The International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) is a Washington-based non-profit organization that, like many working these portfolios, happens to have worrisome ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is, moreover, engaged in a top priority of what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – namely, interfaith dialogue. The Brothers cynically engage in such “bridge-building” in order to induce individuals and institutions of other creeds to provide them with political cover, thereby enabling subversive Islamist efforts to insinuate into this country the supremacist shariah doctrine – all in the name of religious freedom.
On May 30th, the ICRD will further display its true colors. It will have as its guests of honor at a gala fundraising dinner two preeminent stealth jihadists – Faisal Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan. The couple gained international notoriety in 2010 when they sought to build a 15-story mosque complex in a building so close to Ground Zero that it was badly damaged in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.
The only surprise in all of this is the dinner’s keynote speaker: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI).
Now, I am personally fond of Rep. Rogers. In the land of the blind that is our Congress – which is almost completely bereft of lawmakers who focus on national security, let alone provide leadership in that portfolio – he is the one-eyed man, for sure. He has been willing to tell the truth about the world becoming more dangerous when few in his party, let alone the Democrats in Washington, have done so. A former Army officer and FBI special agent, he has championed a strong defense and sought to stave off the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater impulses of legislators determined to dismantle the NSA in the wake of the Snowden treachery.
So, I wrote the chairman last week laying out the ties between the ICRD and various American Muslim Brotherhood fronts and leaders. These include: one of the Brotherhood’s preeminent fonts of ideological purity, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT); the American Muslims for Constructive Engagement (AMCE), whose stated mission is to secure “the deliberate appointment of qualified Muslims to key advisory bodies and policy-relevant positions in government in order to shape U.S. policy choices”; and, through the AMCE, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). ICNA, ISNA and CAIR were listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history: U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, et.al.
Consequently, I urged Chairman Rogers in my 21 May letter to withdraw from the ICRD fundraiser: “While there is certainly no objection to qualified Americans, of any religion, serving in U.S. policy-making positions, it appears that members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a subversive terrorist organization with intimate ties to terrorism, are using the ICRD as a venue for an ongoing influence operation to manipulate U.S. policy. Your attendance at this event would risk further legitimizing this event to the detriment of U.S. national security.”
Unfortunately, this is not the first time Rep. Rogers has evidenced an inadequate appreciation of the civilization jihad the Muslim Brotherhood is waging inside the United States. (To read the Brotherhood’s secret plan for this jihad, see here.). Notably, in July 2012, he joined Senator John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner in criticizing Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other legislators. They had quite properly written five federal agencies’ inspectors general requesting investigations of the roles being played in shaping U.S. policies by individuals shown to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in this country (see: see Part 8 of the free, online course at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com).
This is a particularly bad time for the chairman of the House intelligence oversight committee to have a blind spot with respect to Islamist influence operations. After all, the Obama administration appears determined to admit more Muslim Brothers into this country as they are being rolled up in Egypt. That would be the practical effect of its recent decision to rewrite unilaterally and extra-constitutionally federal immigration statutes by allowing individuals to apply for refugee status if they have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism. Last week, a young Egyptian Brotherhood sympathizer, if not member, appears to be the first to have put this opportunity to the test.
In addition, as Adam Kredo observed at the Washington Free Beacon, the Obama State Department is continuing the embrace of Islamists begun while Hillary Clinton was in charge:
The State Department’s Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau promoted on Friday a controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
The CT bureau on Friday tweeted out a link to the official website of Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a controversial organization founded by a Muslim Brotherhood leader “who has called for the death of Jews and Americans and himself is banned from visiting the U.S.,” according to Fox News.
Mike Rogers is right that the world is becoming more dangerous thanks to the rising capabilities and malevolence of global jihadists. The reality, however, is that the threat is growing in no small part because of the success jihadists are having in undermining our situational awareness and subverting our policies. We need Chairman Rogers for the remainder of his tenure in Congress to be part of the solution to that problem, not compounding it with his own case of willful blindness.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. He is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for Breitbart News Network and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio.
A copy of Gaffney’s letter to Chairman Rogers is below: