GAFFNEY: The company they keep

OPINION:

The truism that you know someone by the company they keep has rarely been more true than in respect to the Obama administration and its burgeoning ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Just last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the latest member of Team Obama to consort with sworn enemies of the United States when she sat down with the newly installed president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Despite official, media and academic efforts to portray Mr. Morsi — and, for that matter, the Muslim Brotherhood more generally — as the kind of people with whom the United States can safely deal in the evolving Middle East and here, the determination of these Islamists to impose their supremacist Islamic doctrine of Shariah worldwide could not be more palpable. Their hostility to America, Israel, Western civilization and other infidels goes back to the founding of the organization in 1928 and is rooted in its guiding program — Shariah — and it is absolute and unwavering. Those who say otherwise are deluding themselves or deliberately deceiving others.

Although it cannot be confirmed at this writing, Mrs. Clinton presumably was accompanied on her travels as usual — particularly in the Middle East — by her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. That would be all the more probable given that Ms. Abedin has myriad family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, her mother, Saleha Abedin, is a leader of the organization’s secretive women’s auxiliary, the Muslim Sisterhood, in which she serves along with Mr. Morsi’s wife, Naglaa Ali Mahmoud.

The presence of an individual with such associations in the most senior ranks of the State Department at a moment when the Obama administration is assiduously “engaging” with the Muslim Brotherhood has raised concerns on Capitol Hill. To their credit, five legislators, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, have asked for a formal inquiry into the role Ms. Abedin, and perhaps others, have played in the adoption of problematic policies favorable to the Islamists.

For her troubles, Mrs. Bachmann has recently been assailed by one of her colleagues, the self-styled “first Muslim congressman,” Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat. Mrs. Bachmann responded Friday with a detailed — and devastating — 16-page, 59-footnote letter to Mr. Ellison’s rash charge that there was no basis for concerns about Ms. Abedin.

The documentation provided also lays bare the established connections between several Muslim-American organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood. The upshot of Mr. Ellison’s foray is that he has inadvertently called attention to the bad company he keeps — namely, with various known Brotherhood front groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Meanwhile, as Mrs. Clinton headed off to Jerusalem, reportedly to assure Israeli leaders that Mr. Morsi means no harm to the Jewish state, a different message is conveyed in a document making the rounds. It is the transcript of an endorsement given at the kickoff rally of the Morsi campaign by one of his supporters, Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi. As the candidate looked on beaming, Mr. Higazi declared: “The dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Mohammed Morsi and his brothers, his supporters and his political party — that of the United States of the Arabs. The capital of the caliphate — the capital of the United States of the Arabs — will be Jerusalem, Allah willing.”

Mrs. Bachmann and her colleagues also asked for investigations into the role being played in shaping U.S. policy by the president of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid. As documented at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com, that senior Muslim Brotherhood operative has been an adviser to President Obama, feted at the White House and the State and Treasury departments, embraced by the Justice Department and used as the vehicle for serial apologies by the Pentagon. Counterterrorism specialist Patrick Poole has dubbed Imam Magid Team Obama’s “diversity czar.”

The fact that the Obama administration is keeping such company is made all the more appalling by the kind of company Imam Magid keeps. For example, as Mr. Poole observed at a recent ISNA “diversity forum” in Dearborn, Mich., Imam Magid presented CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid with a “diversity award.” It speaks volumes about Mr. Walid’s actual “sensitivity” to others that he is on record justifying the destruction of Jews. The Investigative Project on Terror’s Daniel Rogell reported last month that, in an anti-Semitic rant, Imam Walid asked rhetorically, “Did Muhammad order the killing of Jews?” He subsequently answered, “Muhammad didn’t order it. Sa’ad ibn Mu’aadh [one of his followers] ordered that punishment. It was a correct one.”

Not only can you gain insights into people by the company they keep, when it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamists, it is downright dangerous to do otherwise.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy (SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program “Secure Freedom Radio,” heard in Washington weeknights at 9 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.