At five in the afternoon, Cairo time (57).. The Muslim Brotherhood and America (9/11)

September 11 … and the “Reassurance” Meetings:

Immediately following the events of September 11, a study prepared by the Political Department of the Muslim Brotherhood’s International Organization stressed the necessity of holding rapid meetings with the Americans to explain the organization’s viewpoint and to convince them that the Brotherhood was completely distant from the groups that carried out the attacks.

However, the group’s leaders — as the facts reveal — were aware that the distance between the language of reassurance and the ideological roots was not a comfortable one. The intellectual connection was clear through the ideas of Sayyid Qutb to which the Brotherhood subscribes, and which became a wellspring from which numerous terrorist groups drew their concepts, foremost among them Al-Qaeda and its leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In this context, attention is drawn to what al-Zawahiri wrote in Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner about Qutb’s final words and his refusal to request clemency from Gamal Abdel Nasser, and how this symbolism was transformed into a “methodology” studied by fundamentalists as an example of steadfastness in principle. He then discusses sovereignty (hakimiyya), the doctrinal battle, and the “internal enemy” as an instrument of the external enemy.

As for the organizational connection, it appears in the figure of Dr. Abdullah Azzam: a member of the Shura Council of the International Organization and its envoy to Afghanistan, whom this narrative considers the “spiritual father” of Al-Qaeda and bin Laden. The idea, as summarized in Azzam’s own memoirs, was to exploit the presence of this vast number of Muslim youth for jihad in Afghanistan and to form a small army that would become a rapid-deployment force used by the International Organization to assist oppressed Muslim minorities, in his words, across the globe.

Azzam was recruited for this mission in 1981 at a meeting held for that purpose between him and Kamal al-Sananiri, during which the latter conveyed to him a message from the Guidance Bureau in Egypt expressing their support.

This idea later underwent many transformations, from the Services Bureau for the Mujahideen to a database of Arab fighters.

Then came the pivotal transformation: after Azzam’s assassination, when that database evolved from mere records into an organization named in its honor “Al-Qaeda” (“The Base”), after the idea was appropriated by al-Zawahiri and the group of “Egyptian fighters,” and subsequently used in confrontation with the United States, culminating in the well-known events of September 2001.

Meeting with President Bush:

After the events of September 11, the Brotherhood enlisted leaders of the International Organization’s branch in the United States, most notably Dr. Hassan Hathout, head of one of the largest Islamic organizations in America, owing to his longstanding relationship with the U.S. president at the time.

Hathout was the first to receive Bush at the organization’s Islamic center in the U.S. capital, Washington, immediately after the events.

Through him, the group conveyed a message to the American administration affirming its ability to provide assistance in absorbing the anger of Muslim youth and redirecting it toward positive activity away from the passivity of extremist groups, on the condition that America support the Brotherhood in confronting “dictatorial” governments in Arab countries.

These meetings continued to be held secretly until the occupation of Iraq, at which point another important and dangerous milestone in the mutual relations emerged:

Mohammed Mahdi Akef — in his capacity as the organization’s General Guide at the time — decided to instruct the International Organization’s branch in Iraq (the Iraqi Islamic Party led by Mohsen Abdul-Hamid and the Kurdistan Islamic Union led by Salah al-Din Baha al-Din) to cooperate fully with the American administrator Paul Bremer, participate in the transitional government, and fully approve the dissolution of the Iraqi army.

This decision triggered a major crisis within the organization in Iraq and in several other countries, including Egypt, where the Brotherhood was simultaneously participating in demonstrations condemning the American invasion of Iraq. Akef then intervened with an evasive decision asserting that the Brotherhood’s participation in the Iraqi transitional government was an internal matter concerning the Iraqi leadership, which led to resignations, the formation of opposition factions within Iraq itself, and two meetings in Cairo between Harith al-Dhari and Akef, during which al-Dhari demanded the termination of relations with Bremer’s government. Akef refused, considering the matter an internal affair — an attempt to divert attention from the alliance that then existed between the International Organization and the United States under the leadership of President George W. Bush.

To be continued…
We will resume tomorrow…

Paris: 5:00 p.m. Cairo time.