The Mullahs and the Islamic Circle of North America By Joe Kaufman

As war with Iran moves closer to reality, it behooves the U.S. government to keep an eye on those groups and individuals within our borders that could be seen as fifth columns. This is especially the case with regard to entities that have expressed support for the enemy government of Iran. One of those organizations is the Islamic Circle of North America or ICNA, a group with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami. Its present support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and its past (and present) support for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini make the group worthy of investigation.

It is understood by many that the catalyst that drove the Islamist movement of the 1980s and beyond was the Iranian Revolution of 1979, where religious fundamentalists replaced the largely Westernized government of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. And while those in power were Shiites – a minority faction of Islam that many Sunni Muslims consider to be heretical – the takeover was widely embraced as a symbol of religious domination and the beginning of a return to Islam’s past, which Islamists had been praying for for over 50 years. Indeed, the Sunni group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had used the Revolution as a basis for its founding.

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