U.S. Institute for Peace Hosts High Level Global Muslim Brother… Again

The United States Institute for Peace (USIP), a federal institution created and funded by Congress, will host Global Muslim Brotherhood big-wig, and leader of the Brotherhood-linked Ennahda (Renaissance) Party of Tunisia Rachid Ghannouchi on October 28th.  Ghannouchi has been reported to hold the position of deputy head of the International Muslim Brotherhood organization, a group which answers directly to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide. Ghannouchi also served as the assistant Secretary General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), run by Muslim Brotherhood chief jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi. Under Qaradawi the IUMS issued fatwas in support of Hamas suicide bombings, and the targeting of Americans in Iraq during the Iraq War, and on called for jihad against secular leaders in Syria, Egypt and Libya. IUMS is considered a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

During it’s time in power in Tunisia, Ghannouchi’s “moderate” Ennahda party was implicated by the Tunisian opposition for orchestrating the murder of secular leftist politicians.

Thanks in part to a public backlash against the assassinations, Ennahda is out of power, and Ghannouchi has plenty of time to visit with Washington D.C. allies. The USIP also hosted Ghannouchi on September 29th, 2014, and February 24th, 2014.

Typically, Ghannouchi’s presentations at USIP are more moderated than the 2001 statement he gave Al Jazeera praising the mothers of Palestinian suicide bombers:

“I would like to send my blessings to the mothers of those youth, those men who succeeded in creating a new balance of power…I bless the mothers who planted in the blessed land of Palestine the amazing seeds of these youths, who taught the international system and the Israel (sic) arrogance, supported by the US, an important lesson. The Palestinian woman, mother of the Shahids (martyrs), is a martyr herself, and she has created a new model of woman.”

Ghannouchi’s close association with the USIP was likely facilitated at least in part by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a pro-Islamist think tank with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Early CSID board members included known Muslim Brotherhood members Jamal Barzinji and Taha Al-Alwani, who played a role in founding many early Muslim Brotherhood organizations. Both are also linked to the so-called “Safa Group” and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood think tank suspected of supporting Hamas and other terror groups. CSID members, like former CSID Board Chairman Abdulaziz Sachedina also have IIIT ties.

The USIP is well aware of CSID’s  long and troubled history, having been notified of the problems by former USIP board member Daniel Pipes as far back as 2004, when Pipes notified the group that it had invited as a speaker Kamran Bokhari. Bokhari was tied to British group Al-Muhajiroun, an organization banned in 2010, and linked to about half of all British Jihadist terror attacks in the past twenty years. Al-Muhajiroun co-founder Abu Hamza al-Masri was recently sentenced to life in prison for attempting to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon. While Bokhari claims to have left Al-Muhajiroun before Pipe’s intervention, he has other additional questionable ties, including serving as the treasurer for the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), one of the oldest MB-linked organizations in the United States.

USIP’s other federally funded run-ins with jihad supporters included funding a study on Hamas’s moderation, co-authored by Osama Abu-Irshaid, board member of the American Muslims for Palestine, and the former editor of Al-Zaytounah, the paper of the Islamic Association for Palestine. IAP was an organization of the Palestine Committee of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, whose purpose in the United States’ is to support Hamas ideologically and financially.

USIP’s unrelenting support for Ghannouchi is a reflection of the wider support that exists for Muslim Brotherhood organizations more generally among a large swathe of public, semi-public, and private sector diplomacy practitioners.