Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress yesterday that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “heterogeneous, largely secular” organization that “eschewed violence” and “decried al Qaeda.” The ignorance exhibited in this statement has been widely and properly vilified. As our book, Shariah: The Threat to America (amazon.com 0r free download) establishes beyond any reasonable doubt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or, in Arabic, Ikhwan) is a thoroughly shariah-adherent group, committed to the spread of that totalitarian, supremacist politico-military-legal program worldwide and to a Caliphate to impose it, on Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Far from being “heterogenous,” the Ikhwan all over the planet – including inside the United States – subscribes to a creed that assures uniform compliance with its goals (which are identical to those of other shariah-adherent groups like al Qaeda), if not in the tactics for achieving them: “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.”
Gen. Clapper’s statement was so ludicrous that in short order, his spokeswoman was explaining that what the DNI meant to say was exactly the opposite of what he said: “To clarify Director Clapper’s point, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak’s rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation. He is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization,” DNI spokesperson Jamie Smith said.
As the Director appeared to be reading from prepared notes, however, it seems that his statement may not have been a case of misspeaking, but rather one of deliberately mischaracterizing one of the most serious threats America faces at the moment. To the extent his assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood informs U.S. policymaking in Egypt or elsewhere, it doubtless has contributed to the complete hash-up the Obama administration is making with respect to the MB.
Of even more serious concern is the possibility that the top intelligence officer in the United States government is not simply willfully blind, but what they call in the business a “useful idiot.” After all, he told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in December that he considered the Muslim community to be “a source of advice, counsel and wisdom alerting us to those among their number who are professing radical views.” But the first rule of intelligence tradecraft is: “Garbage in, garbage out.” The quality of the analysis of any information about our enemies is a function of how good the inputs are.
In other words, if the Director of National Intelligence is using as sources of “advice, counsel and wisdom” about the Muslim Brotherhood individuals and organizations that have been proven in federal court (at both the district and appellate levels) to be tied to the Ikhwan, the inputs from such sources must be considered suspect, to say the least. At worst, the DNI has swallowed hook, line and sinker disinformation about the MB supplied by the Brotherhood for the purpose of defeating us.
As it happens, I had an opportunity this morning to debate the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence operations with a man the record suggests is one of their most skilled operatives in America, Suhail Khan. Khan and I appeared (audio here) on Fred Grandy’s top-rated drive-time radio program, the Grandy Group. Khan professed to having no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a bit of taqiyya (lying for the faith) that is amply rebutted at www.MBExposed.com, a website that documents his longstanding family and personal ties to assorted MB fronts.
Khan also claimed he was “not an expert” on the Muslim Brotherhood. He nonetheless insisted that he has not seen “any evidence” that the MB has “a strong network in the United States,” that it is infiltrating this country or that it has “influence” here.
Khan made a number of other statements that are even more demonstrably false. For example, he declared that “no Muslim wants to impose shariah” on America. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in mosques, academic institutions and the financial sector are working to bring shariah to this country and every other. To argue otherwise is to misrepresent the true state of affairs as blatantly as did Gen. Clapper in his remark yesterday.
Khan also opined that the “vast majority of Muslims think the U.S. Constitution and shariah are completely compatible.” Only Muslims who believe the Constitution can be mutated beyond recognition – so as to permit the totalitarian legal code of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Somalia and the Taliban to prevail – can believe the two can coexist. By its own terms, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and any effort to insinuate another law in its place, especially one that denies all of our protected civil liberties, is sedition.
In addition to the mistakes Suhail Khan made in the course of such patent taqiyya-mongering, he gave up one unforced error: In response to a direct question by Fred Grandy’s substitute co-host, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Khan declared flatly that he would support an official designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, noting that it had been implicated in “killing innocent civilians.”
Maybe we can get all the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence operations to join us in seeking such a well-deserved and long-overdue designation – a possibly indispensable first step to putting Suhail Khan and his friends permanently out of business and keeping America shariah-free.