The Brotherhood in Your Backyard: Muslim Youth of North America
Renewed congressional scrutiny of the Muslim Brotherhood brings attention to the 29 organizations from the 1991 Memorandum, and their documented advancement of Brotherhood objectives in America
Editor’s note: This is the inaugural article in a series examining alleged Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States—the 29 organizations listed in the infamous 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum outlining a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to destroy Western civilization from within. With renewed U.S. government focus on Brotherhood networks and recent congressional scrutiny, this series investigates the documented connections between these groups and their historical advancement of Brotherhood strategic objectives in America.
The Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA), a 40-year-old organization serving teenagers aged 12-18, operates as the youth division of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) from the same Plainfield, Indiana headquarters at 6555 S. County Road 750 E. As a program within ISNA’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit structure, MYNA claims to have served over 30,000 youth since its 1985 founding through camps, retreats, and educational programming.
What the organization doesn’t prominently advertise is its inclusion as #16 on a list of 29 Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the infamous 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum”—a strategic document describing the Brotherhood’s work in America as “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western Civilization from within.”
The Brotherhood’s Youth Pipeline
MYNA emerged in 1985 as a project of ISNA’s Youth Committee, four years after ISNA itself was established by confirmed Iraqi Kurdish Muslim Brotherhood members. An internal 1980 Brotherhood document explicitly stated the strategy: “to make ISNA a nucleus for the Islamic Movement in North America.”
By 1991, when Mohamed Akram authored the Explanatory Memorandum for the Brotherhood’s Shura Council, MYNA had become significant enough to merit inclusion among organizations advancing what the memo called the “settlement” process—embedding Islamic organizations into American civic life as cover for long-term Brotherhood objectives.
The 2016 ISNA Canada Annual Report confirmed MYNA’s structural relationship: “Now established as a department of ISNA Canada, MYNA continues its historical focus as a youth oriented group.”
ISNA’s Alleged Terror Financing Origins
Understanding MYNA requires understanding its parent organization. Federal prosecutors revealed during the Holy Land Foundation trial—the largest terrorism-financing prosecution in U.S. history—that the Holy Land Foundation operated from ISNA’s Plainfield headquarters in the 1980s, maintaining a joint bank account with ISNA and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).
From that shared account, prosecutors documented, “hundreds of thousands of dollars” flowed to Hamas leaders, with checks made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahideen”—Hamas’s military wing. When ISNA attempted to remove itself from the unindicted co-conspirator list, a federal judge denied the motion, finding “ample evidence” supporting the designation.
ISNA founder Sami Al-Arian was later convicted on terrorism-related charges for Palestinian Islamic Jihad fundraising. Another founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was sentenced to 23 years after being arrested with $340,000 in cash on terrorism-financing charges.
Programming Extremism After October 7
On October 15, 2023—just eight days after Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 Israelis—MYNA hosted a virtual event titled “What’s Going On in Palestine?” The featured speakers, including Linda Sarsour and Corey Saylor, underscored the organization’s ideological positioning. MYNA claimed the event would reveal the, “historical context of the current situation,” just days after the Oct. 7 massacre.
Linda Sarsour, the event’s marquee speaker, had posted on Instagram two days after the October 7 attack: “For decades the State of Israel murdered Palestinian men, women and children”—with no condemnation of Hamas’s atrocities. The Women’s March co-founder, who stepped down from that organization in 2019 amid antisemitism scandals, has repeatedly embraced convicted PFLP bomber Rasmea Odeh.
Over 1,000 rabbis signed an open letter condemning Sarsour’s rhetoric, and she has been accused by Saudi media outlet Al-Arabiya of having roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. At ISNA’s 2017 convention, she urged American Muslims to wage “jihad” against the Trump administration.
Sarsour was scheduled to speak at the August 2025 “People’s Conference for Palestine,” where the 2024 event featured PFLP members who praised the October 7 massacre and the conference named its main hall after Walid Daqqa, a convicted PFLP terrorist who murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam.
Corey Saylor, another speaker at the event, serves as Research Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—itself named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case and designated by the UAE as a terrorist organization in 2014.
Operating Today
MYNA continues its programming nationwide, hosting over 20 camps and events annually across seven regions. In August 2025, the organization solicited memorabilia for a 40th anniversary display at ISNA’s annual convention, celebrating four decades of youth programming under the #PoweredByISNA hashtag.
MYNA’s safety page emphasizes rigorous counselor vetting and youth protection policies, but it says little about how speakers are selected or what standards govern ideological screening. As documented in this article, MYNA has at times provided a platform for figures who appear to amplify extremist or radical narratives, bringing polarizing political messaging to impressionable teenagers during moments of geopolitical crisis, even as the organization says its mission is to help youth become “engaged and productive members of society.”
As Congress renews scrutiny of Muslim Brotherhood networks, MYNA represents perhaps the most concerning element of the 29 organizations listed in the Explanatory Memorandum: the systematic indoctrination of the next generation.