Islamist Networks Thrive as US Misses the Threat

The United States spent two decades fighting in Afghanistan without ever fully understanding the ideology that drove its enemies. That failure has now migrated home. Islamist networks from South Asia have quietly embedded themselves in American nonprofit infrastructure, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, establishing seminaries, and radicalizing new generations.

Federal authorities, fixated on Middle Eastern Salafi-jihadists and Iranian proxies, never mapped the full spectrum of Deobandi, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Dawat-e-Islami operations. This oversight produced two consequences. First, lesser-known groups flourished without scrutiny. Second, even the fleeting federal interest in lawful Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood faded by 2009, when prosecutions halted and some groups received public funding. Today, Islamist networks operate openly through 501(c) charities, sharia finance lenders, and mosques, often partnering with designated terror groups or violating foreign agent laws. The political will to confront this threat remains absent. Twenty-five years after 9/11, Islamist networks continue to thrive because Washington still refuses to name, map, and prosecute them.

America Never Learned Whom It Fought

The U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 started as the fires at Ground Zero still burned. The invasion of a South Asian terror state and the subsequent 20 years of protracted fighting should have introduced American policymakers to the question of South Asian Islamism. However, Deobandism, the Islamist ideology of the Taliban, remains largely unfamiliar. In Afghanistan, at least, America never learned whom it was fighting.

Islamist Networks Flourish Without Scrutiny

Consequently, the domestic problem worsened. U.S. authorities made no effort to stem the flow of Deobandi seminary graduates from Pakistan, some making use of America’s religious visa program. Proxies for Deobandi transnational repression operations and terror-tied Deobandi missionary movements established U.S. operations through the 501(c) nonprofit system. Sharia finance lenders across America appointed top Deobandi scholars to direct their operations. More recently, a Chicago-based network of Deobandi persons and institutions partners with and advocates for the Taliban regime.

Deobandis are not the only untracked South Asian Islamist force in America. Dawat-e-Islami, Ahl e-Hadith, Jamaat-e-Islami, Tanzeem-e-Islami, Tehreek-e-Jafaria, Kashmiri Islamists, among others, operate through America’s nonprofit infrastructure, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and radicalizing new generations of American Muslims. The bulk of new homegrown imams in America are graduates of new madrassas and seminaries established by South Asian Islamist networks on American soil.

The Middle East Myth Misses the Threat

The question of Islamism, policymakers and journalists have erroneously thought, is mostly a Middle Eastern problem. As a result, federal attention after the 9/11 attacks focused on Middle Eastern Salafi-jihadists such as Al Qaeda, Iranian regime proxies such as Hezbollah, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ideologues operate through both violent and nonviolent means.

This view produced two problems. First, as federal officials focused on these few Islamist networks, others flourished amid the lack of scrutiny. Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, America’s leaders, thinkers and policemen have failed to recognize and counteract the gamut of Islamist belief.

Prosecutions Halted and Threats Grew

Second, even federal interest in the threat of the lawful Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood was fleeting. By 2009, the federal government narrowed its field of view yet further and halted prosecutions of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas networks, figuring that lawful Islamism could serve as an ally in the fight against Salafi-jihad. Several of the groups under investigation even later received public funding and partnership.

A Framework to Confront the Problem

Today, Islamism grows, mostly without challenge, in Muslim communities across America. A glance across the ocean, at the withering societies of Western Europe, indicates a need for the U.S. authorities to rethink their approach. The federal government should adopt the following principles.

First, Washington must understand and declare the threat. By naming and mapping every Islamist network, public bodies can identify their institutions, persons, finances, and activities. Acknowledging the threat also generates the possibility of action. Delineating Islamism into its various networks gives the government targets to investigate, defund, and prosecute.

How Islamist Networks Exploit America’s Charities

That only works, however, if the government finds some backbone. Second, the U.S. government must make use of existing statutory tools and enforce the law. Since 2008, the federal government has appeared unwilling to prosecute domestic Islamist terror finance operations, unless it involved Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Islamic State. Not even the October 7, 2023, attacks prompted any apparent action to shut down the array of Hamas-aligned charities operating openly across America.

Across the country, 501(c) humanitarian aid charities openly operate as proxies or partners for foreign extremist organizations and designated terror groups. For example, Helping Hand for Relief and Development, which operates as a branch of the South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami, partnered with the U.S-designated Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2017. Not only did the federal government look the other way; it later handed over taxpayers’ money to the charity.

Iranian families appear to break sanctions laws while financing radical causes through the 501(c) system. Qatari and Turkish Islamist networks operate openly in violation of Foreign Agent laws. And violent extremists such as Khatme Nubuwwat and Dawat-e-Islami, which engage in anti-blasphemy violence, raise millions of dollars through the 501(c) system thanks to a carefully arranged network of mosques and schools. There is plenty for government to investigate and prosecute.

Political Will Remains the Missing Piece

Third, the federal government should reconsider the establishment of a working counter-radicalization program that guides efforts to defund and debilitate Islamist networks. Previous failed efforts, most notably by the Obama administration, to build a “Countering Violent Extremism” program operated on social scientists’ presumptions that ideology does not drive ideological violence. As European governments have now realized, nonviolent Islamist networks’ control of the schools, seminaries, mosques, and charities feeds violent Islamist consequences.

Twenty-five years later, the means to fix the problem is clear. The political will, however, remains lacking.