The State Department’s Divided Loyalties

Michele Bachmann and four other congressional representatives have been taking a lot of flak in the press in recent days for their criticism of Muslim Brotherhood penetration at the highest levels of the Obama administration. In particular, they are being savaged for pointing out the family connections of Huma Abedin, one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aides, with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Their concerns are disparagingly referred to as the “new McCarthyism”. However, whatever one might think of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s proved that he was right: the United States government, especially the State Department, had been penetrated at the highest levels by agents of the Soviet Union.

Congress was right to be concerned about Communist infiltration in 1949, and it is right to be concerned about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in 2012.

The Center for Security Policy has done some research into the MB activities of Huma Abedin’s mother, and they are disturbing indeed. Below is a press release on the topic issued earlier today by CSP.


Center Report Reveals Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official Huma Abedin’s Mother

WASHINGTON, D.C.: A book published and translated by the mother of Obama administration State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin provides fresh evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aide has deeply problematic foreign associations that could, in violation of departmental guidelines, “create… a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”

In light of the escalating controversy over the role being played in U.S. security policy-making by Ms. Abedin and others with personal and/or professional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Part 8 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), the revelations contained in a new Center report — Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother (pdf) — could not be more timely, or important.

The Center’s report excerpts and analyzes relevant passages from a book published and translated by Saleha S. Mahmood Abedin called Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations by Fatima Umar Naseef. Naseef is a past head of the “women’s section” and professor of shariah at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where Dr. Abedin is also on the faculty. The book was published in 1999, the same year Dr. Abedin founded Dar Al Hekma, a university for women also in Jeddah, that Secretary Clinton visited and spoke admiringly of with Huma Abedin in February 2010. [See Remarks on that occasion by Mrs. Clinton, including her comment that Huma holds a “very sensitive and important position” in her department, and those by her hosts.]

Excerpts from Women in Islam in Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother (pdf) include Islamic shariah justifications for the following:

• Stoning for Adultery when Married; Lashing for Adultery when Unmarried
  
• No Death Penalty for the Murder of an Apostate
  
• Freedom of Expression Curtailed to What Benefits Islam
  
• Women’s Right to Participate in Armed Jihad
  
• Social Interaction Between the Sexes is Forbidden
  
• Women Have No Right to Abstain from Sex with their Husbands
  
• A Woman Should Not Let Anyone Into the House Unless Approved by Her Husband
  
• Female Genital Mutilation is Allowed
  
• Man-Made Laws “Enslave Women”

The organization responsible for the publication of Women in Islam was the International Islamic Committee for Woman & Child (IICWC), chaired at the time by Dr. Abedin. IICWC misleadingly describes itself as “an international organization of concerned women who are committed to improving the condition of women and children around the world.” In fact, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League (MWL) and other Islamist organizations with which it is associated, the IICWC is committed to eviscerating the rights of women and children by imposing everywhere shariah, a code that denies them fundamental — and, in the United States, constitutional — liberties.

Specifically, the book published by Dr. Abedin wholeheartedly affirms: limits on women’s free expression; the permissibility of stoning as a punishment for adultery, killing of apostates and female genital mutilation; the contention that “man-made laws” enslave women; and more. It also endorses women’s right to fight in armed jihad. Women in Islam is available online and sold at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist organization co-founded by Huma Abedin’s mother and her late father, Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin.

On July 21, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy posted an essay at National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone commenting on the request by five Members of Congress led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota for Inspector General investigations of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government. In it, he observed that the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs “was backed by the Muslim World League. As the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran relates, the MWL was started by the Saudi government in 1962 ‘with Brotherhood members in key leadership positions.’ It has served as the principal vehicle for the propagation of Islamic supremacism by the Saudis and the Brotherhood.”

Mr. McCarthy notes that:

The five House conservatives… are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman — a convicted terrorist and clerical inspiration for jihadists worldwide, whose release from federal prison at the insistence of Muslim Brother and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been the subject of discussions within and enabled by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department — goes on to observe that:

The State Department is particularly wary when it comes to the category of ‘foreign influence’ — yes, it is a significant enough concern to warrant its own extensive category in background investigations. No criminal behavior need be shown to deny a security clearance; access to classified information is not a right, and reasonable fear of “divided loyalties” is more than sufficient for a clearance to be denied. The [Department’s own security] guidelines probe ties to foreign countries and organizations because hostile elements could “target United States citizens to obtain protected information” or could be “associated with a risk of terrorism.” Note: The Brotherhood checks both these boxes.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, said upon the release of the Center’s new report, Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother:

In the interest of informing the debate about the need to investigate Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda, and those of others shaping policy in the Obama administration, the Center for Security Policy offers in Ties That Bind? further cause for such an investigation. That includes, for instance, evidence of Dr. Saleha Abedin’s personal involvement with the International Islamic Committee on Woman and Child’s affiliated organization, the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR). The IICDR was banned in Israel in 2008 for its collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Union for Good in the funding of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, Hamas. In the United States, the Union for Good was designated a terrorist entity in late 2008.

This further documentation of Dr. Abedin’s positions on shariah law, her leadership of the IICWC and its affiliation with a designated terrorist entity such as the IICDR makes plain that a thorough investigation is fully justified regarding her daughter’s access to classified information and policy-influencing role. In particular, in connection with the latter, Ties That Bind powerfully reinforces the Center’s earlier warning that the IICWC is currently advocating for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to shariah. Americans want no part of such an agenda. They should they have no reason for concern that senior officials in their government are stealthily encouraging it.