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The Muslim Brotherhood “Project”
One might be led to think that if international law enforcement
authorities and Western intelligence agencies had discovered a twenty-
year old document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the oldest
Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks
in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual
conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by
Islamists for more than two decades, that such news would scream from
headlines published on the front pages and above the fold of the New
York Times, Washington Post, London Times, Le Monde, Bild, and La
Repubblica.
If that’s what you might think, you would be wrong.
In fact, such a document was recovered in a raid by Swiss authorities
in November 2001, two months after the horror of 9/11. Since that time
information about this document, known in counterterrorism circles as
“The Project”, and discussion regarding its content has been limited
to the top-secret world of Western intelligence communities. Only
through the work of an intrepid Swiss journalist, Sylvain Besson of Le
Temps, and his book published in October 2005 in France, La conquête
de l’Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (The Conquest of the
West: The Islamists’ Secret Project), has information regarding The
Project finally been made public. One Western official cited by Besson
has described The Project as “a totalitarian ideology of infiltration
which represents, in the end, the greatest danger for European
societies.”
Now FrontPage readers will be the first to be able to read the
complete English translation of The Project.
What Western intelligence authorities know about The Project begins
with the raid of a luxurious villa in Campione, Switzerland on
November 7, 2001. The target of the raid was Youssef Nada, director of
the Al-Taqwa Bank of Lugano, who has had active association with the
Muslim Brotherhood for more than 50 years and who admitted to being
one of the organization’s international leaders. The Muslim
Brotherhood, regarded as the oldest and one of the most important
Islamist movements in the world, was founded by Hasan al-Banna in 1928
and dedicated to the credo, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is
our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of
Allah is our highest hope.”
The raid was conducted by Swiss law enforcement at the request of the
White House in the initial crackdown on terrorist finances in the
immediate aftermath of 9/11. US and Swiss investigators had been
looking at Al-Taqwa’s involvement in money laundering and funding a
wide range of Islamic terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, HAMAS (the
Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood), the Algerian GIA,
and the Tunisian Ennahdah.
Included in the documents seized during the raid of Nada’s Swiss villa
was a 14-page plan written in Arabic and dated December 1, 1982, which
outlines a 12-point strategy to “establish an Islamic government on
earth” – identified as The Project. According to testimony given to
Swiss authorities by Nada, the unsigned document was prepared by
“Islamic researchers” associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
What makes The Project so different from the standard “Death of
America! Death to Israel!” and “Establish the global caliphate!”
Islamist rhetoric is that it represents a flexible, multi-phased, long-
term approach to the “cultural invasion” of the West. Calling for the
utilization of various tactics, ranging from immigration,
infiltration, surveillance, propaganda, protest, deception, political
legitimacy and terrorism, The Project has served for more than two
decades as the Muslim Brotherhood “master plan”. As can be seen in a
number of examples throughout Europe – including the political
recognition of parallel Islamist government organizations in Sweden,
the recent “cartoon” jihad in Denmark, the Parisian car-burning
intifada last November, and the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London – the
plan outlined in The Project has been overwhelmingly successful.
Rather than focusing on terrorism as the sole method of group action,
as is the case with Al-Qaeda, in perfect postmodern fashion the use of
terror falls into a multiplicity of options available to progressively
infiltrate, confront, and eventually establish Islamic domination over
the West. The following tactics and techniques are among the many
recommendations made in The Project:
– Networking and coordinating actions between likeminded Islamist
organizations;
– Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and
individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation”;
– Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to
realign them towards the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals;
– Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, as
long as it doesn’t conflict with shari’a law;
– Avoiding social conflicts with Westerners locally, nationally or
globally, that might damage the long-term ability to expand the
Islamist powerbase in the West or provoke a lash back against Muslims;
– Establishing financial networks to fund the work of conversion of
the West, including the support of full-time administrators and
workers;
– Conducting surveillance, obtaining data, and establishing collection
and data storage capabilities;
– Putting into place a watchdog system for monitoring Western media to
warn Muslims of “international plots fomented against them”;
– Cultivating an Islamist intellectual community, including the
establishment of think-tanks and advocacy groups, and publishing
“academic” studies, to legitimize Islamist positions and to chronicle
the history of Islamist movements;
– Developing a comprehensive 100-year plan to advance Islamist
ideology throughout the world;
– Balancing international objectives with local flexibility;
– Building extensive social networks of schools, hospitals and
charitable organizations dedicated to Islamist ideals so that contact
with the movement for Muslims in the West is constant;
– Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically-elected
institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs,
private organizations and labor unions;
– Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be
converted and put into service of Islam;
– Drafting Islamic constitutions, laws and policies for eventual
implementation;
– Avoiding conflict within the Islamist movements on all levels,
including the development of processes for conflict resolution;
– Instituting alliances with Western “progressive” organizations that
share similar goals;
– Creating autonomous “security forces” to protect Muslims in the
West;
– Inflaming violence and keeping Muslims living in the West “in a
jihad frame of mind”;
– Supporting jihad movements across the Muslim world through
preaching, propaganda, personnel, funding, and technical and
operational support;
– Making the Palestinian cause a global wedge issue for Muslims;
– Adopting the total liberation of Palestine from Israel and the
creation of an Islamic state as a keystone in the plan for global
Islamic domination;
– Instigating a constant campaign to incite hatred by Muslims against
Jews and rejecting any discussions of conciliation or coexistence with
them;
– Actively creating jihad terror cells within Palestine;
– Linking the terrorist activities in Palestine with the global terror
movement;
– Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support
jihad around the world;
In reading The Project, it should be kept in mind that it was drafted
in 1982 when current tensions and terrorist activities in the Middle
East were still very nascent. In many respects, The Project is
extremely prescient for outlining the bulk of Islamist action, whether
by “moderate” Islamist organizations or outright terror groups, over
the past two decades.
At present, most of what is publicly known about The Project is the
result of Sylvain Besson’s investigative work, including his book and
a related article published last October in the Swiss daily, Le Temps,
L’islamisme à la conquête du monde (Islamism and the Conquest of the
World), profiling his book, which is only available in a French-
language edition. At least one Egyptian newspaper, Al-Mussawar,
published the entire Arabic text of The Project last November.
In the English-language press, the attention paid to Besson’s
revelation of The Project has been almost non-existent. The only
mention found in a mainstream media publication in the US has been as
a secondary item in an article in the Weekly Standard (February 20,
2006) by Olivier Guitta, The Cartoon Jihad. The most extensive
commentary on The Project has been by an American researcher and
journalist living in London, Scott Burgess, who has posted his
analysis of the document on his blog, The Daily Ablution. Along with
his commentary, an English translation of the French text of The
Project was serialized in December (Parts I, II, III, IV, V,
Conclusion). The complete English translation prepared by Mr. Burgess
is presented in its entirety here with his permission.
The lack of public discussion about The Project notwithstanding, the
document and the plan it outlines has been the subject of considerable
discussion amongst the Western intelligence agencies. One US
counterterrorism official who spoke with Besson about The Project, and
who is cited in Guitta’s Weekly Standard article, is current White
House terrorism czar, Juan Zarate. Calling The Project a Muslim
Brotherhood master plan for “spreading their political ideology,”
Zarate expressed concerns to Besson because “the Muslim Brotherhood is
a group that worries us …
