Douglas Farah: "The Little Explored Offshore Empire of the International Muslim Brotherhood"

By Andrew Cochran

While we're discusing the nature and role of the Muslim Brotherhood, I wanted to call attention to a new study by Douglas Farah titled, "The Little Explored Offshore Empire of the International Muslim Brotherhood," on the website of the International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC). In the study, Doug discusses the efforts the MB has taken to build a worldwide financial network to meet its objective of "recreating the Islamic caliphate and spreading Islam, by force and persuasion, across the globe." An excerpt (without footnotes):

To this end, the Brotherhood’s strategy, including the construction of its financial network, is built on the pillars of “clandestinity, duplicity, exclusion, violence, pragmatism and opportunism.”

Among the leaders of the Brotherhood’s financial efforts, based on early Brotherhood documents and public records, are Ibrahim Kamel a founder of Dar al Maal al Islami Bank (DMI ) and its offshore structure in Nassau, Bahamas; Yousef Nada, Ghalib Himmat and Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Bank al Taqwa structure, in Nassau; and Idriss Nasreddin, with Akida Bank International in Nassau.

Mapping the network of bank, insurance (takofol) companies and offshore corporations -- which are often used as covers to open bank accounts and move money in difficult-to-trace paths protected by bank secrecy laws -- should be the focus of far more attention because the network provides a mechanism for funding the Brotherhood’s licit and illicit activities around the globe.

This is of fundamental importance because the Brotherhood has played a central role in “providing both the ideological and technical capacities for supporting terrorist finance on a global basis… the Brotherhood has spread both the ideology of militant pan-Islamicism and became the spine upon which the funding operations for militant pan-Islamicism was built, taking funds largely generated from wealthy Gulf state elites and distributing them for terrorist education, recruitment and operations widely dispersed throughout the world, especially in areas where Muslims hoped to displace non-Muslim or secular governments.”

Almost every major Islamist group can trace its roots to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by the Hassan al-Banna, a pan-Islamicist who opposed the secular tendencies in Islamic nations. Hamas is a direct offshoot of the Brotherhood. Hassan al-Turabi, who offered sanctuary in Sudan to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda allies, is a leader of the Brotherhood. He also sat on the boards of several of the most important Islamic financial institutions, such as DMI.

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