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The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, is proudly announcing that the U.S. military is again using their chaplains for active-duty service after a 15-year lull. ISNA has a well-documented extremist history. In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood listed ISNA
as one of its main fronts. Declassified FBI memos said ISNA is a
component of the Muslim Brotherhood, who sees its “work as a kind of
grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
Clarion Project In 2007, the U.S. government labeled ISNA a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial involving the Holy Land Foundation funneling money to Hamas. The label was upheld in 2009 because of “ample” evidence linking ISNA to Hamas. Last year, ISNA’s Canadian affiliate lost its status as a charity because of its accounting discrepancies and links to Pakistani terrorists.
The two chaplains endorsed by ISNA are
Sgt. Mustapha Rahouchen, who will be used by the U.S. Army, and Captain
Rafael Lantiqua, who was chosen by the U.S. Air Force.
In April 2013, the Clarion Project broke the story that
the U.S. Air Force Chaplain Corps had paid ISNA almost $5,000 for two
advertisements in its magazine. When we contacted the Air Force about
ISNA’s ties to the Brotherhood, we received the following response:
“The Islamic Society of North America
is one of many religious organizations recognized by the Department of
Defense that satisfy the ecclesiastical requirements to endorse
qualified religious ministry professionals to serve as chaplains within
the Military Departments.”
This story speaks to the broader threat posed by Islamist involvement in Muslim chaplain programs.
The
Muslim chaplaincy services for the military and prisons were started by
Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who was convicted in 2003 on terrorism-related
charges. He later admitted that he was a secret member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
ISNA is one of the groups that the
U.S. military trusts to certify Muslim chaplains. The military’s former
endorsing agent was Dr. Louay Safi, an unindicted co-conspirator in the
trial of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian,
like Alamoudi, later admitted to having been a Brotherhood operative.
Safi wrote in 2003, “The
war against the apostates [non-believers of Islam] is carried out not
to force them to accept Islam, but to enforce the Islamic law and
maintain order.”
He continued: “It is up to the Muslim
leadership to assess the situation and weigh the circumstances as well
as the capacity of the Muslim community before deciding the appropriate
type of jihad. At one stage, Muslims may
find that jihad through persuasion or peaceful resistance is the best
and most effective method to achieve just peace.”
In 2004, he said that
the “assertion by ‘world leaders’ that the war on terrorism is not a
war on Islam is nothing but a piece of propaganda and disinformation
that was meant to appease Western Muslims and to maintain the coalition
against terrorism.”
He was later suspended from working on U.S. military bases because of a criminal investigation. Safi is now working with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim activist opposed to Islamism who served in the U.S. Navy, wrote in
2010 that a friend of his in the U.S. Army recently told him of his
troubling interaction with an active-duty Muslim chaplain.
His friend asked the imam what
his response would be if a Muslim soldier asked him if Islam prevented
him from participating in combat against fellow Muslims. The answer
should have been easy: Serve your country as you swore to do. Instead,
the imam said he’d tell the soldier that he’s not qualified to answer
the question and to ask ISNA.
Former Defense Department Inspector-General Joseph Schmitz was alarmed enough by loopholes in the system of vetting chaplains that allowed extremist organizations like ISNA’s involvement that he wrote a
letter in 2010 describing his efforts to close them. He revealed in
2004 that he urged the Pentagon to adopt a policy that would prevent
extremist groups, Muslim or otherwise, from involvement in the
chaplaincy program.
He said that a policy should
disqualify groups that support violent sedition, have an endorsing agent
with a criminal history, are on a terrorism watch-list or have leaders
convicted on terrorism-related charges. The Armed Forces Chaplains Board
rejected his advice because it was “legally problematic.”
Here’s what’s really “problematic”:
The U.S. government says ISNA is a Muslim Brotherhood entity and labeled
it an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism trial. That same
government is using ISNA to pick military chaplains and is a top outreach partner of the U.S. government.
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