A Window on the Muslim Brotherhood in America: An Annotated Interview with DHS Advisor Mohamed Elibiary

From the Foreword: The Center for Security Policy is pleased to publish this informative interview with Mohamed Elibiary, a prominent Muslim advisor to the Department of Homeland Security.  It is particularly instructive insofar as Elibiary is a prime-mover behind two of the Obama administration’s most dangerous policies:  (1) normalizing relations with domestic and foreign Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and (2) severely restricting enforcement of the nation’s laws governing material support for terrorism.

At a moment when the Egyptian military is striving to dismantle the infrastructure of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country—including its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party—it is incumbent upon Americans to consider what it and other Islamists who share an agenda of imposing shariah worldwide are doing here.  An important window into the latter is provided by Elibiary’s career and activism, first as a Texas-based terrorism consultant and founder of the (now-defunct) Freedom and Justice Foundation in Plano, and more recently in his capacity as a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Committee and its Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.

Elibiary’s official functions have been the focus of congressional and media attention, particularly in light of his controversial associations with leading American Islamists.  These include the radical Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America and convicted Hamas fundraiser Shukri Abu Baker.

Troubling as such connections are, the implications of the policies Elibiary has espoused are even more worrying.  For example, Elibiary’s promotion of the narrative that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are “moderates” appears to have been influential in encouraging the Obama administration’s blindness to what is, in fact, an unbroken continuum between the ideology and goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda.

Moreover, Elibiary has insisted that even the most basic information about the doctrinal drivers of jihadist terror be purged from U.S. government training materials. Pursuant to the guidance he has helped President Obama promulgate, even quoting the Brotherhood’s own written statements can be portrayed as “Islamophobia.”

It is crucial for American citizens and their representatives to become engaged in a policy discussion about the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda.  The Center for Security Policy hopes that this substantive interview—conducted by national security analyst Ryan Mauro, together with annotations from Mr. Mauro and the Center—will make plain the perils associated with the “civilization jihad” being waged by the Brotherhood in America, with help from well-placed advisors to the Obama administration like Mohamed Elibiary.

Read the paper at the link below.

Ryan Mauro: A Window on the Muslim Brotherhood in America: An Annotated Interview with DHS Advisor Mohamed Elibiary | Center for Security Policy Occasional Paper Series | October 1, 2013  (PDF 37 pages, 457KB)