Last week during an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to US President Donald Trump and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, said: “We have to recognize that if Arab Muslim nations like Jordan have designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization, it may be high time for us to do so as well.”
Previously, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also the US national security adviser, had said that “The Muslim Brotherhood is the progenitor” and “the grandfather of all modern global jihadism.”
Cynthia Farahat is the Egyptian-American author of the bestseller The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death (2022) and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood. She is also a columnist, counterterrorism and counterintelligence expert, and co-founder of the Liberal Egyptian Party in Egypt (in 2003). She has studied Sunni and Shia Islamic jurisprudence and history for over 25 years and co-authored several earlier books, such as Desecration of a Heavenly Religion, officially banned by Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2008 for its criticism of Egypt’s blasphemy law.
Farahat’s work is popular in the West and in moderate Islamic countries and has been translated into more than 28 languages. Her writing landed her on a Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda affiliated group hit list. For almost a decade under former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, she received daily death threats from Islamists and was under 24-hour surveillance.
After Farahat’s brother was kidnapped and tortured by Islamists, her friend murdered, and she survived an assassination attempt in October 2011, she decided to immigrate to the United States. There, she has testified before the US House of Representatives, briefed more than 300 congressional offices, and advised US intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Although banned in some Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood remains a powerful influence there and in all Muslim countries and in most Muslim communities. In view of its security threat in America, Sen. Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to ban the Brotherhood.
In Israel, however, all Arab parties are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood; therefore, it is in their schools, mosques, and social and cultural organizations. Why does our judicial system protect the Muslim Brotherhood?
Farahat discussed the Muslim Brotherhood with The Jerusalem Post.
How did you get the information for your book ‘The Secret Apparatus’?
It was all from the Muslim Brotherhood’s own documents, writings, and speeches. The book relies almost exclusively on their own words. I didn’t utilize secondhand information.
I had a moral duty to share what I learned to try to stop these deadly ideas that flew into America’s tallest buildings from brutalizing more innocent lives around the world.
I wrote it to try to stop horrific attacks like Oct. 7. Indeed, the last chapter of my book mentioned by name the perpetrators who would later be involved in masterminding the Oct. 7 attack from the Taliban Political Office in Qatar.
I also wanted to reveal the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood and its sympathizers have infiltrated most Western institutions, especially those in North America, and the means to counter their war against the West.
Why is the Muslim Brotherhood important?
The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928, began modern Islamism through hijacking the representation of Islam and militarizing it. The Secret Apparatus (SA) was the first covert Islamic terrorist organization in modern history. The MB’s raison d’être is to establish an Islamic caliphate through violent, nonviolent, and covert means.
It is the world’s most sophisticated jihadist syndicate. It operates as an imperium in imperio with parallel transnational military, intelligence, diplomatic, media, and educational apparatuses.
The Brotherhood is the incubator of Islamic terrorism, and a genocidal, fraternal cult that established and operated groups such as Islamic State (ISIS, IS), Boko Haram, the Organization of Monotheism and Jihad, Excommunication and Emigration, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Afghan Services Bureau, Taliban, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Tanzim Shabab Muhammad, Tanzim 1965, and the SA.
Western scholars and intelligence agencies peddle the narrative that the Secret Apparatus has been dismantled, which is false. According to the Muslim Brotherhood’s own words, it is not only operational but is the current governing body in every country in which it operates.
They engage in franchising terror through the Vanguards of Organization Invasion. The VOI Muslim Brotherhood cell is the core of the group’s International and Intelligence Apparatuses. This division runs two simulations – cultural and militant operations – to franchise the Brotherhood terror groups under ostensibly different banners.
For example, the Muslim Brotherhood founded Hamas in the late 1980s to further its anti-Israel/anti-Jewish agenda, and then supported Hamas’s victory over the PLO/PA in 2006 when it took over the Gaza Strip. Presenting itself as a religious organization, it fooled Israeli authorities into thinking it would undermine the more secular PA/PLO.
In fact, there is little or no ideological difference between these organizations. Israeli leaders not only allowed Hamas to expand, but they facilitated its expansion. Despite billions of dollars from Qatar to build tunnels, and the use of Egyptian tunnels to smuggle weapons to Hamas, Israel political, military, and security leaders ignored the threat. US administrations led by presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden furthered Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear power, along with its affiliates Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others.
How influential is the Muslim Brotherhood and what are the main ideas in your book that people should know?
Its most successfully operational expansion tactic is based on its duality and double-speak. In English, they engage in spouting democratic values, and in Arabic they express terrorist rhetoric. This succeeded in utilizing veiled terminology which largely contributed to the infiltration of the United States and other Western intelligence agencies and governments, leading to policies that supported the MB.
In Iran, the medieval Shia Assassins served as the biggest influence on the MB’s formation according to SA co-founder Ali Ashmawi. This was made possible by the taqrib (proximity project) which spans 14 centuries, the effort to narrow theological differences between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam. Hasan al-Banna drew heavily on this legacy to create a death cult, which he called ‘an industry of death.’
The Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian cooperation is one of the most dangerous and complicated relationships in the world of international politics, jihadism, and transnational terrorism.
For decades, the West’s foreign policy strategy by and large has been one of dictatorship maintenance.
What is ‘dictatorship maintenance?'
While the US and other governments directly support tyrants across the globe, they also engage in a more destructive type of dictatorship maintenance by aiding and abetting the dictatorial social and religious practices perpetrated by Islamists.
The bigotry of low expectations toward foreign populations, combined with moral cowardice and maybe an admiration for perpetrators, are the most probable justifications for these actions. An important example of the policy of dictatorship maintenance was uttered by former US president Barack Obama during a speech in September 2014. He said that he hoped to ‘shrink’ the Islamic State’s influence ‘to the point where it is a manageable problem.’ He didn’t say he would eradicate the Islamic State but instead make it a ‘manageable problem.’ To manage something means to control it, not destroy it.
The tactic of allying with jihadists inherently gives the advantage to Islamists because of their long-term strategy and their theologically based mission. Jihadists are also better at being bad. They will always win in this equation. The ‘good terrorist/bad terrorist’ mythology was created to justify aiding and abetting terrorists. Many employ this argument to validate their support of the ‘lesser of two evils’ philosophy.
In Israel, this perhaps might explain why the Muslim Brotherhood is protected by the High Court.
Why is the Muslim Brotherhood not banned in Israel?
It allows Arab-Israeli political parties – all of which are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood – to participate and to promote its ideology.
Although the Knesset has passed bills banning the Brotherhood, the High Court has struck them down.
Attempts by the government to restrict schools run by the MB are declared illegal. Many in the international community, such as the UN, which support UNRWA, operate facilities that are run by the MB and other jihadist groups.
Why has the world turned against Israel?
The first reason is the due to the degenerate moral and spiritual rot of antisemitism. Israel is viciously and unfairly judged by oppressive standards that no any other nation on Earth is subjected to.
The second reason is due to the influence of the MB, which has successfully subverted the view on Israel since 1948. The hypocritical international community falsifies history in their venomous attempt to delegitimize its mere existence. They ignore that fact that the first mention of Israel was in the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating to around 1208 BCE.
Which borders does the international community want Israel to ‘retreat’ to? The borders of 1948? The borders of 1967? The borders of October 6, 2023? The borders of 3000 BC? Because whichever borders they choose, Jews will still be in Israel, but the enemies of Israel will almost certainly not be residing where they are.