Intelligence

Islam

The Muslim Brotherhood 1982 Project and 1991 Memorandum

The 1982 Project and 1991 Memorandum were seized by Swiss and US authorities respectively from senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the early 2000's. The 1982 Project was discovered during a raid by Swiss authorities on the villa of Youssef Nada, a prominent international leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and director of the Al-Taqwa Bank in Lugano, Switzerland in November 2001. The 1991 Memorandum, titled "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," was discovered during an FBI search of a Virginia home belonging to Ismail Elbarasse in August 2004.

Why are these documents important?

In short: the 1982 paper is the global doctrine—know the terrain, build institutions, seek an Islamic state, keep jihad and Palestine central, avoid suicidal clashes. The 1991 memo is the American application—plant the movement inside U.S. and Canadian society through mosques, schools, professional associations, media, money, and politics, under Brotherhood leadership, as a long civilizational campaign rather than a short political season.

This is the playbook for Muslim growth and domination in the West, so it's important that you know it. Below we have provided summaries of each document, as well as the documents themselves in their original Arabic as well as English translations:

The 1982 Project

1982 Project Original Arabic Document: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/1351/0024/files/the-muslim-brotherhood-1982-project.pdf?v=1788462557

1982 Project English Translation: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/1351/0024/files/Muslim_Brotherhood_1982_Project_English_Translation_9-3-2026.pdf?v=1788462479

Summary of the Muslim Brotherhood 1982 Project

Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy
Report S/5/100, 1 December 1982
This is a global strategy paper. It sets twelve “starting points” for Islamic political work worldwide, then breaks each one into elements, procedures, and sample tasks. Local policies in each country are supposed to follow this framework.The twelve starting points, in brief:
  1. Study reality scientifically — map hostile, friendly, and neutral forces; build information and research centers.
  2. Work seriously — concentrate people, time, and money; create economic institutions to fund the da‘wa.
  3. Combine global discipline with local flexibility — the worldwide organization sets binding priorities (especially full liberation of Palestine and an Islamic state there); local branches handle local tactics.
  4. Stay in politics without isolation, while educating and building institutions — enter parliaments, unions, and civic bodies where Sharia is not violated; keep training generations; build social, economic, health, and educational institutions.
  5. Aim at an Islamic state while gradually taking local power centers — draft Islamic constitutions and laws; choose priority locations; work inside existing institutions and create Islamic ones.
  6. Cooperate with other Islamic groups on shared points and excuse differences; avoid multiplying rival movements where one already exists.
  7. Accept limited, temporary cooperation with nationalist movements against colonialism, missionary activity, and “the Jewish state,” without alliances or trust, and with the Islamic movement keeping the initiative.
  8. Practice the “art of the possible” — avoid unequal confrontation that could crush the movement; keep principles while using speeches, statements, and books rather than reckless clashes.
  9. Build protective force and support jihadi movements across the Muslim world and among minorities, “to varying degrees and insofar as possible”; keep the duty of jihad alive.
  10. Build surveillance and media systems — modern monitoring plus effective media to warn Muslims of “conspiracies” and shape opinion.
  11. Make Palestine the central global cause, politically and through jihad — fund jihad, reject peace with Jews as surrender, build jihadi cells in Palestine, link them to mujahidin elsewhere, and “kindle hatred toward the Jews and reject coexistence.”
  12. Constant self-criticism and evaluation of goals, content, and methods.
Overall character: staged, institutional, and dual-track. Public work, education, and institutions sit alongside power-seeking, information work, and support for jihad. Palestine is treated as the key to a wider Islamic revival.

The 1991 Memorandum

1991 Memorandum Original Arabic Document: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/1351/0024/files/the-muslim-brotherhood-1982-project.pdf?v=1788462557

1991 Memorandum English Translation: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/1351/0024/files/Muslim_Brotherhood_1982_Project_English_Translation_9-3-2026.pdf?v=1788462479

Summary of the Muslim Brotherhood 1991 Memorandum

On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America
Mohamed Akram, 22 May 1991
(Holy Land Foundation trial exhibit)This is a North American implementation paper. It explains a goal already adopted in 1987 and treats “settlement” (tawtin / tamkin) as the current priority.The 1987 strategic goal it interprets:
Enabling Islam in North America: an effective, stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood; adopting Muslim causes locally and globally; expanding the committed base; unifying and directing Muslim efforts; presenting Islam as a civilizational alternative; and supporting the global Islamic State wherever it is.
What “settlement” means in the memo:
Islam and the movement should become part of the homeland—rooted, stable, enabled in people’s lives, and embodied in lasting institutions—not a foreign plant.How settlement is supposed to happen:
  • A mental shift: from elite, cautious, preaching-centered work to comprehensive, popular, institutional, initiative-taking work.
  • Historical self-awareness of Brotherhood stages in North America (identity → internal organization → mosques/centers → institutions and schools → public movement → opening to other groups → a second wave of institution-building).
  • A famous formulation of the Brother’s role: settlement is a “civilizational-jihadi process.” Work in America is described as a form of grand jihad to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and “sabotage” its house “by their hands and the hands of the believers,” so that “God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
  • The Brotherhood cannot do this alone. Its role is initiative, leadership, and unification of other Muslims through coalitions, “absorption,” and cooperation (ICNA is cited as a first step).
  • Success in America is framed as support for the global movement and the sought-after Islamic state, not a distraction from it.
  • Islamic centers should become “beehives”: worship, education, family life, youth work, politics, media distribution, and local command posts—compared to the Prophet’s mosque in Medina.
  • The core method is an institutional transformation: existing Brotherhood sections and allied groups should become a full set of “comprehensive institutions” (da‘wa/education, political, media, economic, scientific/professional, cultural, social, youth, women’s, administrative, security, legal).
  • An attached list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends” includes ISNA, MSA, NAIT, IIIT, ICNA, IAP, Occupied Land Fund, Mercy International, and others, with the comment: “Imagine if they all march according to one plan.”

How the two papers relate:

1982 Project
1991 Memorandum
Scope
Worldwide policy
North America
Main aim
Islamic state + global coordination
“Settlement/enablement” of Islam and Brotherhood leadership in the U.S. and Canada
Method
Starting points, staged work, institutions, limited alliances, media, monitoring
Same toolkit, applied locally: centers, schools, front institutions, coalitions
Palestine
Central global cause; political + jihadi
Still among Muslim causes to be adopted; IAP and Occupied Land Fund appear on the friends list
Force / jihad
Build protective force; support jihadi movements
Settlement itself called a civilizational-jihadi process against Western civilization from within
Tone
Strategic, cautious about premature confrontation
More operational and organizational; stresses institutions as the language America understands
In short: the 1982 paper is the global doctrine—know the terrain, build institutions, seek an Islamic state, keep jihad and Palestine central, avoid suicidal clashes. The 1991 memo is the American application—plant the movement inside U.S. and Canadian society through mosques, schools, professional associations, media, money, and politics, under Brotherhood leadership, as a long civilizational campaign rather than a short political season.

Supplemental Information: About the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR

Hassan al-Banna, a schoolteacher in Ismailia, Egypt, started the Society of the Muslim Brothers in 1928 as a response to British occupation, the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate, and what he saw as Western cultural domination. Early work looked like mosque-building, schools, clinics, and moral reform. The political goal was larger: rebuild Muslim society and, eventually, Islamic government. 


Two later currents matter:
  • A gradualist current that works through institutions, elections, and “settlement” in host societies (the tone of the 1982 “Project” and the 1991 North America memo).
  • A more radical current associated with Sayyid Qutb, whose prison writings treated existing Muslim regimes as illegitimate and helped shape later jihadi thought. Qutb was not the whole Brotherhood, but he is part of its intellectual afterlife.
Hamas is the most important armed offshoot: it was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.

A Brief History and Major Events

1928–1932. Founded in Ismailia; headquarters later move to Cairo. Rapid growth through mosques, schools, and youth work.


Late 1930s–1940s. The movement enters politics and creates a secret armed wing, the Special Apparatus (al-Nizam al-Khass). It takes part in the 1948 war in Palestine. In December 1948 a Brotherhood member assassinates Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi after the government dissolved the group. Al-Banna condemns the killing; he is himself assassinated in February 1949, widely believed to have been killed by government agents.

1952–1966. The Brotherhood first backs the Free Officers who overthrow the monarchy, then breaks with Gamal Abdel Nasser. After a 1954 attempt on Nasser’s life, the movement is crushed, leaders are jailed, and Qutb is executed in 1966.
1970s–1980s. Partial revival under Anwar Sadat, then renewed repression. The Syrian branch is destroyed in the 1982 Hama uprising. Brotherhood ideas spread through students, Gulf funding, and diaspora networks in Europe and North America. In 1987 Hamas is formed in Gaza as the Brotherhood’s Palestinian organization.
1982 and 1991 internal papers. The 1982 “Project” sketches a worldwide political strategy (institutions, media, limited alliances, Palestine as a central cause, support for jihadi movements). The 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum” applies that logic to North America under the heading of “settlement”—planting Islam and Brotherhood-led institutions inside U.S. and Canadian society.
2011–2013. After Hosni Mubarak falls, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party wins Egypt’s first free presidential election. Mohamed Morsi takes office in 2012. Mass protests and a military coup remove him in July 2013. Security forces kill hundreds of Brotherhood supporters at Rabaa Square in August 2013. Egypt later designates the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. 
Since 2013. The Egyptian organization is banned and driven underground or into exile. Several states—including Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain—treat the Brotherhood as a terrorist or extremist organization. The United States has designated Hamas, but has not designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole at the federal level. Some U.S. states have recently moved toward their own designations.

How the Muslim Brotherhood is Related to CAIR

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded in 1994 and presents itself as a Muslim civil-rights and advocacy group. It denies being an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood or of Hamas.
The documentary record from the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case is why the relationship is still debated.
The Palestine Committee. After Hamas was founded, the international Brotherhood directed national branches to support it. In the United States that structure was the Palestine Committee, led for a time by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook. Its main U.S. instruments were: 
  • IAP (Islamic Association for Palestine) — media and propaganda
  • HLF (Holy Land Foundation, earlier Occupied Land Fund) — fundraising
  • UASR — research/think-tank work
CAIR’s founders came out of that network. Omar Ahmad (also rendered Omar Yehya) and Nihad Awad were IAP officials and appear on Palestine Committee membership lists entered as trial exhibits. Both attended the October 1993 Philadelphia meeting, where participants discussed how to support Hamas after the Oslo Accords without saying so openly. CAIR was incorporated in 1994. Internal Palestine Committee records from that period list CAIR as an additional organization under the same umbrella. Ibrahim Hooper, later CAIR’s longtime spokesman, also came from IAP.
The 2008 HLF trial. HLF and five officials were convicted of providing material support to Hamas. Prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator / joint venturer. FBI agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR was part of the Palestine Committee structure and that the new group’s role included defending the rest of the network. Early financial transfers from HLF to CAIR were part of the evidence. Ghassan Elashi, later convicted in the HLF case, was a founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter.
In 2009, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis wrote that the government had produced “ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, [and] NAIT … with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” That was a finding about associations in a related dispute, not a criminal conviction of CAIR itself. CAIR was never charged or convicted in the HLF case.
After the trial. The FBI limited official non-investigative outreach to CAIR because of those HLF-case ties. The UAE designated CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014, citing Brotherhood links; CAIR calls that a political smear by a government hostile to the Brotherhood. CAIR says the HLF listing was improper and that it is an independent American civil-rights organization.
A precise way to state the relationship:
  • There is a substantial federal-trial record that CAIR grew out of the U.S. Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, that its founders were committee/IAP figures, and that prosecutors treated early CAIR as part of the same Hamas-support architecture as HLF and IAP.
  • At least one foreign government considers CAIR to be related to the Muslim Brotherhood
  • CAIR rejects that characterization and continues to operate as a high-profile U.S. advocacy organization. Their wholesale rejection of any link, despite several known, provable links undermines and delegitimizes their contrary claims.
The 1991 memorandum is a U.S. Brotherhood planning paper recovered in the HLF investigation, and its attachment lists allied organizations (ISNA, NAIT, IAP, Occupied Land Fund, and others) as pieces of one settlement project. CAIR did not yet exist when that memo was written; it appears in the later Palestine Committee paperwork that grew out of the same milieu.

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