    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                     THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD'S GLOBAL THREAT

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

                                     OF THE

                             COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
                             AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JULY 11, 2018

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 115-90

                                   __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

            Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
                           http://oversight.house.gov

                             _________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

     31-367 PDF              WASHINGTON : 2018

                  Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

                      Trey Gowdy, South Carolina, Chairman
    John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee       Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland,
    Darrell E. Issa, California              Ranking Minority Member
    Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
    Mark Sanford, South Carolina         Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
    Justin Amash, Michigan                   Columbia
    Paul A. Gosar, Arizona               Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri
    Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee          Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
    Virginia Foxx, North Carolina        Jim Cooper, Tennessee
    Thomas Massie, Kentucky              Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
    Mark Meadows, North Carolina         Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
    Ron DeSantis, Florida                Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
    Dennis A. Ross, Florida              Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
    Mark Walker, North Carolina          Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
    Rod Blum, Iowa                       Jamie Raskin, Maryland
    Jody B. Hice, Georgia                Jimmy Gomez, Maryland
    Steve Russell, Oklahoma              Peter Welch, Vermont
    Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania
    Will Hurd, Texas                     Mark DeSaulnier, California
    Gary J. Palmer, Alabama              Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands
    James Comer, Kentucky                John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
    Paul Mitchell, Michigan
    Greg Gianforte, Montana
    Vacancy

                         Sheria Clarke, Staff Director
                        William McKenna, General Counsel
                    Samuel Wisch, Professional Staff Member
         Sharon Eshelman, National Security Subcommittee Staff Director
                        Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
                     David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
                                     ------

                       Subcommittee on National Security

                        Ron DeSantis, Florida, Chairman
    Steve Russell, Oklahoma, Vice Chair  Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts,
    John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee           Ranking Minority Member
    Justin Amash, Michigan               Peter Welch, Vermont
    Paul A. Gosar, Arizona               Mark DeSaulnier, California
    Virginia Foxx, North Carolina        Jimmy Gomez, California
    Jody B. Hice, Georgia                Vacancy
    James Comer, Kentucky                Vacancy
                                         Vacancy

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hearing held on July 11, 2018....................................     1

                                   WITNESSES

    Hillel Fradkin, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
        Oral Statement...............................................     5
        Written Statement............................................     8
    Jonathan Schanzer, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Foundation for
      Defense of Democracies
        Oral Statement...............................................    16
        Written Statement............................................    18
    M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., President & Founder, American Islamic
      Forum for Democracy
        Oral Statement...............................................    40
        Written Statement............................................    43
    The Honorable Daniel Benjamin, Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director,
      John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding,
      Dartmouth College
        Oral Statement...............................................    66
        Written Statement............................................    69

                                    APPENDIX

    Statement by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Diplomat in Residence,
      Princeton University, submitted by Mr. Lynch...................    88

                     THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD'S GLOBAL THREAT

                                  ----------

                            Wednesday, July 11, 2018

                      House of Representatives,
                     Subcommittee on National Security,
                  Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
                                                       Washington, D.C.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:06 a.m., in
    Room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ron DeSantis
    [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
        Present: Representatives DeSantis, Duncan, Gosar, Hice,
    Comer, Lynch, and DeSaulnier.
        Also Present: Representative Grothman.
        Mr. DeSantis. The Subcommittee on National Security will
    come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to
    declare a recess at any time.
        The Muslim Brotherhood is a militant Islamist organization
    with affiliates in over 70 countries, including groups
    designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S.
        Whether the Muslim Brotherhood writ large should be
    designated as a foreign terrorist organization has been the
    topic of debate here in Congress in recent years and has been
    under consideration by the Trump administration.
        Thankfully, the Trump administration has discarded the
    Obama era policy of treating the Brotherhood as a potential
    ally. Now the questions are focused on how expansive to make
    the terror designation and whether it should be done through
    the State Department or Treasury Department.
        The Muslim Brotherhood has been militant from its very
    beginning. Its founder, Hassan al-Banna, who started the group
    in 1928, said that, quote: ``Jihad is an obligation from Allah
    and every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded.''
        And in a book titled ``The Way of Jihad'' he wrote: ``Jihad
    means the fighting of the unbelievers and involves all possible
    efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the
    enemies of Islam, including beating them, plundering their
    wealth, destroying their places of worship, and smashing their
    idols,'' end quote.
        This belief was put into action in the decades that
    followed as the Muslim Brotherhood's members committed numerous
    acts of terrorism, including the assassination of Egypt's Prime
    Minister in 1948.
        This jihadist ideology continues to fuel the Muslim
    Brotherhood today. The Brotherhood mourned the death of Osama
    bin Laden and its leaders developed teachings justifying
    revolutionary violence under sharia law. The Brotherhood has
    preached hatred towards Jews, denied the Holocaust, and called
    for Israel's destruction. The Brotherhood has incited violence
    against Coptic Christians in Egypt amidst a wave of church
    bombings and other attacks by terrorist groups, including ISIS.
        Yusuf al-Qaradawi, perhaps the Brotherhood's preeminent
    cleric, issued a fatwa legitimizing terrorist attacks against
    American troops in Iraq. And he's also deemed the Holocaust to
    be a, quote, ``punishment for Jews,'' and expressed hope that
    another Holocaust would someday be carried out by his fellow
    Islamists.
        The Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, has
    said that the organization's goal is to establish a new
    Islamist caliphate, including the imposition of sharia law,
    which is the totalitarian Islamic legal code. We saw what
    happens when the Brotherhood takes control of a country in
    Egypt from 2012 to 2013, and the results were chilling, that
    then-President Mohamed Morsi defied the rule of law and granted
    himself near absolute power. As Egyptian leader Mohamed El
    Baradi put it, Morsi usurped all state powers and appointed
    himself Egypt's new pharaoh.
        The Brotherhood's legislators enshrined the principles of
    sharia as the main source of law in Egypt's Constitution, while
    the Morsi government used state institutions to promote Islamic
    radicalism, roll back freedom of the press, and launched a wave
    of blasphemy prosecutions.
        The Morsi Muslim Brotherhood government is no more, but the
    Brotherhood and its affiliates continue to advance their agenda
    across the Middle East and throughout the world.
        There's no question that the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates
    are involved in terrorism. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller
    confirmed as much in testimony before Congress when he said
    that elements of the Brotherhood, both here and overseas, have
    supported terrorism.
        A number of these Brotherhood affiliates have been
    designated as terrorist organizations by the United States
    Government. The Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch Hamas
    has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since
    1997. Hamas has taken control of the Gaza Strip, launched
    thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians, and committed
    suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that have murdered
    numerous Israeli and American civilians.
        Muslim Brotherhood networks raise money here in the U.S. to
    support Hamas' terrorist activities in the Middle East.
    According to the Department of Justice, in the early 1990s,
    Hamas' parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, planned to
    establish a network of organizations in the U.S. to spread a
    militant Islamist message and raise money for Hamas.
        And the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation became the chief
    fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee in the U.S.,
    created by the Brotherhood to support Hamas. In 2008, the Holy
    Land Foundation leaders were convicted of crimes, including
    providing material support for Hamas.
        Most recently the State Department designated two offshoots
    of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, HASM and Liwa al-Thawra, as
    terrorist organizations under Executive Order 13224. The State
    Department noted that these groups are responsible for bombings
    and assassinations of senior Egyptian officials.
        This hearing is an opportunity to discuss what the United
    States' next step should be in combating the Muslim
    Brotherhood's threat. Countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
    and the United Arab Emirates have all designated the
    Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
        I know there's disagreement among experts on how best to
    use terrorist designations to address the threat posed by the
    Brotherhood and its affiliates, and we have different
    perspectives on this issue represented within our panel today,
    and I look forward to hearing the witnesses' recommendations.
        Between the radicalism of it hateful ideology, the danger
    of its theocratic rule, as seen in Egypt, its networks,
    including Hamas and HASM, and its powerful state sponsors, it
    is clear that the Brotherhood constitutes a real threat for the
    national security interests of the United States. We can debate
    the best way to counter this threat, but simply ignoring the
    threat is not an acceptable answer.
        We do have a distinguished panel of witnesses here to
    discuss these issues. I want to thank all of them for taking
    their time to come and provide testimony.
        And it is my pleasure to now recognize the ranking member,
    Mr. Lynch, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd also like to thank
    you for holding this hearing to examine the multinational,
    religious, political, and social movement known as the Muslim
    Brotherhood. I'd also like to thank our witnesses for their
    willingness to help this subcommittee with its work.
        The Independent Program on Extremism at George Washington
    University describes the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in
    Egypt, as, quote, ``the world's oldest and arguably most
    influential contemporary Islamist movement,'' close quote.
        While the Muslim Brotherhood spans the Middle East and
    Africa and has spread into Southeast Asia and the West, it has
    manifested itself globally in very varied forms, ranging from
    nonviolent political actors to groups that have resorted to
    terrorism.
        According to the Program on Extremism, some affiliated
    groups, chapters, and radical offshoots inspired by the
    Brotherhood's Islamic ideology are marked by their adaptability
    to the local politics in a given country, their pursuit of
    individual organizational goals and their complete operational
    independence.
        While at one point the central Brotherhood body in Egypt
    officially renounced terrorism and violence under the Sadat
    regime in the 1970s, there is no doubt that certain affiliated
    organizations and spawn groups continue to espouse and engage
    in violent terrorist activity.
        Chief among them is Hamas, which has been designated as a
    foreign terrorist organization by the United States State
    Department since 1997. The original charter issued to establish
    Hamas in 1988 identified the terrorist group as the Palestinian
    branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
        Muslim Brotherhood splinter groups such as Liwa al-Thawra
    and HASM also continue to engage in violence in Egypt. These
    organizations have perpetrated assassination attempts against
    Egyptian defense and security officials and bombings against
    government sites, including attacks against the police training
    center in the city of Tanta and the Myanmar Embassy in Cairo in
    2017.
        Meanwhile, democratically elected political parties that
    also fall within the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella represent a
    significant voting bloc in the parliaments and governing
    coalitions of some of our key counterterrorism allies in the
    Middle East and North Africa.
        In Jordan, which has served as the most critical regional
    ally in our coalition efforts to degrade and destroy the
    Islamist State, Brotherhood-affiliated opposition parties, such
    as the Islamic Action Front, hold several seats in the national
    assembly.
        In Morocco, which remains a reliable regional partner in
    U.S. efforts to counter extremism and combat the Islamic State,
    the Islamist Justice and Development Party leads the coalition
    government.
        Ennahda, the main Islamic party in Tunisia, similarly leads
    the coalition government and has overseen the country's
    democratic transition since 2011.
        The State Department lists Tunisia, along with Jordan and
    Morocco, as our committed partners in the coalition to defeat
    the Islamic State.
        In light of the multifaceted composition of the Muslim
    Brotherhood, our national security strategy under Republican
    and Democratic administrations alike has focused on identifying
    the terrorist threats posed by individual affiliates and
    leaders.
        Most recently, the State Department listed the president of
    Hamas' political bureau as a, quote, ``specially designated
    global terrorist,'' close quote, in January of 2018, stemming
    from his ties with Hamas' military wing. The two Brotherhood
    branches involved in the 2017 terrorist attack in Egypt also
    received this designation.
        It's my understanding that some of my colleagues in
    Congress have called for the Trump administration to go further
    and to designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign
    terrorist organization, just as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria,
    Russia, and the United Arab Emirates have done.
        The effectiveness of our counterterrorism and force
    protection operations in the Middle East and North Africa
    demand that we approach this issue with caution. A wholesale
    designation would severely complicate our relationship with the
    regional security partners, including Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco,
    Turkey, and Kuwait, where the Muslim Brotherhood functions
    within mainstream government and society.
        Former Secretary of State Tillerson underscored this
    challenge during his congressional testimony last year. His
    statement was, and I quote: ``I think you can appreciate the
    complexities this enters into our relations with governments
    where the Muslim Brotherhood has matriculated to become
    participants, and in those elements they have done so by
    renouncing violence and terrorism,'' close quote.
        It could also further escalate the tension in the Middle
    East, which is already operating in a heightened state of
    conflict, where we still have 2,000 U.S. troops on the ground
    in Syria, an estimated 6,000 troops deployed in Iraq.
        Just last month, Mr. Issa of California and I led a
    bipartisan congressional delegation to the Middle East to
    assess regional security and stability amidst the 8-year civil
    war in Syria and the fourth year of civil war in Yemen. As we
    discussed during bilateral meeting Sing Abdullah of Jordan,
    President el-Sisi of Egypt, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel,
    and other allied leaders and military officials, national
    security currently demands that we deconflict the chaos coming
    from these multilayered conflicts.
        The Muslim Brotherhood is experiencing significant decline
    in many countries in the Middle East. It is social conservatism
    that is being rejected by a younger generation that is leading
    to that and accelerating that decline.
        It would be counterintuitive if we lumped political actors,
    nonviolent, nonterrorist, in with the groups that we wish to
    designate for their violent and terrorist activities.
        I would hope that our witnesses would give us direction on
    how best to isolate those who engage in unacceptable terrorist
    activity and not inadvertently give support to those very same
    individuals.
        I yield back.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back.
        I'm pleased to introduce our witnesses. We have
        Dr. Hillel Fradkin, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute;
    Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, senior Vice President for the Foundation
    for Defense of Democracies; Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president and
    founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; and
    Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, director of the John Sloan Dickey
    Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.
        Welcome to you all.
        Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn in
    before they testify. So if you could please stand and raise
    your right hand.
        Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about
    to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
    truth, so help you God?
        Please be seated.
        All witnesses answered in the affirmative.
        In order to allow time for discussion, please limit your
    testimony to 5 minutes. Your entire written statement will be
    made part of the record.
        As a reminder, the clock in front of you shows the
    remaining time during your opening statement. The light will
    turn yellow when you have 30 seconds left and red when your
    time is up. Please also remember to press the button to turn on
    your microphone before speaking.
        And with that, Dr. Fradkin, you're up for 5 minutes.

                           WITNESS STATEMENTS

                      STATEMENT OF HILLEL FRADKIN

        Mr. Fradkin. First, I'd like to begin by thanking Chairman
    DeSantis and Ranking Member Lynch and their colleagues for the
    invitation to address this hearing. It's a privilege to
    participate in this hearing and its discussion of a most
    important subject, the Muslim Brotherhood's global threat.
        After listening to the opening statements, it's a
    particular privilege because I can see from the statements that
    both the chairman and the ranking member are extremely well
    informed about the subject. But that leads to a problem: I'm
    not sure what I may reasonably add to what has already been
    said. I will give it a go and probably go over some of the same
    points that you enunciated and maybe flesh out a few things
    along the way.
        Generally speaking, this subject entails three general
    questions. First, is the Muslim Brotherhood a global threat?
    Second, if it is a global threat, how successful has it been or
    might be? Third, what can be do address this threat? And I do
    understand that's one of the principal objectives here.
        I'm going to principally address the first two questions in
    the prepared remarks and then I expect we'll discuss the third
    question more generally during the discussion period.
        Is the Muslim Brotherhood a global threat? Part of the
    answer is clear. The Brotherhood certainly means to be global
    and it means to be a threat.
        More specifically, the Muslim Brotherhood is devoted to a
    political and religious project that in principle, in its
    essential character and goals, is hostile to other forms of
    politics, including our own. And it means for this project to
    be global in extent. And both of these things have been true
    for a long time, since the founding of the Brotherhood some 90
    years ago by Hassan al-Banna.
        This had to do with the nature of the project itself. What
    was that project? In response to this question, Banna offered a
    simple fivefold formulation that has remained the model slogan
    of the Brotherhood ever since. Quote: ``Allah is our objective,
    the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our constitution, jihad
    is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.''
        Banna proposed this political-religious goal as the
    alternative to the new nation-state politics of his native
    Egypt. More emphatically, he proposed this as the only
    legitimate form of Muslim politics. Simply, its virtue was to
    renew and embody the authentic Muslim way of life, the way of
    life constituted, as he put it, by the Koran and the example
    the Prophet.
        As such, it applies to all Muslims everywhere. Hence, his
    project was necessarily global in principle. To use a term that
    has recently become familiar, it was to be--wind up
    establishing the Islamic State.
        In accord with this, Banna sought to establish branches of
    the Brotherhood in other countries and over time partially
    succeeded. Banna was murdered in 1948, but the essential tenets
    he prescribed for the Brotherhood have never been repudiated.
    And this, I believe, is not controversial nor should it be,
    that there has been no real change in the essential principles.
        And this, I may add, this was enunciated very, very clearly
    by a man named Khairat al Shater, who was the deputy guide of
    the Egyptian Brotherhood, in the spring of 2011 after the
    revolt had started, in a very, very interesting speech, which I
    might reference again later, in which he insisted that nothing
    that they were doing was inconsistent with or in violation of
    what the original vision was.
        What has been controversial is what the Brotherhood project
    practically means and where it falls within the universe of
    other radical Islamic organizations. The controversy is--put it
    this way--there was the suggestion, especially beginning after
    9/11, that by comparison with al-Qaida and other similar
    organizations the Brotherhood was moderate and could be a force
    for moderation. It was argued that it no longer seriously
    embraced the radical vision Banna had enunciated. Rather it was
    ready to participate in ordinary politics and through that
    participation would further moderate.
        As Chairman DeSantis mentioned, we have now had one
    important test of those hopes and they have proven to be false.
    The form of this test was the Brotherhood's sudden if brief
    rise to power in Egypt after the revolt of 2011. While in power
    it attempted to establish a new regime in Egypt that would more
    or less conform to its founding radical vision. And I want to
    stress that this was by intention. Well, Shater thought that
    the time of the final stage of the Muslim Brotherhood project
    had arrived. He was wrong and the project failed.
        Where does that leave the Brotherhood today? I know my time
    is up, but I will conclude with a couple of sentences.
        Mr. DeSantis. Just wrap it up if you can.
        Mr. Fradkin. Certainly within Egypt the Brotherhood is for
    the present a broken organization. But it has sustained defeats
    before, partially by finding bases elsewhere. In the 1960s this
    meant Saudi Arabia; today it means Turkey and Qatar. What it
    will attempt to do from these bases remains to be seen.
        I also want to add one final thing. It is often thought
    that al-Qaida is hostile to the Brotherhood and that's been
    certainly true. Very recently, I think within the last month or
    so, the present head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, made a
    speech in which he referenced the old ties, the old roots
    between the Brotherhood and al-Qaida with great nostalgia and
    welcomed the Brotherhood members to his own project or to a
    reconciliation of sorts.
        Thank you for your attention, and thank you for your
    permission to go over.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Fradkin follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. DeSantis. Appreciate it.
        Dr. Schanzer, 5 minutes.

                     STATEMENT OF JONATHAN SCHANZER

        Mr. Schanzer. Chairman DeSantis, Ranking Member Lynch, and
    members of the subcommittee, on behalf of FDD, thank you for
    the opportunity testify this morning.
        In 2011, President Barack Obama's Director of National
    Intelligence, James Clapper, famously sparked an outcry when he
    said that the Muslim Brotherhood was a, quote, ``heterogeneous
    group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has
    decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam,'' end quote.
        Clapper was way off the mark. For one, the Muslim
    Brotherhood is a gateway to jihadism, as we have already noted
    this morning. It's also a hate group. Its ideology is
    xenophobic, bigoted, and totalitarian.
        And the Brotherhood is not exactly heterogeneous either.
    Many branches subject their members to rigid indoctrination and
    demand unwaivering commitment to the Brothers' deeply
    intolerant interpretation of Islam.
        Still, the Brotherhood's branches do differ tactically. In
    Tunisia and Morocco it is part of the ruling elite. In Jordan
    and Malaysia it's the loyal opposition. In Egypt, Saudi Arabia
    and UAE it is banned outright, forcing the group to work
    underground. And the fact that the various factions do not all
    engage in violence makes it difficult to designate the movement
    in its entirety.
        But that does not mean that Washington is without recourse.
    The Treasury and State Department designated two suspected
    Egyptian Brotherhood offshoots, HASM and Liwa al-Thawra,
    earlier this year. Both groups carried out deadly attacks
    against the army, the judiciary, and the police since 2016.
        In making the case for the designations, the Brotherhood
    links to these groups were actually inconsequential. What
    mattered was the legal criteria, their track records of
    violence and support for terrorism.
        The goal now is to find others that meet this criteria, and
    to that end I have two suggestions. One is the Libyan Hizb al-
    Watan, led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, who previously led the Libyan
    Islamic Fighting Group, a designated terrorist group here in
    the U.S. Belhaj was also believed to be training members of
    Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, another U.S.-designated terrorist
    group.
        Another is al-Islah, which is Yemen's affiliate. One
    cofounder of Islah is Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who allegedly
    helped to coordinate the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. In 2013
    the Treasury noted that Zindani issued religious guidance in
    support of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Islah figures
    also reportedly harbored archterrorist Anwar al-Awlaki prior to
    2011 death by a U.S. drone strike.
        Do these groups meet criteria? I don't know. Ask the
    intelligence community.
        In the meantime, we must also look at the Brotherhood's
    state sponsors, namely Turkey and Qatar. Turkey's ruling AKP
    party is effectively the Turkish arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
    Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously dispatched a
    Turkish campaign strategist to Egypt to help Mohamed Morsi win
    the election, then sent billions of dollars to keep his regime
    afloat.
        After Morsi's ouster in July 2013, Turkey became a home for
    exiled Brotherhood. Hamas operatives have also made their home
    there, including Saleh Arouri, the head of the West Bank
    military wing, who ordered a triple murder in 2014 that sparked
    a massive rocket war with Israel.
        Turkish support for the Brotherhood-linked military
    activity also appears to extend to Libya. Press reports suggest
    that Turkey has been shipping arms to Libyan Brotherhood
    factions. And Turkey now hosts several Brotherhood affiliate TV
    channels as well.
        And speaking of TV channels, we can't forget Qatar. Qatar
    is owner of the pro-Brotherhood TV channel Al Jazeera, but its
    support extends far beyond that.
        After Morsi was elected, Doha gave the Egyptian regime
    billions in aid. Qatar today provides safe haven for many
    exiled Brotherhood figures. Other factions that enjoy Qatari
    support include Tunisia's Ennahda movement, Yemen's Islah,
    Libya's Hizb al-Watan, and of course Hamas.
        Chairman DeSantis, Ranking Member Lynch, I offer four
    recommendations today:
        One, do not waste valuable Federal resources trying to
    designate the entire Brotherhood. Focus on the factions that
    have a record of violence and terrorism finance.
        Number two, use Treasury's tools to reinforce existing
    designations. For example, Hamas, HASM, Liwa al-Thawra are
    already designated. Treasury should sanction the support
    networks. These derivative designations are bureaucratically
    easier to achieve, while designations of new entities can often
    get caught up in the red tape of the interagency process.
        Number three, confront Turkey and Qatar. Their support to
    the Brotherhood is undermining our efforts in that crucial
    battle of ideas.
        And four, support the House NDAA provision calling for a
    report on the Muslim Brotherhood. It is important that we here
    in the U.S. conduct our own assessment of this organization and
    formulate a strategy to address this important challenge.
        On behalf of FDD, thank you again for the opportunity to
    testify, and I look forward to your questions.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Schanzer follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. DeSantis. Thank you.
        Dr. Jasser, you're up for 5 minutes.

                      STATEMENT OF M. ZUHDI JASSER

        Dr. Jasser. Thank you, Chairman DeSantis and Ranking Member
    Lynch and other members of the House Subcommittee on National
    Security, for holding a very important hearing on the Muslim
    Brotherhood's global threat.
        Our American Islamic Forum for Democracy is a counter-
    Islamist American Muslim think tank and activist based in
    Phoenix, Arizona.
        I ask that my full written testimony be placed into the
    record.
        Mr. DeSantis. Without objection.
        Dr. Jasser. I am here today because as an American Muslim I
    have dedicated my life to American security and freedom, not
    only with 11 years in the U.S. Navy, but since 9/11 formally
    countering the oppressive and radicalizing influence of
    Islamist groups in the West upon our communities.
        No group embodies the threat of the radical Islamists more
    than Muslim Brotherhood, or in Arabic, Ikhwan al-Muslimin. The
    Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. Help us modern-
    minded, secular, liberal Muslims marginalize their influence by
    declaring what they are: a terrorist organization.
    Unfortunately, much of the conversation about the Brotherhood
    has been obstructed, muted, marginalized, deferred, minimized
    by the Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers or their allies here in
    the West.
        I have to tell you, in my heart of hearts, I think those
    who give the Ikhwan excuses--either say they are not
    monolithic, they are democratic, they are nonviolent, they have
    branches--must really believe that our entire faith of Islam,
    my faith, is just shades of oppressiveness of theocracy, so we
    have to tolerate the nonviolent theocrats.
        Somehow, we Muslims are since terminally having to accept
    the leadership and control of the global network of the
    terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood.
        In point of fact, nothing would be more pro-Muslim than the
    marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and its direct
    affiliates. Making the Muslim Brotherhood radioactive would
    allow the light to shine upon the most potent antagonists in
    Muslim communities: those who reject political Islamist groups
    and believe in liberty and the separation of mosque and state.
        In my short time I wanted to quick paint two pictures for
    you. First, this diagram. It may be hard to read. But bottom
    line, just so we understand what we are talking about, the
    Muslim Brotherhood, if you look at the top there, 1.6 billion
    Muslims, I think you can divide them politically into
    Islamists, who believe in Islamic states, and secularists.
        Under the Islamists, you've got Sunni and Shia strains. All
    Muslims have two major sects, if not more. There are other
    heterogeneous sects. But 90 percent are Sunni, 10 percent are
    Shia. Within the Sunni stream of Islam are political Islamist
    groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, and Jamaat e-
    Islami in Pakistan.
        The Brotherhood has offshoots of terror groups, and the
    nonviolent group, I believe, gives cover to the Muslim
    Brotherhood terror groups, if you will.
        So that just sort of lays it out as being a strain of Sunni
    Islam. I think that's important because if we start this
    project by labeling the Muslim Brotherhood factions in various
    countries terror groups, I think it also then should not give a
    pass to the Khomeinists in Iran, to other strains, the Salafi
    jihadis, ISIS, et cetera. So just so you understand where they
    fit.
        The next slide looks at the logo. And I think it's
    important to understand what they are. They have not changed
    their logo. And at the bottom, under those swords, which are
    not peaceful, that are not violent symbol, it says wei du(ph).
        And wei du (ph) is from chapter 8, verse 16 of the Koran,
    and it says ``make ready.'' And it's not the Boy Scouts' ``be
    prepared, make ready.'' This is a passage in the Koran that
    refers specifically to battle and preparing for militancy.
    This, despite them coming to power in Tunisia and Egypt and
    elsewhere, they never change the symbol and what they are.
        Thank you for those slides.
        al-Banna and Qutb, as you've heard before me, put forth the
    notion that Islam is all-encompassing for society. And if you
    look at the motto it says, as has been pointed out, that death
    for the sake of God is their highest aspiration.
        So let's define a terror group. Terror group means that the
    actors use any possible targeting of noncombatants or even
    combatants outside the rules of war in order to advance their
    supremacist hegemonic aspirations.
        The Muslim Brotherhood has never condemned theologically or
    ideologically the use of terrorism. And if they have it's been
    a cover, since they've reverted to that repeatedly.
        Now, Muslims are not monolithic. But the Brotherhood,
    whether it's 1.0 or 9.0, in the last 90 years is monolithic,
    and trying to say it's not monolithic is dancing on the head of
    an pin.
        Like the Cold War, communism was a cancer, but the war was
    against Soviet communism. Here, Islamism is the cancer within
    our faith communities, but the war is against the Ikhwan.
        We need to be on the offense, and for too long we've been
    on the defense worried about what the reactions will be. And
    ultimately I see that concern, that defensiveness on the
    American posture about naming the Brotherhood a terrorist
    organization, as at best a form of bigotry of low expectations
    when it comes to Muslims.
        The common enemy theory, saying that, well, the Brotherhood
    has a common enemy with us against ISIS and al-Qaida, is
    offensive to me, not only as an American, but as a Muslim. I
    hear the same thing in saying that we should support genocidal
    tyrants like Assad because they have common enemies with us
    against ISIS.
        Many people try to separate the central elements of these
    parties from the militant terrorist progeny. Recep Erdogan, the
    head of the Muslim Brotherhood group in Turkey, also known as
    the AKP, said: Democracy is like a train; we ride it until we
    get where we want to go and then we get off.
        It is time that we made them radioactive. And I detail in
    my testimony all of the connections, the revolving door between
    various al-Qaida groups, humanitarian organizations in the West
    and in the Middle East.
        The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood said just in
    2010, long after the 1970s in which they supposedly condemned
    violence, he said: Resistance is the solution against Zio-
    American arrogance and tyranny. The resistance can come from
    fighting and understanding--this is from Mohammed Badie, the
    head of the Brotherhood in Egypt, this is 2010, basically
    reiterating the declaration of war that Osama bin Laden said in
    the 1990s. There is no coincidence that there is a revolving
    door between leaders of al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood.
        I think, as has been said before, we begin pegging off
    various groups, terrorist groups from Syria, to Libya, to
    Yemen, to Kuwait, and on, and then ultimately that will begin
    to cut the funneling of money, funneling of ideas into other
    Muslim Brotherhood groups in the West.
        So my final recommendations, Chairman, is to, one,
    designate the MB a foreign terrorist organizations beginning in
    Egypt, and then on a country-country basis in Libya, Syria,
    Kuwait, Jordan, and Yemen.
        Call on American Muslim leaders to take a position on the
    Muslim Brotherhood and its overarching theo-political ideology.
    I ask my fellow Muslims: Will they be the side of freedom,
    liberty, and modernity, or will they be on the side of tyranny
    of the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey's AKP, the Iranian
    Khomeinists, or Pakistan's Jamaat e-Islami?
        Develop foreign policy mechanisms to disincentivize Qatari
    and Turkish Government facilitation of the Brotherhood and
    ultimately think about suspending Turkey from NATO.
        Use the MB designation as a template to transition
    immediately from the currently useless ideological center of
    CVE, countering violent extremism, to the more practical one of
    countering Islamism.
        And please stop engaging Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups
    in government, media, and NGOs, and recognize their Islamist
    terrorist sympathies.
        Thank you.
        [Prepared statement of Dr. Jasser follows:]

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        Mr. DeSantis. Thank you.
        Ambassador Benjamin, you're up for 5 minutes.

                      STATEMENT OF DANIEL BENJAMIN

        Mr. Benjamin. Chairman DeSantis, Ranking Member Lynch,
    distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for
    inviting me here today to discuss this important subject.
        The title of this hearing, ``The Muslim Brotherhood's
    Global Threat,'' invites comment on two questions. The first is
    whether there is a singular entity entitled the Muslim
    Brotherhood. The second is whether that entity or some group of
    Muslim Brotherhood branches or affiliates represent a genuine
    global threat.
        On the first question the answer is straightforward. As
    scholars, intelligence analysts, and policymakers over many
    years have come to agree, there is today no singular monolithic
    Muslim Brotherhood. Decades after the genesis of the Egyptian
    Ikhwan, there is no central administration linking these many
    different groups which are often said to have Brotherhood
    links, or of ideology or origins. In character and matters of
    doctrine they vary greatly.
        The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is an outlawed
    organization, many of whose members are incarcerated. In
    Jordan, the Brotherhood plays a legitimate political role in
    the form of the Islamic Front, which has played an important
    role in Jordan's Parliament. The Kuwaiti Brotherhood's party is
    a legitimate member of that country's parliament. In Morocco,
    the Justice and Development Party has held the prime minister's
    position and is also said to be linked to the Muslim
    Brotherhood.
        Tunisia's Ennahda is frequently characterized as having
    ties to the Brotherhood, though the party has probably
    confounded the expectation of Brotherhood members elsewhere by
    saying that it is separating politics from religion. It's
    notable that just a week ago an Ennahda member, a woman, was
    elected mayor of Tunis and that she does not wear a veil.
        Again, no serious researcher has demonstrated durable links
    between these groups that could be described as ones of command
    and control.
        Does the Muslim Brotherhood constitute a global threat?
    Hereto I would answer that it does not. Most of the groups that
    are said to be Brotherhood affiliates or franchises support the
    democratic process and have abjured violence, if they ever
    embraced it.
        The Egyptian Brotherhood forswore violence in the 1970s.
    There is no compelling evidence that it has reversed course.
        It is noteworthy that two Egyptian Brotherhood splinter
    groups, Liwa al-Thawra and HASM, were designated earlier this
    year under Executive Order 13224 as terrorist organizations and
    both do indeed have a record of violence. It is, however,
    fallacious to suggest that this is a sign of the Brotherhood's
    return to violence. These groups appear to have split off
    because their members wanted to commit violence while the
    Brotherhood as a whole did not.
        I want to be clear, I have no sympathy for the Muslim
    Brotherhood. The Egyptian group, for example, often delivers
    hate-filled anti-American and anti-Western pronouncements that
    are truly repellant. But if there's a threat emanating from the
    various organizations that can be grouped as part of the
    Brotherhood family, it is that repression against them may
    cause them to decide that violence is their only option.
        Anyone looking for the place where the next great jihadist
    wave will break would have to consider Egypt a strong
    possibility. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has hundreds of
    thousands of members and, despite the poor governance of
    Mohamed Morsi, millions of sympathizers.
        The widespread use of extrajudicial killing, indiscriminate
    incarceration, and torture has created a situation in which
    modern Islamists, people who want their society to be more
    Islamic but do not support violence, have no good options. They
    may come to see themselves as cornered and having no
    alternative but to take up arms.
        And it is important to remember that jihadism emerged in
    Egypt, and specifically from the notorious Tora Prison, amid
    the persecutions of the Nasser period. It will be a tragedy and
    indeed a strategic blunder if that lesson has been forgotten.
        A few other quick observations.
        First, the Trump administration evaluated the Brotherhood
    immediately after coming into office and determined that there
    was no legal basis to designate the group.
        Although there has been much speculative writing in the
    press about the orientation of the Brotherhood, the State
    Department's decision not to designate is telling. Department
    decisions are not based on open-source information of uncertain
    quality. Instead, designation decisions are based on all-source
    information, including classified intelligence.
        The fact that such a review took place and that the wishes
    of senior policymakers to designate the group were well-known
    tells a clear story. No basis was found for designating at the
    time. I am unaware of any indication that there is more of a
    basis now. I'm also unaware that this issue is being reviewed
    again within the government.
        A final point. Policymakers and legislators, like
    physicians, must keep in mind the injunction to do no harm. A
    hardline approach to the Muslim Brotherhood groups and their
    members could do significant harm.
        The United States may be enjoying improved relations with
    some Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE,
    countries, it should be noted, whose opposition to the Muslim
    Brotherhood is at least in part rooted in their opposition to
    democracy.
        But its reputation globally among Muslims--that is the
    United States' reputation--is at a low point due to President
    Trump's travel ban, his talked about a national registry of
    Muslims, and other negative comments about Muslims.
        The U.S. faces a real and continuing threat from jihadist
    terrorist violence. Unwise actions to target the Muslim
    Brotherhood groups will only deepen the animus against America,
    and we should not do anything that helps our enemies attract
    more recruits. That, too, would be a blunder.
        It would also be a blunder to further alienate already
    discomforted members of the domestic American Muslim community.
    The last thing the U.S. needs to do is to encourage
    radicalization at home.
        I want to thank you for your time, and I look forward to
    your questions.
        [Prepared statement of Mr. Benjamin follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. DeSantis. I thank the gentlemen.
        The gentleman notices the presence of the gentleman from
    Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, a member of the full committee.
        We thank you for your interest in this topic.
        Without objection, I'd like to welcome Mr. Grothman to
    participate fully in today's hearing. And without objection, so
    ordered.
        The chair now recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
        Dr. Jasser, the argument I think somewhat sketched out by
    Ambassador Benjamin is that if you take a strong stand against
    the Brotherhood like you articulated, that you're alienating
    so-called moderate Islamists and that that ends up leading to
    more terrorism. So how do you respond to that?
        Dr. Jasser. Well, again, I'd use the Cold War analogy. Were
    we worried when we took on the militant Soviets that we would
    alienate the moderate non-Soviet communists.
        It is beyond bigoted to say that the Muslim community is
    represented only by our establishment Islamists who dominate
    oppressively our community.
        So what better way than the country founded on defeating
    theocracy, the United States, to take a position against the
    militant arm of the theocratic branches of the Islamic faith?
    And I think that it would send a message around the world that
    we recognize that the Brotherhood is a militant organization
    and we that way build a platform for what I believe is a
    majority of the non-Islamist voices.
        There were 10 million people that went to the streets in
    Egypt to protest in Revolution 2.0 against the Brotherhood; 90
    percent of those folks were Muslims. And yet, it seems that
    from the arguments of the ambassador and others that the only
    people that we care about are the wings of this oppressive
    party that are nonviolent and somehow want to use democracy as
    a tool to get the power and then oppress the rest of the folks.
        If you look--I was on the U.S. Commission on Religious
    Freedom, met with the Brotherhood in 2013 in Cairo. And I can
    tell you that in speaking to them they have no interest in
    changing their mission, what they are, what their goal is. They
    see the world through the lens of theocracy, not through
    egalitarian rights.
        To say you can moderate the Brotherhood is like saying you
    can moderate the Communist Party into capitalists. It's
    impossible.
        Mr. DeSantis. So, I mean, just to sketch out the ideology,
    I mean, what does that mean for Christians and Jews or other
    religions?
        Dr. Jasser. Well, there's barely any, if any, Jews left in
    Egypt because of the Islamists and what they've done in that
    country and also dictatorship. The Islamists, when they get
    into power, are not only anti-Semitic, listen to their imams
    and clerics and what they preach out of Al Jazeera, from
    Qaradawi on down.
        Women's rights, the ambassador may have cited that they had
    one not hijabed woman, but the bottom line, that's window
    dressing for a central authority that is misogynistic and
    interprets the Koran and other sharia interpretations that say
    that women get a half a vote of a man, a quarter of the
    inheritance, et cetera.
        So they, as you saw in the way they put forth the
    constitution in Egypt, have no interest in an egalitarian,
    liberal, secular constitution. Their interest is the Islamic
    state and giving people rights not under God, but under Islam
    and their interpretation of Islam, where minorities, Coptic
    Christians, apostates--they call moderate Muslims who are anti-
    Islamist apostates. They put people in jail, as Morsi did
    hundreds and thousands, for criticizing him as criticizing
    Islam. That's theocracy.
        Mr. DeSantis. This notion of a moderate Islamist, I mean,
    Islamism is inherently not moderate, because, I mean, if you
    want Islamism to be the governing faith, that is a totalitarian
    system, not democratic. And so to say that that's moderate, I
    mean, maybe it means you're not launching terrorist attacks,
    but you still want an end that is very illiberal, I think.
        The chart you put up, and I want to see if you had--you had
    the Islamist wing, then you had the Brotherhood, and then kind
    of the terrorism growing out of that. And people say, well, the
    Brotherhood, they are not necessarily directing every terrorist
    attack, and I think that's true, but is it safe to say that the
    Brotherhood's ideology has served as kind of the intellectual
    foundation that has sprung a lot of the terrorist groups that
    we've seen, from al-Qaida to ISIS to everything in between?
        Dr. Jasser. Absolutely. I'm a doctor. In the daytime I
    treat patients and disease. We don't treat symptoms. One of the
    primary global cancer cells for the development of al-Qaida,
    Islamic Jihad, all of these offshoots, the primary source of
    training ground is Muslim Brotherhood. Some of them train to be
    part of the secret committee to ultimately be violent, and some
    of them come to the West to make sure our policy remains
    defensive and not offensive.
        So ultimately the goals of their ideology is to create
    Islamic states and a caliphate, and that has never changed.
        Mr. Benjamin. Mr. DeSantis?
        Mr. DeSantis. Dr. Fradkin, Sisi gave a speech probably a
    couple of years ago now where he challenged a lot of the
    Islamist clerics and said: Look, we cannot--and he's a devote
    Muslim, but he was making the point that you can't have a faith
    that is at war with everybody who disagrees, that's billions of
    people. And I think he has made the decision that you really
    have to marginalize the Brotherhood.
        What do you think? Is Dr. Jasser right or is a more
    targeted approach as enunciated by Dr. Schanzer? What are your
    views? How would you comment on those?
        Mr. Fradkin. Thank you very much for the question. It's an
    excellent one.
        I'm not myself clear yet about just how one goes about
    tackling the Brotherhood in terms of the designation as a
    terrorist group. What I am clear about is that it does--it
    creates the conditions for terrorist groups, the way in which
    Dr. Jasser said, in the sense that it is the original version
    of the ideology which underlies the undertaking.
        Another thing I think should be observed is this: We have
    tried to engage with the Brotherhood. And let's put it this
    way: Egypt has been an experiment in several ways.
        First, we had an experiment of how the Brotherhood would
    behave in power. And it had been proposed before that that when
    they come to power they would be, through the exercise of
    power, they would learn to be moderate.
        That we saw was false, and there are reasons why it was
    false, because when they saw the opportunity to exercise total
    power they were keen to.
        We also had an experiment of trying to understand them as a
    vehicle for moderate politics, of engaging with them in that
    direction. That experiment began--well, it began actually in
    the Bush administration, in a variety of ways, but its most
    visible expression was President Obama's speech in Cairo,
    which, among other things, went out of its way to welcome the
    Brotherhood. They were welcomed to the speech itself, somewhat
    against the wishes of Mubarak.
        Mr. DeSantis. My time's up, so you all will have a chance.
    But I want to give Mr. Lynch, get him in here. So I will
    recognize Mr. Lynch.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask unanimous
    consent, I have a letter here, a statement by Ryan Crocker, an
    eminent diplomat in the service of our country. And I'd ask
    that it be entered into the record.
        Mr. DeSantis. Without objection.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you, sir.
        I do want to make a distinction here about what the
    designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist
    organization.
        So there are a lot of conservative, we would even say
    repressive regimes around the world. There are many militant or
    extremist groups around. But the terrorist, terrorist
    designation is targeted toward activity, conduct, war on the
    civilian population.
        And so that's a different terminology and a different
    meaning than simply targeting regimes or organizations because
    they are conservative in their ideology. So it's an important
    distinction to make.
        The other challenge we have here, and I heard it from each
    of you, is our ability to target specific organizations for
    that unacceptable behavior, that waging of war on the civilian
    population and terrorist activity.
        So, Mr. Fradkin, you've said as much.
        Dr. Schanzer, you were saying in your testimony, which was
    very helpful, I think, and thoughtful, that rather than do this
    blanket label of terrorism on the whole Muslim Brotherhood,
    then go after the individual groups that are actually
    undertaking this unacceptable activity, and I completely agree.
        Dr. Jasser, you as well, country by country, let's target
    these people and call them out, call them out and isolate them
    in a way that doesn't make them stronger, but isolates them and
    weakens them.
        Ambassador Benjamin, I know you didn't speak directly to
    this issue, but in the past our success in isolating some of
    these groups has been our ability to differentiate the bad
    actors from the surrounding population and severing their local
    support.
        That seems to be what's happening in many cases in the
    Middle East where the younger population, as I mentioned in my
    opening remarks, the younger population is rejecting some of
    the more extreme edicts of the Muslim Brotherhood.
        Is that something, is that an approach that you think would
    be successful given your experience on the ground as an
    ambassador?
        Mr. Benjamin. Mr. Lynch, the United States has had great
    success in isolating terrorist groups and cutting off their
    wellsprings of support, if you will, and diminishing their
    appeal to the broader population.
        The United States has a much more mixed record when it
    comes to intervening in the politics of other countries and
    telling foreign populations who we approve of and who we don't.
        And our ambassadors, our envoys should by all means speak
    out against hatred, speak out against anything that promotes
    division and promotes antipathy towards the West, but our
    ability to take on the Muslim Brotherhood in the various
    countries when it is not a group engaged in terrorist
    activities is going to be challenging.
        If anything, given the fact that most of these countries
    the Muslim Brotherhood now has a political party, it's in the
    parliament, requires I think that we engage with them more and
    suggests that the benefits of moderation are available to all
    of those who pursue truly democratic policies and the
    pluralistic vision that the United States has stood for.
        Mr. Lynch. Thank you.
        I do want to take a minute here. I thought the statement by
    Ryan Crocker was instructive and important.
        He says here--and obviously Ryan Crocker served in Beirut
    during the bombings of the Marine barracks there, served for
    many years in Iraq. I've had many, many dealings with him. I
    think I've got over 20 trips to Iraq while he was our
    ambassador there.
        But he writes that, after 38 years of his service as a
    Foreign Service officer, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a
    monolithic organization.
        He adds that it's not an organization at all in the
    conventional sense of the term. It has no international
    headquarters, nor an identifiable global leadership. Individual
    country franchises vary dramatically in their ideology and
    politics, and especially in their attitudes towards political
    violence.
        At one extreme, he acknowledges, would be the Syrian Muslim
    Brothers who carried out a number of lethal bombings throughout
    the country in the 1970s. The other would be the Muslim
    Brothers in Egypt, Jordan, and North Africa.
        In Iraq post-2003 the only organized Sunni political party
    was the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Party in Iraq.
    And during his time in Iraq, 2007 to 2009, he worked closely
    with the Islamic Party and its leader, Iraqi Vice President
    Tariq al-Hashimi.
        So I think what he's pointing to is the wisdom of
    discerning which of these affiliates and groups is engaging in
    terrorism and which are engaging in political activity, the
    distinction I made before about whether someone is labeled a
    radical or an extremist and one who is labeled as a terrorist.
    And so I hope we are precise in our language here and precise
    in our goal.
        The other challenge with terrorism is their ability to
    adapt. And I think that just putting out a blanket designation
    on the Muslim Brotherhood, they will sidestep that in a
    heartbeat, and those organizations will reconfigure and
    reassemble in a way that will do nothing to reduce their
    lethality.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back.
        The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Gosar. Dr. Jasser, good seeing you again.
        This conversation is headed just in the right direction
    here. So one of the biggest problems in making policy decisions
    with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood is the fact that the
    Muslim Brotherhood frequently creates front groups that while
    ostensibly are separate, but in reality have close ties to the
    mother ship in Egypt.
        This can include respectable institutions such as civil
    rights organizations, community groups, and charities. A recent
    report by the Middle East Forum concerning Islamic Relief, an
    international aid charity, documented extensive ties between
    Islamic Relief and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
        One of the numerous examples given was the fact that Essam
    El-Haddad, cofounder of Islamic Relief Worldwide, became a
    foreign policy adviser to Mohamed Morsi, and according to
    Egyptian prosecutors used Islamic Relief moneys to fund Muslim
    Brotherhood terrorism in Egypt.
        Question: Does this tendency of the Muslim Brotherhood to
    form ostensibly separate spinoff groups under more respectable
    sources concern you? And secondly, what should our policy
    towards those organizations be?
        Dr. Jasser. Thank you, Congressman Gosar. And it is good to
    be here. Thank you.
        I can't tell you enough how important this issue is. And
    while I believe that the--the first thing I'd respond is tell
    you that the best way to marginalize groups that are front
    groups in the West--so I call them Muslim Brotherhood legacy
    groups, because they don't go by the name Muslim Brotherhood.
        In the United States we've not had religious parties, so
    they've not operated openly. In London they operate openly. The
    Muslim Brotherhood has an office. The Ikhwan website is
    operated out of London.
        But if you want to decrease their influence, the to and fro
    passage of money, Islamic Relief, for example, it's a great
    example. They have donated to Islamic Relief Worldwide.
        The Middle East Forum has an excellent report that was put
    out a week or 2 ago that looks at all of the revolving doors
    between radical Islamist terror groups around the world and
    Islamic Relief. I mean, Bangladesh, a Muslim country, does not
    allow Islamic Relief to do humanitarian work with Rohingya
    refugees because they're worried about radicalization.
        So the problem with front groups in the West, I think, will
    be diminished not by designating group that operate in the West
    here under other names. I think it's too hard to do that. But
    once you designate the mother ship in Egypt, the Brotherhood, a
    terrorist organization, you designate the Yemeni, the Kuwaiti
    Brotherhood as terror organizations, it is going to be much
    more radioactive, their platform of dominating our community.
        And this is why, if you look at the Muslim Sunni
    Association, I'd ask you all to look at the explanatory
    memorandum. The FBI put it into the documentation of the Holy
    Land Foundation trial that laid out the network of Muslim
    Brotherhood organizations and what their plan is in the West.
    That's stood the test of time in the court system and has not
    been refuted effectively because it is the truth, that that was
    their operation.
        So they are a threat. I think they oppress our own
    community here through their money, through their work with
    Qatar and other; Turkey. I mean, in Turkey just 2 weeks ago an
    organization called USCM, or the U.S. Consortium of Muslim
    Organizations, which is basically the Muslim Brotherhood
    leadership in America, went to congratulate Erdogan on his win
    in Turkey, supposedly as a democratic win. Forget the fact that
    he imprisons journalists, tortures professors, all these things
    it didn't matter to them because he's one of Brothers.
        So if I'm going to have a voice and our Muslim reform
    movement is going to have a voice in the United States, the
    best way to weaken our main antagonists, which are the
    Islamists, is to begin to diagnose their foreign terror
    organizations that they sympathize with as terrorist
    organizations, the Brotherhood.
        Mr. Gosar. So my next question should be right along the
    line. In the case of the Islamic Relief USA, a chapter of the
    Islamic Relief International that pays 20 percent of its income
    to Islamic Relief International, it has received at least
    $700,000 in Federal funds, and when accounting for various
    umbrella groups possibly much more. Should U.S. tax dollars be
    barred from going to such organizations?
        Dr. Jasser. I believe once you designate the Muslim
    Brotherhood in Egypt and many of the offshoots I talked about,
    name Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, then you
    can do the same thing to Islamic Relief that you did to the
    Holy Land Foundation because Hamas is a terrorist organization.
    But because they are funneling money through third parties that
    are not designated as terrorist organizations, they get away
    with.
        So the short answer to your question is, yes, we should
    stop giving them money. But you can't do that until you
    designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
        Mr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. I yield back.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back.
        The chair now recognizes Mr. Comer for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        My questions will be asked to the first three gentlemen on
    the panel.
        Ambassador Benjamin testified that most Muslim Brotherhood
    affiliates support democracy and renounce violence. Is that
    true?
        Mr. Fradkin. No. I don't think so. What has been true is
    the issue of violence as far as the Brotherhood is concerned,
    going back to the beginning, was a tactical question. Was it
    useful at any particular stage to use violence to advance their
    goals? And al-Qaida has no doubt that violence is good, but the
    Brotherhood sees it otherwise, but as such, there is no
    repudiation of violence, and that is is just--there is no such
    statement in the historical record.
        Ambassador Benjamin. Of course there is. The Egyptian
    Brotherhood has formally adjured violence in the 1990s.
        Mr. Fradkin. No, no. You said in your testimony they
    adjured it in the 1960s and 1970s when they----
        Ambassador Benjamin. No, I didn't say that.
        Mr. Fradkin. And they did--it says that--what the past was.
    In the 1960s and 1970s, they were in prison, so they had no
    option to exercise violence.
        I am not saying that they are for it, you know, in a big
    way, but it's just not true that, A--and this is the flip side
    of the assertion--the flip side of the assertion is that they
    are interested in entry into a normal, moderate politics, and
    that also is not true.
        And in the case of the Egyptians, they thought--they took
    what they could get under Mubarak, under Sadat. And then when
    they thought they had bigger opportunities, they went in a
    different direction.
        I want to, if I may, this brings up to the question--or an
    observation that Congressman Lynch made earlier that the
    question before us has always to do with action, terrorist
    action and violence. And it's important to focus on that,
    because that's the way in which we conceive of the threat and
    also the way in which our laws are written. And that's terribly
    important, but to some degree, and I agree with you,
    Congressman Lynch, that's the way in which we first have to
    approach the issue.
        The problem is, it does skew the discussion insofar as it
    suggests that those who are not immediately active in violence,
    or even if they've, you know, eschewed violence, as Ambassador
    Benjamin asserts, are the parties to be worked with, the
    parties that are useful for interaction. And this is a
    continuous tendency. Once you've sort of made the distinction
    between the Brotherhood and al-Qaida, you say, okay, these are
    the guys we can work with. And it was worthwhile having the
    experiment, perhaps, but we have had such experiments, and they
    haven't worked.
        Mr. Comer. Thank you.
        Mr. Schanzer. Congressman Comer, thank you for the
    question. What I would say is that in each of the cases that we
    look at around the Middle East, these groups have been shaped
    by their environments. So if they operate under a repressive
    regime, they are often left with no recourse but to recognize
    the regime and to renounce violence. They are more than willing
    to engage in the democratic process, but there's really nothing
    in their creed, all right, which is ultimately the dogma that
    they all adhere to at their core, that suggests that they have
    given up violence as an approach or that they've embraced
    democracy.
        So I think we just need to remember that they have been
    forced into making a lot of these decisions over time. Whether
    they are organically going to remain there, I think, is another
    question entirely.
        Dr. Jasser. And if I can add, I think to take what one or
    two Muslim leaders that happen to be sitting with Americans at
    the time and telling ambassadors what they think they want to
    hear is one thing, versus what they're actually telling their
    own people.
        And when the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in
    2010, decades after the so-called change of approach towards
    violence, tells his leaders that he is telling them that the
    best goal is to attain death and sacrifice through a jihadi
    generation against the U.S. and against the Zional-American
    conspiracy, that is a jihadi call to arms. And that was in 2010
    at the same time of, you know, with al-Qaida and other groups,
    so it sounded very similar.
        And I think basically we're hearing from some leaders that
    we should just continue a whack-a-mole approach to the Muslim
    Brotherhood program rather than actually treating the primary
    central organization as being a terrorist organization based on
    its ideology.
        And, by the way, if the antiviolence approach to them is
    true, we would be able to find rifes of theological, you know,
    disagreements with the Brotherhood's approach, their logo would
    have changed, all these things would have changed. None of that
    has happened. They're just telling a few ambassadors when they
    meet with them what they want to hear so that we don't
    interfere in their business in taking over various countries.
        Ambassador Benjamin. If I may, sir, my points are largely
    being distorted here.
        First of all, there's no legal basis whatsoever for
    designating the Brotherhood on the basis of ideology. Terrorist
    designations are done on the basis of violent act.
        Mr. Fradkin. Right.
        Ambassador Benjamin. That's it. So for Dr. Jasser to talk
    about designating the Muslim Brotherhood is absurd.
        Dr. Jasser. Well, what percent of them should be violent
    suicide? And answer is 10, 20, 80 percent? What percent?
        Ambassador Benjamin. You have to identify individuals and
    you have to identify groups that are carrying out these acts,
    and that's how the law works and that's how the State
    Department works and that's how we have worked throughout.
        And if we get into the business of deciding that a group
    should be designated because we don't like its ideology, first
    of all, we're contravening our own values in terms of freedom
    of speech and of discourse and we're undermining our own
    interests.
        The United States Government has espoused the belief for
    many, many decades that anyone who participates in the
    democratic process honestly, and so far as we can tell, and
    this is based on both intelligence and on the basis of their
    statements, that we ought to talk to them. That is what
    engaging with them means. It's doesn't mean that we are giving
    them money, it doesn't mean that we're giving them any
    benefits. We are talking to them, and that is it.
        And socialization through those processes typically, but
    not always, has positive effects. And we might have actually
    had a worse experience with Mr. Morrissey if we had not known
    the Muslim Brotherhood at all before, and we might have had a
    better experience had we had a more robust dialogue with the
    Muslim Brotherhood before.
        And it's important to note that the reason that we did not
    have a more robust dialogue was because autocratic leaders
    prohibited us from doing so in their country, and the cycle of
    repression and rebellion will go on as long as we are always
    beholden to those autocrats.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman's time has expired.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
    Duncan, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        I'm sorry I had to be over on the floor, so I didn't get to
    hear your testimony. And I really know very little about this
    particular issue, and I read that the Muslim Brotherhood has
    affiliates in 70 countries.
        How many members are there? How many people are there in
    the Muslim Brotherhood all together? Does anybody know?
        Mr. Fradkin. I don't know. No.
        Mr. Duncan. Yes. Ambassador?
        Ambassador Benjamin. We don't know. No one has a global
    figure, but it's in the millions.
        Dr. Jasser. Well, they won an election in Egypt. So they
    did that by having initially 20 to 30 percent of the vote and
    then they won a runoff against the former intelligence
    operation for Mubarak.
        So, you know, in various countries, they can swing 20, 30
    percent of the active Islamists, which are 30 percent of the
    population. So politically they're a large group.
        Mr. Duncan. Well, I understand that at least the first
    three witnesses here think we should designate. Is that not
    correct?
        Mr. Schanzer. Not correct.
        Mr. Duncan. Oh, okay. So of the people who are in the
    Muslim Brotherhood, what percentage do you think are violent or
    advocate violent activities? Does anybody have an opinion about
    that?
        Mr. Schanzer. Congressman Duncan, in my testimony, I did
    note that there are a number of organizations that have already
    been designated: Hasm, Liwa al-Thawra, Hamas. I suggested two
    others, one in Libya, another one in Yemen, where I think we
    would probably see evidence that would meet the criteria, which
    is a fairly simple criteria when you look at the Treasury
    designation process in particular. The State Department's a
    little bit more fuzzy.
        And then I think, you know, from there, we need to think
    about targeting violent individuals within the factions that
    are officially nonviolent or are taking part in the process,
    because we know that there are more hard line members within
    each of these factions, those that support violence, those that
    don't. So this needs to be a targeted process across the board
    according to our criteria of designation.
        Mr. Duncan. Okay. But do we have an opinion as to--I mean,
    is it a very small number or percentage of the people who are
    in the Muslim Brotherhood that would be considered violent or
    prone to violence?
        Ambassador Benjamin. Very, very small.
        Mr. Duncan. Very small.
        Dr. Jasser. Congressman Duncan----
        Ambassador Benjamin. Very small. Certainly those who have
    actually been involved in violent activities, it would be
    significantly less than 1 percent. Those who have joined
    splinter groups, that's another matter, but those splinter
    groups tend to be small.
        You know, one of the things that is somewhat problematic
    about this panel is that, you know, the vast scholarly
    literature on the Muslim Brotherhood emphasizes that the
    overwhelming amount of energy in the last 2 decades has gone
    into the creation of political parties, which are by definition
    opposed to carrying out violence. Okay?
        It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood historically has
    been a group from which splinters or sparks have been thrown
    off, and those people have become more violent. Al-Qaida, the
    original al-Jihad group, those people were originally
    influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood and then became more
    radical.
        But the Brotherhood itself, as far as we know, and
    certainly this was the state of the intelligence when I left
    the government, there are no major entities of the Muslim
    Brotherhood, setting aside Hamas, which is a special case and
    may not even be considered by some people to be Brotherhood,
    that are committed to violence.
        Dr. Jasser. Congressman, there's a very----
        Mr. Duncan. Let me just say this. You know, I've been here
    a long time. This is my 30th year. I was here for the first
    Gulf War, which I voted for, because I heard all of our top
    leaders say that Saddam Hussein was the greatest threat since
    Hitler and they talked about his elite troops, and then I saw
    those same elite troops surrendering to CNN camera crews and
    empty tanks, and so I became kind of skeptical about some of
    these things. And so when the second Gulf War rolled around, I
    ended up voting against it because I thought too many of our
    leaders were too eager to go to war to prove they were the new
    Winston Churchills or prove they were great leaders.
        And so I've felt for a long time that it's been a very sad
    thing that we have sent so many young Americans to fight what I
    thought were very unnecessary wars. And I also noticed that
    many of the people or groups that we are talking about how
    great these threats were were people or groups that were going
    to get money, and that these threats seemed to be more about
    money and power than they were about any great threats.
        But I see, Dr. Schanzer, you wanted to respond to the
    ambassador, so go ahead and respond.
        Mr. Schanzer. Yes. Look, what I would say is that I don't
    know where that number comes from that it's 1 percent or 5
    percent or 10 percent. It's not like, you know, we're looking
    at poll numbers coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood where
    people are calling their homes and saying, ``How many of you
    are radical?,'' and they're openly admitting to it, right? I
    mean, we don't know exactly what the numbers look like within--
    --
        Ambassador Benjamin. I said this was the number of people
    involved in violence.
        Mr. Schanzer. What we can say, though, is that when we look
    at radicalization, we have to look at those that go to the
    battle fronts, that's number one. And we do see a good number
    of people who were former Brothers that have gone on to join
    groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
        But also, when you look at the criteria, the Treasury
    criteria, I'm a former Treasury terror finance analyst, we look
    at basically four criteria. One is, are organizations owned or
    controlled by a terrorist organization, are the individuals
    members. That's number one. That's obvious.
        Number two is financial support. That is the same, in the
    view of law, as engaging in violence itself.
        Another is technical support and then another one is
    material support.
        These are the criteria that we need to look at what when we
    assess Brotherhood groups and individuals. And I think we'll
    find that it's not 1 percent, but it's also not 50 percent.
    There is some fuzzy math in there. I don't know how we'll ever
    get to it, but there is a problem within the Brotherhood. We
    know that for a fact.
        Dr. Jasser. And if I could add just one thing, Congressman.
        Mr. Duncan. Sure.
        Dr. Jasser. These mental gymnastics and confusions that
    you're having is exactly what the Brotherhood wants to happen,
    by dividing themselves into secret committees that push forth
    violent arms and other committees that use political processes
    to come to power. They use liberation theology to basically
    advance, no different than a Nazi party would or other Fascist
    arm would, and they use militant arms and then claim denial
    when they are pushed by more moderate democracies like
    ourselves.
        So at the end of the day, that wing, if it truly has--they
    might eschew violence on the one hand; on the other hand, they
    have never condemned openly those arms of their organizations
    or ever taken ownership of having sprouted those ideas and
    legitimized those factions of terrorist organizations.
        Mr. Duncan. All right. Thank you very much.
        Thank you Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman's timed has expired.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
    Hice, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Listen, whether the number is 1 percent, 5 percent or, as
    you mentioned, up to 50 percent, the question and the issue, as
    we all know, it doesn't take but a small number of radical
    terrorists to create an enormous problem around the world
    wherever they may strike.
        So with that in mind, Mr. Jasser, let me begin with you.
    How important a role does violent jihad play in the Muslim
    Brotherhood ideology?
        Dr. Jasser. Well, I think it's central. And they might
    condemn certain tactics here or there, but at the end of the
    day, their model has remained advocating for violent jihad,
    their ``be prepared'' passage from the Koran is simply a battle
    that they use as their rallying cry. So at the end of the day,
    they are a jihadist organization that believes in the technique
    of violence as one of the avenues to be used.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. So let's look at an example of that. How
    did the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood treat religious minorities,
    say, Coptic Christians?
        Dr. Jasser. I was there in 2013, and they committed, and
    their leaders and imams, called for acts of violence upon
    Christian communities, upon the Coptic community. And while
    there may have been some debate here or there, there was
    impunity given to various Islamist leaders that called for
    those acts of violence. And especially after they lost power in
    2013, it became no holds barred, and it's been that way since.
        Mr. Hice. All right. So let's bring it closer to home. What
    kinds of activities does the Muslim Brotherhood engage in here
    in the United States? Do we know what's happening here or what
    kind of plans? What can you tell me about that?
        Mr. Schanzer. Look, I have to say, I'm not an expert on the
    Muslim Brotherhood here in the United States. I've been more
    focused on the splinter groups and affiliate groups abroad, but
    what we can say is certain groups have been involved in terror
    finance cases. We have seen examples of this. The Holy Land
    Foundation, for example, is sort of a famous one. That was an
    organization that was providing $12 million to Hamas over the
    course of about a decade, and the Muslim Brotherhood group CAIR
    was an unindicted coconspirator in that case. It had an
    unspecified role in that case.
        So we have seen examples of this in recent history, but
    again, I think the important thing to note here is that, you
    know, we need to see a certain criteria in order to designate
    them. In some cases we just might see examples of troubling
    behavior. And this is where I think we need to--you know, with
    all respect to all of my panelists--we need to be looking
    simply at the criteria, not how troubled we are about a certain
    ideology. We need to be--look, there is a criteria in the U.S.
    Government for designation. We go after those groups in the
    U.S. that are in violation of our law and we continue to watch
    those that may be exhibiting some troubling behaviors.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. Thank you. But by your own admission,
    you're not an expert of this in the United States.
        Dr. Jasser, let me go back to you. What other radical
    Islamic movements outside of the Muslim Brotherhood should we
    be concerned about here in the United States?
        Dr. Jasser. Well, it's interesting, actually. If you look,
    for example, at the Khomeinists, Hezbollah, Hezbollah was
    designated a terror organization. We had sanctions against Iran
    for decades. That's one of the reasons there haven't been as
    many acts of Shia-inspired radical--it's not because the
    Hezbollah or the Khomeinists in Iran love America, they chant
    ``Death to America'' all the time, but the sanctions and the
    inability to fund and build mosques like the AKP now is
    building in Maryland and elsewhere, like the funneling of money
    from Saudi Arabia--I mean, up until just a few months ago,
    Saudi Arabia was actually intimately involved in this threat of
    the Brotherhood into Europe and in the West.
        So if you look at our own national security incidents, San
    Bernardino, the Boston bombing, Al Awlaki. Al Awlaki came
    through the Muslim Student Association, which was part of the
    mother ships of the Muslim Brotherhood history progeny here in
    the United States that then evolved. Now, Al Awlaki then left
    the Brotherhood ideology to become a Salafi Jihadist and join
    al-Qaida and go to Yemen, but that revolving door of ideology,
    if you look at the radicalization of a lot of Islamists in the
    United States that go from the conveyor belt of nonviolent sort
    of political antiAmerican, antiSemitic political Islam that go
    towards radicalization, it often starts with Brotherhood legacy
    groups in America.
        And I'll tell you, the Syrian American, the Syrian American
    Council is one of the central parts of that. Its own leadership
    has said its affiliation with the Brotherhood in Syria is one
    of the reasons the United States ended up funding a lot of
    radical Islamist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-
    Sham, and other radical groups in Syria, because of Muslim
    Brotherhood sympathizers in the United States that told them,
    ``Oh, they're okay,'' and you can find it by doing research, by
    looking at their Facebook, social media posts that sympathize
    with those groups in Syria.
        Mr. Hice. Thank you. Could you provide this committee with
    a list of all those?
        Dr. Jasser. Absolutely. It's in my written testimony that
    was submitted, sir.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. All of them?
        Dr. Jasser. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. Thank you.
        Ambassador Benjamin. If I may, Mr. Hice, I believe just to
    expand on Dr. Schanzer's testimony, there hasn't been a
    prosecution in the United States of a Hamas affiliate since the
    Holy Land Foundation.
        Is that correct, Jonathan?
        Mr. Schanzer. No, I don't believe there has been.
        Ambassador Benjamin. And that that was in the late 1990s?
        Mr. Schanzer. That was early 2000s, 2008.
        Ambassador Benjamin. Okay. Early 2000s.
        My point being simply that the Department of Justice and
    the Treasury Department are watching potential terrorist
    activity, and the FBI, of course, very, very vigorously. And I
    think that the paucity of prosecutions tells a very important
    story about the lack of activity going on in the United States
    at this time.
        Mr. Schanzer. I'd like to respond to that for just a
    moment, because I don't think that that actually captures the
    full picture.
        There has not been a designation of a U.S. charity here in
    the United States since 2009. Okay? What it means is, is that
    we have a problem with the system, that we are not looking at
    charities, we're not looking at the nonprofits that could be in
    violation of our laws.
        I actually believe that during the Obama administration,
    not to make this political, but during those years, the fact
    that we did not have a designation to me is very troubling,
    because I don't believe that there was no terror finance
    activity coming out of the U.S.
        So that does not exonerate the Muslim Brotherhood. To me it
    seems as if the system was not working for the last decade, and
    I'm hoping that we get to see a reinvigoration of that system
    now.
        Mr. Hice. Thank you for that answer and I agree. I yield
    back.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman's timed has expired.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Grothman. Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for
    being here today.
        Ambassador Benjamin, I'll start with you. You're affiliated
    with the Brookings Institution. Is that correct?
        Ambassador Benjamin. I'm a nonresident senior fellow there.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. I'm not sure how familiar you are with
    the inner workings of the Brookings Institution, but are you
    aware they've taken almost $15 million from the Qatari
    Government?
        Ambassador Benjamin. I am aware that Brookings has a center
    in Doha and that it has, like many other institutions in the
    United States, accepted funds from foreign governments,
    including Qatar.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. Do you know why Qatar would be funding
    the Brookings Institution or why they would find it of interest
    to give them $15 million?
        Ambassador Benjamin. So I don't want to speak for the
    institution. I know, because I have participated in it, that
    Brookings hosts, or cohosts, an annual Islamic World Forum,
    which is held, I think, half the time in the United States,
    half the time in Qatar, and brings distinguished speakers from
    all over the world to talk about issues of common interest.
        And as I said before, Brookings has a center in Doha where
    it carries on scholarly activities much like those that it
    carries on here.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. A fellow at the Doha center, this is
    what I'm trying to come around, someone named Saleem Ali, was
    quoted as saying, in The New York Times, if you can believe The
    New York Times, there was a no go zone when it came to
    criticizing the Qatari Government, and the Members of Congress
    using Brookings reports on Qatar should be aware they're not
    getting the full story.
        Do you feel that by accepting $15 million, it colors at all
    the view of the Brookings Institution when it comes to talking
    about Qatar and therefore the Muslim Brotherhood?
        Ambassador Benjamin. I worked at Brookings before going
    into the Obama administration. I was the director for the
    center on the U.S. and Europe. We accepted grants from the
    European Union, among others. And I have the highest regard for
    my fellow scholars at Brookings and believe strongly that their
    views are not influenced by the sources of their funding, in
    much the same way that their views are not influenced by the
    corporate funding, which is another frequent source of funding
    at Brookings and throughout the think tank world, or from
    foundations, whose leadership may have particular views, but
    those views are not imposed upon the scholars. And the think
    tanks generally in Washington work very hard to avoid having
    the views of their donors appear in their reports.
        Mr. Grothman. I don't know how big Brookings is, $15
    million just hits me as kind of a large sum of money.
        And I just wondered, can you speculate on what motive the
    Qatar government, which is sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood as
    well, what motivation they would have in giving such a large
    contribution to Brookings?
        Ambassador Benjamin. In my dealings with the Qataris, which
    has been quite extensive, I know that they are interested in
    building dialogue between the United States and their country
    and the Muslim world more broadly. And, you know, we see this
    in many other contexts as well. You know, probably the biggest
    contributor to the think tank world is Norway.
        I see no reason to impute any ill intentions to the Qataris
    here, nor would I to the many think tanks that are receiving
    money from the UAE or from the Saudis, whose, you know,
    opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood is very well known right
    now, even if in, particularly the Saudi case, it's been
    anything but consistent.
        Mr. Grothman. Okay. I'll ask either one of the other of
    you, it's been implied by Mr. Benjamin that the Muslim
    Brotherhood is just kind of an umbrella name and there's not a
    lot of coordination between the Muslim Brotherhood in one
    country to another. I'd ask you to comment on that in general,
    whichever one of the other three wants to comment.
        Mr. Fradkin. I can say a little bit about that. I think
    that originally there was a good deal of coordination and
    there's a desire for there to be such. Over time, it's been a
    mixed picture. For a very long time, the other Brotherhood
    chapters looked to the Egyptian chapter as the founding
    chapter. They still cooperate. In the context of the 2011 Arab
    revolts, people went from Egypt to Tunisia to consult with
    their Brotherhood chapter. Actually, the Tunisians recommended
    that the Egyptian Brotherhood be a little bit more restrained.
    It was good advice, which they didn't take. And there is that
    kind of thing.
        Because of the situation that was referred to before by
    Jonathan Schanzer, it's harder for them to coordinate, but they
    will be looking to coordinate. And one of the issues, one of
    the relevant considerations, is where they will coordinate
    from.
        Qatar is one place, because they do support the Brotherhood
    and they provide, in particular, support for Al Jazeera, which
    is a platform for the most significant Brotherhood cleric, al-
    Qaradawi, but I think actually more important in the near
    future is going to be Turkey, because Turkey is a much bigger
    country, it's a more powerful country, and it has the wind in
    its sails now, or its president does. And I think it's pretty
    clear he's acting as if he is going to be the godfather to the
    Brotherhood. He's provided a safe haven for many of the
    Egyptians who had to flee, Brotherhood and others.
        And what exactly he will do or what they will do under his
    auspices, I don't know, but because of the character of Turkey
    and the fact that the government is so completely under the
    control of its president, there is much greater opportunity in
    the future for coordinating action, I would say.
        Mr. Grothman. Thank you. I believe my time is up.
        Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back.
        I want to again thank our witnesses for appearing before us
    today. The hearing record will remain open for 2 weeks for any
    member to submit a written opening statement or questions for
    the record.
        And if there's no further business, without objection, the
    subcommittee stands adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                    APPENDIX

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                   Material Submitted for the Hearing Record

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