ABU DHABI // An Emirati man who was lured into the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager was not even aware that he was a member until years later when he was summoned to meet senior members in Abu Dhabi to pledge his allegiance on the eve of his departure to study at a university in the US.
Jamal Al Hossani, who spent two decades under the Brotherhood’s control before extricating himself from the banned organisation, spoke openly of his experiences.
“It was at that meeting that you know you are pledging allegiance, where they say, ‘you have reached a stage where you are one of us’,” Mr Al Hossani said, adding that he accepted only because he was put on the spot by his friends.
“It is a kind of commitment for a person to adhere to the organsation’s orders in the future. So they may tell you to leave your job, for example.”
In the interview, broadcast by Abu Dhabi Al Emarat TV, which is owned by The National’s publisher, Abu Dhabi Media, Mr Al Hossani told Issa Al Mail of covert missions to recruit new members and training in obeying seniors without question, in the US and UAE.
He revealed that the Brotherhood, which was recently labelled a terrorist organisation by Saudi Arabia and has caused tensions between Qatar and its Arabian Gulf neighbours, is deeply secretive and that its UAE agents sought to recruit young people with a strong sense of ethics and who were religiously observant.
“The Emirati youth are mobilised through social and cultural activities, appealing excursions and religious debates that teach the works of Muslim Brotherhood leaders like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan Al Banna, under the pretence of reforming individuals and communities and spreading the word of God,” Mr Al Hossani said.
“[As a young man] you feel like you are part of a group that gives you a high status and that speaks to you very politely.
but, in five to 10 years, you are saturated.
“You become part of this organisation and it’s then difficult to get out – it’s like a kind of brain-washing, and you start to accept things that you did not accept 10 years earlier.”
Mr Al Hossani, who studied engineering in the UAE and is now about 50, said that he did not even know his exact rank in the group’s hierarchy until years later.
He said he was a member of the operations office in charge of the student union, which was a cover for the organisation’s activities in the US.
He also said that the international organisation holds two key events in the United States. The first, the Muslim Arab Youth Association conference, is an event held over Christmas holidays that attracts about 10,000 Muslims and includes Brotherhood leaders from around the world, such as Yousef Al Qaradawi.
“The conference attracted over 150 Emirati students studying in the United States,” he said.
At the convention, the Brotherhood’s head of student union, Mr Al Hossani, would organise an outing for Emirati students to attract recruits.
The second is an annual gathering for all members of the organisation in the United States, allowing them to get to know each other and agree on work plans. The seemingly religious event is, in fact, political in nature.
Mr Al Hossani said: “After I was appointed to the student union office for Emirati students in the USA, I became in charge of maintaining the union’s activity, managing its elections and keeping communication lines open with organisation members when preparing so-called religious seminars, conferences and other activities with concealed political objectives set by the leadership.”
Mr Al Hossani explained the sophistication of the Brotherhood’s operations in the US. He said that there is an operations office that classifies the whole country in separate zones according to the distribution of Emirati youth, with one member assigned to oversee each zone.
These members have an educational task; they oversee the “families” – as groups of members are referred to – and develop programmes. They also organise public events through which they attract people to be recruited at a later stage.
Mr Al Hossani said the group took advantage of the environment of freedom in the US. Their activities and programmes seemed normal and that is why they went undetected.
In his two decades in the Brotherhood, Mr Al Hossani moved between the UAE and US. He told of the critical role played by Al Islah, the UAE arm of the Brotherhood, in the Northern Emirates, where efforts to recruit and mobilise young male and female Emiratis were most intense within the country.
In contrast, Al Islah was altogether absent in Abu Dhabi.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
