US Muslim Brotherhood Group Visits Erdoğan

A US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion is report­ing on a 24 August 2020 meet­ing between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the orga­ni­za­tion and Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdoğan tak­ing place at the Turk­ish pres­i­den­tial com­plex. Accord­ing to the report of the US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions (USCMO):

Sep­tem­ber 7, 2020 Wash­ing­ton, DC.A spe­cial del­e­ga­tion of the US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions (USCMO), the largest Mus­lim-Amer­i­can coali­tion of lead­ing nation­al and local com­mu­ni­ty insti­tu­tions, has returned from a spe­cial meet­ing with Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan at the Ankara pres­i­den­tial com­plex, thank­ing him for the Turk­ish people’s rush of pan­dem­ic aid to Amer­i­cans in their time of PPE short­age and stress­ing the need to nur­ture the spe­cial, his­toric rela­tion­ship between the two nations. “On our return from our recent sol­i­dar­i­ty vis­it to Beirut in the wake of the port blast, we met with Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan to pro­mote the impor­tant friend­ship between Amer­i­ca and Turkey,” said Ous­sama Jam­mal, USCMO sec­re­tary gen­er­al, who led the del­e­ga­tion. “This is a nat­ur­al bridge-build­ing role for Amer­i­can Mus­lims to offer our coun­try.” “We made a spe­cial point to thank him per­son­al­ly for the Turk­ish people’s dis­patch of masks, gowns, and gloves for Amer­i­cans in need dur­ing the ear­ly first peak of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis when per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment short­ages were ram­pant here. We also not­ed Turkey’s key role in help­ing mil­lions of dis­tressed through­out the region espe­cial­ly Syr­ia where Turkey hosts over 3.5 mil­lion refugees, Pales­tine, Rohingya, Soma­lia, Libya, and most recent­ly Lebanon.”

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Face­book posts dis­play gifts par­tic­i­pants received from Erdoğan, includ­ing match­ing per­son­al­ized autographs.

The arti­cle iden­ti­fies the fol­low­ing indi­vid­u­als as  rep­re­sent­ing the USCMO at the meeting:

• Ous­sama Jam­mal (USCMO Secretary-General)

• Osama Abuir­shaid (Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Palestine)

• Esam Omeish (Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety, Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions)

• Imam Haaz­iq Muham­mad II (The Mosque Cares; Min­istry of Imam W. Deen Mohammed)

• Muham­mad Ruhul Amin (Mus­lim Ummah of North America)

• Mohamed Mur­sal (Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of North Amer­i­ca; IANA)

• Mazen Mokhtar (Baitul­maal)

• Bas­sam Obeid (North Amer­i­can Imams Federation)

• Sheikh Hasan Jama (IANA)

• Mohamed Mur­sal (Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of North Amer­i­ca; IANA)

Accord­ing to a Face­book post from Abuir­shaid, par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed US-Turk­ish rela­tions and a need to strength­en them, and the arti­cle states that Erdoğan praised the Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and thanked them for “seek­ing to active­ly fos­ter con­tin­u­ing pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships between the two nations.”

The US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions was estab­lished in 2014 by eight orga­ni­za­tions, sev­en of which are part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood which is a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR. The inau­gur­al con­fer­ence for the USCMO was held two years lat­er and was attend­ed by a wide vari­ety of Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers as well as US gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Since its found­ing, the USCMO has grown to include 35 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions, almost half known to be part of the USMB and includ­ing almost every impor­tant com­po­nent of the Broth­er­hood in the US. The GMBDW report­ed in July that Pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Joe Biden addressed a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence orga­nized by the USCMO

A 2011 report authored by the GIOR Senior Edi­tor detailed Erdoğan’s ide­o­log­i­cal ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and con­clud­ed that since 2006, Turkey has become a new cen­ter for the GMB. The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch (GMBDW) had pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on the grow­ing rela­tion­ship between Turkey and the US Broth­er­hood including:

• In July 2020 it report­ed on a USCMO Con­fer­ence Call attend­ed by the Turk­ish Ambas­sador to the US where Ous­sama Jam­mal and oth­er USCMO/USMB lead­ers praised Erdoğan and played a pre-record­ed Eid-al-FItr mes­sage from the Turk­ish President.

• In Octo­ber 2016 it report­ed on a meet­ing between Erdoğan and a group of US Mus­lim lead­ers, many of whom are tied to US Mus­lim Brotherhood

• In April 2015 it report­ed that the USCMO had tak­en Turkey’s side on the 100^th anniver­sary of the geno­cide of Arme­ni­ans at the hands of the Turks dur­ing World War I.

• In June 2013 it report­ed that an offi­cial of the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North America’s met with then Prime Min­is­ter Erdoğan.

Ous­sama Jam­mal, along with anoth­er USMB leader Sir­aj Wah­haj, also praised Erdoğan in speech­es at a New York event in Sep­tem­ber 2019. Erdoğan deliv­ered a speech at the same event.