Several months ago, Douglas Murray and myself were approached by Paul Cruickshank, a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security, who wanted some help with an article which he was co-writing together with Peter Bergen about the intellectual challanges facing al-Qaeda.
Douglas and I spent over two hours briefing Cruickshank about Islamist movements in the UK and put him in touch with several British Muslims who could help him further. Cruickshank and Bergen's resulting article 'The Great Unraveling' was published as the cover story of this week's issue of The New Republic. Unfortunately, however, the authors seem to have seriously misunderstood the nature of the threat that Islamic extremists pose to British society.
The article discusses how al-Qaeda is coming under attack from former jihadists around the world. While much of this is true, the article goes on to describe the Muslim Brotherhood, and particularly its British branch, the Muslim Association of Britain, as an indispensable ally against al-Qaeda.
As support for this thesis, the article quotes several of Cruickshank and Bergen's long-standing Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist contacts in London who previously helped them research al-Qaeda. These include Kemal Helbawy (who Bergen unsuccessfully sought to invite to speak in the US) and Noman Benothman who tell them - correctly - that al-Qaeda is losing support among Muslims but who also convince the authors that this is because al-Qaeda is being successfully opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood's connections with Islamic terrorism are too numerous to mention here. However, it is worth recalling their motto "Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope", their support for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's mass murder, the decision of Hassan al-Turabi, the Brotherhood's leader in Sudan, to invite Osama bin Laden to live there in 1990 and the constant attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas, the brotherhood's Palestinian branch. Former members of the Brotherhood include Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab al-Suri - all leading jihadist ideologues and brotherhood members are even believed to have initially radicalised bin Laden himself.
The article's authors do fleetingly admit that the Brotherhood's opposition to al-Qaeda does not mean that they are automatically pro-western, writing that "most of these clerics and former militants, of course, have not suddenly switched to particularly progressive forms of Islam or fallen in love with the United States (all those we talked to saw the Iraqi insurgency as a defensive jihad)."
However, they conclude, "their anti-Al Qaeda positions are making Americans safer." The authors might have added that their positions are only making Americans safer in the short term.
As evidence, the article describes how the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) took over the Finsbury Park Mosque in 2005 from Abu Hamza, "confronted" his followers and "joined forces with the British authorities to reclaim the institution from pro-Al Qaeda militants".
The articles fails to mention, however, that since then MAB has done little to curb extremism in the mosque and has infact turned a blind eye to extremists who continue to use the mosque to recruit followers.
In January 2007, the Telegraph reported that the MAB-run mosque was now being used by Hizb ut-Tahrir to recruit followers and that they were using US airstrikes against members of the extremist Islamic Courts Union in Somalia to stir up Muslim anger against the West. Leaflets distributed at the mosque read: "The re-invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Somalia: join the protest against Bush's terrorism. [President Bush] has sponsored Ethiopian troops invading Somalia and bombed villages, killing civilians using the excuse of targeting terrorism."
Separately, the Guardian reported (also in January 2007) that senior representatives of the Islamic Courts Union had visited the mosque to raise funds. Abdiwali Mohamud, a Somali community worker in Camden, told the Guardian: "They were trying to influence people in a Muslim way, saying are you with us or with the unbelievers?"
The Islamic Courts representatives also called on the mosque's congregation to give money and provide military support for their jihad. The Telegraph had previously found leaflets in the mosque's entrance hall reading: "Stop American massacre against Somali People. Join and show your anger."
The New Republic article does not mention how MAB have failed to tackle extremism in the Finsbury Park Mosque, however. Instead, the article quotes Robert Lambert, formerly head of the Metropolitan police's Muslim Contact Unit, as endorsing MAB's work, saying that, "When you have Muslim leaders who are attacked both by Al Qaeda supporters and by commentators who oppose engagement [with Islamists], then they are in a useful position."
In addition, the article absolutely fails to mention the Muslim Brotherhood's British members are not only at odds with al-Qaeda but with also non-Islamist Muslim groups that oppose not only terrorism but also sectarianism, jihadism and religious ghettoisation. For example, while the authors do mention the anti-jihadist activities of Usama Hassan and the Quilliam Foundation, they do not make clear that several leading MAB members such as Suhaib Saeed, Azzam Tamimi and Anas Altikriti have begun a bitter and highly-personal campaign to discredit Usama Hassan, the Quilliam Foundation and the valuable work which they are doing.
Ironically, if Cruickshank and Bergen had actually asked Usama Hassan (who we put them in contact with), whether he thought that the Brotherhood should be given a greater role in tackling terrorism in the UK, they would have heard the same answer that I heard from him: an adamant 'no'.
The article's endorsement of Kemal al-Helbawy is even more bizarre. Helbawy's dislike for the Jews is notorious and long-standing. In 1992, he told a confernece in the US:
"Do not take Jews and Christians as allies. For they are allies to each other. Oh Brothers, the Palestinian cause is not of conflict of borders and land only. It is not even a conflict of human ideology and not over peace. Rather, it is an absolute clash of civilizations, between truth and falsehood. Between two conducts - one satanic, headed by Jews and their co-conspirators - and the other is religious, carried by Hamas, and the Islamic movement in particular, and the Islamic people in general who are behind it."
The video is available here.
In early 2008, Helbawy gave a scarcely less-deranged speech at an event organised by the Radical Middle Way in London. The video is available here.
Bergen and Cruickshank appear to be pleading for some sort of quid pro quo with Islamist extremists. Perhaps they think that as long as Islamists tackle al-Qaeda they should be freely allowed to incite hatred and violence against Jews. Maybe they believe that the Muslim Brotherhood should be allowed to support Zarqawi's attacks on Iraqi civilians as long as that American civilians are not attacked. Perhaps they should have entitled their article 'No dead Americans, no problem'. If the writers are indeed guilty of such moral cowardice, then their attitude is proof not that al-Qaeda is losing, but that it is winning.
Peter Bergen has previously written eloquently about Osama bin Laden's rise to prominence through the CIA's support for extreme Islamists against the Soviet Union. It is clear that he has not learnt from this the dangers of believing that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'. Just because the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to al-Qaeda's strategy, this does not make it a friend or ally of the West.
You quote Kemal al-Helbawy, making an inference from his antiSemitic remarks, perhaps alluding to the general purview of his discourse:
"Do not take Jews and Christians as allies. For they are allies to each other..."
He is merely paraphrasing the Qur'an and maxims of Islam's sole (or soul) prophet.
Given that faith in each of the Islamic theological creeds (Sunni, Shi'a etc.) presupposes a recognition of the 'prophethood' of Muhammad and the flawless, incorruptible and undying message of the Qur'anic corpus, all Muslims are required to endorse this Egyptian's comments.
There can be no escaping the fact that whether 'moderate' Muslim, Jihadist or 'secular', in order to be an adherent one must approve of scripture containing language that unequivocally calls for the destruction of Britain as we know it.
Muslims can plead 'translational bias', extremist views or simply Islamophobia, but the fact remains that the majority, if not all of the unsavoury behaviour and views that we have become accustomed to, find their origin in the Islamic scriptures. The Arabic texts are clear.
The question is how long we are willing to tolerate what is effectively a 5th column on these shores?
If nobody seems to read the texts themselves, or decision makers rely on Muslims to interpret texts for them, how can one be sure that one is getting the full story?
No-one seems to be concerned that the World Ahl ul-Bayt organisation is based here in London...I guess they provide a sanitised version of Islam too? Do they recruit?