Huma Abedin's Brotherhood Ties Are Not Just a Family Affair

BY ANDREW C. MCCARTHY JUL 27, 2012 8:35 AM ET

Senator John McCain�s claim that concerns about Huma Abedin are a smear based on �a
few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations� proves more embarrassing by the
day. In fact, to the extent it addressed Ms. Abedin, the letter sent to the State
Department�s inspector general by five House conservatives actually understated the
case.

The letter averred that Abedin �has three family members � her late father, her
mother and her brother � connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or
organizations.� It turns out, however, that Abedin herself is directly connected to
Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major Muslim Brotherhood figure involved in the financing
of al-Qaeda. Abedin worked for a number of years at the Institute for Muslim
Minority Affairs as assistant editor of its journal. The IMMA was founded by
Naseef, who remained active in it for decades, overlapping for several years with
Abedin. Naseef was also secretary general of the Muslim World League in Saudi
Arabia, perhaps the most significant Muslim Brotherhood organization in the world.
In that connection, he founded the Rabita Trust, which is formally designated as a
foreign terrorist organization under American law due to its support of al-Qaeda.

You ought to be able to stop right there.

A person is not required to have done anything wrong to be denied a high-ranking

government position, or more immediately, the security clearance allowing access to
classified information that is necessary to function in such a job. There simply
need be associations, allegiances, or interests that establish a potential conflict
of interest.

Government jobs and access to the nation�s secrets are privileges, not rights. That
is why the potential conflict needn�t stem from one�s own associations with hostile
foreign countries, organizations, or persons. Vicarious associations, such as one�s
parents� connections to troublesome persons and organizations, are sufficient to
create a potential conflict.

In this instance, however, before you even start probing the extensive, disturbing
Brotherhood ties of her family members, Huma Abedin should have been ineligible for
any significant government position based on her own personal and longstanding
connection to Naseef�s organization.

Specifically, Ms. Abedeen was affiliated with the Institute of Muslim Minority
Affairs, where she was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
The journal was the IMMA�s raison d�etre. Abedin held the position of assistant
editor from 1996 through 2008 � from when she began working as an intern in the
Clinton White House until shortly before she took her current position as Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton�s deputy chief of staff.
The IMMA was founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Omar Naseef, who was then the
vice president of the prestigious King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. The
IMMA�s chief product was to be its journal. For the important position of managing
editor, Naseef recruited his fellow academic Zyed Abedin, who had been a visiting
professor at the university in the early 1970s.

To join the IMMA, Dr. Abedin moved his family, including infant daughter Huma (born
in 1976), to Saudi Arabia from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Zyed�s wife, Saleha Mahmood
Abedin (Huma�s mother), is also an academic and worked for the journal from its
inception. She would eventually take it over after her husband died in 1993, and
she remains its editor to this day. Huma Abedin�s brother Hassan, another academic,
is an associate editor at the journal.
The journal began publishing in 1979. For its initial edition, Abdullah Omar Naseef
� identified in the masthead as �Chairman, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs� �
penned a brief introduction relating the IMMA�s vision for the journal. Zyed Abedin
appeared as managing editor in the journal�s second edition in 1979, proclaiming in
a short introduction his �deep appreciation to H.E. Dr. Abdullah O. Naseef,
President, King Abdulaziz University, for his continued guidance, support, and
encouragement.� (I am indebted to the Center for Security Policy, which obtained
some copies of the journal, going back many years.)

Not long after the journal started, Naseef became the secretary general of the
Muslim World League, the Saudi-financed global propagation enterprise by which the
Muslim Brotherhood�s virulently anti-Western brand of Islamist ideology is seeded
throughout the world, very much including in the United States.

We are not talking here about some random imam in the dizzying alphabet soup of
Islamist entities. In the pantheon of Islamic supremacism, there are few positions
more critical than secretary general of the Muslim World League. In fact, one of
the MWL�s founders was Sa�id Ramadan, the right-hand and son-in-law of Hassan al-
Banna, the Brotherhood�s legendary founder.

The MWL manages the �civilization jihad� � the Brotherhood�s commitment to destroy
the West from within, and to �conquer� it by sharia proselytism (or dawa), as
Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Brotherhood�s top sharia jurist, puts it.
Nevertheless, the MWL has a long history of deep involvement in violent jihad as
well.

It was under MWL auspices in 1988 that Naseef created a �charity� called the Rabita
Trust. The scare-quotes around �charity� are intentional. To direct the Rabita
Trust, Naseef selected Wael Hamza Jalaidan. A few years earlier, Jalaidan had
joined with Osama bin Laden to form al-Qaeda.

This would surprise you only if you waste your time listening to John McCain,
Version 2012 � as opposed to John McCain, Version 2011, who professed himself
�unalterably opposed� to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Under the Brotherhood�s interpretation of sharia, which is explained in such works

as Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, all Muslims
are supposed to donate a portion of their income. This obligation, known as zakat,
is usually referred to as �charity� by Islamists and their Western pom-pom waivers.
But it is not charity; it is fortification of the ummah � the notional global
community of Muslims.

As Reliance instructs, zakat can only be given to Muslims, and one-eighth of it is

supposed to be donated to �those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in
Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army
roster.� Remember that the next time you hear the ubiquitous claim that Muslim
charities are being misused as �fronts� for terrorism. This is not a �misuse� and
they are not �fronts.� Under sharia, the streaming of donations to violent
jihadists is quite intentional.

A month after the 9/11 attacks, Naseef�s Rabitah Trust was formally designated as a
foreign terrorist organization by the United States government. Ultimately,
branches of the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief
Organization � other �charities� with roots in the MWL � were also designated as
foreign terrorist organizations under federal law. This, too, should have not been
a surprise. In 2003, in connection with a terrorism prosecution in Chicago, the
Justice Department proffered that Osama bin Laden had told his aide Jamal al-Fadl
that the Muslim World League was one of al-Qaeda�s three top funding sources. (Fadl
later renounced al-Qaeda and cooperated with federal prosecutors.)
Throughout the time that he ran the MWL and the Rabita Trust, Naseef kept his hand
in at the IMMA. In fact, he continued to be listed on the masthead as a member of
the �advisory editorial board� at the IMMA�s journal until 2003. We might hazard a
guess why his name disappeared after that: in 2004, he was named as a defendant in
the civil case brought by victims of the 9/11 atrocities. (In 2010, a federal court
dropped him from the suit � not because he was found uninvolved, but because a
judge reasoned the American court lacked personal jurisdiction over him.)
Huma Abedin was affiliated with the IMMA�s journal for a dozen years, from 1996
through 2008. She overlapped with its founder, Naseef, for at least seven years �
it could be more, but I am assuming for argument�s sake that Naseef had no further
involvement in his institute once his name was removed from the masthead.

The case against Ms. Abedin�s suitability for a high-level position with access to
the nation�s secrets gets much worse if you add in her family ties.

To summarize what I�ve already outlined here at Ordered Liberty: her parents were
recruited by Naseef to head up the IMMA; her mother is an active member of Muslim
Brotherhood organizations � including the Muslim Sisterhood and two entities that
are part of Sheikh Qaradawi�s Union of Good, another designated terrorist
organization; there is persuasive evidence that her father was a member of the
Brotherhood � e.g., the intimate tie to Naseef and his widow�s membership in the
Muslim Sisterhood (which is substantially comprised of wives and female relatives
of prominent Muslim Brothers); her mother is a tireless advocate of sharia law as
preached by Qaradawi and the Brotherhood; and her brother, who is also affiliated
with the IMMA�s journal, was a fellow at an Islamist institute (the Oxford Center
for Islamic Studies) on whose board sat both Naseef and Qaradawi.

Nevertheless, the family ties to the Brotherhood only further elucidate what is
already patent: Huma Abedin�s connection to Abdullah Omar Naseef, by itself, would
have been more than enough justification to deny her a security clearance. That
would have made it inconceivable that she could serve as deputy chief of staff to
the secretary of state.

Ms. Abedin has very disturbing connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Though she is
not a policymaker, she is an important adviser, and during her three-year tenure,
federal government policy has radically shifted in the Brotherhood�s favor, to the
point that the Obama administration is not only embracing the previously shunned
Brotherhood but issuing visas to members of formally designated terrorist
organizations.

The question is not whether the five House conservatives were off-base in asking
for an investigation into ties between administration officials and Islamist
organizations. The question is why the other 430 members of the House haven�t
joined them � and why John McCain, John Boehner, and other Republican establishment
luminaries are championing the Muslim Brotherhood�s side of the dispute.