During the 18^th annual MAS-ICNA Convention held at the McCormick Place in Chicago in December 2019, Nihad Awad and Hatem Bazian were panelists for the Islamic Movement clearinghouse Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), whose executive director is Dalia Mogahed. Bazian is co-founder (along with Hamza Yusuf and Zaid Shakir) and Professor of Islamic Law and Theology at Zaytuna College. In the late 1980s, Bazian, while a student, was an outspoken advocate for the Central American Solidarity Movement, an entity known for its open embrace of communist ideology.

In 1992, Bazian (then an executive board member for the United States Student Association) endorsed the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism national conference, which was held on the campus of University of California at Berkley. There, a specific agenda of activities was established for an Islamic Movement leader closely working for decades with the Left. The purpose is clear: to leverage willing leftist institutions and organizations to help advance the Islamic Movement civilization jihad with an opportunistic, symbiotic alignment.

The dialogue between Awad and Bazian during this MAS-ICNA ISPU session “Islamophobia Is Not What You Think” held on 29 December 2019 was indicative of  Muslim Brotherhood/Islamic Movement plans for targeting law enforcement by means of future agitation and street demonstrations. Concern should be warranted based upon the following remarks by two senior leaders within the Islamic Movement, which is engaged in hostile influence operations against the USG.

Hatem Bazian conveyed these points to convention attendees: 

• “Many of your local police departments have engaged and linked themselves to what is called the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Part of it is that police departments get what you call the goodies that the federal government give them the surplus equipment and so on. But many of this equipment that are put at the local level have surveillance capabilities, and those surveillance capabilities have third party access to them. So what you need is to intervene at your local government level, at the city council level, because local police department are answerable to your city council members. Which means you have to understand what is the local police doing, what type of surveillance equipment have been installed, and what third party access to that information at the local level is taking place.”
   
• “Make sure your local police is not sent abroad to be trained on counterterrorism. This is a fact that some of the primary, uh, avenues for the local police they send to Israel to be trained on counterterrorism tactics.”
   
• “That is a decision at the local level that you need to get in the face of your city council members, your mayor, in order to affect that this is not a place for people to go and be trained.”

Nihad Awad followed up with concluding remarks:

• “So our success is not only in our self-interests, but really a reflection of our faith standing up for justice. When you witness any bigotry against any community you have to show up, and you have to stand up, you need not to be invited. When you see an oppression, as the prophet (in Arabic) said, it’s not only about the oppressed or the oppressor, it is also about you. Where are you?”
   
• “So, when you stand up against any injustice against other communities, automatically they will come to you, because it takes the entire community to fights [sic] bigotry (unclear) Islamophobia.”  

In the wake of the violent protests directed by the Left across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the ICNA Council for Social Justice declared a Day of Outrage on 5 June 2020. Imams were instructed “to give khutba on police brutality and structural racism in America.” This entrance of the Islamic Movement, as Muslims joined at the street level with the Left in demonstrations, represents an escalation with mass line attacks by a strategic anti-American alliance targeting the pillars of a free society. Today, the Islamic Movement and Left are destabilizing and threatening the security of communities across the U.S. through their public demands calling for the defunding and abolition of law enforcement.

Matthew Edwards is a national security analyst with an emphasis on counter intelligence and threat assessment.