The greatest mistake the West can make when confronting radical Islamism is to assume that every threat will arrive carrying a gun or wearing a suicide vest. Terrorism is the most horrifying manifestation of Islamist extremism, but it is not the only method through which radical movements have sought political and societal transformation. A newly published review of foundational Muslim Brotherhood documents provides a disturbing reminder of a very different strategy: patient institution-building, political participation, social activism, coalition-building and the accumulation of influence from within Western societies themselves. Most striking is a 1991 memorandum written by a senior Brotherhood figure in the United States describing the movement’s work in America as a “grand jihad” whose objective included destroying Western civilization “from within.” Thirty-five years later, the West should take seriously what the movement’s own historical documents said about its ambitions.
Key Findings
• The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna around a comprehensive Islamist vision in which religion extended into society, economics and politics. The report traces al-Banna’s strategy as gradual: religious outreach, education, social activity, institution-building and political organization could precede the use of force.
• A 1991 memorandum by Brotherhood figure Mohamed Akram Adlouni described the strategic goal in North America as establishing an effective Islamic movement led by the Brotherhood and presenting Islam as a “civilizational alternative.”
• Most strikingly, that memorandum characterized Brotherhood work in America as a “grand jihad” intended to “destroy Western civilization from within.”
• The report connects the American Brotherhood milieu to the Palestine Committee, established to assist Hamas, and recounts subsequent US investigations into Hamas-support networks.
• A separate 1982 document known as “The Project” advocates building institutions, entering centers of influence and supporting jihad movements, although its authorship is not established by the report.
• Hamas explicitly identified itself in its original 1988 charter as a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
Wrong Threats
Western societies have become exceptionally good at recognizing one version of Islamist extremism. We know what a terrorist looks like after he begins shooting. We understand the threat of explosives, hijacked aircraft, rockets and suicide bombers. Intelligence services devote enormous resources to identifying people preparing acts of violence. The more difficult challenge is recognizing an ideological movement whose strategy may unfold over decades rather than minutes. That is the central issue raised by The Muslim Brotherhood – Long-Term Plans Against the West, a September 2026 review of foundational documents associated with the movement.
The report begins with Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. His conception of Islam was not confined to personal religious observance. It encompassed the individual, family, society, economics and politics, with the ultimate objective of constructing society and government according to Islamic principles and sharia. Crucially, the process was conceived as gradual.
Da’wa, education, charitable activity, institution-building and political organization could transform society from below. The report cites al-Banna going considerably further, envisioning the struggle eventually being pursued on Western soil until Islam “casts its shadow over the earth.”
That historical background matters because of what emerged decades later in the United States.
Brotherhood Memo
In 2004, American authorities arrested Ismail Selim Elbarasse, who had been associated with the Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and with senior Hamas figure Musa Abu Marzouk. A search of his Virginia home uncovered a large collection of documents and recordings relating to the history and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Among them was an extraordinary document.
The Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America had been written on May 22, 1991 by Mohamed Akram Adlouni, identified in the report as a member of the Brotherhood’s U.S. Shura Council and a senior figure within the Palestine Committee apparatus.
Akram referred explicitly to a long-term plan that he said had been approved and adopted by the movement’s council and conference in 1987.
The document then described the movement’s objective in America. It called for establishing a stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood, expanding the observant Muslim base, directing Muslim efforts and presenting Islam as a “civilizational alternative.”
But then came the passage that should still resonate in Washington 35 years later. Akram described Brotherhood activity in America as a form of “grand jihad” whose objective was to “destroy Western civilization from within.”
Those are not words attributed to the Brotherhood by its enemies. They appear in a Brotherhood document addressed to Brotherhood leadership.
“From Within”
The significance of the document lies partly in those final two words: “From within.”
The strategy being described was not primarily an invasion of the West from outside. Nor was it simply conventional terrorism. It envisaged entrenchment. The memorandum discussed Islamic centers, educational institutions, civil-society organizations, media, political activities and coalitions as elements of the movement’s development in North America.
This creates a fundamentally more difficult challenge for liberal democracies. The very things that make Western societies free—freedom of religion, association, speech and political organization—can potentially be exploited by movements that do not ultimately share the liberal assumptions upon which those freedoms depend.
Swedish Memo
The report examines a second document whose provenance requires greater caution.
In November 2001, Swiss authorities raided properties connected with Yusuf Nada, a longstanding Muslim Brotherhood figure who described himself as the movement’s international-relations coordinator. Among material seized at his home was an unsigned Arabic document dated December 1, 1982, subsequently known as “The Project.”
Because the document was found in Nada’s possession, it became widely associated with Brotherhood strategy. But unlike the 1991 memorandum, the report does not establish who actually wrote it. That distinction matters and should not be blurred. Nevertheless, its contents are striking.
The document proposes a worldwide strategy involving research and mapping, political and institutional activity, establishing Islamic institutions, entering centers of influence, tactical cooperation with other movements, information systems, support for jihad movements and placing the Palestinian issue at the center of the strategy. One passage calls for gradually working to control local centers of power through institutional action. Another advocates participation in parliaments, local councils, professional unions and other elected institutions in ways serving Islamic interests.
Alongside this sits an instruction to keep the duty of jihad alive.
Whether “The Project” can definitively be described as an official Brotherhood master plan is therefore open to question. What cannot be ignored is how closely some of its themes resemble the much better documented 1991 American memorandum.
Alas, Hamas
There is another reason these historical documents matter enormously today. Hamas did not emerge independently of the Muslim Brotherhood tradition. The report recounts how Hamas grew from the Palestinian Brotherhood environment surrounding Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Article 2 of Hamas’s original 1988 charter stated explicitly that “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.”
The American story is important as well. The report describes the establishment in 1988 of the Palestine Committee within the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States to assist Hamas. It identifies three principal bodies associated with its work: the Islamic Association for Palestine, the United Association for Studies and Research and the Occupied Land Fund, which subsequently became the Holy Land Foundation.
The FBI’s investigation of networks supporting Hamas eventually produced extraordinary evidence about how some of these organizations operated. At a secretly recorded 1993 meeting in Philadelphia, participants discussed opposition to the Oslo peace process and the need to conceal references to Hamas, reportedly using “Samah”—Hamas spelled backwards—as a code name.
The Holy Land Foundation was subsequently shut down by the U.S. government, and its prosecution became one of America’s most significant terrorism-financing cases.
Bulwark Israel
This is where the report’s argument becomes particularly important for understanding Western attitudes towards Israel. Western observers frequently compartmentalize Islamist hostility towards Israel. Israel is treated as a separate problem arising exclusively from borders, settlements or Palestinian grievances, while Islamist ideological movements in Europe and America are discussed as an entirely different phenomenon. The foundational material examined in this report suggests that the separation is not always so neat.
“The Project” places the Palestinian cause at the center of a broader Islamic strategy and describes it as central to a renewed Islamic revival. The 1991 memorandum emerged from an American Brotherhood milieu in which the Palestine Committee was working to assist Hamas. Israel therefore occupies an exceptional place in this worldview. It is not merely another foreign-policy issue.
The world’s only Jewish state represents a direct obstacle to an ideological vision in which political Islam ultimately triumphs. This helps explain why anti-Israel activism can become such an important mobilizing issue for Islamist movements far beyond the Middle East.
Sacrificial Israel
This leads to the most provocative conclusion of the report. It suggests that the struggle against Israel can provide a window into a wider confrontation with Western civilization. Islamist movements themselves place Israel within a much larger civilizational struggle. Hassan al-Banna did. Hamas’s foundational ideology did. And the 1991 memorandum discussing the Brotherhood’s objectives in North America did.
This is why the West should pay considerably greater attention when radical movements describe Israel not simply as a country whose policies they oppose, but as an entity whose very existence must end. Israel may be geographically closest to the ideological confrontation, but it is not its final destination.
Liberal Democracies
The uncomfortable question raised by these documents is how an open society should respond to a movement prepared to use openness against it. The answer cannot be to abandon Western freedoms. That would hand extremists precisely the victory they seek.
Governments must investigate foreign financing. They must scrutinize organizational connections. They must prosecute support for terrorist organizations. They must demand transparency from groups seeking access to public institutions. Most importantly, policymakers can actually read what ideological movements have written about themselves.
Believe Terrorists
Thirty-five years have passed since Mohamed Akram wrote his memorandum about the Brotherhood’s strategic objective in North America. More than four decades have passed since “The Project” was written. Nearly a century has passed since Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Western governments have changed repeatedly during that time. Political attention spans have become shorter. News cycles have accelerated from days to minutes.
Ideological movements can think differently. They can think in generations. That may ultimately be the most important lesson contained in these documents.
The West naturally searches for immediate threats: the terrorist preparing a bomb, the gunman planning an attack, the hostile state moving missiles. Those threats are real and must be stopped. But there is another kind of struggle that takes place slowly—through ideas, institutions, organizations, political influence and the gradual normalization of objectives that might once have seemed unthinkable. The Muslim Brotherhood’s own historical documents deserve attention precisely because they force us to consider that longer horizon.
The 1991 memorandum did not describe America merely as somewhere Muslims should be free to practice their faith and participate in society. It described a movement seeking to establish itself, accumulate influence and pursue what its author called a “civilizational-jihadist” mission. And it described the ultimate objective in unmistakable terms: destroying Western civilization “from within.” The West does not need paranoia in response. It needs something far more valuable. It needs to pay attention.
