{"id":31222,"date":"2026-08-08T18:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=31222"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:26:15","slug":"i-was-in-the-room-what-i-witnessed-at-the-senate-hearing-on-the-muslim-brotherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=31222","title":{"rendered":"I Was in the Room: What I Witnessed at the Senate Hearing on the Muslim Brotherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I sat in the front row of a U.S. Senate hearing this week and watched something unfold that I believe deserves far more attention than it is receiving.\n<\/p>\n

Pray for your fellow intercessor.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hearing was titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America<\/em>. It was convened by Sen.\u00a0Ted Cruz before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
\nIFA CEO David Kubal and Chief Program Officer Kris Kubal at the hearing.\n<\/p>\n

I went there as an intercessor. I\u2019ve been covering the growing Islamic issue for over 10 years and urging prayer and action by Americans of faith.\n<\/p>\n

Sitting just feet from the witnesses, I listened, watched, and prayed as testimony was entered into the congressional record about the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations witnesses alleged are connected to its ideological and organizational network in the United States.\n<\/p>\n

But almost immediately, something else became impossible to ignore.\n<\/p>\n

Half the committee was missing. Not simply one senator. Every Democratic member of the subcommittee declined to participate.\n<\/p>\n

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla, and Peter Welch were absent. Senator Cruz was the only senator sitting on the dais \u2014 not just the only senator on his side of the aisle, but the only senator in the room, period.\n<\/p>\n

The empty chairs told a story of their own.\n<\/p>\n

This was not a last-minute absence. The five Democratic senators announced their boycott in writing before the hearing even began, calling it a \u201cpolitical creepshow\u201d and accusing Cruz of \u201cscapegoating Muslims\u201d to energize Republican voters ahead of Texas primaries. They stated plainly that they had no intention of engaging with the substance of the hearing at all.\n<\/p>\n

Cruz noted the empty dais himself in his opening remarks, calling the absence an embarrassment and asking why not a single member of the minority thought a hearing on terrorism financing was worth attending.\n<\/p>\n

Three witnesses testified. Their backgrounds were serious, and so was their evidence.\n<\/p>\n

Retired FBI Special Agent Lara Burns<\/strong>, now a senior research fellow at George Washington University\u2019s Program on Extremism, had worked on the Holy Land Foundation investigation \u2014 one of the most consequential terrorism-financing prosecutions in American history. That case resulted in the Holy Land Foundation and five of its leaders being convicted in 2008 of providing material support to Hamas. Burns testified about the evidence uncovered in that investigation and what she described as a long-term Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure that continues to operate inside the United States.
\nA graphic displayed during the hearing.\n<\/p>\n

Attorney Arielle Klepach<\/strong> of the National Jewish Advocacy Center addressed a different problem: what happens when an organization tied to terrorism financing shuts down, only for the same individuals and networks to reorganize under a new name.
\nKyle Shideler testifies before the Senate Committee.\n<\/p>\n

Kyle Shideler<\/strong> of the Center for Security Policy laid out, in detailed written testimony, what he described as the Brotherhood\u2019s long-term strategy inside America. He told the subcommittee that the Holy Land Foundation trial produced an \u201cextraordinary body of evidence\u201d \u2014 wiretaps, internal memos, organizational charts, meeting transcripts \u2014 that laid bare a sprawling domestic infrastructure. Prosecutors in that case identified a broader network of organizations they alleged were part of it, including the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).\n<\/p>\n

Shideler testified that Muslim Brotherhood members \u2014 including individuals later convicted on terrorism charges \u2014 worked for decades to influence leaders in both American political parties, that affiliated organizations recruited and trained chaplains for American prisons and the military, and that Brotherhood-linked organizations operated on college campuses across the country. He described CAIR specifically as growing out of what the government identified as a \u201cPalestine Committee\u201d network \u2014 created, he testified, to build political and media support for Hamas inside the United States.\n<\/p>\n

Cruz connected this directly to recent history, telling the subcommittee that the unrest that erupted on American college campuses after October 7 \u201cdid not emerge from nowhere,\u201d but was, in his words, the product of decades of organized institutional influence-building.\n<\/p>\n

The most sobering thread of the hearing, for me, was not historical. I have known the facts and details of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s actions, funding, and influence in our nation. \u00a0It was the fact that just the day before the hearing, Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan\u2019s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, defeating Rep.\u00a0Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow \u2014 a significant win for the progressive wing of the party.
\nKyle Shideler testifies before the Senate Committee.\n<\/p>\n

During the hearing, Cruz asked Shideler directly whether he believed a Muslim Brotherhood branch is operating in the United States. Shideler answered yes. Cruz then asked whether El-Sayed\u2019s candidacy concerned him.\n<\/p>\n

Shideler testified that it did not because of anything alleged against El-Sayed personally, but because of the network around him. He told the subcommittee that El-Sayed\u2019s father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, has ties to two Brotherhood-linked organizations: he formerly served as president of CAIR-Michigan, and he has sat on the Islamic Society of North America\u2019s Founders Committee \u2014 a body Shideler described as reserved for the organization\u2019s most committed backers and largest funders, alongside other individuals he identified as known Brotherhood members. Shideler also raised El-Sayed\u2019s association with Emgage, a Muslim political mobilization and candidate-recruitment organization that he testified maintains close ties to CAIR.\n<\/p>\n

While El-Sayed deserves focus and scrutiny, so also does the larger pattern we are seeing. Organizations with documented, testified-to Brotherhood lineage are no longer operating only on the margins of American civic life. They are embedded in donor networks, founders\u2019 committees, and get-out-the-vote infrastructure that touches campaigns for the United States Senate. Candidates aligned with those networks are not protesting outside the political system anymore. They are winning primaries inside it. That is not a fringe development. That is a shift in who holds power in American government \u2014 and it is happening with remarkably little scrutiny, in no small part because half the committee charged with providing that scrutiny chose not to show up.\n<\/p>\n

As I sat in that hearing room, I had clarity of three of the biggest threats facing our nation, with the shifting embrace of radical ideologies. One, Islamic candidates who espouse a radically differing worldview and values that are antithetical to our founding principles and Constitution. Joining forces with them sometimes is also the second group\u2014the rising influence of the Democratic Socialist agenda and candidates who are increasing their position and voice in the Democratic Party. And the third threat that may be uncomfortable for many of us to hear is the inactivity of people of faith in the conservative movement.
\nKyle Shideler and IFA Chief Program Officer Kris Kubal.\n<\/p>\n

It is easy for Christians to identify the movements we believe threaten our nation. It is much harder to ask whether we have contributed to the vacuum they are filling.\n<\/p>\n

I believe there are powerful ideological forces working to reshape America. From a biblical worldview, I believe the ideas behind Islam \u2014 like the ideas behind Marxism and communism \u2014 stand fundamentally opposed to biblical understandings of human freedom, the dignity of the individual made in God\u2019s image, and the proper relationship between God and government.\n<\/p>\n

As I listened in that hearing, I wondered how we got here, where we have an active radical terror group operating freely under the guise of religious freedom in our nation. And a hearing that only garnered the interest and concern of one Senator of the committee. Who will stop these radicals? Who is doing something about this threat?\n<\/p>\n

While the answer is multifaceted, one answer hits close to home. Millions of Christians do not vote. Others vote but never become involved in a civic action again. We watch school boards make decisions affecting our children, but never attend a meeting. We complain about the government while never meeting or engaging the people who govern us. We lament cultural change but remain silent while we let others shape the culture.\n<\/p>\n

We pray \u2014 and don\u2019t misunderstand me\u2013prayer is absolutely essential and powerful\u2014 but sometimes we use prayer as our last action instead of looking at ourselves to take action as the answer to that prayer.\n<\/p>\n

Intercessors for America has always believed that informed intercession matters. We\u2019re about news, prayer, and action. We don\u2019t want Christians to know what is happening in our government and nation, so we can become angry or fearful about it. We want to know what is happening so we can pray accurately and act faithfully.\n<\/p>\n

Our prayer should lead us to ask a personal question: Lord, what are You asking me to do?<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

Here is where I believe He is leading us, and I want to be specific rather than vague:\n<\/p>\n