BlackEagle/BlackEagle Logistics & Procurement Branch, Data Support Section
Results of Criminal Organizations Database Search: Muslim Brotherhood
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Muslim Brotherhood #CR0001983
(Also... Some alternate names are aliases, other are names for specific subgroups or
cells).
Ikhwan al Muslimin
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
Hizb al Islami
Source: CIA, EuroTer, Interpol, MI-6
Type: Political terrorist organization
Scope:
Acts of terrorism with moderate frequency throughout Europe, the Middle East and North
America, against enemies of the Muslim people.
Affiliations:
The Ikhwan-dominated Sudanese government has allowed Lebanese Hizbullah [#CR0001132]
to set up training bases in Sudan while the Islamic Republic of Iran has declared its support for
the Ikhwan-based political parties in Algeria and Tunisia, which were denied electoral victories in
1991. [Interpol] The Palestinian faction of the Ikhwan spawned HAMAS [#CR0002211]. Links are
also believed to exist with the Worldwide Islamic Jihad [#CR0001716], and the Palestine
Liberation Organization [#CR0000318] [MI-6]. The recent capture of a Muslim Brotherhood
operative have revealed links with the Islamic Amal [#CR0001390] [CIA]
Personnel: 5000(Syria), 20000 worldwide (believed) [CIA]
Operating Since:
1928
Structure:
Scattered cells of operatives, numbering anywhere from five to one hundred members. Cells have
been known to work together towards a common goal. [Interpol]
Leaders:
Hassan al Banna [#LL3728161], leader, died in 1949. Present leadership is unknown.
Legitimate Connections:
The Muslim Brotherhood throughout the world are known to operate a number of different front
operations, including many Muslim relief organizations and support societies. [EuroTer]
Resources:
Smallarms, explosives and all forms of military equipment. Excellent funding and a high level of
intelligence. Moderate training and training facilities.
Suspected Criminal Activity:
The various Ikhwan organizations have had histories of using assassination, military attacks,
and arson or bombing of bars, nightclubs, or hotels as means to force Muslim states to heed
their agenda when they have otherwise been repressed by those governments or else denied
full political participation. The Ikhwan launched an offensive in Hama in which they defeated the
Syrian Third Armored Division. The Iraq-based radio called on the Syrian people to rise up and
join the insurgency. Al-Asad responded with 12,000 soldiers who cordoned off Hama, a city of
200,000 people, and began to level it over a two-week period by tank fire, artillery, and helicopter
gunship fire. The Syrian army lost 1,000 men while as many as 25,000 civilians perished.
Additional Commentary:
The Ikhwan al Muslimin is a nonstate Islamic fundamentalist group that seeks to replace
existing secular governments in the Muslim world with Islamic regimes under which
religious and political affairs would both be governed by the Shariah, that is, the sacred law of
Islam. The name is applied to several territorial organizations, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,
the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and so on, that are formally independent of one another though
all are historically derived from the original Ikhwan founded in Egypt by in 1928. In lands whose
governments are either sympathetic or at least not hostile to the Ikhwan, the local organization
tends to define its aims and methods in terms of islah, reformism, whereas in countries whose
governments are hostile the Ikhwan tends to define its mission in Islamic revolutionary terms.
Terrorism has been used by the Ikhwan only instrumentally, in order to achieve their agenda
when electoral means or other forms of political participation have been denied to them.
Although individual territorial Ikhwan organizations have sought the support of other Muslim
governments, whether of religious regimes such as Saudi Arabia or of secular regimes such as
Bathist Iraq, these amount to little more than tactical alliances with what the Ikhwan may regard
as its own strategic enemies.
During the period from 1946-1947, the Ikhwan clashed with Waqf supporters in street riots, which
led to the December 1948 ban on the organization. That same month the Egyptian prime
minister was assassinated by Ikhwan members. In reprisal, government agents murdered Banna
by February 1949. From 1950 to 1954, the Ikhwan collaborated with the Egyptian Free Officers in
overthrowing King Farouk. Conflict then broke out between the Islamic fundamentalist Ikhwan
and the secular, modernizing military junta under Gamal Abdel Nasser [#LL0946513]. With the
failure of the 23 October 1954 Ikhwan-inspired assassination attempt against Nasser, a ban on
the Ikhwan and a crackdown ensued in which 6 Ikhwan leaders were hanged and 4,000 followers
arrested. Following Nasser's death, his successor, Anwar Sadat, pardoned the remaining
imprisoned Ikhwan members, allowed the return of those who had fled Egypt in 1954, and
allowed limited participation of the Ikhwan in elections. Sadat hoped to co-opt the Ikhwan in
order to bolster his image among the Egyptian public as a believing, religious president. In fact,
by 1978 the Ikhwan had infiltrated and co-opted the majority of the 1,000 legal Islamic
associations chartered in Egypt and had become the largest legal source of opposition to
Sadat's free trade and investment policies as well as to his policy of seeking a separate peace
agreement with Israel. Sadat erred also in believing that by indulging a chastised Ikhwan, he
could thereby split and weaken the Islamic fundamentalist opposition.
In Tunisia the Ikhwan renamed itself the Hizb al Islami [#CR0001132], the Islamic Party. In
Algeria the Ikhwan called itself the Ahl al Dawa [#CR0000944], People of the Call (to faith),
which has created the Islamic Salvation Front. In the Gaza Strip and West Bank the Palestinian
branch of the Ikhwan formed Hamas [#CR0002211], which has played a major role in the
intifada. In Syria, where the Ikhwan have been banned since the Bathist coup of 1963, the
Ikhwan has attempted to carry out an armed insurgency with occasional major terrorist acts,
which have been retaliated against by massive acts of Syrian state repression. Following the
military defeat of Syria in the 1967 war with Israel, Ikhwan members from the Syrian cities of
Homs, Aleppo, and Hama underwent military training in Al Fatah [#CR0002091] camps in
Jordan, which marked the transformation of the Syrian Ikhwan from a party to a paramilitary
movement.
In April 1980, al-Asad launched a crackdown on the front organizations that supported the
Ikhwan and arrested 5,000 supporters. On 25 June 1980, the Ikhwan attempted to assassinate
al-Asad. In reprisal the Syrian regime summarily executed as many as 300 imprisoned Ikhwan
leaders and passed a decree on 7 July 1980 making membership in, or association with, the
Ikhwan a capital offense. On 11 August 1980, the regime summarily executed all 80 apartment
dwellers from a complex that had harbored an Ikhwan sniper. The Ikhwan had goaded the regime
into such repressive measures in the hope that the Syrian people would then rise up against
regime repression, but the severity of the state terror had the opposite effect of quelling all open
support for the Ikhwan. The Ikhwan ceased activities for one year in order to reassess strategy
and tactics. They published a manifesto, "the Declaration and Programme of the Islamic
Revolution in Syria," and sought Iranian support. Iran, which had a tactical alliance with Syria
against its current wartime enemy Iraq, declined its support. The Ikhwan then turned to Iraq for
support and obtained light arms and shoulder-held rockets as well as the use of Iraqi radio
facilities.
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