Draft:Explanatory Memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Disclosure of the Memorandum

The Memorandum was accidentally discovered by the F.B.I. in 2004, during a search of the home of Ismail Selim Elbarasse, a fundraiser for Hamas in Annandale, Virginia. Elbarasse was arrested by chance after a Maryland Transportation police officer noticed a woman dressed in traditional Islamic garb videographing cables and other support structures of the Chesapeake Bay bridge. The woman was riding in a car driven by Elbarasse and was his wife. The F.B.I. obtained a search warrant against Albarasse’s home; during the search, agents discovered a secret cellar which housed more than 80 bankers' boxes containing the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The Memorandum was one of the most important documents in the archive; another document linked the Holy Land Foundation, which had originally been established as a tax exempted charitable fund, to supporting terrorist organizations and subsidizing Hamas.

The Contents of the Memorandum

The Memorandum discloses the Muslim Brotherhood's plan to take control of the United States and Canada by unifying all Muslims residing there under its leadership, establishing new, powerful organizations, and cooperating with non-Muslims, to bring in and settle large numbers of Muslims in a programme described as a “Jihad-culture process.” It describes various tactics for achieving its ends, include creating a coalition of Muslim organizations and establishing Islamic centres in every city. These community social centres are to disseminate Muslim Brotherhood propaganda through various organizations including CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations,) ISNA (Iranian News Agency) and MSA (Muslim Students Association.) According to the plan, each key organization will maintain its own local organization in every city; however, they will all be linked to the local Islamic centres. These centres will include communications and cultural facilities such as printers, multimedia, journals in English and Arabic as well as groups of artists, photographers, producers, journalists, and communications experts. Furthermore, the Memorandum proposes a strategy of cooperation with a variety of organizations such as research institutes, educational centres, universities and schools, teachers training institutions, scientific associations in schools, academic training institutions, organizations associated with the Islamic faith, etc. The document includes a list of at least 24 Muslim-American organizations under the heading, “Our Organizations and Organizations of Our Comrades.”

• Islamic Society of North America  
• Muslim Students Association or Muslim Student Union  
• Islamic Association of Palestine  
• Muslim Communities Associations
• Association of Muslim Social Scientists
• Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers
• Islamic Medical Association of North America
• Muslim Youth of North America
• Fiqh Council of North America
• Islamic Associations
• Islamic Circle of North America
• International Institute of International Thought
• Muslim Public Affairs Council
• Muslim Advocates
• Muslim Legal Fund of America
• Council on American Islamic Relations
• United Association for Studies and Research  Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development  
• U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations and their members
• Muslim American Society
• Students for Justice in Palestine - Hamas

Reactions to the Memorandum

The fact that the Memorandum includes a variety of Muslim organizations raised the alarm that there is a network of extreme Islamic groups in the U.S. which operate in violation of democratic values. On the other hand, there are those who argue that the titles of these organization do not necessarily indicate that they all act according to the dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some of the researchers in the United States into the activities of Muslim organizatioins are known to be extreme in their antagonism towards at least some Muslim organizations. One of them ,Frank Gaffney a defense analyst and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (1983-87), is considered by many to be a far-right conspiracy theorist. Gaffney is the founder and former president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), which is one of the organizations that published the English version of the document. In commenting on the Muslim organizations listed in the Memorandum, The New York Times pointed out that it is by no means certain that all of them support the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/09/world/middleeast/document-elbarasse-search-3.html