U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Groups Called "Threat Organization" in DOD Memo

By Douglas Farah

The following recent, unclassified memorandum, a military intelligence analysis of some of the Holy Land Foundation documents, was sent to me by a friend concerned with these issues. For the first time that I know of, the Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the United States are classified as "threat organization" in an official writing.

It also directly addresses the campaign by Truespeak Institute, led by Jim Giurard, to change the language of the war on terrorism.

J. Michael Waller is an important part of that campaign as well, and, in his recent monograph Fighting the War of Ideas Like a Real War: Messages to Defeat the Terrorists argues, a Giurard does, that one should classify Islamist terrorist attacks as _hirabah_ rather than _jihad_.

It is not an insignificant semantic difference, and its importance is given below, and in Waller's own work. Thanks to the work of Waller and Giurard, the concept is gaining some currency in the U.S. counterterrorism community.

I have done nothing to the document except remove the name of the author who did the analysis, at the request of military officials. While this is circulating widely in the Pentagon and policy making circles, I honored that request. Neither the officer who wrote this nor the official who wrote the introduction had any role in giving it to me.

This document is part of a broad debate that is finally being engaged, on the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups in the United States.

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This assessment makes the point that the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a threat organization and the affiliated US domestic Muslim NGOs and associations identified in the strategy document should likewise be considered part of the Muslim Brotherhood network, that these are “front” functional organizations operating as links and nodes of the overall network.

Exceptionally important in the analysis is the role of the “Truespeak” organization and Jim Guirard who has been arguing in DoD circles and academic institutions that the term jihad should be suspended from the GWOT lexicon to be replaced by hiraba. This analysis demonstrates that “Truespeak” contributors are part of the Muslim Brotherhood threat network, with the implication that this entire communication and lexicon effort is part of a strategic disinformation and denial and deception campaign.

Those involved in strategic communication or IO, whether senior leaders, practitioners or analysts should take a close note.

This analysis begins to provide clear I&W for domestic threats that DoD, DHS and the USG must come to terms with.

LTC Joseph C. Myers
Senior Army Advisor
Air Command and Staff College
Maxwell AFB Montgomery, AL

7 September 2007


INTRODUCTION

*The following is a brief analysis of a Muslim Brotherhood document entered into evidence in the U.S. v Holy Land Foundation trial (Trial) that the U.S. Justice Department is currently prosecuting in Federal Court. Analysis is based on this document as well as other publicly available documents. (For a broad offering of Trial documents, see here ). The attached documents relate to ISNA and the Trial.

· The first document is a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum that was accepted into evidence in the U.S. v Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case. The first 16 pages are in the original Arabic and the second are English language translations of the same. It is dated 22 May 1991 and titled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” (Memorandum). The document includes an Attachment 1 that contains “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” My full blog is here.

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