Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State... same recruitment strategies

By Amr Farouk, writer and researcher on terrorist groups

The political currents in Islam depend on a strategy of polarization and recruitment to include new members within their ranks. They rely on such a strategy to guarantee the vitality of continuity and survival as they spread their followers, practitioners to spread their ideas and trends inside institutions and entities in various Arab societies.

The Muslim Brotherhood organization (MB) came at the forefront of these currents. Many movements of violence, extremism and terrorism have emerged from the Brotherhood. The organization built a structure from which it branched into several sections. One of the most important of these branches is the students' section, which is the real nucleus that gives the organization a survival and temporal and geographical expansion strategy.

The MB`s Student section consisted of 7 main committees charged with polarizing and recruiting the students from the age of 8 to 20 years. Each of the seven committees has branches spread within the various administrative and structural sectors of the organization.

The Student section Committees include the following:

• The Cubs Committee: It is concerned with attracting preparatory and primary school students. 
• The Secondary Committee: It is concerned with recruiting secondary school students.
• The Youth Committee: It is concerned with attracting youth within 16 years of age into residential areas (operating in the geographical area).
• The Flowers and Girls Committee: It is concerned with recruiting female students, supervised by the Muslim Brotherhood`s Sisters section.
• The Schools Committee: It is concerned with following up the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity in private and government schools.
• The Universities Committee: It is concerned with following up the activities of Muslim Brotherhood students inside the High Education and Al-Azhar universities. It represents a separate organizational structure, which has a special responsibility and is monitored directly from the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Office.
• The Al-Azhar Education Committee: It is concerned with following up the Muslim Brotherhood's activity within the Al-Azhar institutes and schools.
• The Muslim Brotherhood adopts a strategy of "white minds", in the process of attracting and recruiting the students and adolescents sector, through a policy of "emulation and indoctrination." 

The organization considers that this broad segment of society is easy to influence, adapt intellectually and behaviorally, and make it consistent with the Muslim Brotherhood`s literature and project. This is a segment that has no political, intellectual or ideological affiliations, and is unable to argue or intellectually rebel.

The organization has set a set of programs to influence the awareness of the student sectors, and gradually recruit them. These programs include the Islamic education project, the elite project, the distinguished, and the inpidual advocacy project.

Each project is concerned with a specific age, and is implemented in a specific period of time. It depends on the extent of the person’s connection to the MB’s project intellectually and behaviorally, through the direct process of indoctrination and simulation.

Each project has its own intellectual and cultural methodology, through which the awareness of the student sectors is formed according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s project and its directions, such as the “Rashad” series, “Al Moein” series, for the Cubs sector.

There is also the series “Principles of Islam” for the secondary school student section and the “Fi Rehab Al Islam” series for the youth sector.

There are some booklets that are taught at advanced levels, such as the book “What does my affiliation with Islam mean,” some of Hasan al-Banna’s messages addressed to young people, al-Mahj’s book “The Kinetic Biography of the Prophet” by Munir al-Ghadhban.

There is also the book “Fiqh al-Sunnah” by Sayed Sabeq, and the book “Fi Zelal AL Qur’an” by Sayed Qutb, and the series "In Riyadh Al-Jannah", for the flowers and girls section.

The Muslim Brotherhood set up a set of paths to implement projects to attract and recruit various student sectors, such as mosques, charitable projects, educational centers, whether private or attached to mosques, and scouting activity in sports clubs, universities, government and private schools, by controlling school broadcasts, student unions, and mosques attached to it, and universities by establishing some teams that move and spread within the student sectors on campus.

The organization depended on the idea of "Jihadist camps" and closed "brigades" in the process of rehabilitation of its members intellectually and organizationally, according to the extent of their response and absolute loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood’s project intellectually and behaviorally.

Salafi jihadism 

Most of the Salafi jihadism currents that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood and Qutbism thought depend on a very important document, within the framework of the process of polarizing and recruiting new members. The lines of this document were written by Abu Ubaydah Abdullah al Adam, one of the legitimate references for armed organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

The takfiri authority identified a number of steps and conditions to attract new elements within the organization in its document with the aim of deceiving them and influencing their ideas and opinions. Hence, it is easy to employ and use them in various activities of the takfiri organizations, and to implement them through secret or sleeper cells.

Their first step and the preliminary stage to attract the elements and their falling into the nets and plans of these armed takfiri entities was the observation and screening stage:

This step is concerned with the careful selection of the human model to be recruited and polarized, and matching his specifications and personal behaviors with the conditions predetermined by the Muslim Brotherhood. In this step, they test their members` ability to obey, docility and obedience to leaders, their secrecy, the ability to retain information and the desire for material need.

The second recruitment and polarization step of the Salafi jihadism organizations is the investigation and information gathering:

It is a stage concerned with gathering accurate information and details about new elements. This stage includes their intellectual and political convictions, their perception of the idea of establishing the so-called caliphate, their understanding of the issue of the Muslim community, the application of Sharia, their vision of jihad and democracy, and their belief in the implementation of Hodood and organizational and collective work.

This stage is also concerned with knowing whether these elements have previously belonged to any movement or organizational entity before? knowing whether they had dealt with security services before? or have relatives within the security services? and investigating members of their families in detail? 

The takfiri document unified the necessity for the target elements to be outside the circle of belonging to the communist, Nasserite, or national movement. The document prefers that the choice be made from within the circles surrounding the mosques, or those involved in the Islamic milieu, such as the Salafist movement, because it is easy to influence them and attract them to the ranks of the cell or group. 

In its document, the takfirist reference explained that the third stage in the process of recruitment and recruitment is the stage of establishing relations: 

The document indicated that after applying the conditions and ensuring the integrity of the information on the new elements, then the stage of establishing and documenting relations between the new elements and the members of the organization who are concerned with the polarization and recruitment comes so that it is ready to receive what is dictated to it without discussion or debate in preparation for joining them to the ranks of the cell they want to do within the scope and borders of the state.

The document also stipulated that marriage to one of the organization's women is an important factor in documenting the bond between the entity and the new member. After that,  it becomes easy to draw and link him to the organizational work, and to work to change its awareness and thought and unify views, according to the organization’s vision, goals, and means to reach its goal in armed Jihad. 

The fourth stage is titled "The Recruitment Process":

This step is concerned with placing new elements within the scope of utilizing their behavioral, physical and psychological potential. According to the document, they are housed in military work, field work, jihadist and organizational media, message and weapon transmission cells, information-gathering cells and other various departments and cells within the organizational entity.

According to the takfiri document, the elements of the organization are pided according to the criteria of secrecy and openness and the role assigned to them in advance. 

The document stated that the inpiduals and elements of the organization cannot be fully exposed under the name of the declared work, but the work is pided into a confidential and a public domain.

The document clarified that there is an apparent element who is working in public. This person is showing his affiliation with the organization and is known to the security services. He is moving according to specific goals consistent with the vision and goals of the organization. This person specifically must control the amount of information available to him in anticipation to monitor his movements and communications. 

There is another hidden or secret element that hides his appearance, affiliation, and behavior so that no one knows him. This person shall be responsible for certain tasks, and he is used to penetrate the security services and penetrate into the official institutions of the state with the aim of collecting information and using it in the operations that the organization wishes to implement. 

Those persons most likely are secret and sleeper cells that operate at certain times to achieve or carry out specific operations of the terrorist organization. They often do not carry valid official data or documents in order to mislead.

The takfiri document stressed the necessity of completely transforming the armed jihadist action into covert action due to the targeting and restriction operations launched by the security services against the armed organizations.

The fifth stage was laid down by the document under the title "Preparation and Preparation":

According to the takfiri document, this is the most important stage for the formation of the armed organizational personality. This stage begins with what it termed “political legal education,” which means focusing on the concepts of loyalty and innocence, the atonement of ruling regimes, the necessity of jihad and armed organizational work, clearly defining enemies and how to confront them, and how to fight them.

This stage also includes training in information and intelligence security courses according to the concepts of organization, physical and military rehabilitation, methods of using weapons, and the dismantling and assembly of explosives and dealing with them.

This article was prepared by Mahmoud Basiony in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of SEE or its members.