference.
Kaine thanked the audience for their help with his gubernatorial campaign and asked for them to again support him in his quest to become a senator. This is troubling when you consider what else happened that night: A Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon Jamal Barzinji, called a “founding father” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. and an associate of Hamas. His Wikipedia page has been altered to boast of the award and Kaine’s attendance.
FBI documents from 1987-1988 flat-out state that Barzinji is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He played an instrumental role in setting up the Brotherhood networks in the U.S. decades ago. In 1972, he was the president of the Muslim Students Association, identified as a Brotherhood front in the Islamist group’s own documents. He was a founder of the North American Islamic Trust and a top official with the Islamic Society of North America, both labeled by the federal government as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. A judge ruled in 2009 that the government provided “ample evidence” tying the two organizations to Hamas.
Barzinji is the vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, another prominent Muslim Brotherhood front. An internal Brotherhood file from May 1991 lists the IIIT as being part of its American network. The same document frankly says that this network’s goal is to wage a “grand jihad” that results in “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” so that Sharia-based governance can be instituted.
He is also a founder of the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church. The mosque is very closely tied to the Brotherhood and Hamas, with a government document accusing it of “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.” Anwar al-Awlaki served as the mosque’s imam from January 2001 to March 2002, and its services were attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood shooter. It continues to spout extremism to this day.
Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation in 2003. Special Agent David Kane said in a sworn affidavit to the judge authorizing the search that he “is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.”
The affidavit mentioned his ties to Sami al-Arian, a Brotherhood member who secretly led PIJ operations in the U.S. Barzinji held positions with seven other organizations who had their offices raided: The IIIT, SAFA Trust, SAAR, Amana Trust, Mar-Jac Investments, Mena Investments and Reston Investments. Patrick Poole broke the storythat the Obama Justice Department has blocked the prosecution of Barzinji, among other top Muslim-American officials tied to the Brotherhood and Hamas.
This isn’t the first time that Kaine has associated himself with Muslim Brotherhood figures masquerading as moderates. In 2007, Kaine appointed the president of the Muslim American Society, Esam Omeish, to the state’s Commission of Immigration. It is well-documented that the MAS is a Brotherhood front, and it was also known that Omeish is on the board of directors of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque. He calls the Muslim Brotherhood a “moderate” organization and admits being influenced by it.
In 2004, Omeish praised the spiritual leader of Hamas as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.” Videotape surfaced of a speech Omeish gave in 2000 where he saluted Palestinians that understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land” and pledged to do everything possible to help them. Omeish subsequently resigned, but Kaine did not learn his lesson. Even after that embarrassment, Kaine failed to learn about the Brotherhood network.
The Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. depends upon the ignorance of the media and government officials. It takes advantage of politicians’ desires for Muslim votes, as their commitment to victory makes them overlook the Islamist ties of those they embrace as part of their campaigns. Tim Kaine is the exact type of official the Brotherhood is looking for.
