What is the Muslim Brotherhood and How Does it Operate?

Part 8 of a serialization of Shariah – The Threat to America, the report of Team B II of the Center for Security Policy.

Shariah stresses its adherents’ exercise of information dominance. Accordingly, its campaign of civilization jihad against the United States prominently features political and psychological warfare, influence operations and other techniques for neutralizing and, ultimately subverting the nation’s foundational institutions.

Targets include the political system, the military, law enforcement, public and private education from preschool through graduate school, religious institutions of all major faiths, the financial system and the media.

The shariah information war in the West and the civilization jihad of which it is a central element is driven by an organization called the International Muslim Brotherhood (MB), also known by its Arabic title “Ikhwan.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the Communist Party-like “vanguard” or tip-of-the-spear of the current Islamic movement in the world. While there are other transnational organizations that share the MB’s goals, if not its tactics – including al Qaeda, which was born out of the Brotherhood – the Ikhwan is by far the strongest and most organized.

Organizational structure and processes

The MB is now active in more than 80 countries. In each country with an Ikhwan presence exists an Organizational Conference (planning group), a Shura Council (legal body), and a General Masul (leader) or “General Guide.” The “Supreme Guide” is the individual leader of the International Muslim Brotherhood and is based in Cairo, Egypt.

The MB’s civilization jihadist process is primarily conducted by groups posing as peaceable, “moderate” and law-abiding Muslim community organizations. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood’s bylaws (viewable in English on the Ikhwan’s website), MB doctrinal books in English, and a series of Muslim Brotherhood documents found in a 2004 FBI raid and entered into evidence in the largest terrorism-financing trial in American history in 2008, make one thing plain: The Ikhwan’s mission in the West is sedition in furtherance of shariah’s supremacist agenda, not peaceful assimilation and co-existence with non-Muslim populations.

Thanks to the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial that resulted in the convictions of all the accused, it is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States today is actually controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.

Background of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement shariah worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State, known as the caliphate. Therefore, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood have the same objectives. They differ only in the timing and tactics involved in realizing them.

The Brotherhood’s creed is: “Allah is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” It is evident from the Creed, and from the Brotherhood’s history and current activities detailed in the Team B report, that violence is an inherent part of the MB’s tactics. The MB is at the root of the majority of Islamic terrorist groups in the world today.

The Ikhwan believes that its purposes in the West are, for the moment, better advanced by the use of non-violent, stealthy techniques, properly known as “pre-violent” techniques. In that connection, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to establish relations with, influence and, wherever possible, penetrate government circles in executive and legislative branches at the federal, state and local levels; the law enforcement community; intelligence agencies; the military; penal institutions; the judicial system; the media; think tanks and policy groups; academic institutions; non-Muslim religious communities; and other elites.

The MB engages in all of these activities and more for one reason: to subvert the targeted communities in furtherance of the Ikhwan’s primary objective – the triumph of shariah.

In Part 9 of this serialization of the Center for Security Policy’s Team B report on shariah, we will examine the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood and its movement to penetrate Western democracies.