This morning Washington Post columnist Colbert King published a very important piece, about the Muslim Brotherhood organizing in the D.C. Jail. King’s piece focused on a detainee who was murdered by another inmate. The murderer was described in an affidavit as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The victim was murdered because he apparently crossed the Muslim Brothers. King rightfully criticizes the D.C. Jail officials, who insisted that the Muslim Brothers were not organizing in the D.C. Jail, for their incompetence. But there are much broader implications to this story.

The Muslim Brotherhood was the original modern Islamist organization. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by an Hassan al-Banna, an elementary school teacher, as a response to Egypt’s westernization. The Muslim Brotherhood’s founding ideology is that shari’a, Muslim religious law must direct all human affairs. At the same time, the Muslim Brothers embraced modern technology and organizational technigues. It spread quickly in the Arab world and linked with similar organizations in Pakistan and Iran. One of its leading ideologues, Sayyid Qutb, was originally an Egyptian secularist. But, while studying in the United States, he was offended by American culture and became a Muslim extremist. In the late 1940s the Muslim Brotherhood fought a violent terrorist war against the Egyptian government. In 1945 Muslim Brotherhood terrorists assassinated the Prime Minister of the Egypt.

Many major Islamist terrorist groups have their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad in Egypt (both of which are now major components of al-Qaeda) and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. As a young man, Yasser Arafat was a Muslim Brother in Egypt. The Muslim Brothers and their offshoots have extensive experience operating in prisons and recruiting prisoners. Prisons are full of individuals prone to violence and open to a radical message – particularly one that allows them to blame their problems on someone else and which legitimates violence. Criminals are obvious recruits for a terror organization.

It appears that this problem has come to the U.S. Jose Padilla, an al-Qaeda operative arrested in Chicago in June 2002, was recruited in prison. But where al-Qaeda focuses strictly on terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood is a broader-based organization that seeks to impose shari’a through intimidation on a local level. Islamists recruited in prison could return to their homes in violent neighborhoods, where they would band together and attack criminals. They would earn local gratitude for imposing order on their chaotic community, but they would also attack businesses such as liquor stores that are forbidden under Islamic law. From this point it is only a small step to opening madrassas where children would be brainwashed – which again might be welcomed as an alternative to deficient public schools. This may seem farfetched, but it has already happened throughout the Middle East in Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, and Algeria.

The Muslim Brotherhood in the D.C. Jail is not an anomaly. Chuck Colson of the Prison Fellowship Ministries reports that radical Islam is gaining adherents in U.S. prisons. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal exposed Muslim prison chaplains in New York state who were members of radical Islamic groups and were actively recruiting in the prisons. Because prisons in the U.S. fall under many different jurisdictions it will be difficult to forge a consistent national strategy to confront this danger. But, as Mr. King’s article shows, getting prison officials to even be aware of the problem is the more immediate problem.