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by Abha Shankar
IPT News
June 17, 2019
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 Most religious
groups exist to provide fellowship for their members and help them with
spiritual needs.
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) stands apart,
both for its close ties to South Asian Islamist radicals, and for its overt
and repeatedly stated ambitions to convert the world to Islam, a new
report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) finds.
ICNA has been described as "openly affiliated" with the
Sunni revivalist movement Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). In addition to advancing a rigid interpretation of Islam, the Islamist
movement has provided an ideological platform and recruiting base for South
Asian terrorist groups.
In many ways, ICNA's ideology echoes the JI, which was created in
1941 by Islamist ideologue Maulana Syed Abdul Ala Maududi in Lahore,
Pakistan, which was then part of British India. Muslims, Maududi preached,
"wherever you are, in whichever country you live, you must strive
to change the wrong basis of government, and seize all powers to the rule
and make laws from those who do not fear God. You must also provide
leadership to God's servants and conduct the affairs of their government in
accordance with God's law, remaining fully conscious of living in God's
presence and being accountable to Him in the Hereafter. The name of this
striving is Jihad."
ICNA, in turn, was set up to establish "Iqamat Deen," the Islamic system
of life, in North America with the ultimate goal of founding a global
Islamic state or Caliphate.
"Wherever [the] Islamic movement succeeds to establish true Islamic
societies, they will form coalitions and alliances. This will lead to the
unity of the Ummah and step towards the reestablishment of Khilafah
[Caliphate]," writes former ICNA President Mohammad Yunus in the
August 2000 issue of the organization's flagship publication, The
Message International.
A 2010 Member's Hand Book published by ICNA's Tarbiyah (Education &
Training) Department, reported earlier by the IPT, recognizes that achieving an Islamic super state is a gradual process and
involves several stages.
Maududi attended ICNA's inaugural public event held in 1974 at
Columbia University.
"Jamaat-e-Islami and affiliated theocratic extremist groups pose an
immediate and ongoing threat to stability and secular democracy in South
Asia, leaving religious minorities at grave risk of continuing
violence," says a resolution introduced in February by U.S. Rep. Jim
Banks, R-Ind., in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
It specifically names ICNA and its charitable organizations, ICNA Relief and Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), as JI's
"domestic affiliates" and calls on the United States Agency for
International Development, the Department of State, the Department of
Homeland Security and related agencies "to halt all partnerships and
funding arrangements" with them.
Helping Hand reportedly has ties to U.S.-designated Kashmiri
jihadist groups, JI Pakistan and its affiliate chapter in the Indian state
of Jammu & Kashmir.
The IPT report details ICNA's entrenched ties with the Muslim
Brotherhood infrastructure in the U.S., which continue today.
Its national
conventions are organized and co-sponsored with the Muslim American Society (MAS), which was created in 1993 as the Brotherhood's arm in the U.S.
They feature radical speakers who advocate jihad, advocate
on behalf of Kashmiri separatists, and call for the elimination of Israel.
ICNA is a member of the US Council of Muslim Organizations
(USCMO) that was launched in 2014 by eight national Islamist
organizations to enforce an Islamist monopoly on Muslim political debate.
ICNA's leadership sees dawah [Islamic proselytization] as the
organization's key purpose to establish Islam in the United States. ICNA's
proselytization arms, Why Islam and GainPeace, promote dawah ostensibly "to
provide accurate information about Islam," and in so doing,
"dispel popular stereotypes and persistent misconceptions about Islam
and Muslims." But the true mission of these groups is clearly laid out in the
works of the head of ICNA's Dawah and Publication's wing, Shamim
Siddiqi, which is win converts in order "to make Allah's Deen dominant
on this earth."
ICNA also promotes proselytizing to non-Muslims in a deceptive way. A
2010 Member's Hand Book published by ICNA's Tarbiyah (Islamic education and
training) Department states that "Why Islam is a subdivision of the
Dawah [proselytizing] Department" that "works to promote Islam
among non-Muslims." But it instructs ICNA members to give non-Muslims a different
mission of Why Islam. They are not to be told that they are being invited
to join the faith. Rather, Why Islam "was created after the
unimaginable event of 9/11 ... to educate the American public with accurate
information of Islam and to clarify any misconceptions our community may
have about Islam and Muslims."
Over the years, ICNA's bimonthly publication, The Message
International, has published numerous articles and editorials,
including by ICNA members, that exhort jihad, defend terrorists and other radicals, attack U.S. and Western foreign policy, advocate on behalf of Islamists and Islamist movements, and engage in inflammatory rhetoric against Jews and Zionism.
The magazine has featured interviews with senior JI leaders in which
they support JI's goal to establish a global caliphate and praise ICNA's role in the "advancement of Islamic
ideology." Its 1997 issue published an exclusive interview with the now-U.S.-designated terrorist Syed Salahuddin, lauding
the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) commander as the
"undisputed leader of the mujahideen struggling to liberate the
territory of Kashmir from brutal Indian occupation." Another article
in the same issue salutes Jibril Abu-Adam, an American citizen and
convert to Islam, who was killed while fighting alongside Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in Kashmir. Although there
has been a toning down in the magazine's rhetoric in recent years, it
continues to peddle anti-American propaganda and feed into the
Muslim victimhood narrative.
ICNA's leadership has glorified jihad and martyrdom and advocated JI's
Islamist ideology as a panacea to problems afflicting the global Muslim
community. The fact that a former senior ICNA leader was a top commander of Al-Badr, JI Bangladesh's militant
offshoot, only reaffirms the close ties ICNA shares with the Islamist
movement.
In 2016, ICNA's former vice president and leader of its New York
chapter, Ashrafuzzman Khan, was tried in absentia by a Bangladeshi war
crimes tribunal and sentenced to death. Khan allegedly participated in the abduction and murder of
18 Bangladeshi intellectuals during the country's 1971 liberation war
against Pakistan.
Despite ICNA's open propagation of JI's Islamist ideology in North
America and ties to South Asian jihadists and radical extremists, U.S.
government officials continue to engage the JI outpost and its affiliates that also receive millions of taxpayer dollars from federal
agencies. ICNA reportedly received a $1.3 million grant from the
Department of Homeland Security in 2016 and more than $10 million from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency for disaster relief work in 2016 and 2018.
ICNA's propagation of an Islamist ideology and grand ambition to
establish a global caliphate make it something far different from a
mainstream religious group. While it doesn't advertise its agenda, its
affinity for Maududi and the JI, its embrace of radicals and its documented
plan to try changing society ought to give people pause before engaging in outreach and providing millions of tax
payer dollars in funding to ICNA and its affiliate groups. The recent Banks resolution calling for ending all partnership and
funding to ICNA and its charitable fronts is a step in the right direction.
Read the full IPT report on ICNA here.
Related Topics: The
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) | Abha
Shankar, Jamaat-e-Islami,
Maulana
Syed Abdul Ala Maududi, Islamism,
Muslim
Brotherhood, Iqamat
Deen, Jim
Banks, ICNA
Relief, Helping
Hand for Relief and Development, dawah,
Shamim
Siddiqi, Mohammad
Yunus, Islamist
conventions
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