The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy by Erick Stakelbeck Page A
Authors: Erick Stakelbeck
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members on national security, but both are also diehard interventionists whose policy prescriptions for the Middle East—arming rebel factions and hoping that an acceptable Islamo-democracy emerges—inadvertently help the Brotherhood and other hostile Islamists. Witness McCain’s bizarre visit to the notorious jihadist hotbed of Benghazi, Libya, in April 2011. Reports were rampant then that the rebel forces working to overthrow Gaddafi were riddled with al-Qaeda types, including some who had fought against American troops in Iraq. McCain, undaunted, encouraged the U.S. government to arm these same Libyan mujahideen, whom he called his “heroes.” 11 Despite McCain’s giddy endorsement, our dalliance with Benghazi’s Islamists hasn’t worked out so well, if the September 2012 sacking of our consulate and subsequent murder of four Americans there, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, is any indication.
In an age when America is waging war—militarily and ideologically—against Islamic fundamentalists, the pervasive ignorance in Congress about the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk is not just unacceptable, it’s downright disgraceful. You cannot begin to understand al-Qaeda, for instance, without first understanding the history and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that spawned AQ and so many other Islamist movements bent on the destruction of the United States.
Which brings us back to Hassan al-Banna. Ever wonder where al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamikaze suicide bombers got their inspiration? In his book, Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 , German author Matthias Küentzel recounts the Brotherhood founder’s morbid glorification of jihadi martyrdom, or what al-Banna called “the Art of Death.” Küentzel writes:
In 1938, in a leading article entitled “Industry of Death,” which was to become famous, Hassan al-Banna explained to a wider public his concept of jihad—a concept in which the term Industry of Death denotes not something horrible but an ideal. He wrote, “To a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.”
According to al-Banna, the Koran enjoins believers to love death more than life. Unfortunately, he argues, Muslims are in thrall to a “love of life.” “The illusion which had humiliated us is no more than the love of worldly life and the hatred of death.” As long as the Muslims do not replace their love of life with the love of death as required by the Koran, their future is hopeless. Only those who become proficient in the “art of death” can prevail. “So, prepare yourself to do a great deed. Be keen on dying and life will be granted to you, so work towards a noble death and you will find complete happiness,” he writes in the same essay, republished in 1946 under the title, “The Art of Death.” 12
In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a Taliban fighter famously proclaimed, “The Americans lead lavish lives and they are afraid of death. We are not afraid of death. The Americans love Pepsi Cola, but we love death.” 13 Clearly, thi s reasonable chap had embraced al-Banna’s “Art of Death” concept. Repeatedly over the past three decades, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, and Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah have espoused this theme. So have the 9/11 hijackers, the London and Madrid mass transit bombers, and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas. For example, as Israel conducted Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in November 2012, Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, released a video declaring that their fighters “love death more than [Israelis] love life.” 14 This kind of fanatical mentality, popularized in the modern age by al-Banna, has brought us the grotesque ritual of Palestinian mothers eagerly sending their sons to
In an age when America is waging war—militarily and ideologically—against Islamic fundamentalists, the pervasive ignorance in Congress about the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk is not just unacceptable, it’s downright disgraceful. You cannot begin to understand al-Qaeda, for instance, without first understanding the history and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that spawned AQ and so many other Islamist movements bent on the destruction of the United States.
Which brings us back to Hassan al-Banna. Ever wonder where al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamikaze suicide bombers got their inspiration? In his book, Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 , German author Matthias Küentzel recounts the Brotherhood founder’s morbid glorification of jihadi martyrdom, or what al-Banna called “the Art of Death.” Küentzel writes:
In 1938, in a leading article entitled “Industry of Death,” which was to become famous, Hassan al-Banna explained to a wider public his concept of jihad—a concept in which the term Industry of Death denotes not something horrible but an ideal. He wrote, “To a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.”
According to al-Banna, the Koran enjoins believers to love death more than life. Unfortunately, he argues, Muslims are in thrall to a “love of life.” “The illusion which had humiliated us is no more than the love of worldly life and the hatred of death.” As long as the Muslims do not replace their love of life with the love of death as required by the Koran, their future is hopeless. Only those who become proficient in the “art of death” can prevail. “So, prepare yourself to do a great deed. Be keen on dying and life will be granted to you, so work towards a noble death and you will find complete happiness,” he writes in the same essay, republished in 1946 under the title, “The Art of Death.” 12
In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, a Taliban fighter famously proclaimed, “The Americans lead lavish lives and they are afraid of death. We are not afraid of death. The Americans love Pepsi Cola, but we love death.” 13 Clearly, thi s reasonable chap had embraced al-Banna’s “Art of Death” concept. Repeatedly over the past three decades, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, and Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah have espoused this theme. So have the 9/11 hijackers, the London and Madrid mass transit bombers, and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas. For example, as Israel conducted Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in November 2012, Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, released a video declaring that their fighters “love death more than [Israelis] love life.” 14 This kind of fanatical mentality, popularized in the modern age by al-Banna, has brought us the grotesque ritual of Palestinian mothers eagerly sending their sons to
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