Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster

[David Guyatt]

Part 2

Exile in Saudi Arabia

So when Nasser threatened to nationalise the Suez Canal, so important as a conduit for oil cargo to Europe and elsewhere, the Rothschilds employed their assassins from the Muslim Brotherhood against him. The Rothschilds had maintained an interest in the canal, ever since Baron Lionel de Rothschild financed his friend's Bejamin Disraeli's purchase of the canal for the British government in 1875.

When Brotherhood members fired shots at Nasser in 1954, the group was forcibly suppressed by the government, with thousands of members being imprisoned. Six of its leaders were tried and executed for treason and many others were imprisoned. Interrogations revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood functioned virtually as a German Intelligence unit. As well, as divulged by Copeland:

Nor was that all. Sound beatings of the Moslem Brotherhood organizers who had been arrested revealed that the organization had been thoroughly penetrated, at the top, by the British, American, French and Soviet intelligence services, any one of which could either make active use of it or blow it up, whichever best suited its purposes. Important lesson: fanaticism is no insurance against corruption; indeed, the two are highly compatible.117

The CIA also became concerned over Nasser's leanings towards the Soviet Union. Great Britain and the United States had originally agreed to help finance the first stage of Nasser's Aswan High Dam project. Although, in 1956, the U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles, cancelled the U.S. offer, and the next day Britain followed suit. Five days later, Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, promising that the tolls Egypt collected would in five years pay for the dam.

In response to Nasser's nationalisation of the Canal, the United Kingdom and France, with the help of Israel, invaded the Sinai and much of Port Said, sending the Egyptian military into retreat. However, due to pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, the British and the French had to withdraw. Though Israel did achieve the cessation of Egyptian raids, Nasser was hailed as having achieved a victory for the Arab world.

Fleeing members of the Muslim Brotherhood were then shuttled to the CIA's ally, Saudi Arabia. When John Loftus, a Justice Department official in the eighties, was permitted to peruse classified government documents, he discovered that the British Secret Service convinced American intelligence that the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood would be indispensable as "freedom fighters" in preparation for the next major war, which was anticipated against the Soviet Union. Kim Philby, the Soviet agent who infiltrated the British Secret Service, and the son of "Abdullah" Philby, helped the US acquire these Arab Nazis, then being expelled from Egypt, who were afterwards sent to Saudi Arabia. There, according to Loftus, "they were given jobs as religion education instructors."118

Thus, beginning in the 1960s, the Salafi became more formally allied to the Wahhabis, who became the principal patrons of the Brotherhood, which set up branches in most Arab states. With the CIA's tacit approval, the Saudis provided funds for Brotherhood members who joined the anti-Nasser insurgency in Yemen in 1962.

"Like any other truly effective covert action, this one was strictly off the books," wrote Robert Baer, a nineteen-year veteran of the CIA, in Sleeping with the Devil. "There was no CIA funding, no memorandum of notification to Congress. Not a penny came out of the Treasury to fund it. In other words, no record." Describing the Brotherhood as a "silent ally" that provided a "cheap no-American casualties way" to do "our dirty work in Yemen, Afghanistan, and plenty of other places," he explained, "All the White House had to do was give a wink and a nod to countries harboring the Muslim Brothers." 119

In 1962, with CIA encouragement, the Saudis established an organisation called the Muslim World League. Underwritten initially by several donors, including Aramco, then a CIA collaborator, the League established a powerful international presence, with representatives in 120 countries. It was headed by then chief Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed ibn Ibrahim al-Sheikh, a lineal descendant of Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, and the presidency remains vested in the Saudi Mufti to this day.
Included among its eight members were important representatives of the Salafi Muslim Brotherhood: Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Hasan al Banna (and whose own son Tariq Ramdan is now being groomed as a new reformist scholar for Muslims in the West), Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, leader of the Brotherhood offshoot Jamati Islami of Pakistan, and Maulana Abul Hasan Nadvi of India

Footnotes:

117 The Game of Nations, p. 184.
118 Loftus, John, "The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda". Jewish Community News, October 4, 2004.
119 Lee, Martin A. "Not a prayer: then as now, American schemes to change Islam have been dangerous folly". Harper's Magazine, June 2004.