Debating the Muslim Brotherhood in America Part III: Elibiary’s Relationship with American Islamists

on October 16, 2013

The Center for Security Policy Occasional Paper Series

DEBATING THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN AMERICA

An Interview with DHS Advisor Mohamed Elibiary

Ryan Mauro,  The Clarion Project

Made possible through the Institute for Religion & Democracy

Part III: Elibiary’s Relationship with American Islamists

The takeaway from this section is how Elibiary has close relationships with a wide array of American Islamist groups, even if he disagrees with some of their views. As mentioned in Part 1, internal US Muslim Brotherhood documents identify these groups as “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The Justice Department similarly labeled the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and a list of individuals as belonging to the US Muslim Brotherhood. More recently, in response to an appeal by these groups, a Texas federal judge declared that, “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.”

Mauro: What is the extent of your relationship with groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, North American Islamic Trust, Islamic Circle of North America, International Institute of Islamic Thought, Muslim American Society and the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America?

Elibiary: As a Texas-based Muslim community leader who’s done work in a couple of dozen states, I have naturally interacted with leaders from all these and other mainstream Muslim community groups, including speaking to their constituencies. I don’t have any special relationship with any of them, but I am generally friendly with these and all other organizations servicing the community.

When I have found common ground with these or other community-based groups, I have cooperated with them on civic engagement projects; and where I’ve disagreed with their positions, I have offered their leadership my criticism in private and proceeded to do my own work.

Investigative reporter Patrick Poole found a photo of Elibiary sitting next to Jamal Badawi for a panel. Badawi is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial because of his fundraising for the group.

His name appears in a 1992 US Muslim Brotherhood directory. Badawi’s website says he is “active” in the Islamic Society of North America, a US Muslim Brotherhood entity and, like CAIR, is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-fundraising trial. ISNA’s website listed him as a “Member at Large” of its board until the website was renovated this year. In 2009, Badawi referred to Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.” In 2010, he endorsed the “combative jihad” of Palestinians and Muslims who face “unprovoked aggression or to resist severe oppression.”

Badawi is also a founder of the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors said in 2008 was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” In 2004, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, a convicted terrorist and formerly secret member of the US Muslim Brotherhood, said “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.” In a recent documentary, Alamoudi infers its ongoing existence, writing, “I am, I hope, still a member of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the USA.”

Elibiary (cont’d): For example, multiple media outlets have publicized that, perhaps more than any other, I have labored to build up community cooperation with the FBI and law enforcement post-9/11. Some of these organizations you mentioned, frankly only a few years ago, adopted a public boycott position towards the FBI. So that was one example where our grassroots messaging to community activists were 180 degrees apart, and so I shared my views with their leadership in private and didn’t turn the disagreement into a public matter.

As a result, I disclosed in my 2010 congressional testimony and CNN published in 2009, that when the “Virginia 5” disappearance to Pakistan situation happened and the families went to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR called my cell phone in Dallas and agreed to let me immediately liaison in the FBI.

Elibiary has an adversarial relationship with Muslim reformers. Even in this interview, he defends Islamists while sharply criticizing their Muslim opponents. His opposition to Muslim reformers likely influenced the DHS training guidelines that warned that “trainers who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’ may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted unbiased information.”

Elibiary (cont’d): That’s my way. There are other Muslim advocates of reform who have instead publicly chosen to politically-demonize, in conservative media outlets, mainstream Muslim community organizations as “Islamists.” Labeling these or other Muslim community organizations as either “Muslim Brotherhood-associated” or “Muslim Brotherhood-legacy” in my opinion is counterproductive and has largely marginalized those “anti-Islamist” activists in Muslim communities and mainstream media outlets, thereby leaving many to question what their value is after all is said and done to the real cause of reform.

Elibiary criticizes the labeling of “mainstream Muslim community organizations” as Islamists or Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups. The US government and the Muslim Brotherhood rarely agree on anything but they do agree on this: These “community” groups belong to the US Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, Elibiary refers to them as Brotherhood-linked throughout this series.

Elibiary’s now-defunct organization, the Freedom & Justice Foundation, has links with Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups. He defends these groups, as a PR problem for them is a PR problem for him. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report documents that many of his organization’s Advisory Council members have served as officials with CAIR, ISNA and the Muslim American Society (MAS), the lattermost being “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America” according to federal prosecutors in 2008 and a former secret US Muslim Brotherhood leader. His Advisory Council also has affiliations with the Islamic Association of North Texas and its Hamas-linked Dallas Central Mosque. Both are connected to the US Muslim Brotherhood and the Holy Land Foundation, the GMBDR reports.

One affiliation of Elibiary’s that is mentioned is his fellowship with the American Civic Leadership Institute from 2008 to 2009. The organization’s list of speakers includes Elibiary and Islamists like Zaid Shakir, who justifies attacks on US soldiers and preaches that the US Constitution is inferior to Shariah because it grants equality to Muslims and non-Muslims. Alumni include several officials from Brotherhood-linked groups like CAIR and ISNA.

Mauro: How was your organization, the Freedom and Justice Foundation, accepted by these controversial groups?

Elibiary: Since beginning my community advocacy post-9/11, I have always held a high degree of confidence in the American Muslim community and its patriotism. Therefore, since even before registering the Muslim community nonprofit I co-founded, the Freedom and Justice Foundation (F&J), I reached out to dozens of community leaders from across many local North Texas Muslim congregations, as well as national organizations and convened a meeting with five dozen of them in a Dallas-area hotel to lay out my plans. I invited everyone to join us as we would set out to interconnect Texas Muslim communities and build state-level interfaith community alliances and public policy influence.

In the six years that F&J directly coordinated state-level advocacy by Texas Muslim communities, different community organizations accepted us as a big-tent independent group at different paces. For example, the Houston chapter of CAIR was initially very encouraged and supportive of our Texas Muslim Legislative Day at the State Capitol initiatives, more than, say, the Dallas chapter of CAIR.

Similarly with the Muslim American Society (MAS) chapters, some like in San Antonio were supportive of F&J’s civic engagement efforts from the start while other MAS chapters were either slow coming on board or opposed to our efforts for a number of years. Along the way, I’d meet with many community leaders and share our centrist vision for the state of Texas all the way out to 2040.

The Muslim American Society Elibiary mentions is an organization riddled with Muslim Brotherhood links. In 2004, its then-Secretary General said that, “Ikhwan members founded MAS…” Convicted al-Qaeda financier and longtime Muslim Brother Abdurrahman Alamoudi confirmed this in 2012, saying, “everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Elibiary (cont’d): Being a community of over a half-million Texans and from every background, I naturally ended up learning a lot about the schisms amongst Muslims globally. As an example, in FJF’s second year after having passed Texas’ first Muslim-related law with the aid of a Jewish legislator, I reached out to the Salafi community and brought one of their senior clerics to give the first Friday Muslim congregational prayer literally inside the Texas State Capitol.

I would end up having to address concerns by Texas Shia Muslim activists for including Salafi Muslims, and when I agreed to speak to Shia Muslim audiences or accept an invitation from my governor to attend a private banquet for the Agha Khan, leader of Ismaeli Muslims, I would end up having to similarly address concerns amongst some Sunni Muslim community leaders.

As he explains below, another group receptive to Elibiary is the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. He states that he “spent a week with dozens of very senior Salafi scholars” from the group discussing Islamic jurisprudence. The Clarion Project has shown that AMJA is an extremist organization by almost any definition. Its fatwas call for the gradual establishment of Sharia Law in America using deception; marital rape; jihad against Israel and ban Muslims from joining the FBI or serving the US military in a combat capacity.

As mentioned in Part 1, Elibiary’s organization gave a pro-Islamist presentation at an AMJA conference in 2007 that compared the Muslim Brotherhood to Evangelical Christian groups.

In this interview, Elibiary speaks of when he brought a senior Salafi cleric “to give the first Friday Muslim congregational prayer literally inside the Texas State Capitol.” It is unclear if this Salafi cleric was from AMJA.

Elibiary (cont’d): If we truly, as Americans, believe in our system of governance and Constitution as the best mankind ever created, then why would we fear allowing everyone to transparently bring their ideas forward in the public square to debate?

A number of years ago, at the height of tensions across the US vs. Islam divide with hundreds of Muslims dying daily in American-occupied Iraq, I spent a week with dozens of very senior Salafi scholars at an Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America meeting, discussing in classical Arabic, relations with our country from an Islamic Jurisprudence perspective.

Being a young man presenting before such an audience, which naturally included a number of scholars with publicly-available fatwas not very friendly to US relations, I found that properly engaged and debated, we Americans can build effective partnerships across a number of Islamic movements towards shared interests.

Elibiary evinces is a clear pattern of activism in favor of Islamists and in opposition to anti-Islamists. This is Elibiary’s right as an American but its legality shouldn’t disqualify it from being taken into account, especially when he serves as a senior DHS advisor.

Part I: The Holy Land Foundation

Part II: Elibiary & the Muslim Brotherhood

Part III: Elibiary’s Relationship with American Islamists

Part IV: “Islamophobia”

Part V: US Policy (To be published tomorrow)

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