The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States - with Lara Burns and Dalia Ziada

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0:28you are listening to an art media podcast the strategy and the thinking of the muslim brotherhood is very different than the western way of thinking and so most of society doesn't understand it we don't want to be islamophobic we don't want to be considered racist and so our tolerance and our freedoms and the things that we hold dear to us actually allow this radical ideology to spread unchecked. So what we're seeing in Europe right now, what we saw in Canada also most recently, what we saw in the United States in the aftermath of October 7, under the false banner of supporting the Palestinians or Gaza, is all iterations of this strategy.

1:24It's 7.45 a.m. on Sunday, November 8th here in New York. It's 2.45 p.m. on Sunday, November 8th in Israel. Before we get started, a couple of quick housekeeping notes. On Wednesday, November 11th, Call Me Back will record a live episode at the Israel Hayom Summit at the Intercontinental Hotel in Times Square here in New York. Israel Hayom is one of Israel's leading newspapers. It's a source I rely on quite regularly, and it's also where our media contributor Amit Segel serves as chief political analyst. Amit will be on stage with us. The timing is hard to beat. It will be two weeks after Israel's election and one week after our midterms here in the U.S., and of course, all of this against the backdrop of anticipated escalation in tensions with Iran.

2:13The summit is a full-day event focused on the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, with speakers including former Mossad director Dari Barnea, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and Ambassador Yehuda Kaplan, who is U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. Dr. Miriam Adelson will also be in the audience and on stage. If you're in New York, come join us. Follow the link in the episode description and use promo code ISH50. That's for Israel Hayom. That's ISH50, ISH50 for 50 % off the registration. And if you can't make it, we'll be airing this as an episode of Call Me Back in the coming weeks.

2:56Since last week's midterm elections in the United States, I've been following the conversations in the fold, our private community for listeners of Call Me Back and the rest of the ARK Media family. And one question keeps coming up. What do we do now? ARK Media contributor Michal Bitton took on that question last week on her substack, which is called Committed. She did it in an essay that she titled Stay and Fight. Well, this Tuesday, November 10th at 7 p.m., Michal will join Chayalea Sufran, co-host of the Chosen People Problems podcast, live in the fold. Chayalea and Michal in the fold. They'll talk through what Jewish wisdom says about how to act in a moment like this, when to stay and fight, how to rebuild, and how to keep seeing each other across our divides.

3:45Then they'll take your questions. If you're not yet a member of the fold, this is the moment to join. It's where our listeners have been working through exactly these questions together. And I'm in there myself. You can subscribe at arcmedia.org or follow the link in the show notes. Now onto today's episode. We're recording a few days after midterm elections that certainly reshaped Washington. Democrats will control with large margins the House and the Senate come this January. There's a lot to unpack in that result, and we'll continue our deep dives in the coming weeks. But today I want to focus on one race that has forced a much bigger debate out into the open.

4:23In Michigan, Abdul Al-Sayed has won about 52 % of the vote in his Michigan U.S. Senate race. And Al-Sayed wasn't alone. At least seven Muslims were elected to the next Congress, a record. The race in Michigan between Al-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers was also the most intense test yet of a question that has moved from think tanks to the center of American politics, the Muslim Brotherhood, and whether its network operates inside the United States. In November 2025, President Trump signed an executive order starting the process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations.

5:04In January, the State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization. The Treasury Department similarly sanctioned the Egyptian and Jordanian branches, saying they had provided material support to Hamas. Federal prosecutors proved in the Holy Land Foundation case back in 2008 that a fundraising network tied to Hamas with roots in the Brotherhood's American infrastructure was operating on American soil. That isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a court record. And there's a lot more for our listeners to be aware of. To help shed light on these issues and what actually is really going on here, I've invited two guests who know this world inside and out.

5:46Laura Byrne spent more than two decades as an FBI special agent working terrorism cases, including the Holy Land Foundation investigation. And she testified at a Senate hearing on this topic just this past summer. She's now a senior research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian human rights activist who saw the Muslim Brotherhood up close in Cairo, where she lived. She was forced to flee Egypt after condemning the October 7th attacks on Israel. She now works on these issues with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy as their director in Washington, D.C.

6:27Dalia also co-authored a report arguing that the Brotherhood is pursuing a decades-long strategy of entering Western institutions. One is an investigator who deals in evidence that has to hold up in court. The other is a liberal Muslim who has lived with the consequences of the Brotherhood's politics. I'll ask them both what this election here in the United States means for the larger debate and how Americans can take extremism seriously without turning an entire faith community into a suspect class. My conversation with Laura Burns and Dalia Ziada right after this message. This episode of Call Me Back is brought to you by the Jewish Communal Fund, JCF.

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8:00Ever listen to Call Me Back and think to yourself, this would be so much better if Amit went on a rant about the latest celebrity who said something stupid about Israel? Or if Nadav ranked every member of Knesset by how hot they are? Tune into our show, Chosen People Problems, for the real news. Yeah, because that's what the world needs. More Jews in media. Yeah, like more Jews with strong opinions about things. I think we should do it one more time. I don't want to do yeah. I can't stand. You could say it. I just don't want to say it. What did I say? We both did yeah. Like, we're not. Why are we doing that?

8:30It sounds so ridiculous. Sorry for those listening and editing this. It's going to get worse from here, by the way. Listen to our show, Chosen People Problems. This should actually be the intro. Okay. Chosen People Problems. We're like Amit and Adav, but more so. Please tune in or Dan Siena will be mad at us. You can find Chosen People Problems wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free and get access to our weekly exclusive bonus episode by joining ARK Plus at arcmedia.org. Laura Burns, Dalia Ziada, welcome to Call Me Back. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Dan. Pleasure to use you.

9:08Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity. All right, Dalia, I want to start with you. Because of your firsthand experience, you actually watched the Brotherhood come to power in Egypt. And after October 7th, you had to flee your own country. So can you tell us a little bit about that story? So I was just one of the millions of Egyptians who grew up thinking that, you know, Israel is evil and the Muslim Brotherhood are good people and Hamas are probably doing resistance against some kind of occupation that we know very little history about. And until actually I was 18 years old, and this was at the time of the second Intifada, I was a freshman student, or as I like to call it, a freshman student in Cairo at that time.

9:57And I was just like all the other students joining these ridiculous protests with the and exactly the same banners you're seeing around all over American campuses right now. Until about two months into that, I saw the people organizing their protests against Israel on my campus, who later on I learned they are the Muslim Brotherhood. I saw them burning my own flag for the sake of this cause that they are claiming they are supporting. And this really has shaken me and opened my eyes. And all of a sudden, I found a flood of questions coming at me about the Middle East, geopolitics, about Israel, about Hamas as a terrorist organization, about this group that's called the Muslim Brotherhood.

10:47And since that time, my life changed forever. As I started to educate myself about their evil ideology, I became an opponent to them. and after the Arab Spring in particular, when they wanted to hijack our emerging democracy at that time, I was one of the leaders who organized against them. And since then, I've been working against their ideology in Egypt, in the Middle East in general, and also in the United States here advocating for their designation and so. So, Dalia, when exactly in the period you're describing, when exactly did you see the change? When exactly did you see it begin? So I think we started to see the real face, the real ugly face of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

11:36In the years that followed young liberal democratic activists going to the streets, calling for ending decades of dictatorship and building new democracies, the Muslim Brotherhood were waiting around the corner for these revolutions to succeed so they can hijack it. I'm speaking about 2011, which is the time of the Arab Spring revolutions and also my personal experience in the early 2000s. But there is also an important chapter to this story related to October 7, most recently, because this was the time when I believe those Islamists found the opportunity to come back at me and take revenge. kind of when I spoke out against Hamas and their terrorism in Egypt.

12:22Most of them were celebrating October 7, unfortunately. And this gives the Islamists an opportunity to come and try to hurt me so badly. And eventually I had to flee, come to the U.S. And to my surprise, they are all over the place here as well. Okay. Laura, I want to bring you in. You came to this from a very different perspective in a very different place, which is your 20 plus years as an FBI agent, including your work on the Holy Land Foundation case. For listeners who've only heard quote unquote Muslim Brotherhood and campaign ads, can you give us a primer on the Muslim Brotherhood? When did it start and why did it start?

13:03So these are all great questions. And yes, my background is very different. As you said, I began to learn about the Muslim Brotherhood when I was a very brand new FBI agent when I began investigating the Hamas terrorist network and had to learn about the movement from the ground up. And what I learned and what has been established is that the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest modern day Islamist movement in the world. And we have to be very careful here because when we talk about an Islamist movement, individuals and entities confuse that with the religion of Islam, and they are very different things.

13:39When we're talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, we're talking about a political ideology, an ideology that believes that their very radicalized version of Islam should govern every aspect of life and society, your children's education, your marriage, et cetera, et cetera. It is very different than the religion of Islam. It began in Egypt in 1928. It was founded by Hassan al-Banna and very quickly spread through the Arab world. But what a lot of individuals don't realize is that by the 1960s, The Muslim Brotherhood had a presence here in the United States. At that time, it was predominantly located on U.S.

14:19campuses where Muslim Brotherhood members from the Arab world primarily had migrated to the United States to attend university. And the very first entity where they gathered was in the Muslim Students Association, the MSA, which existed on various campuses. Now, that was the 1960s. By the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood was entrenched in the Gaza Strip, involved in a number of social infrastructure. Why? For the purpose of spreading their ideology. Key to the Muslim Brotherhood's mission is winning the hearts and the minds of people by gradually normalizing their rhetoric to convince others to support them.

14:57Right. And that once that's done, then violence could be appropriate to assert non-Islamist governments. So by the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood was well entrenched in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser extent in the West Bank, but was very well established here. By the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood chapter in the United States had cells in almost every state, had a hierarchical structure, had what we would call like a board of directors, which they referred to as the Shura Council, and had what we would think of like a chairman of the board, which is a Mosul Al-Alam. And they had, by the 1980s, four or five established front organizations through which they covertly operated, meaning the Muslim Brotherhood was covertly operating to drive its rhetoric through these ostensible, legitimate organizations that were labeled as cultural organizations and things like that to drive their agendas and to start normalizing their ideology here, beginning on U.S.

15:53campuses and in our society. And Laura, to take the Muslim Brotherhood or its affiliate organizations like the Muslim Students Association and other organizations in the United States, if we were to take them at face value, what is the story they would tell about themselves? If they were sitting here right now, what would they say about what they're doing here in the West? They would say whatever they think the Americans want to hear. We have the benefit of having the FBI had wiretapped decades ago a meeting of senior U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the United States where they actually planned to drive their pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

16:29And a central to that meeting that's recorded and the transcripts are out there in the public realm was we can't say to the Americans what we really want to do. we will lie to them. War is deception and they consider themselves at war with Western society. And that part of that war is deceiving and camouflaging, operating through foreign organizations using terminology that Americans understand, using terminology that Americans can get behind. Freedom of speech, civil rights, humanitarian rights, all the while secretly driving their radicalization agenda here in society, which includes anti-Western agendas, anti-Semitic agendas, and advocacy for hate and violence.

17:15Dahlia, we recently did a Call Me Back episode on the riots in France and unrest in other parts of Europe. And France's government, I think the security establishment, had published a report last year warning about the Muslim Brotherhood, about what they call the Brotherhood's entryism, quote unquote, into French institutions. So can you talk a little bit about what they mean, what they're referring to? What is the Brotherhood actually achieved in Europe so far? And how did they do it? Yeah, actually, even the term entryism was something we started at ISGAB more than two years ago in a report that we wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in Western democracies in general and the United States in particular.

18:01And seeing the French adopting the exact term is actually a good sign that they are finally waking up to the real problem that's happening in their society. So what we are seeing in France, in the UK, in Europe in general, is just an example that the US and maybe Canada, if it is not too late for Canada right now, has to learn from. What we're seeing is part of the Tamkin mission of the Muslim Brotherhood, the 100-year plan that the Muslim Brotherhood wrote about 40 to 45 years ago to explain how they want to take over the West and why they want to take over the West, because this is their main way to controlling the world.

18:47In the mind of the Muslim Brotherhood, there are two worlds. One is called Dar al-Islam, which means the house of Islam, and the other is called Dar al-Harp, the house of war. And the house of war includes everybody else who is not a Muslim, everybody who is not following their ideology. And to Lara's point, this is a political ideology, meaning that you can be a Muslim and against the Muslim Brotherhood, and you can be a non-Muslim and support and adopt the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. And they realized that when they started to immigrate to the West in 1970s and 80s and settled there, and they found in the open society, in the democratic societies, a chance to weaponize democracy, to hijack this very democracy.

19:36And guess what? Their Tamkini strategy is not about carrying weapons, going outside and killing everybody, and just taking over your government. but it is about destroying your civilization from within. And these are not my words, Laura can tell you. It's already written in the documents they discovered in the Holy Land Foundation trial. So what we're seeing in Europe right now, what we saw in Canada also most recently, that what we saw in the United States in the aftermath of October 7, under the false banner of supporting the Palestinians or Gaza, is all iterations of this Tamkin strategy. So, Lara, just pivoting off of what Adair just said, MBZ, Mohammed bin Zalman, the president of the UAE, and the UAE, as you know, has done extraordinary work on de-radicalization within the Emirates, and they've really tried to confront the brotherhood.

20:32I mean, they cite the brotherhood openly as a big threat to modern, moderate societies like their own, but they actually have done important work and trying to dilute it, if not actually wipe it out in their own country. But what MBZ has said publicly, and he says to officials privately, is the problem for the UAE and other Arab countries as it relates to the Muslim Brotherhood is not what's happening in our own countries, it's what's happening in Europe. We're sending our citizens, our young citizens to Europe to study, to study in universities, to study in religious and madrasas, and they're being radicalized there.

21:07And the real danger is what's happening there. And then the risk to us is then they come back home. It's not what's happening in our own country. So first of all, do you agree with that assessment? And secondly, is Europe further along in dealing with this problem now that it's shaking them the way that it is than we are in America? You know, those are really good questions. And I think there is legitimacy to what they're saying is that in the UAE and in other parts of the Middle East, they understand the nature of the threat. They understand this Muslim Brotherhood movement. They understand how it operates and how it slowly and gradually seeks to radicalize a population, right, against democracy, against freedom, against all of those things that Western democracy stand for.

21:52And because of that, they have parameters and guidelines and guardrails there to prevent the spread of that radical ideology. But in the West, we don't have that understanding. The strategy and the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood is very different than the Western way of thinking. And so most of society doesn't understand it. In Western society, we don't want to be Islamophobic. We don't want to be considered racist. And so our tolerance and our freedoms and the things that we hold dear to us actually allow this radical ideology to spread unchecked in our most sacred of places, our universities, where our next generation of leaders come from.

22:34But in the West, there is a resistance to hearing that truthful message. Dahlia, let's, I want to zoom in on North America. You warned that someone with alleged brotherhood ties was rising higher in American politics than ever before. Michigan voters elected just this past week, Abdul El-Sayed, by at least five points, regardless of your warnings. And by the way, he flatly denies any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But there's these lingering questions about what his actual ties are, what he's being honest about, what he's not being honest about. My first question here is, what can you say about Abdul Al-Sayed's ties to the Brotherhood?

23:14We have to look to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood did not survive for almost 100 years by chance. They do that through mutation and manipulation of whatever system they are in. It's very hard to miss that there is an involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood here. And by the way, this is not the first time the Muslim Brotherhood used democracy, which is, by the way, again, is totally against their values and their thinking in order to achieve kind of power building or build their power. We saw this happening in Gaza. Hamas did it. Even Hamas, for God's sake, the terrorist organization, Hamas used democracy to achieve that.

24:00Just for our listeners, what Talia is referring to is 2006 when Hamas actually ran in elections in the Palestinian territories and got elected. And then, sorry, you were going to talk about what the Muslim Brotherhood did in Egypt. Egypt and Tunisia in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, 2012, 2013 and so. They would run for office and they would get elected. They would participate in the democratic process. Exactly. They use it as a ladder. They can climb on, reach the top, and then destroy the ladder. This is exactly their strategy. And this is what Arab countries, by the way, realized early on.

24:35And that's why in most Arab countries, Muslim majority countries, the Muslim Brotherhood is banned. However, they came here, they immigrated with this ideology to the West and came here with this same thinking, except that the democratic system here is more tolerant and it somehow enabled them to get to this point. So we are speaking about one case, for example, like Abdurrahman al-Sayed. You have someone whose mother was active in the 1970s on campuses in Cairo. And by the way, this is the time when the women of the Muslim Brotherhood were the ones leading the group, not the men, because most of the men at that time were either in prison or immigrating to other countries in hope to bring their wives and children with them.

25:26So the women were the actual leaders, the Muslim sisters at that time were the actual leaders of the group. So she's not just anybody. She's not just someone who sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood. If what her daughter is saying that she was active and her daughter wrote that already, it's documented. If she was active at that time, this means she was actually one of the leaders. We have also, Abdurrahman himself has a long history with the MSA and the Muslim Student Association. he's been a leader in this organization and the MSA actually was on the list of unindicted perpetrators in the Holy Land Foundation case that Lara investigated so it's so we are speaking about a real network also if you look most importantly actually then the lengths with his family and his history and so if you look at who paid for his campaign you have CARE the Council of American Islamic relations, which has notorious relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

26:30And so you have people who either worked in the bigger network of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West or worked actually with organizations that supported Al-Qaeda and others. One of the supporters for al-Sayed campaigns and the other Islamist campaigns, for example, people like Linda Sarsour and Muhammad Sultan. Muhammad Sultan himself was the son of a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who incited many times, again, is the West against the United States, against Israel. And beside the funding, beside the family relations, look at the narrative. The excessive views of anti-Israelism, or what I call the palestinization of the rhetoric that they are using, this is intentional.

27:17This is the directions that were given to them by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the main ideologues, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, years ago to use as a tool to influence Western politics. So put all of this together, yes, we are now seeing a case of somebody who's allegedly a Muslim Brotherhood member himself or has a strong ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. But to conclude with that, let's look beyond labels. The Islamists today are not the usual Islamists we know, are not the people with long beards, short gown, and so. No, they are educated people, and they do not necessarily carry the label of Islamist, but they do everything to advance the goals of Islamism.

28:04And this is what we need to look at and focus on. Just to play this out a little bit, because what Abdul Al-Sayed often says when presented with versions of some of the charges you're laying out here is, guilt by association for things he would say my mother said or did back in like the 1970s. I'm just a proud religious Muslim today, and I'm totally committed to American democracy and to the U.S. Constitution and to the pluralism of American life. And you're taking these links of family members from decades ago and using them to implicitly indict me and associate me with things he would argue.

28:44Again, I'm just laying out how I've seen him respond to these. So what concretely would you point to as evidence of his associations today? We have to wait and see his actions. We have to wait and see if he's really will live up to what he says. And if he can really prove that he is not part of the MSA, which he is already is, if he's not part of. So just so I'm clear, so you're saying he doesn't deny his involvement with the MSA and you're saying the Muslim Students Association and you say the Muslim Students Association has either been infiltrated by or is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood.

29:19That's that to you is a concrete example. I'm not putting charges on anyone here. I understand. I'm just a researcher investigating these allegations. And based on my experience as a scholar and everything, I can see the network. Perhaps you cannot see it now, but I can see how this network is operating and what Il Saeed's role in it. I hope he proves me wrong down the road. I hope he acts differently. I hope he can really untie himself from his history. To further what Dalia is saying, so when she comments about the MSA, and I did as well, this is not something that we create and just have formulated an opinion in the air about.

30:02We have lectures of senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders from the United States, audio tape, that were presented at trial, where it is explained to the audience that it was mandatory for Muslim Brotherhood members migrating here to join the MSA and be active in it. So it's not, again, this is not just an assumption that someone is making. And I'll go back to interviews that I did many years ago of senior U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leaders and where I would ask the question, how do you know when someone else is a Muslim Brotherhood member? And the answer was, we know by what they say, by how they act, by what they do.

30:43They don't have to exchange, you know, confirmation that, oh, yes, I'm Muslim Brotherhood too. They understand by looking at the indicators, what they say, what they believe in, who they're surrounded by, and going back to what Dahlia said. When the Council on American Islamic Relations is backing a candidate, that concerns me. So when that organization is backing a candidate, questions should be asked. We'll be right back after this break. Year-end is the biggest moment for charitable giving. It can also mean a rush of decisions, which organizations to support, how much to give, and how to organize all of the receipts.

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32:09There's never been more coverage of Israel in the Jewish world, and I'd say there's never been less of it worth trusting. But because our ARK Plus members fund most of what we do here at ARK Media, we're free to cover the stories that need to be told, honestly and without compromise. When you join ARK Plus, you support that mission, and you also get access to members-only episodes of Call Me Back and other shows in the ARK Media network. Each of these shows covers everything from Israel's security and rising anti-Semitism to American politics and what it means to be Jewish in this moment. If you're able to, consider becoming a member.

32:45You can sign up for ARK Plus at ARKmedia.org or follow the link in our show notes. We're back with Laura Burns and Dalia Zayada. We often hear the criticism that the Jewish community has this quote-unquote loyalty, this dual loyalty, the term is used, to the United States, but also to the state of Israel, the American Jewish community. and that there's been what I would say is a sort of anti-Semitic canard out there, that the Jewish community has infiltrated our politics and infiltrated American civic life and is using it for this agenda that the Jewish community is being surreptitious about in terms of being fully upfront about what its agenda is.

33:28Again, I think it's an unfair comparison, but I just want you to respond because I think some people listening to this will think, well, is there a double standard in how we're talking about the Muslim Brotherhood? You know, there is a difference because the Jewish community is a very, very, very small percent of the population here in the United States. and, you know, individuals within the United States who promote democracy and our democratic values and openly also support the Jewish state, that to me is, you know, something that is for the good of Western society, as opposed to an entity which masquerades as something it's not, whose agenda involves destroying our democracy from within, destroying our society from within, and changing every aspect of our lives, right?

34:18Every aspect, the constitution they seek to destroy. It's absolutely unfair. We're speaking about a Jewish community that sees in this Western democracy a refuge, that sees it at the place in which it was able to feel secure enough to thrive and succeed. And once they thrived and succeeded within the system, they started to give back to it. to enhance it more and more. Compare this to a community, unfortunately, so brainwashed by the Muslim Brotherhood narrative that wants to destroy this civilization or in best case scenario, does not really see it as a good civilization at all. And a community on the other side that sees in this Western democracy, the place where they can exist, the only place they can exist.

35:11And And actually speaking about Israel, linking this to Israel, because I know many people say, ah, this is dual loyalty and things like that. This is not accurate. Israel has a different place in the history of the Jewish people than, let's say, Saudi Arabia or Mecca or so in the history of the Muslims. It's not just about supporting the country overseas. It's supporting the idea when Jewish people or even non-Jewish people like myself support Israel, they support the idea that the Jewish people, after history of being persecuted and prosecuted by politicians over generations and societies over generations and thousands of years, that finally they have a place where they can feel safe, they can exist.

35:57It's not just a country. Israel is not just a country for the Jewish people. It's about emphasizing the right of the Jewish people to exist. And you cannot claim that you're not anti-Semitic if you claim that you are anti-Israel, actually. I don't want to read too much into this, but the distinction in how the terms are used, because I've seen this effort to try to create this moral equivalence between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. I've always been struck by the difference in the words. Anti-Semitism projects hatred. If you're anti, you're against Jews. Islamophobic is not suggesting that you hate Muslims.

36:34It's that you fear Muslims, that in order to address the issue of being Islamophobic, you need to be a little less fearful. You've got to let your guard down and be a little more open-minded. So I do think the distinction between those two terms is interesting. That terminology was created as a weapon, as opposed to identifying actual hate. And so when I am speaking about bigotry and bigotry exists across the spectrum, right? You do have anti-Muslim hate. I refer to it as anti-Muslim hate, just as we refer to anti-Semitism, because looking at the use of the term Islamophobia by groups in the United States and abroad, it is a weaponized term.

37:20I mean, CARE has, since the mid-1990s, labeled acts by the government against terrorism as Islamophobic, and that is wrong. You know, government actions against terror organizations and terror networks are just that. They're counterterrorism efforts. And when a group that markets itself as the largest Muslim civil rights advocacy organization in this country labels that as fear of Islam, that's weaponization of that term. And I think it's a great question. And so when I'm speaking about bigotry against Muslims, I use the term anti-Muslim or anti-Islam, because I think it's more accurate depiction because that's the term that we use for anti-Semitism and, you know, other types of hate against this group, right?

38:01Anti. Yeah, I would actually comment very quickly. The word Islamophobia is implying that there is a fear in Western societies of not Muslims, of Islam itself as a religion, which is so ridiculous, again because actually nobody cared about islam before 9 11 they only cared about it when it started to be an ideology used as a platform by these islamists as a threat to them as a threat to these western societies so this is the distinction and islamophobia they want to imply that okay if you speak against these islamists want to imply that if you speak against us, you are speaking against an entire religion, not against an entire community, even an entire religion.

38:50So it's only a weapon they are using to protect themselves against any legitimate criticism by people who are not necessarily Muslims. Well, I would just add one other point, which is it's not surprising, given the melting pot that America is an American society has been throughout its history, that you have all these demographics in the United States that do feel some connection, not loyalty, which is different, but some connection to a country that their family's from, that they're from, that their ancestors are from. We have vibrant, in the United States, we have a vibrant Irish community and the American Irish organizations that are very active in politics.

39:32We have Pakistani American organizations, American Indian organizations. We have, you know, Polish organizations in the United States, U.S. Polish Americans, U.S. Ukrainian. I mean, I can go on and on and on. As someone who's spent a lot of time in American politics, I've spent a lot of time, you know, with politicians. I work with having to go to all these different organizations and their events and meet with them when they come to, you know, meet with senators and House members in Congress. I think this is probably unique to America to some degree among the large Western democracies. And there's something similar with the Jewish community.

40:03There's organizations that are about the U.S.'s relationship. There are Christian organizations, by the way, Christian organizations in the United States, like one of the largest CUFI, C-U-F-I, Christians United for Israel. There are Christian organizations that are about strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. So that is not unique to the Jewish community, A. And B, the argument that these organizations make, whether it's AIPAC or whether it's CUFI, or I can go on and on and on, is that it's in America's interest, strategic interest. It's in America's foreign policy and economic interest to strengthen ties with Israel.

40:34What you're describing here with the Muslim Brotherhood is they're being less upfront about what their actual agenda is. And I want to, I guess, ask you, Laura, you worked on this Holy Land Foundation case in the prosecution. Can you firstly briefly describe what it was and what it proved about Hamas and the Brotherhood operating in the United States? Yeah, so the investigation of the Holy Land Foundation was a terror financing investigation into one of Hamas's original front organizations here. What that investigation, which lasted many, many years and actually preexisted, me joining the FBI.

41:14And what we learned through that was not only did the U.S. Muslim or did the Muslim Brotherhood establish a structure here, whose purpose was for all the things that we've talked about. that when in 1987, when Hamas was created by the International Muslim Brotherhood for the purpose of annihilating Israel and then also countering secular forces in the Palestinian arena. Shortly after that, the International Muslim Brotherhood sent a delegation to the United States to meet with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leaders and explain to them that they would, from the United States, support the Hamas organization with media, money and politics.

41:48This is early 1988. And the man in charge of this was a leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood named Musa Abu Marzouk. Musa Abu Marzouk would go on to become the number one leader of Hamas worldwide while living in the United States and retains leadership in the Hamas Political Bureau to date. OK, he oversaw the development and operation of the first three Hamas front organizations in the United States. And what was the primary goal at that time in the early 90s, in the first part of this conspiracy? They were funding the social infrastructure that Hamas operated in Gaza. And by 1991, the West Bank to do what?

42:30To radicalize the population. They gave aid to every aspect of Palestinian society. But with Hamas, there's always a cost. So they would build schools and then the little children would attend the schools and learn that Jews were the enemies of God and that they needed to be killed. Right. So that was what the U.S. infrastructure was funding that I would then argue ultimately led to Hamas being elected in 2006. But then there was a change in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed, which was a peace agreement between the government of Israel and Yasser Arafat on behalf of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

43:04There was established peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a pathway to a two state solution and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. the Palestinian self-rule, and resulted in the idea pulling out of Gaza, people in Israel and the West Bank in Gaza were very happy for the most part. But who was it? The Hamas terrorist organization. And so they bowed to derail peace, as did the individuals who were leading the U.S.-based Hamas network. And the FBI wiretapped this conspiratorial meeting where they identified how they were going to continue to support Hamas through operate through front organizations, et cetera, et cetera.

43:39And this conspiracy continued on until in 2001, after 9-11, the President Bush designated the Holy Land Foundation, one of the original three Hamas front organizations, as a terrorist organization and shut it down. And so that investigation really painted a picture for the public in 2008 of what this network looked like, but really nobody was paying attention. So even after learning that history, okay, The Democrats in the Senate boycotted a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the Muslim Brotherhood's network in America. And it was a hearing you appeared at. You testified at. Now, in January, this coming January, the Democrats will run that committee.

44:20They'll have the majority. But there's a delicate tension here. How could Congress address tariff financing while also providing civil liberties guardrails to protect Muslim Americans? That's what they will say the tension is. How do we balance this? You know, in this country, we all are afforded the same rights, right? We are all afforded the protections of the Constitution. We all have our civil liberties, and those should all be protected, regardless of race, religion, you know, gender preference, whatever. We're citizens or people that are in this country and benefit from that. But we have to absolutely use a truthful foundation and have the courage to identify threats to our national security and then deal with them.

45:04And I think what happened in September when I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with two other witnesses, I very clearly stated in my written testimony that I was there to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, a political ideology, that it serves a purpose that runs contrary to our Western democracy, and that this was not about the religion of Islam. But groups out there immediately repackaged it and said, this is Islamophobic. Don't attend. That's not truthful. And the factual foundation is the Muslim Brotherhood exists here and operates with the purpose of destroying our Western democracy.

45:42We have to begin with the facts and then all else can be debated. But having individuals within government and without and advocacy organizations relabel a factual testimony, sworn testimony, as something that's Islamophobic runs contrary to all of our interests because it prevents the truth from coming out. Dalia, your institute's recent report argues the following. The Muslim Brotherhood should be treated as an ideology, not just an organization. And you've called for government-supervised alternatives to brotherhood-linked institutions. Government supervised alternatives. That term in American life almost needs its own trigger warning because people think about government oversight of what they would argue are religious-based organizations.

46:31That seems pretty at odds with the American ideal. So what do you imagine that looking like in practice? Absolutely. This is a great question, Dan. But actually, to get into this question, I want to take from what Laura said about Islamophobia and that people like her who are actually working on behalf of protecting this democratic system and protecting Muslims like me would be accused of being Islamophobic is really mind-blowing for me. And this term, this term Islamophobia, Islamophobic, actually appeared immediately after 9-11 when the Muslim Brotherhood were trying to introduce themselves as representatives of all Muslims, not only in the United States, but all Muslims worldwide in their interactions with policymakers.

47:22So it's very deceptive. There is no such thing as Islamophobia, which is, as they describe it, is equivalent to anti-Semitism. Actually, this does not exist. People did not care about Muslims before 9-11. Yes, there is some examples of anti-Muslim bigotry in certain circles, and they are very limited and very directed and pointed at certain people. But Islamophobia, as it is used by these Islamists, in my opinion, is just a weapon to silence people like Lara, like you, defending their countries. To your question about what should we do, like what and what we described as government supervised alternatives.

48:04My point here is that the Muslim Brotherhood were able to control these Muslim communities and brainwashed them over years by getting into their mosques, into their Islamic centers, into their Islamic schools, and so, and indoctrinate them over years. And their chance to do that was bigger because there is no supervision on these places as part of the democratic system here. However, as we are now working on designating chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood and hopefully eventually designating the group itself, this will create a vacuum because now the Muslim Brotherhood control hundreds of Islamic centers all over the country.

48:50And these Islamic centers include schools, mosques, social clubs. And so if all of a sudden you take this network away, Muslims will be disoriented. And I learned it at least from my experience in Egypt is that as soon as this happened, more extremist groups like the Salafists talk over. And I don't want this gap to be created. So what I was suggesting by government supervision is that somehow the federal offices need to have some kind of reporting, some kind of providing alternative Islamic centers for these Muslim communities where they can practice their religion without being infiltrated or brainwashed by Islamists, again, either the Muslim Brotherhood Islamists or the Salafists or even worse, jihadists or so.

49:42Final question for both of you, or for each of you, two years from now, what would tell you that we got this debate right? Or what would tell you that we got it wrong? Like, what are you looking for in the next two years in how this debate is played out in Washington, in Congress? Let's start with you, Laura. So I'll say that it's a great question, but I also think that the question kind of implies kind of the limits of our in Western society ability to understand strategy. Right. So, Dolly, I said a little bit ago, the Muslim Brotherhood has had this strategy in place for 100 years. And so they're gradualists and they don't have a deadline for accomplishing their goals.

50:26And I think that in the West, we do think, we think we plan lunch, we plan spring break, we plan summer vacation. If we're in politics, we plan two years in advance, right? But in doing so, I think what we are doing is really limiting ourselves on the long term, the long game that they play. And so, I mean, I would hope in the next two years, we would see a recognition of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. I would hope that we would see better laws codified that govern, actually govern 501c3s, organizations that operate at the benefit of the taxpayer that are right now being exploited by a number of malign foreign influences.

51:06I would hope to see better oversight over foreign influence in our universities and better oversight or some oversight because there isn't any on foreign influence in our K-12. I would hope that we would see those things. And so I'm hopeful, but I also think that we have to be able to plan and think like they do and that the strategy must be longer than, you know, the next two to four to six years because theirs is. Yeah, I actually echo everything that Lara said about the signs we should look for. But also, I will focus more on the U.S. democracy. I'm a big believer in this democracy. I'm sure the pendulum of democracy will swing back.

51:49And sooner than later, maybe in the coming two years, in the coming four years or six years, the people who voted for the Islamists thinking that they will really support their day-to-day life needs and help with their economic problems. And so they will see them exposed under the sun of the politics and will realize that perhaps they did a mistake. We did a similar thing in Egypt. People voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, thinking that they are the solution, as they claimed they are, for their economic problems and so. But in less than a year, they realized they did a mistake when these Islamists started to threaten their very identities.

52:31And they went to the street back again to protest against them. Except that things change here in the U.S. without necessarily having to go to the street and protest. So the democracy always corrects itself. And I am sure that sooner than later, the people who did what I call a mistake by voting for these people will sooner or later realize that they need to correct their mistake and get them out of power. And this will happen. All right. We will leave it there. This is a conversation we could keep going on and on about. There's so many layers to this, but I want to thank you both. Laura Burns, Daya Zieda, thanks for being on Call Me Back.

53:09Thank you. Thank you. It was nice talking to you both.

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