How the CIA Helped The Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrate the West

by Jerry Gordon (August 2011)

Muslim Brotherhood and founder Hasan al-Banna

 Fox News reported:

[. . .]

, Hasan al Banna in 1928. He advocated violent Jihad and the replacement of secular governments with a worldwide totalitarian Caliphate governed under strict Islamic Shariah law. Banna became a devotee of Adolf Hitler, who was himself an admirer of Islam and militarist Jihad conquest. Despite Banna’s assassination by Egyptian authorities under King Farouk in 1949, the MB succeeded in establishing branches throughout the Middle East, such as Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Syria. There are even branches in Europe and America. The Hamas Charter of 1988 seeks the obliteration of the Jewish State of Israel. Among MB fronts in the US are:

• Muslim Public Affairs Council.

1991 strategy plan of the MB in the US to overthrow our Constitution and form of government via ‘stealth Jihad’ and replacing it with a Shariah–ruled Caliphate.

The Arab Spring and US Relations with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

 

Investor’s Business Daily noted the ensuing chronology of events, punctuated by the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in Egypt during the Arab Spring of 2011 that swept the heartland of the Muslim ummah.

2009: Obama delivers his Cairo speech to Muslims, infuriating the Mubarak regime by inviting Brotherhood leaders to attend.

2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians.

2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas.

World Muslim League.  This resulted in an MB beachhead in the US launched from the Munich Islamic Center.

The Muslim Brotherhood Mosque in Munich

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ian Johnson illustrates that conclusively in his investigative book, A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, CIA and the Rise of The Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Johnson earned his Pulitzer for a Wall Street Journal series about the Chinese religious group, Fulan Gong.  He has been a long time resident in Germany and until early in 2010, was the Berlin Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. His book is about how an accidental discovery of a map in a “Londonistan” extremist Muslim bookstore, where he had been a regular customer, triggered five years of research into the MB mosque in Germany that led to his book. Johnson notes the accidental discovery:

Wandering the aisles, I noticed a peculiar map of the world. [. . .]Famous mosques decorated the edge of the map- the Grand mosque in Mecca, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the wondrous Blue Mosque of Istanbul and the Islamic Center of Munich.

Johnson goes on to note:

But he notes the cautionary aspect of this tale:

Gerhard von Mende, ex-Nazi Turkologist

The mosque in the Munich saga begins with the seminal role played by ex- Nazi Turkologist and antisemite Gerhard von Mende, an ethnic German, born in Riga, Latvia. He held a PhD in Soviet Studies and Economics from Berlin University and ultimately became a full professor there. Von Mende was a talented linguist, spoke Turkish and several Central Asian variants, Arabic, Russian, French, English and even Norwegian, his wife’s native language.  Von Mende also wrote blatant antisemitic tracts. Johnson notes this from a von Mende book, The Peoples of the Soviet Union:

Johnson notes that von Mende engaged in such screed because:

Ostministerium – the bureaucracy for administering the occupied territories in the East – to build an initiative aimed at cultivating irredentist Muslim movements in overrun Soviet territory. Von Mende was one of the mid-level bureaucrats who participated in the Wannsee conference in January 1942. The Ostministerium oversaw the implementation of the Final Solution of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews. Despite SS engineered overhauls in 1943 of the Ostministerium, von Mende survived to become overall head of the Foreign Peoples Division, with overall responsibility for dealing with irredentist Muslim communities in Soviet areas overrun by the German army.

Veli Kayum, entered the camps and enlisted their aid in forming fighting military units to combat their former Soviet masters. Kayum ultimately becomes head of a Turkestan National Liberation Council. Another Uzbek and von Mende protégé, Baymirza Hayit, became  liaison to the German High Command. Several hundred thousand former Soviet Muslim POWs joined this effort and formed Waffen SS units akin to those in the Balkans, like the Bosnian Handshar or Dagger Division. One such Caucasian unit had regular German uniforms with a distinctive patch (Biz Alla Bilen – “God With Us”).  These Soviet Muslim cadres in German units were used in the unsuccessful relief of Stalingrad and as special ops units in Operation Zeppelin. That operation involved the parachuting of Soviet Muslims into Russian territory equipped with maps and radios as pathfinders and possible saboteurs of petroleum complexes in Grozny and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. Other former Soviet Muslim POWs become functionaries at the Ostministerium in Berlin and were organized into national liberation desks engaged in propaganda broadcasts –a model for post WWII CIA-funded efforts at Radio Liberty. One of those who figures in post-WWII activities with the CIA funded Radio Liberty is Tatar, Garip Sultan, who held the Tatar liberation desk at the Nazi Ostministerium. Sultan was promoted to military governor of the Tartar provisional government by the Nazis. One of von Mende’s initiatives bore significant results when over 20,000 Tatars joined Waffen SS auxiliaries after the Nazis took the Crimea. Von Mende reached out to Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini and asked him to consider taking the post of Mufti for the conquered Crimea. Von Mende wrote Husseini:

Promethean League members who were anti-Soviet émigrés. Some Muslim units interviewed by US Army CIC evaded return to ultimate imprisonment and death in a Soviet Gulag under the terms of Yalta agreement. As Johnson notes, perhaps upwards of a few thousand of these ex-Nazi Muslim soldiers end up in Displaced Persons Camps near Munich, the largest city in the American sector of post-war Germany. Von Mende, despite his Nazi background, was interviewed by the CIA, given the code name Capriform and received a position at the University of Munich, as cover. The CIA was very interested in inserting agents into Soviet territory. Ultimately, however, the CIA rejected his suggested approach to information gathering and covert propaganda warfare. Nevertheless, von Mende ultimately thrived by running an independent consultancy in Dusseldorf until his death in 1963. That consultancy was supported initially by British Intelligence and later, with the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, by BND Intelligence, Refugee Programs and the Foreign Ministry to monitor Muslim émigrés. Those new émigrés included wartime Caucasian and Central Asian Muslim Waffen SS alumni. Among them were Garip Sultan, Ibrahim Gacoglu, and Nurredin Namangani, an Uzbek Imam of an SS division who survived a term in a Soviet gulag. Some became involved in CIA covert anti–Soviet activities during pilgrimages to Mecca.

President Eisenhower with the Princeton Islam Seminar Delegation aEnter Said Ramadan the son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood Founder, Hassan al-Banna

Dr. Said Ramadan. Ramadan with the connivance of  Haj Amin Al Husseini spread the political Islamic doctrine of the MB via the World Muslim League. The League was co-founded by the Grand Mufti, al Husseini, and Ramadan. The core of the MB doctrine was the restoration of the Caliphate which had ended with establishment of modern Turkey in 1924. The Caliph would enforce strict Islamic Law in the ummah – the community of believers. Ramadan married one of daughters of Egyptian MB founder Hassan al-Banna, who was assassinated in 1949 by Egyptian authorities under King Farouk. Gamal al-Banna, brother of the MB founder, thought Ramadan could “have been the foreign Minister of the MB. He was an eloquent orator and spoke English. He had many contacts overseas.” Ramadan and the Grand Mufti held a meeting in Karachi during the World Muslim Congress in 1951. Ramadan was then elected as a secretary of the Congress. Ramadan was also with the Grand Mufti in the Jerusalem-based Islamic General Congress. Among his colleagues in the MB was Sayyid Qutb, the MB’s principal modern theorist and author of the tract Milestones. Qutb propounded the view that those who disagreed with these Islamic principals were apostates and therefore subject to a death.

Abbott Washburn deputy director of the US Information Agency . . . recalled the high priority that Eisenhower gave to religion in his personal life and in geopolitical strategy.

Dr. Said Ramadan, Circa 1960

The encounters with Ramadan at Princeton in 1953, despite skepticism, nonetheless encouraged the Eisenhower Administration during his second term to provide support for the MB. This was viewed largely as a response to Soviet influence in Egypt under Nasser. In a letter to Presbyterian Church leader Edward Elson, Eisenhower wrote:

Rusi Nasar, an Uzbek who had previously gone on  pilgrimages to Mecca for AMCOMLIB and who directly attacked the Soviet delegation at the Second Bandung conference.

Ramadan held no hatred for the American people, only amazement at the incompetence of the American intelligence community and its seemingly endless reliance on corruption to get what it wanted.

Mahdi Akef Supreme leader of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Ghaleb Himmat, a Syrian businessman, who headed the Islamic Center for over 30 years from his base in Lugano, Switzerland. He was assisted by Egyptian businessman Youssef Nada who secured funds mainly from Libya (both pre and post Gaddafi takeover) to complete the construction of the Munich Islamic Center which opened in 1973. Mahdi Akef, current supreme leader of the Egyptian MB. headed the Munich Islamic center for four years from 1984 to 1987.

assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser. This time the plot was foiled by a tip from King Hussein’s Jordanian intelligence service. An MB operative in President Nasser's personal Honor Guard was poised to assassinate him. News of the plot resulted in Egyptian security detaining more than more than 6,000 conspirators. Perhaps in revenge for this attempt by the MB, Nasser had MB theoretician Sayyid Qtub executed in 1966.

Bahram Nahidian, who was a rug merchant and supporter of the Ayatollah in Washington, DC became Ramadan’s recruiter of these converts for operations against supporters of the late Shah. An Afro American Islamic convert, David Belfield, a.k.a. Dawud Salahuddin was recruited for the assassination of Ali Akbar Tabatabai’e, a counter-coup plotter and coup organizer. Tabatabai’e was shot at point blank range by Salahuddin disguised as a US postal worker at Tabatabai’e’s residence in Bethesda, Maryland on July 22, 1980. Salahuddin fled the US to Geneva, where Ramadan gave him temporary refuge. Despite initial objections by the Iranian Embassy in Switzerland, Salahuddin was cleared and fled to Tehran where he obtained sanctuary under Ayatollah Khomenei.

Professor Tariq Ramadan Son of Said Ramadan and Grandson of MB Founder Hasan al-Banna

Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University in the UK. The younger Ramadan was denied entry to the US by the Bush State Department because of his charitable contributions to Hamas, an MB affiliate. Federal court decisions in 2008 led to Tariq Ramadan being granted a visa.

Said Ramadan died in Switzerland in 1995.

The Munich Islamic Center Spawns MB Affiliates in the US

 

Youssef Nada, Egyptian Financier of MB in US

Yusuf Qaradawi attended, they created the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) to nurture and spread the neo-Salafist doctrine of Qutb and others. After a 1978 meeting in Saudi Arabia, the MB leaders decided strategically to locate the IIIT in the US. Initially the Institute was opened in Philadelphia, lead by Dr. Ismail Faruqi, who was on the faculty at Temple University. Later the IIIT would move to its present site in Fairfax County, Virginia.

                              

Of Islamic Thought

Two attendees at the Lugano meeting were Dr. Jamal Barzinji and Ahmed Tontonji. Barzinji signed the incorporation papers for the opening of the IIIT in the US in 1980. Another MB functionary was Dr. Hisham Altallib. He became a voting member of the Munich Islamic Center in 1978. The trio of Tontonji, Barzinji and Altallib, after study in Britain, left for the US in the 1960’s. In 1962, Tontonji formed the oldest MB front in the US, the Muslim Student Association. The first MSA National chapter was formed in 1963 at the campus of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which launched ISNA. The National MSA has grown to more than several hundred chapters on high school, college and university campuses throughout the US and Canada. Perhaps the most notorious of which is the Muslim Student Union at U.C. Irvine in Orange County, California whose members were indicted for disrupting the speech of Israeli Ambassador to the US, Hon. Michael Oren in February, 2010.

The Lugano trio of three Iraqis, Totonji, Barzinji and Altallib, settled in Indianapolis. They were joined by benefactor Nada who lived there between 1978 and 1982. They used Saudi money to build a national headquarters on a 42 acre site in the community of Plainfield, Indiana. There they created several MB fronts: the North American Islamic Trust, used to provide Shariah compliant mortgages for mosque construction and expansion, the Muslim Student Association and the largest Muslim advocacy group in the US, the Islamic Society of North America.

All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Northern Virginia chairman Ahmed Tontonji is:

named as a defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by more than 600 relatives of people who died in the 9/11 attacks.

He acted as a co-founder and officer of the Saudi-founded/Saudi-funded (and now defunct) SAAR Trust. Additionally, he served as Vice President of the Safa Group and the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). Officials have linked the non-profit IIIT to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda…”

In Conclusion

Charlie Wilson’s War of the 1980’s. That effort was spawned by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski under President Carter in 1979 and was another anti-Soviet attempt to use a “holy war,” along with billions from the US, the Saudis and the corrupt Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence service, to weaken the USSR. After the Soviet 40^th Army retreated from Afghanistan in 1989, al Qaeda, followers of the MB Islamic doctrine of Qutb, arose to afflict us with global Islamic terror. The Bush Administration while feigning refusal to meet with the MB in Egypt, nevertheless cultivated the successor to the World Muslim League founded by Said Ramadan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a virtual Caliphate composed of 57 Muslim nations. In 2007, President Bush appointed the first special envoy to the OIC, giving it embassy status in Washington, DC. In the wake of the Arab spring in Egypt, the Obama Administration has reached out to the Egyptian MB that might become the ruling party if, as expected, their new Freedom and Justice Party receives a plurality in the coming elections this fall.

To comment on this article, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish timely and interesting articles like this one, please click here.

If you have enjoyed this article and want to read more by Jerry Gordon, please click here.

Jerry Gordon is a also regular contributor to our community blog. To read his entries, please click here.