The Center’s own Kyle Shideler sits down with Secure Freedom Radio

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. We’re joined by Kyle Shideler, my colleague at the Center for Security Policy where he directs our Threat Information office. Really a go-to resource on the challenges that we’re facing from the jihad, both of the violent kind and the civilisation kind, among others. Kyle is an expert in these matters. He previously served as a director of research and communications at the highly esteemed Endowment for Middle East Truth. And has been a contributing author to, among other things, its books, Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network: America and the West’s Fatal Embrace. Kyle, welcome back. It’s good to have you with us.

KYLE SHIDELER:

It’s a pleasure to be here, Frank.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you about Saudi Arabia. It’s been getting a lot of attention, much of it critical of late, as you know, in particular in connection with the possible declassification at long last of twenty-eight pages of a congressional report looking into its involvement as an official government operation in the 9-11 attacks. Kyle Shideler, you know a lot about the Saudis. Give us a sense of the likelihood that the Saudis were doing such a thing.

KYLE SHIDELER:

Well, the Saudis were almost certainly – they had some level of involvement. What exactly that is remains to be seen. And obviously, if we were able to access these twenty-eight pages, these classified pages, we would know a lot more. What we do know, of course, is that the Saudis, for a long time, played a role in the sort of support and finance function of organisations which then supported al-Qaeda. We’re talking about organisations like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which was the sort of Wahbabist organisation that the Saudis used to fund mosques and fund Islamist organisations which then, in turn, funnelled money to al-Qaeda. So the Saudis played a most key role in creating the infrastructure which then undergirds all of what al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were able to accomplish.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We’re visiting with Kyle Shideler of the Threat Information office he directs at the Center for Security Policy. And Kyle, you were just touching on an incredibly important point, it seems to me, and that is that what the Saudis have been doing for a long time, whether it’s through this so-called WAMY, the World Association of Muslim Youth, or organisations like the North American Islamic Trust, has been building mosques which in turn create, as you say, a kind of support network for jihadists of the violent stripe as well as the sort of pre-violent kind, as I call it, the civilisation kind. How do they do that? I mean, what is the funding mechanism and what are the orders of magnitude of what they’ve put into this enterprise?

KYLE SHIDELER:

Well, we’re talking about billions and billions of dollars. They do it through a variety of different ways. Obviously, they have a sort of international structure, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and other groups like that, which are moving money around to various other Islamic entities which then are, in turn, controlling and building the mosques. You mentioned the North American Islamic Trust, which is a good example of that. The North American Islamic Trust is an organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. We know that because of documents that were submitted at the Holy Land Foundation trial. But it’s real job is to hold the deed to US mosques. And so that then enables them, that is the Muslim Brotherhood and other Saudi-supported radicals, to use those mosques for their recruitment for their indoctrination of people who will come to be jihadists. By moving them through stages of indoctrination and recruitment. And so that’s what we saw in the lead up to 9-11. We saw individuals like, for example, Anwar al-Awlaki who worked out of dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church. And individuals like this still, to this day, play a very key role in recruiting and indoctrinating individuals to jihad terrorism.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

When you see what the Brotherhood has been doing, Kyle, it’s unmistakable that it’s about jihad, of course, but what does that tell us, what’s the relationship between the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, obviously the supporting of their activities is going on, but I had thought at one point that the Saudis had actually declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, had they not?

KYLE SHIDELER:

Well, they had. The on-again, off-again relationship between the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood is one of these things that, as Westerners, we’re perhaps often befuddled by. Prior to 9-11 and certainly prior to the takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis had largely used the Brothers as part of a transmission chain for the moving of this money and this radical material, shariah-adherent material, around the world. But following the takeover in Egypt, the Saudis became very concerned that they themselves would become a target. This is the sort of relationship that the Saudis have always had with Islamists. It’s because despite their own support for these causes abroad, they are not interested in seeing those same forces turned back on them and risking their control of the Arabian peninsula.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

It’s kind of, I guess, a protection racket. They wind up supporting these guys with the condition that they wage their jihad someplace else, not in the kingdom. Let me ask you about one of the most prominent Muslim Brothers that we know about, Kyle, a fellow by the name of Jamal Barzinji. Give us a sense of his background and his involvement with the, well, with the Brotherhood for sure, but also perhaps with the Saudis.

KYLE SHIDELER:

Well, Barzinji passed away in September of last year, but during his time in America, he was the co-founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought located in Fairfax, Virginia, and it’s a very prominent Muslim Brotherhood think tank. They really kind of provide some of the intellectual backbone for the civilisation jihad project that the Muslim Brotherhood carries out in the United States. In fact, one of their – they introduced the term civilizational battle to talk about this idea of a conflict between civilisations at the ideological rather than at the military level. Additionally, Barzinji was the founder or one of the founding members of the Muslim Students Association which was the first Muslim Brotherhood organisation in the United States. He was the general manager of the North American Islamic Trust. He was a member of the shura council of the Islamic Society of North America. And he was a director of the SAFA Group, which was a network of charities and companies in northern Virginia that was raided by federal authorities for funding Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was also a member of a number of other Brotherhood organisations as well.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, so this is quite a pedigree. What do you make, Kyle Shideler of the Threat Information office, then of the fact that the White House, which has been quite embracing of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and organisations here and abroad for some time now, has decided to pick, of all people, Jamal Barzinji’s grandson, Zaki, to be its head of public outreach to this Muslim community?

KYLE SHIDELER:

Well, you might say to yourself perhaps the son didn’t follow in the footsteps of the father. Which would, one, indicate to me that you don’t understand the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood because it is very much a family enterprise, but you would also need to know that Zaki Barzinji was himself the former president of the Muslim Youth of North America, which is another Brotherhood-oriented organisation that was named in the explanatory memorandum of the Brotherhood when it was found in that house of that Hamas operative in Virginia and entered into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation trial. So this is an individual who was a leader of a group, a named group, that the government is well aware is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and yet he is being selected to represent the US government to Muslim-Americans in this country. And that sends a terrible message. But it has been a message that the Obama White House has sent uninterrupted since he took office in 2009.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

It’s nonetheless staggering. Kyle Shideler, we thank you so much for the work that you do birddogging these various organisations and their influence operations, their subversion, their civilisation jihad here in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world. Keep it up my good friend and come back to us again very soon. Next up, we’ll be speaking with Gordon Chang, who will talk about the latest North Korean missile launch and president Obama’s appalling visit to Hiroshima. Right after this.