The nation of Qatar
has historically been a funder of terrorism
The United States and Qatar
will do more to keep the region and our homeland safe
And it our hope that Qatar will change its policies
to stop terrorism,
terror financing,
harboring of terrorists.
Enough is enough.
Our interests with Qatar converge
somewhat more often than they actually diverge.
Qatar must cut ties with terrorists
Qatar is both an ally and an
adversary of the United States
This is the role that
Qatar has been playing for the last
20 years at least.
They continue to support a lot of bad actors.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the
mothership of radical Islamism.
The Muslim Brotherhood
was founded in 1928 in Egypt.
They said that they want to restore the
supremacy of Islam.
But they always had a violent streak.
In recent years, that violent streak
has come back.
The Cooperation Council of the Arab
States of the Gulf -- also known as
the Gulf Cooperation Council
or GCC -- was established in 1981 as a
regional intergovernmental political
and economic union.
From the beginning, Qatar has been an
outlier.
What was the reason for the
GCC states these six small oil rich
countries to come together...
...Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and
Oman...
What brought them together
a quarter of a century ago?
Fear of the larger neighbors, Iran and Iraq.
That was the fear. That was
the basis for these
countries to get together.
At some point it
seems that Qatar wanted to be the
smart one in the group,
among the GCC states, and it decided
that the future of
this region is something called
Islamic or the islamist brothers
or the Muslim Brothers as they call it.
The Gulf Cooperation Council has
cited Doha’s ongoing support for
the Muslim Brotherhood and other
extreme Islamist groups as a reason
for the sanctions they have placed on Qatar.
Almost every Sunni
Islamist terrorist group has come
out of the Muslim Brotherhood.
At one point in their foreign
policy the Qatari elite basically
decided to gamble
and support the Muslim Brothers.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in
the late 1920s.
It was a violent organization
designed to overthrow Western
influence in Egypt but it quickly
spread to other countries around
the Middle East.
Fast forward to today,
the Muslim
Brotherhood ideology is the
cornerstone of most of the violent
Islamist ideologies that we see in
our so-called war on terrorism.
It's the cornerstone of the al Qaeda ideology.
In fact, the cofounder
of the of al-Qaeda with
Osama bin Laden, was a Muslim Brother.
We see Muslim Brotherhood ideology informing ISIS.
We certainly see it as a cornerstone
of Hamas.
Some of the harshest extremist groups in
Syria, Al Qaeda's top
leadership, also sought inspiration
from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Many Muslim Brotherhood members are
involved in assassinations,
of terrorist plots, and of violent
extremist actions and exhortations.
In many cases,
Muslim Brotherhood preachers are not engaging in
terrorist acts themselves
but their words are serving as inspiration
and exhortation to others to do that.
That is why the Muslim
Brotherhood has been described
as a terrorist group or
a terrorist enabler by countries including
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Muslim Brotherhood are often
found responsible for financing
specific terror plots or
facilitating people who end up
joining extremist groups.
There are other
Muslim Brotherhood related
funders who live in Qatar, operate
out of Qatar, basically while
raising money ostensibly for
charitable causes, also
end up being a conduit for funding for extremist groups
In Syria, for example, Al Nusra
which, is considered an action
affiliated to al Qaeda...is seen as
a Muslim Brotherhood front and fund
raising for that has been very open in Qatar.
We are talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars in funding for
various offshoots, charities, and
groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood
that also play a role
as either enablers, facilitators,
or motivators of terrorist groups.
Turkey and Qatar have become
sort of allies in keeping the Muslim Brotherhood
not only alive but facilitating it throughout
the Muslim world, especially the Middle East.
The Muslim Brotherhood will benefit
from the Qatari largess and will continue
to cause trouble across the Middle
East,
and as long as there is trouble in the
greater Middle East, America will not be
completely safe.
