The U.S. Terror Support Network Exposed
The retrial of five officials of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. shut down by the government weeks after 9/11, concluded on November 24 with guilty verdicts on all 108 counts. Federal prosecutors had charged that Holy Land officials had conspired to provide material support to terrorists and served as the fundraising arm of Hamas in the U.S., which raised more than $12 million after Hamas had been designated a terrorist organization in 1995.
The implications of these guilty verdicts are staggering in their importance. The most immediate is that federal prosecutors have proved they can win these kinds of complicated terrorism financing cases. Monday’s guilty verdicts are in sharp contrast to the first trial in this case, which ended in October 2007 in a mistrial and victory celebrations by the defendants and their supporters. In response, prosecutors streamlined their case, dropped a number of lesser charges, and prepared new exhibits to help jurors understand the scope of the conspiracy.
This does not bode well for those subject to other ongoing terrorism support inquiries, most especially officials associated with the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). IIIT was included in the widespread Operation Green Quest raids in March 2002, and is the focus of an ongoing federal grand jury investigation. Convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader and former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian was indicted in June for refusing to provide testimony regarding the funding of his U.S.-based terrorist front operation by IIIT, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). IIIT was the primary financial backer for WISE.
Officials for another closed Islamic terror charity, KindHearts, should also be concerned. The Toledo, Ohio-based KindHearts had its assets frozen by the Treasury Department in February 2006, specifically identifying the group’s support for terrorism. KindHearts was identified as the successor organization to the Holy Land Foundation and another closed terror charity, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Global Relief Foundation. No charges have been filed against KindHearts officials as of yet, but the success of the Holy Land Foundation prosecutions very well might change that.
Another lasting impact of the Holy Land Foundation trial will be the exhibits made public which tie some of the most prominent Islamic institutions in America to the international terrorist support network. In June 2007, the New York Sun reported that a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case included the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). ISNA claims to be the largest Islamic organization in the country, and CAIR claims to be the largest Muslim “civil rights” group. NAIT is known for holding the deeds for more than 300 mosques in the U.S. and for its ties to the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment.
What the Holy Land trial exhibits showed is that all of these organizations had been founded to serve as arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic extremist group in the world. The terrorist group Hamas is the self-declared Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Court documents showed that CAIR was founded as the political and lobbying arm of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.
The lasting impact of these organizations’ role in the terrorism finance conspiracy is that they are regularly courted by some of the highest-ranking officials of the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and FBI. These agencies have come under intense criticism, sometimes from within their own agency, for partnering with these organizations while they were simultaneously named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial. With the guilty verdicts, any continued cooperation with these organizations will prove to be difficult and increasingly controversial.
The biggest bombshell of the recent trial was a strategic memo made public that was authored by a leading U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Akram, entitled “On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” While the memo was dated May 1991, it stated that the strategy itself had already been approved by the North American Muslim Brotherhood leadership in 1987.
What this memo explains is that the general strategic goal of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. is to wage a “grand jihad” to destroy the West from within by means of a “civilizational-jihadist process”:
The Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood's name for itself] 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. …
They are then to work to employ, direct, and unify Muslims’ efforts and powers for this process. In order to do that, we must possess a mastery of the art of “coalitions,” the art of “absorption,” and the principles of “cooperation.”
With the convictions in the Holy Land Foundation trial and the exhibits used to accomplish those convictions, it is reasonable to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood, while not yet engaging in violence, is continuing to actively promote their own brand of Islamic supremacism and working to destroy our fundamental freedoms and liberties while exploiting the same. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood network, its organizations identified in an appendix to the Akram memo, ought to be considered a “threat organization” for national security purposes and authorities ought to be on guard. This has already been the conclusion by several prominent analysts who had studied the many trial exhibits, including my colleagues LTC Joe Myers and former Pentagon J2 analyst Stephen Coughlin.
So the Holy Land Foundation trial may finally be concluded, but its potential impact beyond the prison terms that will be handed out for the convicted could continue for the foreseeable future. Not only may more terrorism finance and terrorism support cases be forthcoming, but more critical inquiry into those individuals and organizations who aided the Holy Land Foundation conspiracy.
For many observers, both are long overdue.
When are we going to witness the levee en masse of American Muslims denouncing these practices in their community against America in the name of their religion? Will there ever be a day when the racism and totalitarianism of the jihadist movement ever become a pariah among Western Muslims? Is it unfair to argue that the many long years of silence by Western Muslims provide tacit support to jihadists and their crimes?
#1, Marsouin: The answer to your question is that NEVER will so-called “moderate” or Western Muslims collectively denounce terrorism, or anything done by fellow Muslims. It is disallowed as an Islamic practice (denouncing fellow Muslims). This is why you do not, and never will, see Muslims raise up en mass against the acts of other Muslims. This is why you see riots and killings and death threats and massive protests in the Islamic world over cartoons or something the Pope says or some “blashemic” passages written by a Western author that offends them, but you’ll never see a collective response to acts carried out by fellow Muslims. That is forbidden Islamically.
I’m waiting for groups like CAIR and ISNA and prominent Muslim leaders to say this was all a set up, a kangaroo court, that the jury was full of Islamophobes, that the FBI is just persecuting innocent Muslims for being pious.
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth
#1
Stop whining with rhetorical questions, please! You know the answer, as do I.
The government has a list of 300 likely candidates for communities that encourage islamic terrorism on one way or another. A good first step would be to shut these mosques down, deport their religious leaders, put all of the community leaders within each mosque under close inspection, and do background checks on all members of the mosque. Then follow all leads arising from these actions–legally or extra-legally if needed.
When will this happen? After the next major attack on US soil. Whether a bombing, poisoning, or Mumbai-style attack the result will be a suspension of Habeas Corpus and a country-wide cleansing of these scumbags.
There is little need to attack Islam in general, just start with these radical mosques and fan out where the leads take you. Radical mosque=enemy when we get going. Without the ability to organize through their mosques, the individual radicals will be reduced to ineffective acts (think Beltway Sniper) that are extremely painful but not existentially threatening to our way of life.
Tough? yep. Effective? I certainly would hope so.
Iconoclast, #7: Do you really believe this will happen under the next administartion? I hope you’re right, but I think the day that would happen is becoming very short.
If Obama establishes institutional responsibility for the welfare of every inhabitant of America (a la Cloward-Pavin), Muslim Americans will wind up on the wrong side of the battle (when they feel compelled to support him) and lose any largess they may have garnered for themselves. Americans will find leaders who will take seriously the threats that we are facing. Political Correctness will grow thin as it is in some parts of Europe and there will come a moment when Muslims will have to choose Islam or America.
That is my prophecy based upon the best crystal ball I could afford under the current economic conditions.
Don
No, I don’t think so. But I also think my thoughts are laughably simplistic when contrasted with the sophisticated thinking we have seen displayed by the likes of General Petraeus and others like him in our security organizations.
OTOH, if Obama appoints the likes of Gorelick to AG–she who more than anyone else is responsible for the lapses that allowed 9/11–our strategic level of thinking will be reduced to ineffectiveness.
But I do not believe that Obama will allow another 9/11 or Mumbai in the USA. He and other Democrats/Leftists know that blaming Bush for events after Bush has gone will not go over well with Americans. Thoughtful people in the administration will also know that there is a real possibility of mob revenge following another attack, particularly if it appears that the administration demonstrated weakness in the face of muslim terror.
And, of course, since Democrats have been nearly completely taken over by the Left we can rest assured that brutal suppression of civil liberties will not bother them in the least. Most of the left is extremely ignorant and subject to wild swings of uninformed opinion–making them remarkably malleable in the hands of their “annointed”. And having effectively a “state organ” from the MSM will provide cover for nearly any attack on our civil liberties as long as it is a Democrat (lefty, natch) is doing it.
I tend to agree with Don (above #2), Muslims will never collectively denounce another Muslim for any dastardly act committed against non-Muslims.
Islamic terror has been taking place for over 50 years, always targeted are westerners, Americans, and now Brits, and especially anyone Jewish. Other than an occasional, rather comical, announcement from some mouthpiece in the UN, there has never been a really strong condemnation from any of the Islamic clerics who matter. Instead, they continue to preach their hate from the mosque every week. These mosques need to be torn down and the hateful preachers need to be deported.
America needs to wake up to the needs of the day, we have the wherewithal to stop this if we want to, and to do it without violence. It’s called boycott. Let us find out what businesses in our respective communities are owned and operated by members of CAIR, IIIT, and other Muslim Brotherhood members, and simply stop doing business with them. Find another motel to stay in, find another place to buy your Hostess Ding Dong’s and don’t use a taxi driven by a Muslim. When the money dries up and they go out of business the funding to terror will no doubt stop. Would a reverse immigration flow really bother anyone if the trouble makers simply went home?
The solution is within our grasp.
I tend to agree with Don (above #2), Muslims will never collectively denounce another Muslim for any dastardly act committed against non-Muslims.
Although all of these terror charities are supported by the Wahhabi establishment of Saudi Arabia, the US government has never denounced or prosecuted Saudis for their involvement in the 9/11 attacks, their support of Hamas, al Qaeda in Iraq or most terrorist acts committed worldwide. If we can’t collectively denounce the hub of world terrorism, why should we expect others to do so?
After 9/11, CAIR lost 90% of its Muslim membership. If 90% of all Americans could manage to boycott Saudi Arabia as effectively as American Muslims boycotted CAIR, we could accomplish something.
Never fear Obama is here.
How did Obama amass $1 billion dollars for his campaign. A huge amount legitimate the rest, well do the math.
The muslim world wanted Obama.
Never fear Obama is here.