Fuqra/MOA and Sheikh Gilani have a history of links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas, its Palestinian wing, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997 by the U.S. State Department. The Brotherhood is not listed as a terrorist group, despite being the parent group of Hamas, but there is a bipartisan movement in Congress to designate it.
Relationships with Brotherhood Affiliates
MOA was linked to the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the leader of Egyptian Gama’a Islamiyya, an affiliate of the Brotherhood.[1]
MOA was also linked to a Brotherhood affiliate name the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, the American branch of Makhtab al-Khidamat. It was led by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of Usama Bin Laden. It is seen as the predecessor to Al-Qaeda.
Attempts were made to build a relationship with the Muslim Students Association, which was founded as a Muslim Brotherhood front. It is worth noting that all college chapters of MSA operate independently with some being more open to diversity and social unity than anti-Semitic postures and threats of violence.[2] A 1990 letter to President Bush says that MOA’s Quranic Open University has representatives with the Muslim Students Association.
Contact information for Ahmad El-Kadi, the leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, was found to be in MOA’s possession. He led it from 1984 to 1993. It is unclear why MOA possessed the information. It is theoretically possible that it was part of generic intelligence-gathering.
A Common Islamist Front
MOA has also had links to Sudanese cleric Hasan al-Turabi, who is essentially the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan. Turabi’s main focuses in the early 1990s was forming a common Islamist front against the West. This included having a massive terrorist summit in Khartoum in 1993. Sheikh Gilani was seen there and initially attempted to keep his attendance secret.[3]
A 1993 State Department intelligence document said that Sheikh Gilani is linked to a “mujahidin hub” that includes multiple allied Islamist terrorist groups that belong to the Muslim Brotherhood movement. It reads:
“A close working relationship reportedly exists among [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar, Egyptian Islamic Gama’at spiritual leader Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Yemeni Islamic Jihad leader Sheikh Zindani and Sudanese National Islamic Front (NIF) leader Hassan al-Turabi. Sheikh Jilani, the leader of the Jama’at al-Fuqra based in Lahore, is also believed to have some ties to the mujahidin network. This circle of mutual admiration nurtures the network of safe havens, bases and logistical support.”[4]
The intertwined nature of the Islamist terrorist network that included the Muslim Brotherhood and MOA came into view in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As terrorism expert Steven Emerson explained in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1998:
“The culmination of this pan-Islamic militant partnership may have been seen in the World Trade Center bombing: Rather than being an attack dominated by the militant Islamic Jamaa from Egypt, evidence now shoes that the bombing was the product of collaboration from five different radical Islamic organizations, including the Gama Islamiya, Islamic Jihad, al-Fuqra, Sudanese National Islamic Front and Hamas.
The scope and breath of these militant Islamic groups should demonstrate unambiguously that, while not coordinated formally on an operational level, the militant Islamic groups network with one another in a sort of terrorist ‘internet.’”[5]
Ikhwanul Muslimun and Islamberg
The Islamberg land was originally linked to a non-profit registered as a church named Ikhwanul Muslimun, meaning “Muslim Brotherhood.” It was registered as a church on the property in 1974. It is unclear whether this is a direct link to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, but it is unlikely that such a name would be used for any reason other than affinity for the well-known Islamist movement.
The person who registered Ikhwanul Muslimun on the land that became Islamberg was contacted by the Fuqra Files creator, Ryan Mauro, in April 2012. The individual was a known long-time MOA member. He acted surprised that that the Ikhwanul Muslimun non-profit is still active and said they now go by the name of the United Muslim Christian Forum (MOA’s interfaith branch).
He said that he thought that the non-profit’s dissolution was reported to the IRS and would do so now. As of October 2016, it is still active (see picture below). This is significant because of its similarity to a case in Delaware where MOA “forgot” to report the dissolution of a non-profit.
By dissolving a non-profit but not alerting the IRS, its existence can be hidden while the administrators can maintain the benefits of having a “church.” The benefits include having an Employer Identification Number so operatives can set up tax-exempt bank accounts around the country that don’t need to be reported to the IRS.
MOA now makes the strange claim that the Ikhwanul Muslimun “church” changed its name to MOA as part of a secret plot by Muslim Brotherhood agents to defame Sheikh Gilani. Any crimes committed by MOA members associated with the non-profit should therefore be attributed to the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators, not Gilani or the “real” MOA, the group argues.
Oklahoma City Terror Network
MOA had a commune in Talihina, OK and a presence in Oklahoma City that was connected to a broader Islamist terrorist network.[6]
In his authoritative book titled I Heard You Were Going on Jihad, author Mitchell Gray exposed an interconnected Islamist terrorist and extremist network in Oklahoma City centered around an address that he provided a pseudonym for.[7] The owners of the address ran an import company and owned low-income properties. The location is linked to a network of operatives from Fuqra/MOA, Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood.
Funding from Pennsylvania Mosque
The MOA’s non-profit in Pennsylvania received significant funding from a mosque in the 1990s that appears to be linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. A declassified intelligence report says that the non-profit received many checks from the Islamic Society of Susquehanna Valley. An online directory of mosques places that facility at Sunbury, PA.[8] A now-defunct website for the mosque stated that events were held at the Ghulam Rasool Mosque in Sunbury. The website did not acknowledge any ties to MOA when it was last updated in 2000.
The mosque website linked to various organizations and individuals tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, such as Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi, Fiqh As-Sunnah (a Brotherhood text) and the Islamic Society of North America. It also linked to the Islamic Circle of North America, a derivative of an Islamist party in Pakistan and to the Benevolence International Foundation, an Al-Qaeda front used to support terrorists in Bosnia and Chechnya.[9]
Guerrilla Training
It is probable that Muslim Brotherhood plans to develop paramilitary training camps in the U.S. was related to MOA’s own camps. The Blind Sheikh’s group, which is a Brotherhood affiliate, had a relationship with MOA that likely included use of MOA camps.[10]
In the early 1980s, Zeid al-Noman, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Executive Office in the U.S. and a member of the Brotherhood’s board of directors, gave a speech to Brotherhood members that included a discussion of guerilla training inside the U.S.
Al-Noman detailed the Brotherhood’s plans to collect intelligence, monitor adversarial forces like Zionists and conduct counter-intelligence against law enforcement agencies “so that we find out if they are monitoring us, are we not being monitored, how we can get rid of them.”
Part of MOA’s modus operandi is to set up security organizations as fronts and to bid on government contracts. They also applied for jobs in law enforcement.
He said that “there is weapons training in many of the Ikhwans’ camps” and refers to difficulties members are experiencing at a camp in Oklahoma, which may be the aforementioned MOA camp in Talihina.
Noman says that the owners of the camp grounds were requiring more information from Muslim visitors, including accurate identification. He said the police also arrived on one occasion and asked for identification cards and/or visas. Noman said the scrutiny forced them to go to another camp in Missouri.[11]
A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lays out a strategy that includes “training on the use of weapons domestically” and says there are “noticeable activities in this regard.” The memo states that the Brotherhood’s “work in America is a kind of grand jihad…in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” It emphasized partnering with like-minded Muslim groups, just like Sheikh Gilani was doing.[12]
A secret videotape filmed in 1991 or 1992 shows Sheikh Gilani advertising his guerrilla warfare training for Islamic fighters around the world. He boasts of having trained Palestinians to fight Israel. One featured class is specifically for fighting “Jews and Israelis.”[13]
The Palestinians supposedly trained by Gilani and MOA in Pakistan and Kashmir were most likely members of Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both Hamas and MOA opposed the peace process and any notion that pursuing Israel’s destruction should be abandoned.
American Muslim Alliance
Khadijah Ghafur, one of the top MOA officials who was convicted of running a charter school scam in California, was the Fresno regional representative of the American Muslim Alliance. Its President, Agha Saeed, said he met Ghafur at a conference in 1997.[14] The American Muslim Alliance is an Islamist group accused of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Pakistani intelligence.[15]
2003 Counter-Terrorism Investigation
Drug Enforcement Agency documents from an investigation into Fuqra/MOA indicate that some connection to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Brotherhood/Hamas-linked terrorist group, was discovered. These specific files were kept by the El Paso Intelligence Center, which likely means that the intelligence related to MOA’s Texas branch.
The documents were indexed under Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Center of Lexington, the Chicago Islamic Center and the Ajouly Money Exchange.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) first began defending MOA in 2014 after the Clarion Project broke a story identifying a MOA enclave in Texas, accompanied with declassified FBI documents identifying MOA as an extremist group and terrorist threat.
CAIR distributed a biased article that whitewashed MOA.[16] When a CAIR official was confronted by Ryan Mauro, creator of Fuqra Files, on television about CAIR’s increasing ties to MOA, the official responded, “there has not been a terrorist group operating in America since 2001 because of the effectiveness of our intelligence and law enforcement.”[17]
MOA likewise defends CAIR as “highly respected.”[18] They falsely attack their critics (including Muslims) as financially-motivated and bigoted “Islamophobes” and suggest that a Zionist conspiracy is waging a war on Islam.
The U.S. Justice Department designated CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a CAIR-linked charity that was shut down for financing the Hamas terrorist group. The Justice Department identified CAIR as an “entity” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body established by the Brotherhood to advance Hamas’ cause.[19]
In another terrorism trial, that of Sabri Benkhala, federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing:
“From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists … the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”
The United Arab Emirates, a Muslim country that previously supported CAIR, designated the organization as a terrorist group when it decided to ban the Muslim Brotherhood.[20]
Three officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spoke at the MOA’s first annual International Islamophobia Conference in Schenectady on November 14, 2015.
MOA General Counsel Tahirah Amatul-Wadud lives in Springfield, Massachusetts and spoke at the New York event. She is on the board of the Massachusetts chapter of CAIR. The biography of her used by CAIR declines to mention her affiliation with MOA, instead referring to her generally as the “general counsel for a New York Muslim congregation.”
She posted an article by Sheikh Gilani on her Facebook account that preached that the Islamic State terrorist group (also known as ISIS or ISIL) is a front for British intelligence and that a Jewish conspiracy orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The article criticizes the U.S. for going to war with Nazi Germany:
“There was no need for America to go to war against Hitler. Hitler was not the enemy of America or the American people. There was a mutual animosity between Hitler and the Jews. So, the American people paid a very heavy price for fighting someone else’s war,” Gilani wrote.[21]
Imraan Siddiqi, the executive director of the Arizona chapter of CAIR, served as a delegate representing India. He was a member of the board of directors of the mosque hosting the event, the Muslim Community Center of Capitol District in Schenectady, New York.[22]
In 2013, Siddiqi retweeted a message that referred to the U.S. military as an “Occupying Army” and said that Americans should be “rescued” from serving in it.[23]
Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of CAIR, was a featured speaker.
Walid has expressed support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and accused the West of secretly plotting to undermine the group after it won the presidency. He has also downplayed Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel. He frequently characterizes the FBI and law enforcement as systematically persecuting innocent Muslims and minorities.
He says that the FBI infiltrates mosques with the objective of “basically cultivating and inciting people towards extremism.” He claims that the FBI is “basically manufacturing their own terrorism suspects to give the appearance that they’re actually doing something tangible in the so-called ‘War on Terrorism.’”
Walid was quoted by another CAIR official in 2014 as suggesting that fallen U.S. troops should not be honored on Memorial Day if they died in wars where he sees the U.S. as the aggressor. He also said in 2014 that he was “not getting excited” about Independence Day because the U.S. “has yet to atone for slavery and ethnic cleansing.”[24]
Official Stance of Sheikh Gilani & MOA
Sheikh Gilani and MOA claim that they were victimized by a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to undermine support for Gilani by committing crime and violence. The group claims to have vanquished the Brotherhood from the United States and Gilani should be thanked. Gilani points to his condemnation of the terrorist tactic of suicide bombings as evidence of his sincerity.
As mentioned above in regards to the Ikhwanul Muslimun “church” on Islamberg property, MOA attributes any crime by its members to the Brotherhood. It claims that the Brotherhood, Salafists and Wahhabists are secret agents of the British, who are secret agents of the Satanic-Zionist conspiracy.
Gilani claims that once he discovered the infiltrators, “I was able to disband the world’s most dangerous setup of Wahhabis, the Ikhwanul Muslimun” and MOA has “gotten rid of Wahhabi Ikhwanul Muslimeen in America.”[25]
He claims that the Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda have tried to kill him six times in Pakistan and he must send his family to the U.S. for their safety.
However, MOA’s publishing company, Zavia Books, sells a book on Sharia Law by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader. Qaradawi is one of very few Islamic leaders besides Gilani that MOA promotes.
[1] For more information on this relationship, read the section of this website about MOA’s relationships with other Islamist groups, specifically the Blind Sheikh and Egyptian Gama’a Islamiyya.
[3] Footage from the summit, including an interview with Sheikh Gilani, was in the award-winning “Seeds of Terror” documentary that can be watched on the Fuqra Files YouTube channel.
[4] “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous.” (1993). State Department Intelligence and Research Bureau.
[5] “Foreign Terrorists in America: Five Years After the World Trade Center.” (1998), U.S. Senate, Committee of the Judiciary, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information.
[6] For more information on the MOA network in Oklahoma, click here.
[7] Gray, Mitchell. (2015). I Heard You Were Going on Jihad. Mill City Press.
[8] Islamic Society of Susquehanna Valley. (n.d.). Islamic Valley. http://islamicvalley.com/iv/mosque/info/53M/islamic+society+of+susquehanna+valley
[9] In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. (2000). Susquehanna Valley Islamic Society. http://www.oocities.org/svislamics/
[10] For more information on this relationship, read the section of this website about MOA’s relationships with other Islamist groups, specifically the Blind Sheikh and Egyptian Gama’a Islamiyya.
[11] Evidence from the Holy Land Foundation trial. Tape Number/CD number T13-T18 1 “Ikhwan in America.”
[12] An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America. (1991). Exhibit from the trial of the Holy Land Foundation: http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum
[13] The tape, titled “Soldiers of Allah,” was obtained by Martin Mawyer from a law enforcement source. More information about the film is available in the section of this website about guerrilla training.
[14] Sean Webby, Karen de Sa and Brandon Bailey. (2001). Muslim Enclave in California Draws Suspicion from FBI. Associated Press. http://lang.sbsun.com/socal/terrorist/1201/25/terror15.asp
[15] Shankar, Abha. (2016). IPT Exclusive: Document Reveals Omar Mateen’s Father Tied to Radical Islamist Groups. Investigative Project on Terrorism.
[16] Mauro, Ryan. (2014). CAIR Defends U.S. Jamaat ul-Fuqra Terror Group. Clarion Project.
[17] Mauro, Ryan. (2016). CAIR: No Terror Orgs in US. Clarion Project.
[18] A Discredited Islamophobe Attacks Muslim Woman Attorney in Blog. (2016). Islamic Post.
[19] Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – Nat’l Headquarters. Clarion Project. http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/council-islamic-relations-cair
[20] Antonia Blumberg, C.A.I.R. and Muslim American Society Seek Clarity After UAE Designates Them On Terrorist List (11/18/2014), Huffington Post; Adam Taylor, Why the U.A.E. is Calling 2 American Groups Terrorists (11/17/2014) Washington Post; Ryan Mauro, UAE Doubles Down on Designation of CAIR as Terrorists (2014), Clarion Project.
[21] CAIR-Fuqra Official Announces Intention to Run for Governor (2016), Clarion Project.
[22] CAIR Intertwines with U.S.-Based, Terror-Linked Fuqra Group. Clarion Project.
[23] CAIR Officials: U.S. Army ‘Occupiers,’ ‘Murderers.’ (2013) Clarion Project. http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cair-officials-decry-muslims-us-military
[24] CAIR-Michigan. Clarion Project. http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cair-michigan
[25] Sufi Leader El Sheikh Gilani: America Beware of Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen. (2013). Islamic Post. https://www.islamicpostonline.com/opinion/2013/01/29/sufi_leader_el_sheikh_gilani_america_beware_ikhwan_al_muslimeen-421/
Other Notable Articles
Dawud Walid-CAIR’s Michigan Chapter President. An IPT Report.
CAIR – Suspected and Supported by the Federal Government, By: IPT News, The Investigative Project on Terrorism (July 30, 2010)
“The FBI severed its relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2008, saying until it determines “whether there continues to be a connection between” CAIR leadership and Hamas terrorists, the organization is not an appropriate liaison partner.
Two recent episodes show that, despite this rhetoric and evidence linking CAIR to a Hamas support network – in addition to unresolved questions about its current connections – government agencies continue to engage with the group, even sending its officials abroad to represent the U.S…” [Read More]
