MICHELE BACHMANN TARGETED FOR ‘UGLY ISLAMOPHOBIC FEAR MONGERING’
By Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 20 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
January 17, 2013
New Campaign Against Rep. Bachmann for
Anti-Brotherhood Stance
People for the American Way (PFAW) has launched a new campaign against Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who, after her recent re-election to Congress, has been re-appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
A PFAW-sponsored petition with 178,000 signatures is to be presented to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Monday 21 January 2012 to protest Bachmann’s HPSCI appointment.
Citing what PFAW calls “ugly Islamophobic fear mongering,” the petition decries what it alleges are Bachmann’s “unfounded and irresponsible attacks on dedicated public servants.”
Although it does not say so specifically, the PFAW petition likely refers to a set of letters signed by Rep. Bachmann and four Congressional colleagues – Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and Lynn Westmorland (R-GA).
The letters were sent in June 2012 to the inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State and the Office of the Director of National Security (ODNI). The letters note that U.S. foreign policy has undergone a dramatic shift in the direction of open support for the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and question whether that policy shift may be the result of Brotherhood influence operations.
Given that the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding case had established with voluminous documentary evidence from the Muslim Brotherhood’s own archives that its mission in America is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within,” Congressional requests, most particularly from the HPSCI, that inspectors general look into the possibility of Brotherhood penetration into the highest levels of the U.S. government would seem to be most appropriate.
As the debacle of the Islamic Awakening continues to churn across the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, and Muslim Brotherhood operatives consolidate their sharia rule in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt (and move closer to ousting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad), the collaboration of the U.S. government in the Brotherhood’s “grand Jihad” is as critical to the jihadis as it is inexplicable to defenders of genuine democracy both at home and abroad.
As Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues rightly pointed out, U.S. policy, once implacably opposed to the march of Islamic jihad, shifted dramatically during the years following the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, individuals with close links to the Muslim Brotherhood were named to advisory and appointed government positions.
Huma Abedin, for example, who is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, not only served while a student at George Washington University on the Executive Board of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), a Muslim Brotherhood front group that is so acknowledged in its own document (The Explanatory Memorandum), but also served for 12 years as the assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA), the publication of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA).
Both the IMMA and its journal were founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, whom Andrew McCarthy describes as “a wealthy and influential Saudi academic who became a financier of the al Qaeda terror network as well as the secretary-general of Muslim World League – one of the most significant joint ventures of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi government in terms of spreading Islamic supremacist ideology.”
Then there is Mohamed Magid, the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim Brotherhood front group in the U.S. and named by the Department of Justice an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.
As with Abedin, Magid’s leadership of an acknowledged affiliate of a jihadist organization pledged to “destroying the Western civilization from within” seemed no obstacle to a U.S. government advisory appointment on an issue directly related to jihad. Magid was named a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group” of the Homeland Security Advisory Council in Spring 2010.
Mohamed Elibiary, Magid’s colleague on the DHS Working Group is also a member of the DHS Advisory Council itself. Elibiary has defended Sayyed Qutb, perhaps the foremost theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, and recommended his writings. He also spoke at a December 2004 conference in honor of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini entitled, “A Tribute to a Great Islamic Visionary.”
Abedin, Magid, and Elibiary are but three examples cited with careful and thorough references in the Congressional letters to the inspectors general; all were named to serve in U.S. government positions in which they are expected to provide advice on official policy related to Islamic terrorism.
During their collective government tenure, U.S. policy backed al-Qaeda-affiliated militias to overthrow the government of Libya and replace it with one strongly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood; supported the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to oust the government of Hosni Mubarak, an American ally for over 30 years; and openly declared support for al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebel militias fighting to oust the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Further, during the period when Abedin, Magid, Elibiary and like-minded figures have been in positions to influence U.S. policy “from within,” the U.S. government has implemented a federal-bureaucracy-wide policy to purge from official documents, speech, and training all usage of terms like “jihad” to describe terrorism that is motivated by Islamic doctrine, law and scriptures.
And yet, the questionable allegiances, background history and documented positions of these and others in support of individuals, organizations and positions that espouse Islamic terrorism not only failed to alert any independent counterintelligence authorities within their respective Cabinet departments or during background investigation processes. Unbelievably, the documented history of these individuals seemed of insignificant merit to attract strong bipartisan support even when Reps. Bachmann, Franks, Gohmert, Rooney and Westmoreland courageously and appropriately raised the issue themselves.
It is part of the duties of the inspectors general to investigate even the appearance of conflict of interest lest public trust in its federal servants be eroded. When the possible conflict of interest involves the forces of Islamic jihad, the very enemy that attacked us on 9/11, the one battling to defeat American troops fighting in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, then the obligation to take seriously the warnings of patriotic Congressional representatives is indeed a serious one.
Click here to sign a counter-petition:
“Stop the Witch Hunt Against Rep. Bachmann.”
Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 20 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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