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Washington Post claims declaring Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group will put academics who study it at risk of arrest

Jan 27, 2017 9:42 am By Christine Douglass-Williams

The argument that Yale professor Andrew March presents here in the WaPo is perhaps intended to be satirical. It is difficult to imagine any other alternative, given the fatuousness of its premise. March attempts to cast doubt upon the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood even has any relationship with terrorism. He also indulges in hysterical fear-mongering, claiming that “those who conduct research on the organization could find themselves at risk of prosecution for ‘material support’ of terrorism.”

If that were true, all Jihad Watch writers would have been arrested long ago for writing about jihad terror activity.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood is clearly a terrorist organization. Its mission is plain; its “logo fits its motto: ‘Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!'”

In the words of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna, “all Muslims must make Jihad“:

“All Muslims Must Make Jihad. Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward. Furthermore, Allah has specifically honoured the Mujahideen {those who wage jihad} with certain exceptional qualities, both spiritual and practical, to benefit them in this world and the next. Their pure blood is a symbol of victory in this world and the mark of success and felicity in the world to come.”

Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi openly calls for violence against Israelis; the Muslim Brotherhood plan for North America spells out its detailed strategy for conquest. Even Saudi Arabia has declared it a terrorist organization. But all the WaPo offers in its defense is silly, unsubstantiated fear-mongering.

“Designating the Muslim Brotherhood a ‘terrorist organization’ puts academic researchers at risk”, by Andrew March, Washington Post, January 25, 2017:

There is a hidden danger for academics and journalists lurking within congressional legislation introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Most of the discussion has focused on whether the legislation’s premise is correct about the Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship with terrorism and the potential impact on Muslim American organizations. There is another threat more specific to academic researchers and analysts: Those who conduct research on the organization could find themselves at risk of prosecution for “material support” of terrorism.

Whatever else it may be, the Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that has been studied, contacted — and in some cases advised — by a large percentage of academic researchers, journalists and analysts working on the Middle East. This raises a multitude of questions: What would it mean legally if the Brotherhood were officially designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)? Could its files be subpoenaed? Could the publishing of interviews with Brotherhood members be designated as material support? Could speech activities related to defending the ideology and worldview of the Brotherhood, perhaps by contrasting it with more radical forms of jihadist ideology, be subject to prosecution?

The reason for concern lies in a recent dramatic expansion of the scope of “material support for terrorism” statutes. Those statutes have, over the past decade, been a valuable and frequently used tool for prosecuting people suspected of aiding or abetting terrorism. They typically have been interpreted to include financial, organizational or other types of material support.

The statute also criminalizes “expert advice or assistance.” At first glance, this is also not necessarily troubling. If one agrees that it is reasonable to prevent a U.S. citizen from advising al-Qaeda or the Islamic State on how to hide money or build weapons, then the argument follows that there is not an unqualified right to provide “expert advice or assistance” to a terrorist organization resulting from the right to speech or association.

However, the government — with the support of the Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010) — has defined “expert advice or assistance” more broadly than teaching a designated foreign terrorist organization how to more effectively advance its violent goals. According to interpretations of the law, it is also illegal to provide any organization on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations (or even just “terrorists” not on the official list) with “expert advice or assistance” even if it aims at peaceful, or even peacemaking, aims. It is conceivably a federal crime for former president Jimmy Carter to advise Hezbollah or Hamas on negotiation tactics in the pursuit of a negotiated peace or some limited human rights aims.

It recently got even worse than that. The Supreme Court upheld the material support statute in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project on the grounds that it only criminalizes actual expert advice or assistance “directed to, coordinated with, or controlled by foreign terrorist groups” and not mere association with people who may also be members of such groups or “independent advocacy” of viewpoints or causes that may also be shared by terrorist groups. The problem is that in practice the law serves to help criminalize independent speech or mere association with groups on the FTO list.

The implications of this became clear in an important 2011 criminal trial in Boston, U.S. vs. Tarek Mehanna, a trial in which I served as an expert witness for the defense. In this case, a Boston-area pharmacology student was prosecuted on the basis of the material support statute for two broad sets of activities: (1) traveling to Yemen for less than a week, purportedly in search of a training camp to later participate in the anti-occupation insurgency in Iraq, and (2) translating various Islamic legal texts and videos associated with jihad and discussing these issues with local American Muslims. According to the law as defended in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Mehanna’s various speech activities could be criminal only if translation does indeed amount to a kind of “expert assistance” and if it was done in a manner “directed to, coordinated with, or controlled by foreign terrorist groups.”

The case reveals three more expansive possibilities for prosecuting speech. First, much of what Mehanna translated was not “crime-facilitating” material — i.e., material that provides technical knowledge of how to commit a crime. Rather, it was either propaganda or Islamic legal and theological discussions.

Secondly, the law of conspiracy allows the government to prosecute speech that is not “directed to, coordinated with, or controlled by foreign terrorist groups.” The government argued that “providing translation services and distributing material intended to inspire others to participate in violent jihad,” expressing “support for successes of the terrorists and setback for the American and other Westerners, and rejection of moderation, and desire to leave the U.S. and not live among the ‘kuffars,’ ” and “efforts to convince and radicalize others” could all be construed as overt acts in pursuit of a conspiracy to provide support for terrorism — even if there were no contact between the individual and terrorist groups.

Third, the government is permitted to bring into a criminal trial virtually unlimited amounts of private speech about religious and political matters on the grounds that they go to the “state of mind” of a defendant in engaging in other kinds of speech in defense of the cause of “jihad.”

What does this have to do with academics and the scholarly study of the Middle East? Suppose that a university or trade press publishes a translation of a text written or published by or on behalf of an organization connected with terrorism, or by a writer connected with such an organization. If the press has to contact a publisher for rights, or downloads the text from a website associated with an FTO in some way, has it coordinated with an FTO and thus provided it with material support? ……

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, Muslim Brotherhood, United States, Useful idiots Tagged With: Andrew March, Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, Washington Post


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Comments

  1. Richie says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 9:45 am

    Remember, for Muslims- Muslims who kill and rape are always the victim

    • Dave says

      Jan 28, 2017 at 10:06 am

      Illegal terrorist organization ask Egypt who they are!?

  2. Jaladhi says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 9:54 am

    It is clear that the so called “prestigious” schools such as Yale, Harvard, etc, etc, are full of morons like this “professors”. Why any parent would consider wasting their hard earned money by sending their kids to such schools is beyond me!

    • Judi says

      Jan 27, 2017 at 10:59 am

      Millions of $ of Saudi money ploughed into these once prestigious schools.

      • A Harris USA says

        Jan 28, 2017 at 12:09 pm

        Judi, yes indeed, follow the money!! I say go ahead and shut these savage pigs down.. Arrest them, who cares, maybe the best answer for these stupid libs is cut off the money, and stop funding their life style.. In order to hurt these idiots, people have to stop sending their kids to these schools, and use good schools that do not teach this crap, Liberty University comes to mind………….

  3. Kay says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 10:00 am

    It never fails to amaze me how the Left twists things. So now people will argue against this sensible move (declaring MB a terrorist organization) by arguing against massive government spying on citizens that is not the issue at all.
    It’s a wonder that Wapo is considered journalism by any.
    By his logic, people wouldn’t be able to study disease, natural disaster, wars in history . . .
    and yet people will actually consider this argument.

  4. Angemon says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 10:09 am

    Those who conduct research on the organization could find themselves at risk of prosecution for “material support” of terrorism.

    Starting with American intelligence, I’d bet, and going all the way up to Trump for simply reading the memos… NO, you idiot, there’s a difference between “research” and “support”. Saying “The MB acted such and such, and therefore it meets the criteria to be called a terrorist group” is different from saying “I will give material support to the MB , knowing they’ll use it for such and such”.

    This is such a stupid argument that I’m inclined to doubt the mental sanity of this individual. Are there, or not, other cases in history of research into terrorist organizations, whether before or after they were labelled as such? What is the historical precedent? For someone to be accused of providing support, intent needs to be proven (and good luck with that) – you are NOT going to be sent to jail because you made a donation to a relief fund that turned out to be a jihad-terror sponsoring group if you thought you were giving money to help starving children in Africa. If you, however, were giving money knowing it would go to help buy explosives or to feed the families of suicide bombers, it’s a completely different case.

    Third, the government is permitted to bring into a criminal trial virtually unlimited amounts of private speech about religious and political matters on the grounds that they go to the “state of mind” of a defendant in engaging in other kinds of speech in defense of the cause of “jihad.”

    Yes, state of mind – i.e., intent. There’s a difference between someone going “Christians and Jews are the worse of creatures and need to be humiliated constantly so they can be reminded of the price they pay for their rebellion against muhammad” through their entire life and someone saying “I’m a Christian born and raised in a muslim nation, and this group of people I’ve been investigating and translating texts from think Jews and Christians are the worse of creatures and need to be humiliated constantly so they can be reminded of the price they pay for their rebellion against muhammad”.

    • efoc says

      Jan 27, 2017 at 3:24 pm

      Very well said Angemon. This guy is a fine example of hysterical fear-mongering and debilitated logic trying to pose as “argument”.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 27, 2017 at 5:06 pm

      Good post, Angemon.

  5. IQ al Rassooli says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 10:12 am

    There is absolutely no doubt that ALL leftists, so called liberals and the PC elites are in a terminal Nuclear MELTDOWN mental state

    So far, since DJ Trump ( May God Bless and Protect him) became PRESIDENT all the above have literally LOST their peanut brains!

    Every article they write, every statement they make PROVES that “We the People” were being Raped, Plundered, Subjugated, Humiliated and Denigrated by the LEAST capable ‘leaders’ in the history of the Republic

    Every single day shows how these utterly Clueless, Spineless and Un American Despicable people elites have been guiding us literally to our utter destruction

    By the end of 2017 -or hopefully much earlier – the SWAMP will be DRAINED and flushed with ALL these elites down the SEWER where they truly belong

    This ‘professor’ – like thousands more – should be consigned to a MENTAL asylum

    IQ al Rassooli
    Kafir & Proud!
    MAGA & DTS!

    • MacUalraig says

      Jan 27, 2017 at 2:00 pm

      What’s MAGA & DTS?!

      • IQ al Rassooli says

        Jan 27, 2017 at 2:05 pm

        By Jove you must be on a different planet

        MAGA = Make America Great Again !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        DTS = Drain the Swamp !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        IQ al Rassooli
        Kafir & Proud!

  6. Adrian says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 10:50 am

    Wow… yes, you wouldn’t want Muslim Brotherhood scholars to face all the persecution and arrests that scholars of Communism and Nazism are subjected to daily here in America!

  7. somehistory says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    Reading between the lines: he wants to give advice to mb and its members on how to do what they already do and doesn’t want to be arrested for aiding, abetting or conspiring with, a *designated* terrorist group. He knows already they are a terrorist group, but he doesn’t want them designated so he can keep advising them.

    According to his lies, John Miller could have been arrested for having gone to Afghanistan to meet with bin laden and interviewing him. He wasn’t arrested, but given an important job with the government.
    According to this liar, all students (including me) could be arrested for researching, reading and writing papers on, al queda, bokoharam, and all of the other known terror groups, or writing papers on Iran, SA, and other terror supporting nations. The professors would be arrested for teaching such things and assigning those as topics of study.

    He isn’t worried about students researching….he’s worried about himself giving advice and aid and *comfort* to the mb.

  8. stan lee says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    Such professors are capable of conveying their personal leftist political agendas which indoctrinate impressionable minds of students who are at the time of life where Communism and Socialism can become their basic ideologies. Professors teach those agendas rather than support for the U.S. Constitution. It has become evident in numerous universities.
    It is a reasonable goal to observe such professors in order to know what they teach and ideology they may foment as a result. I believe there is far more leftism taught in secondary education operations, than there is objective study of the U.S. Constitution.

  9. Vic says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    WaPo with its responsible journalism, again.
    Let’s see….do any other countries list the MB as a terrorist group?
    Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Syria…
    Imagine that…their own Arab brothers
    The MB has never made their intentions a secret. We just never thought about informing ourselves and asking substantive questions. And when smart and informed people did, the MB and its cronies just resorted to calling them islamophobes.
    Any bells ring when the name Morsi is mentioned? The MB was on Egypts terrorist list under Mubaraks term and their activities were controlled. The Arab Spring took place, Mubarak as deposed and the MB candidate won the election. The MB put Morsi in office under the guise of working with a coalition of parties to give the impression that he was willing to work with other less “radical islamist” groups. What happened shortly after he took over but try to change the constitution to give himself more executive powers without the agreement of the coalition partners. This change was in the works from the beginning. he was taking orders from his MB bosses. The military saw it coming and there was a coup and Morsi was incarcerated with many of his supporters for acting against the state. The MB went back on Egypts terrorist list.

    That is just one instance. There are many other infiltrations allowed in high places in our government by the previous administration which was a declared sympathizer of this MB mafia. Much to our detriment curtailing our ability of fight them effectively.

    These academics can’t find any records of the charter of the MB? Blind idiots. They are just afraid their grants and funding for their worthless projects might get cut off. Do they know how to do any worthwhile work?

  10. George says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 4:58 pm

    You don’t give advice to an enemy on how they can peacefully accomplice their goals. Whether they use peaceful of violent means to accomplice their goals, they are a self-avowed enemy seeking supremacy with an evil end.

  11. gravenimage says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 5:04 pm

    Washington Post claims declaring Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group will put academics who study it at risk of arrest
    ……………………….

    What a load of crap–were this the case, no one would be able to study crime, which is clearly false.

    Just more baseless hysteria intended to stop us from protecting ourselves.

  12. davej says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    The world has far more “Islamic scholars” than are needed. The subject only requires a few hours of study to reveal that it is a malevolent totalitarian death cult with a side serving of misogyny and perversion that deserves to be tossed on the ash heap of history. No need for pious hair splitting by overpaid “academics”.

  13. Peter says

    Jan 27, 2017 at 9:58 pm

    If the reporters covering the Muslim Brotherhood would be arrested, then one can assume they are also Muslim Brotherhood. That being the case, then that would explain all the media and PC coverage of the Brotherhood making it out to be “mostly secular” and a band of dedicated adherents of the ostensibly “religion of peace, justice and tolerance.”

  14. Joe says

    Jan 28, 2017 at 8:06 am

    Andrew March and Yale know they are advocating terror. Yale should be closed and March put in jail until the threat has been mitigated.

  15. Carl Mullan says

    Jan 28, 2017 at 10:52 am

    Designate them FTO along with AMP, MAS, MSA, and SJP the brotherhood’s proxies here in the U.S.

  16. More Ham Ed says

    Jan 28, 2017 at 7:20 pm

    The Washington Compost.

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