Perilous Times
Muslim Brotherhood 'declares war' on U.S.
Analyst compares leader's sermon to bin Laden's pre-9/11 warning
Posted: October 12, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Art Moore
WorldNetDaily
Activists from the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan carry a portrait of Saudi
dissident Osama Bin Laden September 28, 2001 at a rally in Islamabad,
Pakistan. Many people were concerned about possible U.S. attacks on
Afghanistan and announced 'Jihad' or holy war against America in the
event of an attack. (Photo by Visual News/Getty Images)
Five years before the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaida declared war on America,
the West, Christians and Jews – and virtually no one noticed.
Now, a longtime observer of Islam is warning that a "war declaration"
of potentially much greater significance has been made.
The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, who was
elected only months ago, has "endorsed anti-American Jihad and pretty
much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book," writes Barry Rubin,
author and director of the Global Research in International Affairs
Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs
Journal.
The Brotherhood – the dominant Islamic organization in the West that
has spawned most of the major Muslim terrorist groups, including
al-Qaida, along with the largest "mainstream" organizations – is giving
the signal that it is "ready to move from the era of propaganda and
base-building to one of revolutionary action," says Rubin.
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organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations from the
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In a sermon published Sept. 30 titled "How Islam Confronts the
Oppression and Tyranny [against the Muslims]," Badi said waging jihad
against both Israel and the United States is a commandment of Allah
that cannot be disregarded.
The remarks were delivered in a weekly sermon, published Sept. 30 on
the Muslim Brotherhood's website and translated into English by the
Middle East Media Research Institute.
Governments trying to stop Muslims from fighting the U.S., he said,
"are disregarding Allah's commandment to wage jihad for His sake with
[their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah's word will reign
supreme" over all non-Muslims.
Rubin concludes: "Let it be said that in September 2010, the Muslim
Brotherhood, a group with 100 times more activists than al-Qaida,
issued its declaration of war."
He calls the sermon "one of those obscure Middle East events of the
utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media,
especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western
governments, because they don't fit their policies; and by experts,
because they don't mesh with their preconceptions."
The sermon is a signal to the Brotherhood's hundreds of thousands of
followers, Rubin says.
"Some of them will engage in terrorist violence as individuals or
forming splinter groups; others will redouble their efforts to seize
control of their countries and turn them into safe areas for terrorists
and instruments for war on the West."
Rubin calls Badi's "explicit formulation of a revolutionary program" a
"game-changer."
"It should be read by every Western decision-maker and have a direct
effect on policy because this development may affect people's lives in
every Western country," he writes.
Some U.S. and Western leaders are urging engagement and partnership
with the Brotherhood, Rubin notes, because they regard it as moderate.
But the movement, founded in the 1920s in the wake of the collapse of
the Ottoman Turkish empire, considers itself an instrument of the
charge Muslims were given when Islam was founded 1,400 years ago – to
make the Quran and Allah's authority supreme over the entire world.
In a 1991 document titled "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General
Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," the Brotherhood stated
the Muslim community "must understand that their work in America is a
kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western
civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their
hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and
Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
In his sermon, Badi declared Arab and Muslim regimes are betraying
their people by failing to confront the Muslim's real enemies, not only
Israel but also the United States.
All Muslims are required by their religion to fight, he said: "They
crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the
[Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice
and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the
enemies pursue life."
Asked by WND to assess Rubin's conclusions, Robert Spencer, author and
director of the website JihadWatch.org, said Rubin is right that "war
against the West has been the Brotherhood's program, according to
captured internal documents, since at least 1982."
"This sermon just crystallizes many of the ideas contained in those
documents," he told WND.
Spencer said be believes it's possible that Badi's sermon is a seminal
declaration of war comparable to al-Qaida's 1996 declaration.
"It certainly could be," he said, "but I don't see it as all that much
qualitatively different from things they've said before. If they were
dedicated as far back as 1991 to 'eliminating and destroying Western
civilization from within,' this doesn't seem to represent a huge
departure."
Call to arms
Rubin emphasizes the significance of the remarks coming from Badi. He
explains that when a "marginal Muslim cleric" like Britain's Anjem
Choudary says that Islam will conquer the West and raise its flag over
the White House, the remark can be treated as "wild rhetoric."
"But when the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood says the same thing in
Arabic, that's a program for action, a call to arms for hundreds of
thousands of people, and a national security threat to every Western
country," Rubin says.
Rubin notes the Muslim Brotherhood controls front groups recognized by
Western governments and media as authoritative. Government officials in
many countries meet with these groups, he says, asking them to be
advisers for counter-terrorist strategies and national policies.
Prominent U.S. organizations launched by Muslim Brotherhood leaders
include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Students
Association, North American Islamic Trust, the Islamic Society of North
America, the American Muslim Council, the Muslim American Society and
the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR – a self-described
civil rights group that has more than a dozen former and current
leaders with known associations with violent jihad – is trying to keep
alive a lawsuit against WND and two investigators behind the
best-selling expose "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's
Conspiring to Islamize America"
CAIR's origin as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas is
documented in "Muslim Mafia." CAIR and some of its leaders were
confirmed by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in
the trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted
of helping fund Hamas.
Banner of the revolution
Rubin points out President Obama "speaks about a conflict limited
solely to al-Qaida," which "makes sense when referring to Afghanistan,
Iraq and Yemen."
"Yet there is a far bigger and wider battle going on in which
revolutionary Islamists seek to overthrow their own rulers and wage
long-term, full-scale struggle against the West," he says. "If it
doesn't involve violence right now, it will when they get strong enough
or gain power."
Three years ago, Rubin published a detailed analysis of the
development, explaining that the "banner of the Islamist revolution in
the Middle East today has largely passed to groups sponsored by or
derived from the Muslim Brotherhood."
The exposure, he writes, "so upset the Brotherhood that it put a
detailed response on its official website to deny my analysis."
"Yet now here is the Brotherhood's new supreme guide, Muhammad Badi
giving a sermon entitled, 'How Islam Confronts the Oppression and
Tyranny,'" Rubin says.
Badi's interpretation, he says, is in tune with the stances and holy
books of normative Islam.
"It is not the only possible interpretation, but it is a completely
legitimate interpretation," he says. "Every Muslim knows, even if he
disagrees with the Brotherhood's position, that this isn't heresy or
hijacking or misunderstanding."