The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death
It is the last Sunday of the month so we’re reading a book having to do with religion, making this weeks book The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Industry of Death by Cynthia Farahat. So let’s do this.
So, the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest terrorist network currently in operation, and Farahat does a remarkable job tracing Brotherhood members to the creation of...well, everything islamic terrorist related. Hamas did not just spring up. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Taliban are all common names in the news cycles of the west, but all of them have ties back to the Brotherhood. And while within Islamic countries, the Muslim Brotherhood is known to be a terroristic organization, in the West, only America and Germany have designated certain branches of the organization as terrorist organizations.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Russia, Kenya...and and Argentina, so there’s at least one western country with her head out of her ass….yet another reason to love Javier Milei...These countries have all declared the entire organization of the Muslim Brotherhood to be terrorists. America is late to the party, in 2026 we decided the Jordanian, Egyptian, and Lebanese branches are terrorists.
Farahat argues the entire organization and all branch affiliates are terrorists. It’s a rotten infested tree down to it’s very roots and should be ripped out and destroyed for the good of the rest of the forest...I literally just came up with that metaphor, but I’m pretty pleased with it.
I was actually surprised that as of the writing of this book in 2022, the United States had not designated the Brotherhood as terrorists. I read a book thirty years ago, Virgins of Paradise by Barbara Wood, original publication 1993, reprint 2012, where one of the characters gets pulled into the Muslim Brotherhood, which was a terrorist network in the book. So when MB started appearing in the news, I just sort of assumed we all knew they were terrorists. I forget how widely I read and the different pieces of information I am exposed to through that.
So who is the Muslim Brotherhood?
While the organization itself was officially founded on March 22, 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. And it has a front facing organization, which in recent years has been trying to overhaul the image of the Brotherhood using classic Orwellian doublespeak. And then there is the secret, not public facing part. This is the part that funds and networks and creates ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban. And it is a broad, deep network with global reach.
And throughout The Secret Apparatus, Farahat traces this network, both the public and secret sides, showing how they intertwine and work together. It was genuinely eye opening, in a “oh great, I really needed THAT nightmare living rent free in my head” kind of way. Because prior to reading this book, I honestly thought the Muslim Brotherhood was more or less confined to Egypt. I had no idea the depth and breadth of it’s reach.
Now, I’m not going to go through and try and trace all the players on this review. Because over 100 years, there are ALOT of players on this field. And I would need a conspiracy board just to keep track of who was where at what time.
Instead I want to focus more on what their goals are, and some of that infamous doublespeak, which Farahat translated for us. And some of the differences. A lot of people assume that the Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam are so divided that the enemy of my enemy is my friend….now that we’re warring with Shi’a Iran, we can befriend Sunni ISIS, for example.
Very much not true. Farahat goes back several hundred years before the founding of the brotherhood to provide examples of when Shi’a and Sunni got along just fine. Or the difference between Sufi and Salafi. Sufism is Islamic mysticism. And Sufi tends to be shunned by the fundamentalists of both Shi’a and Sunni branches of Islam. Salifism is the fundamentalist branches of Sunni Islam.
So what is the difference between Shi’a and Sunni? Well, when the prophet Muhammad died in 632, the religion split, with those who follow Sunni believe the community should pick who the next leader is, and those who follow Shi’a believing leadership is an inherited trait, and so only following the line of direct descent from Muhammad is valid. Sunni is, by far, the largest branch of Islamic faith, with Shi’a largely being concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan...that last bit is from Wikipedia. The Shi’a fell back….like a lot a lot… following the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003, which is how the Sunni run ISIS came to destroy the Yazidi populations, as told in The Last Girl earlier this month.
How does all this tie in with the Muslim Brotherhood? Well, Farahat pulls out I think it was 9 sections that are designed to propagandize, infiltrate, bribe, and recruit operatives from society at large. So you have the section that is designed to propagate the message, that being the theology of Islam. Students are the largest body that Islam shoots to recruit from. Which, well if you want an idea of just how good at recruiting the brotherhood is, look at all the leftist organizations on any college campus in America. All the useful little idiots who have been told what to think, not taught HOW to think, who blindly parrot “From the River to the Sea” Slogans on behalf of Hamas and Palestine. Labor and Peasants. Farahat dissects how Islam embraced the very worst of both Communism and Fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s, even showing how Egypt allowed literal Nazi’s to hide in Cairo post WWII, while also embracing Stalinism as a means to control the populace.
So the Brotherhood recruits from students, labor and peasants, professionals and unions. They have an entire section dedicated to physical training. Another one to press and translation. And the Muslim Sisterhood, which is exactly like it sounds...the same thing for the women in Islam. And Family. More than likely if you know someone who publicly acknowledges being in the Muslim Brotherhood, then their family is also in the Brotherhood or Sisterhood. And they intermarry.
And a good chunk of why so much of what they do is unknown is, believe it or not, compared to the Cosa Nostra. They took a page from Italian crime families and play everything very close to the vest.
And yes, the Muslim Brotherhood gets along just fine with the Ayatollah’s, despite the Shi’a/Sunni rift, which is why the Ayatollah’s and Iran have been seen to be the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
How about that doublespeak? Truth. That’s a simple enough word. The Dictionary defines truth as “Conformity to fact or actuality.; Reality, actuality.” The Brotherhood has truth meaning the implementation of Shari’a law...because only Allah knows the truth.
Freedom does not mean freedom like we in America know it, freedom of speech and expression, free to be you and me. It means freedom from all forms of transgression against Shari’a law.
Farahat provides a list of vocabulary words, which on their face have absolutely nothing in common with how the Brotherhood means the word. But those same useful college campus idiots will spout the party line like it’s been handed down by Allah himself.
And not just the campus idiots. She pulls out known meetings between US policy makers who have met with known members of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the weeping detriment of the world as a whole. Like I said at the beginning, it’s only in 2026 that the US has designated SOME Brotherhood branches to be terrorists. But Farahat makes a strong argument for the entire organization being rotten to the root. An argument that is only enhanced by the fact that countries that actually LIVE in that region of the world, make no distinction between different branches, and have dubbed the entire organization as Terrorist.
This book was… a little frenetic. Like I said, there are ALOT of names here, names that bounce back and forth, and I almost NEED a conspiracy board to keep track of all the players. But Farahat did a remarkable job showing what the Brotherhood has pulled from Communism and Stalinism and Fascism and how they have folded those history horror shows into their current ideology to make something new and wholly evil.
It was an interesting read, and while I do recommend it, I would recommend pacing yourself, take a little more time than the week I gave myself to read it, and maybe start a spreadsheet so you can get a visual guide for how internecine the organization as a whole is.
