Former US Homeland Security advisor Mohamed Elibiary has tweeted a couple of comments in response to our criticism of a recent local media profile of him. The tweets apparently take issue with our postings on the US Muslim Brotherhood which he says are “outdated” and for which he offers an alternative view:
What blogs like @globalmbwatch define as a US branch of #MB are mainstream American NGOs that are controlled by & serving American citizens.
It is difficult to respond to the “outdated” charge since no other information is presented but presumably he means that at one time the relevant organizations were at one time part of the US Muslim Brotherhood but no longer, having become the “mainstream” organizations as described above. In response, the GMBDW points to a 2009 report on the US Muslim Brotherhood authored by our editor in which he took up the claim that the US Brotherhood has somehow changed or reformed:
More important is the claim made by the MAS, for example, to have gone “way beyond” the Egyptian Brotherhood, implying some form of reform and/or moderation on the part of the US Brotherhood. There are many reasons to be suspicious of this and similar claims. First, almost all of the US Muslim Brotherhood organizations continue to exist in their original form, often led by their founders and/or family members. No attempt appears to have been made to “clean house”by bringing in new and untainted leadership. Second, no public attempt appears to have been made by any US Brotherhood organization or leader to acknowledge the history of the Brotherhood in the US. Only disingenuous denials have been issued when damaging documents come to light suchas those examined in this report. Finally, where detailed investigations have been made of US Brotherhood organizations, they have revealed an extensive history of support for Islamic fundamentalism,anti-Semitism, and support for terrorism that has included ideological, financial, andlegal support, particularly for Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations. For example,many of the individuals and organizations identified in this report have either been convicted ornamed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terrorism financing case. Given the stated intent of the US Muslim Brotherhood to conduct an “organizational jihad” in order destroy the US from within and the extensive Brotherhood infrastructure existing within the US., the burdenof proof must shift to the Brotherhood to prove it is anything other than what it says it is.
We also note that of all the US Muslim Brotherhood organizations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) appears to have gone furthest in its attempt to change its image. However, for essentially the same reasons outlined in the Hudson report, we remain skeptical of ISNA’s true nature as we explained in detail in our post on that subject.
Furthermore, Mr Elibiary’s characterization that the organizations in question are “mainstream American NGOs that are controlled by & serving American citizens” can be described as either a deliberate attempt to mislead or a woeful lack of knowledge on the subject, neither being particularly desirable characteristics for a US national security advisor. If by “mainstream”, Mr. Elibiary means acceptance by certain constituencies in the media, government etc. then we would agree though we fail to see how such acceptance is negates being part of the US Brotherhood. However, we should also note that in a 2011 Gallup poll on which National Muslim American Organization represented the US Muslim community, only CAIR scored in two digits but at only 12% while the rest were in single digits with the MAS at 0%. So it would seem that these groups are viewed as mainstream not by US Muslims but only by means of their own efforts to position themselves as such. As far as being controlled by American citizens, we again fail to see the relevance since almost of Global Muslim Brotherhood organizations are operated by persons with local citizenship. As for the notion that US Brotherhood organizations are “serving US citizens’, we would contend that when all is said and done, US Muslims are in fact not well served by the US Brotherhood organization but, in any event, we once again fail to see the relevance to the topic at hand.