All Entries Tagged With: "Ikhwan"

Don’t fear us: Tunisian Islamist leader

By Tarek Amara | Source

The October 23 vote for an assembly that will draft a new constitution has pitted resurgent Islamists against secular groups who say their modern, liberal values are under threat.

Tunisia electrified the Arab world 10 months ago when a popular uprising overthrew autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, creating a model that was copied by people hungry for change in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.

Western powers and governments in other Arab states are watching Tunisia’s election closely, worried that democratically elected Islamists might impose strict Islamic law and turn their back on Western allies.

Rachid Ghannouchi, who returned to Tunisia from exile in Britain after Ben Ali’s fall, told Reuters in an interview that Western countries and Tunisian liberals had nothing to fear from a victory for his Ennahda party.

“Ben Ali did everything he could to convince the West that we are a terrorist group but he couldn’t do it,” he said.

“We are not cut off from our environment … All the values of democracy and modernity are respected by Ennahda. We are a party that can find a balance between modernity and Islam.”

LITMUS TEST

More than 100 parties will contest the election, but Ennahda has the highest public profile and biggest support network. Opinion polls suggest it will get the most votes, but not win an outright majority in the assembly drafting the constitution.

In the interview, Ghannouchi denied an allegation by his critics that he presents a moderate image in public but that once in power his party’s hardline character will emerge.

Two issues in particular, women’s equality and liberal moral attitudes, are seen by many Tunisians as a litmus test of how tolerant Ennahda will be if it gains power.

In an indication of the party’s stance on women’s rights, a woman who does not wear the head covering favored by Islamists is Ennahda’s candidate for one district in the capital, Tunis.

“The values ??of modernity and women’s freedom began with the first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba,” Ghannouchi said at his party headquarters, where many of the staff are women.

“We will not retreat from these values ??… We will support these values,” he said. “A woman’s freedom and her freedom of dress has been established and we will develop it.”

Western tourists are a major source of income for Tunisia but their habits of drinking alcohol and wearing skimpy clothing can cause tensions with devout Muslims.

Nevertheless, Ghannouchi said he did not favor any restrictions.

“We will seek to create a diversified tourism product, like Turkey,” he said, adding that hotels would not be prevented from offering alcohol and swimming pools, but that they would be encouraged to offer packages for observant Muslims without access to alcohol and with Islamic dress codes at the pool.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

European states for years tolerated Ben Ali’s autocratic rule because Tunisia was a trading partner and it helped curb the flow of drugs, illegal migrants and Islamist militants northwards across the Mediterranean.

Ghannouchi said it was in the interests of all sides for Tunisia to maintain good relations with the West.

“I lived for a long time in Europe without any problems,” he said. “I lived in tolerance with everybody.”

“During my meetings with Western officials and diplomats, I received the message that Ennahda will be welcomed if it wins the elections,” he said.

“They told me that they stand at the same distance from all competitors and their goal is the success of the democratic transition, because the failure of the transition would be catastrophic for Europe, for example, which will be flooded by hundreds of thousands of migrants.”

“We will maintain the relations with our traditional partners such as Europe, but we will seek to improve them in order to get advanced status,” Ghannouchi said, referring to a trade pact Tunisia is seeking with the European Union.

“But we will try also to diversify our partnership to open up to the United States and Latin America, Africa and Asia, and especially Arab markets,” he said.

One reason for the uprising against Ben Ali was that the economy was growing too slowly to generate jobs for youngsters.

Ghannouchi said his party’s foreign policy would be driven by the need to fix this problem. “The biggest concern is to attract foreign investment as part of foreign and local partnerships to drive growth and increase jobs.”

“The party aims to develop the knowledge economy by encouraging investment in the technology industry … There are significant growth opportunities in the telecommunications sector,” he said.

He said he had a message for potential investors.

“Tunisia has become beautiful without Ben Ali … We will put an end to corruption, we will develop legislation to stimulate investment,” said Ghannouchi. “We will confront the corruption that has spread in the structures of the state.”

(Editing by Christian Lowe and Alistair Lyon)

Commentary: The real threat in Egypt: Delayed democracy

Jackson Diehl wrote for the Washington post an op-ed on the “real threat in Egypt: Delayed democracy“:

A lot of people in Washington seem to think so, though they are talking about it quietly so far. Their fears are specific: that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic fundamentalist parties will take power when Egypt’s first democratic elections are held later this year; and that peace with Israel — the foundation of a 30-year, American-backed order in the Middle East — is “hanging by a thread,” as Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy put it.

No one in Egypt is talking about demolishing the peace treaty with Israel, even the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is standing against the Israeli violations against humanity, despite of their complete understanding for the Egyptian foreign policy and its international complications.
So The Muslim Brotherhood cannot seek a new war with Israel, at the same time, they will express -in case of being in power- the real pulse of the Egyptian street.
So fearing the Muslim Brotherhood and thinking of them as the new threat in the region is unrealistic talk based on arbitrary speculations.

True, Islamist parties may win a plurality in the parliamentary elections. Estimates of their potential vote range from 10 to 40 percent. But that still means they would hold a minority of seats; and the Islamists themselves are divided into several factions. The strongest of them recognize that they will not be able to force a fundamentalist agenda on Egypt’s secular middle class or its large Christian minority, at least in the short and medium terms.

This paragraph is full of deceptions. First of all, The Muslim Brotherhood or the other moderate Islamists in Egypt don’t aim to impose or to force Sharia on the Egyptian people.
On the other hand, the Christian minority are believing in the Islamic component of the Egyptian civilisation! So being ruled by moderate Islamists is not representing a real fear for a very large section of the Egyptian Copts.

Those who worry about an Egyptian implosion sometimes hint that the elections should be further postponed or even canceled. In fact, the opposite is needed. The United States and other Western governments ought to adopt the demand put forward in a letter last week by Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was one of the leaders of the revolution: that the military “quickly announce specific dates for the process of transferring complete power . . . to an elected civilian authority that would control everything in the nation.” Egypt’s problem is neither its revolution nor its prospective democracy: It’s what is happening — and may yet happen — between the two.

In Egypt, We believe that the best thing to do right now is to transfer the power to an elected civilian government, and the Muslim Brotherhood just like the other civilian political forces will not save any efforts to save Egypt and the whole region.

Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood and a new historic testimony

Hussam Tammam | Source

Fatemah Abdel-Hadi, one of the founders of the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood Chapter and a prominent leader in the group, was one of the founding generation of Muslim women activists. Women’s activism was modest in the first few years after the creation of the group in Ismailiya before it moved to Cairo in April 1932, and its work became better known under the leadership of Labiba Ahmed. In April 1944, it launched into action with the creation of the first Executive Committee of the Muslim Sisterhood upon the orders of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, and under the supervision of Mahmoud Al-Gohari. The committee included 12 female members chaired by Fatemah Al-Ashmawi and her deputy, Abdel-Hadi.

Abdel-Hadi was the wife of a very important although not well-known figure, Mohamed Youssef Hawash, who was a prominent member of the famous 1965 Group who were disciples of the famous idealogue Sayed Qutb. Not only was Hawash Qutb’s companion in jail and then execution, he is considered Qutb’s eye through which he viewed the Muslim Brotherhood and the hand that led him as an outsider through the group’s inner machinations which were difficult to decipher in the 1950s and 1960s, during bloody confrontations with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s regime.

Abdel-Hadi was a firsthand witness of an era; she was one of the founders of the Muslim Sisterhood, a realm that three quarters of a century later remains unexplored in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the overall Islamic movement. Only few have surfaced out of this dynamic and at times explosive entity, such as Haja Zeinab Al-Ghazali who was viewed as a symbol of Muslim women’s activism and fascination after the publication of her famous autobiography Days of My Life, about the true and unwritten record of the Muslim women’s movement. Abdel-Hadi’s testimonial serves as an introduction to this history, especially from a social perspective.

Abdel-Hadi’s life and record was intertwined with the major milestones, events and historic transformations of the Muslim Sisterhood and overall Islamic movement. It is also linked to the most prominent central figures in the history of Islamic activism in Egypt and Arab world. She was very close to the households of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and the group’s historic icons; she was in close relations with Al-Banna’s family, wife and daughters, and in fact was the only female not in his family to be present at his home when he was assassinated, when his body was prepared for burial, and as his funeral procession left his house.

She was also closely connected with the women in the households of the second Muslim Brotherhood guide, Hassan Al-Hodeibi, and Qutb, the second most prominent idealogue of the group after its founder Banna. She lived with them through the ordeals of the arrest of their men and the dilemmas of Brotherhood households without their patriarchs. Abdel-Hadi also lived through the ordeal of imprisonment herself with 50 other Sisterhood members, and was a witness to and influential activist in the Muslim women’s movement.

Since her husband was Qutb’s companion during years of incarceration, where they spent most of their time in the prison hospital, Abdel-Hadi’s testimonial of the Islamic movement’s philosopher in the middle of the last century is exceptionally significant. She knew him at close proximity because of her husband’s relationship with him, and was familiar with his personal life through her ties with his sisters, and during her visits with her husband and his companion in prison and hospital. In time, she became a confidante of Qutb and even a go-between for a proposed marriage that failed.

Abdel-Hadi’s testimonial on the 1965 Group, which has earned a prominent place in the history of relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the state, is a unique and exceptional perspective not only because of her proximity and connection to many events and details in these events, but also because she is one of its prominent victims. She experienced prison first hand and her husband was the last of three executed.

Abdel-Hadi’s narrative in My Journey with the Muslim Sisterhood: From Imam Al-Banna to Nasser’s Jails is a little known testimonial in the history of the Islamic movement, in which she attempts to document the most significant and muted events as part of a historic record. Her testimonial covers an important time in the history of the Islamic movement spanning more than three decades, beginning at the end of WWII, through the July revolution and the fall of the monarchy in Egypt, as well as critical years during the Nasser regime and the beginning of Sadat’s rule.

What is unique about her tale is that she presents a very personal insight, even when she discusses events and incidents that formed the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt during a very complicated era. She reveals her relations with figures who changed the course of history, some of them executed by hanging while others became presidents of the republic. It is an eyewitness and sometimes firsthand account where she is a protagonist in the events.

Unlike others, Abdel-Hadi does not exaggerate, inflate or improvise even when she relates her personal agony and suffering with her small family. Her young daughter and son lived through the ordeal of their mother’s incarceration, and their father’s imprisonment for many years, and his eventual execution.

Unlike other storylines, such as Zeinab Al-Ghazali’s, Abdel-Hadi’s tale appears to be more authentic as a historic testimonial about the acute conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the 1952 Revolution. What she lived through did not need emotional sensationalisation, or perhaps imaginary embelishments, to convince readers that the Muslim Brotherhood lived through true adversity under Nasser.

The most important aspect of Abdel-Hadi’s testimonial is that it is not purely political, but recounts important milestones in the social history of the Muslim Brotherhood movement — the group’s political dimension continues to overshadow its other facets that are mostly absent in testimonials and memoirs that document the history of the Brotherhood. Reading about Abdel-Hadi’s journey with the Brotherhood is key to understanding the important transformations which occurred in social life in Egypt over half a century, some of whose chapters we continue to live.

Abdel-Hadi’s testimonial spotlights the most important key to many of the critical transformations in the history of Muslim women’s activism, or preaching to women in general. Most significantly, the transformation of the Muslim Sisterhood from a social proselytisation movement into an ideological-political one caused by an even bigger transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood overall.

We find out how the Muslim Sisterhood was primarily focused on society and proselytisation in the beginning with the aim of promoting authentic piety, commitment to good conduct and values through charity, assisting the poor and needy, as well as collecting and distributing alms. Soon, it quickly delved into politics, perhaps as a result of momentous events, including the confrontation with the July Revolution regime, and morphed into a wing of an ideological movement immersed in all forms of politics, its rituals and leading figures.

There is an extensive discussion of the hijab (head veil) and its symbolism in the modern Islamic movement, and also its significance in religiosity and society in Egypt in general. We will be surprised at how it was almost non-existent when the Muslim Sisterhood was a prosetylising social movement before it immersed itself into a political conflict and slipped into the trap of ideology, making the hijab an icon that summarises the definition of faith and piety.

The transformation of the Islamic movement, especially the women’s chapter, into a political ideology required it to have prominent symbols and the hijab, and today’s niqab (face veil), met all the necessary criteria.

Further reading into this transformation reveals why prominent leading female activists in the Islamic movement became less public in the 1970s, such as Abdel-Hadi or Al-Ashmawi, while figures such as Al-Ghazali rose to the fore. The latter was an epitome of the transformation of the Muslim Sisterhood from a social prosetylitision movement into blatant political activism, with its ideological conflicts, components and conspicuous symbols.

Hussam Tammam is a researcher specialised in Islamist movements and ideology.

Tariq Alhomayed: Do the Egyptians trust the Muslim Brotherhood?

By TARIQ ALHOMAYED | Al-Arabiya.net

What is happening in Egypt today is a state of bickering, not all bad and indeed in some parts good, carried out by Egyptians in general and political groups in particular, especially with regards to calls for a civil state, or at least a state of law, following the Egyptian revolution.

The simplest example of this is the controversy about the declaration of constitutional principles, which the Muslim Brotherhood alongside other Islamic groups oppose, whilst they have been accepted by civil political forces. The declaration of principles does not mean depriving the Muslim Brotherhood, or Islamic groups in general, of access to power, but rather it means ensuring the future of Egypt and its democracy, just as it means that the country will be heading in the right direction towards becoming a state of law, whether it is ruled by the Brotherhood or any other political force. This matter deserves the acceptance of all Egyptians, just as it deserves tremendous political and media effort on the part of civil forces to explain the idea to ordinary Egyptians, to educate the Egyptian public about the importance of declaring the principles of the constitution now, and before the entire political process is completed.

Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the constitutional principles means that they have fallen into the trap they had set for the young people and other civil political forces. The Brotherhood has been extensively preoccupied with minor issues after the fall of Mubarak, rather than the issue of ensuring the future of Egypt, which is the most important. The Brotherhood’s mere rejection of the declaration of principles makes Egyptians skeptical of the sincerity of the organization. Is the group, for example, sincere in its talk about democracy, and the transfer of power, or does the Brotherhood intend to secure power, and then change the rules of the game? Declaring the constitutional principles now is like declaring the rules of football, before all Egyptian political forces, of all kinds, take to the political playing field, with elections and so on, according to the rules of the game which are known and agreed in advance, instead of the rules of the game being developed inside the political arena.

The fear of all fears for today and tomorrow – if the constitutional principles are not declared – is that the Muslim Brotherhood will play the game of the “Maghreb goal” after the elections in Egypt. This, for those who do not know, is the way football was often played in the neighborhoods of Saudi Arabia. Usually children would play in the afternoon, and usually before Salaat al-Maghreb the losing team would begin to exert pressure to score one more goal in order to nullify the result. Here, the two teams are playing for the “Maghreb goal”, meaning that whoever scores the final goal before the Salaat al-Maghreb is the winner, even if the other team had scored more goals previously. Often, if the losing team’s players are physically stronger or more experienced, thus intimidating for the opposition, they would wait until just before Salaat al-Maghreb and then exert all their effort to score. This is a form of trickery, or Taqiyya [Shiite principle whereby true intentions or beliefs may be concealed when an individual is under threat].

Therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the declaration of principles today can be considered a political version of the “Maghreb goal”. Following the overthrow of Mubarak, the Brotherhood wants to exclusively rule Egypt, and this is a danger to Egypt as a whole. The Brotherhood’s lack of acceptance for the declaration of constitutional principles is an opportunity for all Egyptian civil political forces to explain to the Egyptians the seriousness of their country becoming an extremist state like Iran. Those who want to rule Egypt must offer a political project to serve the people, not Islamic slogans and promises, otherwise the post-Mubarak era will become more dangerous than the reign of Mubarak itself.

(Published in the London-based Asharq Alawsat on August 16, 2011.)

Editorial Comment:

It seems that the writer doesn’t know “any”thing about the Egyptian circumstances since the revolution. To be clear, the Supra-Constitutional principles had been rejected -in advance- through the referendum over constitutional amendments in March. On the other hand, we can’t neglect the fact that not only the Muslim Brotherhood are rejecting these principles.

The majority of political parties, political activists and non-politicized citizens are standing against the proposed principles. In Egypt, The MB sees that there is no need for any extra constitutional amendments or declarations. Therefor, The Muslim Brotherhood is rejecting the imposing of any declarations on the Egyptian people, and if these principles put on a referendum before the Egyptian voters, No one -including the Muslim Brotherhood- will refuse its results.

The Stream: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

Source | By Ahmed Shihab Eldin

As the Brotherhood aims for a position in the new government, Egyptian youth discuss the topic of Islamist politics.

“You can’t dictate democracy,” I said to a woman from the US who fearfully asked me: “But what if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power in Egypt?” The question came at the end of a panel hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City.

This was one of several dozen times I had been asked the question in the months since Mubarak was overthrown by a popular uprising in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

With parliamentary and presidential elections due in September, the question is both relevant and timely, but as fearful as some in the West may be, it is nearly impossible to envision a scenario wherein the Muslim Brotherhood will not play a substantial role in governing Egypt following these elections.

“The Brotherhood is a formidable movement, as old as the state itself in Egypt – and it will disappear only if Egyptians themselves stop endorsing it,” says Larbi Sadiki, a Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter.

“The MB is not some kind of clerical temple of wisdom – it has doctors, engineers, lawyers, merchants, business people, teachers, the army and police force … all of Egypt is represented in its power base.”

Despite, or perhaps in part because of, Mubarak’s banning of the group for decades, the Brotherhood is undoubtedly both the most organised and most influential political group inside Egypt.

For that reason, the group is poised to secure a large number of seats in parliament, if not a majority.

So what then if the Brotherhood comes to power?

What does this mean for Egypt’s secular and Coptic communities, many of whom played a central role in the very revolution that overthrew Mubarak, and in doing so, allowed for the Brotherhood to finally be recognised as a political party on June 6.

The answer may lie in the political reality that in a democratic election, with power, comes accountability.

“The MB has always been the party that exercised self-restraint,” Sadiki said.

The Brotherhood has been positioning itself to be a loud and influential voice in whatever new government takes shape – but careful to not be seen as leading or attempting to take over the government.

“They will now seek to increase their share of the vote but never to create political imbalance. They are capable of pragmatism and they will seek to form ‘coalitions’ inside parliament instead of seeking an outright majority on their own right,” Sadiki said.

This strategic move is designed to deflect criticism from within Egypt’s galvanised public, during times that will be marked by struggle, before stability and prosperity is established. But it also gives the West and the international community less reason to withhold economic assistance – including in the form of tourism, on which Egypt will remain heavily dependent in the coming years.

The question of whether political Islam and democracy can co-exist is not a new debate in the Muslim world, but one that, for Egyptians – to face the question at the polls in September – demands serious consideration.

It is the Egyptian people’s right to decide, as their ultimate decision will have enormous consequences on the entire region.

Provided elections are both fair and transparent, their right to decide must be respected.

“US administrations should worry about the absence of democracy – not the absence of Islamists from Arab politics,” Sadiki said.

“The former is more detrimental to Arab citizenry, the US and the world. This has been demonstrated by the misrule of people like Gaddafi, Bashir, Saleh, Mubarak and Ben Ali. Democracy means accepting, periodically, the verdict of the people.”

Given the new era of civic engagement that is spilling over from the virtual realm on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere into the streets, the West must trust that, should the Brotherhood be elected to office and leads the country astray, they will be held accountable and find themselves fatefully matched with Mubarak.

“I have confidence that the Egyptians and Tunisians have now invented a brand of politics that no single party, ideology or movement can hijack from the people,” Sadiki said.

‘TweetNadwa’

On Sunday, the question of Islam’s role in Egyptian public and political life was the focus of Cairo’s first-ever “TweetNadwa”, a meeting organised for activists, bloggers and tweeps from across Egypt’s political spectrum to exchange – in 140 seconds at a time – their opinions on the matter.

The discussion focused on the subject of Islamist youth and included some of the country’s most well-known examples – including Ibrahim Hudhaibi, Abdel Moneim Mahmoud and Ahmed Samir.

The gathering, which took place in Dokki, Cairo, was intended to be an extension of the many 140-character message conversations around politics, society and religion taking place in the Twitterverse, as young Egyptians explore the various paths for Egypt’s future.

The success of the event can be seen as a modern and technological manifestation of the will for democratic self-determination. A healthy public discourse is flourishing online and is now finding its way into social life.

Alaa Abd El Fattah (@alaa), who organised the event, said his primary intention was to help facilitate new conversations and new contacts for the participants.

“One day I was watching an Muslim Brotherhood leader on TV and Twitter was full of commentary on what he was saying,” El Fattah said. “I realised that all my Ikhwani friends have basically left the group or are highly critical of it.”

Despite it being the week of exams for local universities across Cairo, the venue was already over capacity 20 minutes before the gathering was scheduled to start.

While the main speakers were all from the Brotherhood, independant Salafis were also there, though in fewer numbers and with less of a concrete political platform.

The first half of the meeting consisted of El Fattah putting tough questions to his guests including: “Are you an Islamist?”, “Is Egypt an Islamist nation?” and “Why did you leave the Muslim Brotherhood?”

The answers to the final question highlighted the most pressing of several challenges facing the Brotherhood today – the growing divisions among its youth.

More than 70 per cent of the population in Egypt is under the age of 29, and they make up more than 80 per cent of the country’s unemployed citizens.

The Brotherhood’s youth may still be part of the organisation, but they are first and foremost part of a generation that, like the #TweetNadwa participants, interacts with a wide range of individuals and groups through the internet and social media as well as books and satellite television.

“The youth of the MB were the first to use the internet to communicate different political messages, at once displaying connection with their peers in terms of age and ideological affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood in terms of championing democratic government and loyalty to Islamic identity and ideals,” Sadiki said.

This generation is exposed to leftist, liberal and Islamic thinkers. This generation has struggled to find jobs for decades.

Large swaths of the Brotherhood’s youth have been inspired by the Justice and Development party in Turkey which just won a landslide victory in this month’s general elections.

Many of Egypt’s youth members ignored calls by the group’s elite members to boycott the Friday demonstrations that eventually led to Mubarak’s ousting. Instead, the youth joined other political parties and groups in Tahrir square, indicating that unity against the corruption of the Mubarak’s government trumped political divisions and strategies.

“TweetNadwa had the same magic we had in Tahrir. People were just happy we could be together,” El Fattah said.

“They disagreed, even discussed their fear of each other, but if you treat people with expectations that they’ll act as individuals, they will – and they will surprise you. If you insist on boxing them in categories, they will
eventually fit it comfortably.”

The general consensus among former and current Muslim Brotherhood youth was that they felt the organisation was limited in scope.

“There was a feeling that the Muslim Brotherhood is not big enough to contain their aspirations, and not relaxed enough to accept their questioning minds,” El Fattah said.

In June, the Brotherhood created the Freedom and Justice Party and announced that it was looking to create new alliances with liberal groups in the hopes of creating a path for a healthy democratic transition.

The move marked an effort to preserve their political positioning as the most popular political party at a time when divisions have been emerging primarily within the group’s youth members.

Can the Brotherhood appeal to Egyptian youth?

After years of political suppression, assassinations and the mass imprisonment of its members by Egypt’s government, the group is aiming to take measures to avoid international isolation.

“This is a very dangerous political period,” Vice President of Freedom and Justice Essam Al Arian said. “We want to pass the next few months safely with the help of others.”

This may lend some explanation to the recent news that the Brotherhood was aligning itself with the prominent liberal Wafd Party, which could very well increase its chances of winning a majority in parliament.

One of the Brotherhood’s younger members – who asked to remain anonymous due to what he called “extreme political sensitivities” within the group – said that the leaders of the Brotherhood are not concerned with a unified Egypt or a particularly prosperous Egypt, but simply with electoral victory for the Freedom and Justice Party.

“The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood shuns the culture of secrecy within the MB and this is part of the problems arising today,” Sadiki said.

“The Muslim Brotherhood prefers quiet politics.”

Islam Lotfi, who played an instrumental role in organising the protests that eventually ousted Mubarak, has joined other young members criticising party leaders, including Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie for claiming that the ousting of Mubarak from power could be seen as “divine retribution” for the jailing of members of the Brotherhood in years past.

“What the Supreme Guide said is not true, because members of other political waves were also detained, such as communists,” Lotfi, one of the younger members of the group, said.

Moreover, while many of the youth members are calling for reforms, including the democratisation of the political structure and increased representation for women – it remains unclear whether the leadership will fully support these proposals.

Despite the divisions between the elder, more traditional members and the youth, the group is likely to make significant gains. For years they have garnered support from the largely rural and poverty-stricken parts of the country where, much like Hamas has done in Gaza, they have launched many social welfare projects including healthcare and educational services, despite being banned from politics.

As the Brotherhood decentralises their power by seeking out alliances in order to appeal to broader segments of the population more divisions and internal conflicts within the group have emerged.

Although the Brotherhood announced that they would not be running any presidential candidates, several prominent Brotherhood members have recently announced their intention to run for president.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh announced his candidacy – in direct defiance of calls from group leaders forbidding any Brotherhood members from supporting the candidacy of a Brotherhood contender.

Despite efforts by the Brotherhood – and other groups based on an Islamic platform – to acknowledge the necessity of a civil state, wherein national unity must trump political rivalries, and where the people themselves are the source of all government authority, many are still wary that Islamist parties are looking to enforce strict interpretations of Islamic law.

The Brotherhood’s leadership has made it clear that their politics will be governed by Sharia, one way or another.

In June, Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood’s Deputy General Guide, said the group was planning to develop an Islamic studies centre, aiming to rebuild the principles of Islamic Sharia.

Also, in June, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie said that opposing an Islamic basis for Egyptian governance was morally wrong.

“An Islamic reference for a civil state is the only guarantee for all Egyptians, but to call for a civil state without an Islamic reference is contradictory and against ethics and morality,” Badie said.

For the Muslim Brotherhood, elections cannot come soon enough, so as to limit the time some of the newer parties running on Islamic platforms have to organise their campaigns and offer an alternative.

Ibrahim Houdaiby may have summed up the challenge facing the Brotherhood best in a recent interview with the Christian Science Monitor.

“The Brotherhood has two options. The first is to be a rigid organisation that insists on having only one legal political manifestation, and in that case the Brotherhood would eventually collapse.”

“The other is to be a more flexible organisation, allowing different political manifestations and retreating from the political domain to the civil domain and operating in the background of society to shape … social roles and so forth. In this case, it would grow more powerful. It would be able to capitalise as an organisation on the social capital.”

Ahmed Shihab Eldin is a journalist and multimedia producer who currently co-hosts The Stream on Al Jazeera English.

Islamophobe Dennis Prager Lectures Powers: The Left Is Naïve About Evil

Source

In his neverending effort to portray President Obama as too pro-Muslim (and all that connotes), Sean Hannity combined in one segment last night Obama’s recommendation that Israel and Palestine return to 1967 borders with his own supposedly prescient predictions of radical Islam taking over Egypt – a suggestion that Israel might meet the same fate thanks to Obama. Hannity was joined in that effort by Islamophobe Dennis Prager. Prager, you may recall, was censured by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s Executive Committee – a remarkable event considering that he was on the Council – for saying that Rep. Keith Ellison would undermine American civilization and make us more vulnerable to terrorism when he was sworn into Congress with a Koran. Never mind that more than four years later, our civilization is still intact and there has not been an uptick in terrorist attacks. That didn’t stop Prager from lecturing Kirsten Powers, the other guest, that, “Leftist and naïve are synonymous… The left is naïve. It is naïve about evil.”

Powers, who has inlaws in Egypt, started off by agreeing with Hannity that there’s a lot of radicalism in Egypt. She added that the Muslim Brotherhood is the most organized political party and is in the best standing to win in the upcoming elections, that there have been a lot of attacks on Coptic Christians, and that there’s a lot of chaos right now.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Egypt but I will point out that an imminent takeover by radical Islamicists does not appear to be certain. For example, in an article about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, The Guardian agrees the organization is “poised to prosper” but it also reports, “None of this looks like becoming the Islamist takeover feared by secularists. But it seems clear the role of Islam in Egyptian public life is going to be bigger.”

Rather than explore what’s actually happening in Egypt, Hannity’s next question made it clear that his real interest in the subject was using it to attack President Obama. Hannity said to Prager,

Dennis, this is somewhat troubling to me and maybe it sounds like I’m putting myself down here (actually, Hannity was patting himself on the back). If it was so clear as day and so simple for me to see this, how is it that our president, our State Department, our national security people, how did they get something so obvious? The polls show that 75% of Egyptians think that apostates should get the death penalty and they didn’t foresee this happening? How could they miss this?

As Hannity spoke, B-roll footage showed an angry mob of, presumably, Egyptians. But who knows? The implicit message from Hannity – later explicitly stated by Prager – was that all Middle East Muslims are alike and just itching to impose sharia law at any opportunity.

Prager said, “The reason is left-wing naiveté. Leftist and naïve are synonymous.” As he sneered about Tom Friedman writing about the “Arab Spring,” Prager boasted, “People like you and me and even Kirsten for that matter, who I understand doesn’t come from the right-wing side – nevertheless, people like us understand the Egyptian people don’t buy the same Jeffersonian, American values, Judeo-Christian values – any of the values that we have – the vast majority of Egyptians do not believe that there should be peace with Israel, believe that sharia should play a prominent role in Egypt’s life. But for the left, all they knew was our dictator was being removed and that’s a good thing.”

You might say that the right said the same thing about Saddam Hussein – except that we actually invaded to make his removal happen. Eight years later, we’re still there, still paying the cost in blood and treasure, despite then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assuring us that the whole operation would probably not take even six months. Or then-Vice President Cheney predicting weeks, not months. Cheney also predicted we’d be “greeted as liberators.”

Of course, that didn’t factor into either Prager or Hannity’s comments. But if they thought they had a Pat Caddell or a Doug Schoen in Powers, they must have been sorely disappointed. She interrupted Hannity’s diatribe about Egyptian mob attacks on reporters Anderson Cooper and Lara Logan before he inevitably used that to somehow tar Obama. She said, “The overall population in Cairo is actually fairly moderate, even the Muslims are fairly moderate. The problem is, is that because of the repressive government…”

Hannity interrupted her. “No, they’re not.”

Powers not only has personal knowledge of the situation in Egypt but she also served in the Clinton administration as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Public Affairs. She’s got real credibility. Hannity, on the other hand, has no credentials in international affairs.

Powers persisted. “Compared to Saudi Arabia or other places in the region, they are much more (moderate)… They don’t want to live under sharia law. They do not want to live under the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Hannity claimed that a Pew poll showed that most Egyptians want a Muslim government.

“That’s different,” Powers pointed out. She said that the population takes Islamic religion very seriously and wants the government to be founded in it but “that’s very different than sharia law.”

Naturally, Prager (who I’ll admit also has some international cred) disagreed. But he did so by slyly changing the subject away from Egypt to Islam in the Middle East as a whole. “It’s not different from sharia law. Of course, there are a handful of Muslims for whom that is true. But for the vast majority of Arab Muslims – and we’re talking about Islam within the Middle East right now – sharia is what a serious Muslim is about.”

Hannity segued to Obama’s Middle East speech and the visit from Benjamin Netanyahu. “The president talks about pre-67 borders. And I’m glad he got a lecture from (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu today because he needed one.” That’s right, the same Hannity who jumped to defend Mel Gibson, who has yet to apologize for hosting anti-Semite Andy Martin, and who welcomed anti-Semitic Hal Turner to his radio show – that Hannity is a big friend of Israel.

Prager agreed with Hannity and said, “I don’t think anybody saw it as disrespectful of the president of the United States.”

“I’ll bet he did,” Hannity said gleefully
Powers piped up. “I did.”

Prager went back to his original thesis. “The left is naïve. It is naïve about evil. It was naïve about evil under communism, it is naïve about evil whether it is in the figurehead of an Islamist. It is naïve about these things. If only Israel were to go to ’67 borders, then Palestinians would recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist. That will not happen.”

When it was her turn again, Powers said, “Netanyahu actually was disrespectful to (Obama) and I think it’s a problem. I don’t know why you’re enjoying him being disrespectful to the president.” She also got in a few words about naivete. “There’s a lot of naivete in the United States that actually can be referred to as ignorance about the Middle East.” She brought up Iraq as an example and added, “So to try to smear all people on the left as not understanding anything I think is inaccurate and there are a lot of people on the right also who are criticizing Obama for the fact that he wasn’t …getting behind the so-called Arab spring.”

For good measure, she confronted Hannity about the right-wing freak out and distortion of Obama’s comments about the 1967 borders which, she correctly noted, was a “starting point.”

In fact, while Prager smeared the left as “naive,” he and Hannity were promoting a simplistic, agenda-driven view of Egypt, Muslims, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East that could not be bothered with the kinds of details or nuance that Powers was offering. It was the same kind of thinking that got us into Iraq.

Watch the Video Here

Commentary: Senator Lindsey Graham On the Muslim Brotherhood

Ikhwanophobia

After watching the response of Senator Lindsey Graham on a question tickling the Middle East affairs, where the Senator talked about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and how much he is: ” suspicious of their agenda. ”
What we really need to say that the Senator Graham should listen from the Muslim Brotherhood, He seems to be very ignorant towards the political life in Egypt. In his small comment, Senator Graham addressed the young people of Egypt and said that: ““I don’t believe the young people, who went into the squares throughout Egypt and risked their lives, want to replace the current government with something more oppressive”
For me, I don’t believe the Senator Graham knew about the combination of the young people who went into squares in Egypt, those young people who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberal parties, the leftist parties, without being that “suspicious” of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda.
I’m also so suspicious about Mr Graham’s response if the young people of Egypt, chose the Muslim Brotherhood in the coming elections, how will Mr Graham’s act against that? and will he support Obama’s foreign policy then?
Muslim Brotherhood proved through their long history that they don’t have any hidden agendas, and the role of the Mubarak’s regime and the other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East was to intimidate the west and the international public opinion from the Muslim Brotherhood.
My advice to Mr Graham is to listen to the Muslim Brotherhood, not to listen about the Muslim Brotherhood, and to set with them at the same table to discuss the “agendas” of the Muslim Brotherhood. These discussions will -for sure- change Mr Graham’s attitude against the Muslim Brotherhood, or at least, will make him think twice before being so suspicious about the MB agenda.

Role of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Unclear

Source
By Daniella Peled – The Arab Spring

Religious movement expected be major player in coming elections, but its policies remain ambiguous.

The Muslim Brotherhood, MB, has long been a leading opposition force in Egypt. Following the fall of the Mubarak regime, it is expected to become a major political player, but there remain serious concerns over its possible agenda. Issandr El-Amrani, a leading Cairo-based journalist and blogger, looks at public attitudes towards the movement.

As Egypt prepares for the transition to democracy, is the MB perceived as an emerging political force?

A lot of people are questioning what the political map is going to look like and there is nervousness over the possibility of the success of the MB. They are the only well-organised opposition group and look like they might dominate the coming elections.

There are fears among the elite and among the Coptic Christians too – legitimate fears, because the MB are unclear as to their position on a number of issues. Do they advocate a system of Islamic punishments like they do in Saudi Arabia? How exactly do they envision the role of non-Muslim minorities in public life?

The MB is very dedicated to the issue of Palestine and some people are nervous that Egypt could find itself isolated as a result of this stance. It is not that people love Israel here but the risks associated with the MB stance are severe, for instance, losing United States support and financial aid, which we simply can’t afford.

There are some things, such as opposition to the president being a non-Muslim or a woman, and the provision that the al-Azahr Islamic university play a supervisory role over legislation passed by parliament, to ensure it is Sharia-compliant, that they have shown willingness to change. They clearly don’t want to scare people off.

But there is a great deal of ambiguity, and the MB has been sending contradictory messages.

For instance, since the fall of Mubarak, demonstrations have continued, with people angry over the slow pace of change by the army. The MB pledged support for the ongoing protests. Yet two weeks ago, the MB distanced itself from them, arguing that the army needs to be supported through this period of transition.

And following recent renewed violence during Friday protests in Tahrir Square – in which two people were killed and more than 70 injured – the MB made it clear they did not want to antagonise the army. They are hedging their bets as they work on revising their political programme, which remains controversial.

They do also have to be careful because the law still says that there can’t be a religious political party, and it is still unclear what they can get away with.

As the MB transforms itself into an official political party, are there any internal divisions or tensions emerging?

The MB announced that it will form a Freedom and Justice party and is in the process of arranging the paperwork to make it into a legal entity. They are still arguing over how many seats they will contest – some elements want to go for 30 per cent, while others are more ambitious and say they should compete for 50 per cent.

They do seem confident that they are going to do well, as they are disciplined and well-organised, in contrast to the secular groups. But there are splits within the MB too, and offshoots opposing the current direction of the leadership. One, for instance, is led by Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Ibrahim Zafarani, and is gaining the support of more liberal, progressive elements and appealing more to a younger following. It’s still not clear, though, where these offshoots might be heading.

The MB presents itself as always having had a moderate message. They argue that they are not intending to revolutionise society or to include radical new policies – they don’t even necessarily aim to win a majority of seats, and they currently still say they are not going to run a presidential candidate.

Their aim, as they see it, is not to get seats in the cabinet or to form the next government, but to build an Islamic society from the ground up. They want an overall ideological reform of society – first in Egypt, but also spreading to the rest of the Middle-East, resulting in an Islamic model. This obviously scares people, particularly as there are certainly totalitarian aspects to this vision.

While the MB presents itself as a moderate grouping, are there concerns about more extremist elements within the organisation?

No matter how urbane or sophisticated some of the MB leaders may be, there is a worry about the base of the movement. This includes Wahhabi influence, which is a fundamentally undemocratic movement.

Amongst the ranks of the MB are also those with ultra-conservative views which shock many Egyptians even though Egypt is a conservative society. These include things like the full-face veil – something you barely saw in Egypt 20 years ago and is now quite common.

There is widespread acceptance that the MB has the right to form a political party. I know many members of the MB, and they are very respectable people, they have a sincere wish to do something for their country, but I don’t agree with their views.  

Daniella Peled is an IWPR editor.

Islamophobia Rears its Ugly Head Following Foreign Office Visit to MB

Ikhwanweb

Triggering again the face of Islamophobia was the recent visit Thursday by a delegation from the British Foreign Office, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s administrative office in Alexandria.

The visit led by Consul-General Marie- Louise Archer and Foreign Office Relations Coordinator Martin Hetringen was slammed by the Quilliam Foundation think tank in London which was based to allegedly counter- terrorism.

The meeting which was amiable according to Archer was part of British efforts to increase cooperation and accepting cultural differences with Egypt’s political and intellectual trends after the January 25 revolution. It obviously worried trends who opposed the MB participating in the political arena

According to James Brandon, head of research at Quilliam admittedly the Brotherhood is a major player in Egypt and it is not unreasonable for the British government to meet with its representatives. Demonstrating a model example of both Islamophobia and Ikhwanophobia however he continued, accusing the MB of masterminding the engagement ’to further its own anti-Western agenda and to sideline more liberal Muslim voices adding the efforts were to whitewash its own extremist beliefs.

It has been repeatedly reiterated by the MB and those who understand the group that it has and always will promote nothing but peace and does not nor will resort to violence hence it is a moderate group and the fears are unfounded. Furthermore MB leader Hamdy Hassan said the meeting had been a good opportunity to exchange views and discuss the group’s view on the forthcoming elections indicating there are neither hidden agendas nor plans. He told the delegation that the MB does not discriminate among presidential candidates and discussed the group’s party platform and position with regard to women and Copts. He asserted the group seeks to participate not dominate and it is from the people and for the people.

Although Brandon denounced the British government stressing it had no idea on how to engage critically with the group regarding it as the authentic voice of the Arab street a spokesman for the Foreign Office has confirmed that it will continue to have contact with the MB who are a very likely to be part of the current political dialogue in Egypt.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: Testimony by Dr. Nathan Brown

By Dr. Nathan Brown

Source

As Egypt transitions to democracy, the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is looking to play a more active role in the nation’s political life. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Nathan J. Brown explains why the Brotherhood does not pose a security threat to the United States and should be welcomed as a legitimate political actor.

U.S. Policy Recommendations:

“There is every reason to be interested in the Brotherhood’s myriad (and surprisingly diverse) country-based movements, but there is no reason to fear it as a menacing global web,” concludes Brown.

Download the full Testimony

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches

At February’s Conservative Political Action Conference, a student from the group Youth for Western Civilization at Liberty University asked members of a panel titled “The Shari’ah Challenge to the West”: “Are we going to see a rise of Islamic Europe, and America just sits there on its own… are we actually going to win?” Another audience member asked, “what recourse does America have as a country… to deal with that problem with a completely won Islamist population? What recourse do we have at home and abroad?”

That these questions were treated as legitimate lines of inquiry at a conference that serves as a dog and pony show for Republican presidential candidates demonstrates the success of a cottage industry of anti-Muslim fearmongers (politicians, religious groups, ministers, self-styled national security experts, former government officials, retired military officers, pundits, and writers) who have cultivated a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that totalitarian Islamic radicals are bent on infiltrating America, displacing the Constitution, and subverting Western-style democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.

As Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, opens his hearings into “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” this week, these conspiracy theories will take center stage in the halls of the United States Congress in the latest and most blatant McCarthy-esque twist in the rising level of Islamophobia in the United States. Anti-Muslim diatribe and activity have reached what Marshall Breger, a law professor at Catholic University, an Orthodox Jew and a Republican, has described as a “season of singular national distemper where, for reasons best understood by social psychiatrists, the American people have entered into what can only be described as ‘open season’ on Islam.”

The conspiracy theorists succeed by using self-styled, unqualified “experts” to stoke fears of secret plots of Muslims to take over America and replace its Constitution with shari’ah law. That they even point to shari’ah, says Lena Salaymeh, a Harvard-trained lawyer now working on her doctorate in Islamic legal history at Berkeley, is evidence of their ignorance about Islamic law, politics, and culture.

“There’s a cottage industry in the West of people who pretend to be experts on Islam, who are getting a lot of time in the media,” Salaymeh points out. “It wouldn’t pass in any other context that you would get people who really know nothing turning into experts. But it happens in this context because they’re saying what people want to hear.”

If one untangles what that cottage industry is saying, one can detect five claims of the shari’ah conspiracy theory: that the goal of Islam is totalitarianism; that the mastermind of bringing this totalitarianism to the world is the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamic groups from Hamas to the Islamic Society of North America; that these organizations within the United States are traitors in league with the American left and are bent on acts of sedition against America; that the majority of mosques in the United States are run by imams who promote such sedition; and that through this fifth column, shari’ah law has already infiltrated the United States and could result in a complete takeover if not stopped.

What Shari’ah Really Is

In an interview with the Center for American Progress, Intisar Rabb, a member of the law faculty at Boston College Law School, explains that: “Shari’ah is the ideal law of God according to Islam… Shari’ah has tremendous diversity, as jurists and learned scholars figure out and articulate what that law is…”

In pre-colonial times, Salaymeh added, jurists—legal thinkers—would determine fiqh, the understanding of what divine law is based on their interpretation of religious texts. It’s important to note, however, that because human interpretations of divine revelation vary, and because there’s no central Islamic authority, there is no fixed legal definition of shari’ah.

In post-colonial times in the Middle East and North Africa, as a means of “coalesc[ing] popular support against imperialism,” Salaymeh explains, some activists promoted “Islamic unity,” in which use of “Islamic law” became a popular rhetoric. Rabb, too, noted, “Historically, Shari’ah served as a means for political dissent against arbitrary rule.”

“So shari’ah became a battle cry of resistance,” Salaymeh says. “It’s used by certain political groups to claim they are not being represented, or that their government is not representative of the people. So it’s more about representation and identity than it is about specific codes or laws.”

Even though some political activists in Middle Eastern and North African countries promote “Islamic law” in reaction to the imposition of European-style government and legal systems on them, there is no single school of thought on what shari’ah, or divine law, is or means—and there is no single, accepted legal code. “If Islamic law were some book where you could look to it and cite to it, and say, it says right here that Western democracy is bad, then maybe that would make sense. But that’s just ridiculous… This claim of Islam’s incompatibility with democracy has nothing to do with anything historical, or anything in legal texts.”

The cottage industry, she says, points to some aspects of Wahhabism, such as requirements on dress codes, and portray that as representative of Islamic thought. “The problem is, I don’t think that they understand that Islamic law means different things to different people in different places. None of these Wahhabi interpretations of Islam are applicable or relevant to all of the world’s Muslims, most of whom are not Arab, it’s important to remember.” (Most American Muslims are not of Arab descent either; according to a 2007 Pew poll, of the 65% of American Muslims who were born abroad only 24% were born in Arab countries.)

That strict Wahhabism—which the Saudi government helps promote and fund in and outside of Saudi Arabia—is not representative of Islam globally. Such Wahhabism, according to Salaymeh, is an “extremist strain” on the periphery of the Muslim community. “In a weird way,” she says, “the neo-cons are in dialogue with the extremists and are legitimating the extremists’ position by refusing to recognize that there are other interpretations of Islam and experiences of Islam that are not the Wahhabi one.”

You Can View The Whole article Here: Religion Dispatches

The Muslim Brotherhood After Mubarak

What the Brotherhood Is and How it Will Shape the Future

Carrie Rosefsky Wickham

With the end of the Mubarak era looming on the horizon, speculation has turned to whether the Muslim Brotherhood will dominate the new Egyptian political landscape. As the largest, most popular, and most effective opposition group in Egypt, it will undoubtedly seek a role in creating a new government, but the consequences of this are uncertain. Those who emphasize the risk of “Islamic tyranny” aptly note that the Muslim Brotherhood originated as an anti-system group dedicated to the establishment of sharia rule; committed acts of violence against its opponents in the pre-1952 era; and continues to use anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric. But portraying the Brotherhood as eager and able to seize power and impose its version of sharia on an unwilling citizenry is a caricature that exaggerates certain features of the Brotherhood while ignoring others, and underestimates the extent to which the group has changed over time.
Founded by Hasan al-Banna in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has had the longest continuous existence of any contemporary Islamist group. It was initially established not as a political party but as a da’wa (religious outreach) association that aimed to cultivate pious and committed Muslims through preaching, social services, and spreading religious commitment and integrity by example. The group saw its understanding of Islam as the only “true” one and condemned partisanship as a source of national weakness. It called on Egyptians to unite to confront the forces of Zionism and imperialism and pursue economic development and social justice.
The Free Officers’ Movement, which seized power in Egypt in 1952, was influenced by the Brotherhood and shared many of its concerns. But the new regime headed by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser did not support the Brotherhood’s call for sharia rule and viewed the group as a potential rival. After a member of the Brotherhood attempted to assassinate Nasser in 1954, Nasser had the pretext he needed to try to crush the organization — interning thousands of its members in desert concentration camps and forcing others into exile or underground.
The leaders of the Brotherhood learned very different lessons from their experience during the Nasser years. Some, like the Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, became radicalized and concluded that the only way to confront the vast coercive powers of the modern state was through jihad. Hasan al-Hudaybi, who succeeded Banna as the Brotherhood’s General Guide, or leader, advocated moving toward greater judiciousness and caution. Umar Tilmisani, who succeeded Hudaybi in 1972, renounced violence as a domestic strategy altogether when then President Anwar el-Sadat allowed the group to join the political fold.
Beginning in 1984, the Brotherhood started running candidates in elections for the boards of Egypt’s professional syndicates and for seats in parliament — first as junior partners to legal parties and later, when electoral laws changed, as independents. Some of the group’s leaders opposed participation, fearing that the Brotherhood would be forced to compromise its principles. But Tilmisani and others justified political participation as an extension of the Brotherhood’s historic mission and assured critics that it would not detract from the Brotherhood’s preaching and social services.
Although the Brotherhood entered the political system in order to change it, it ended up being changed by the system. Leaders who were elected to professional syndicates engaged in sustained dialogue and cooperation with members of other political movements, including secular Arab nationalists. Through such interactions, Islamists and Arabists found common ground in the call for an expansion of public freedoms, democracy, and respect for human rights and the rule of law, all of which, they admitted, their movements had neglected in the past.
By the early 1990s, many within the Brotherhood were demanding internal reform. Some pushed for revising the Brotherhood’s ideology, including its positions on party pluralism and women’s rights. Others criticized the old guard’s monopoly of power within the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, demanding greater transparency, accountability, and stricter conformity with the internal by-laws governing the selection of leaders and the formation of policy.
In 1996, increasingly frustrated with the old guard’s inflexible leadership, some prominent members of the “reformist” wing broke from the Brotherhood and sought a government license to form a new political party, Hizb al-Wasat (Center Party). Wasat leaders who used to be in the Brotherhood, along with a few reformers who remained in its fold, helped launch the cross-partisan Movement for Change, known by its slogan, Kefaya (Enough) between 2004 and 2005. They worked with secular democracy activists on such projects as creating a civic charter and a constitution, preparing for the time when a new democratic government came to power. During the past week of protests, members of these cross-partisan groups were able to quickly reactivate their networks to help form a united opposition front. These members will likely play a key role in drafting Egypt’s new constitution.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood itself has been stunted in comparison to its analogues in Morocco and Turkey because of its constant vulnerability to repression combined with the parochial mindset of its aging leaders. Nevertheless, important changes, representing a departure from the group’s anti-system past, have occurred. Over the last 30 years, Brotherhood leaders have become habituated to electoral competition and representation, developed new professional competencies and skills, and forged closer ties with Egyptian activists, researchers, journalists, and politicians outside the Islamist camp. Calls for self-critique and self-reform have opened heated debates on policy matters that were once left to the discretion of the General Guide and his close advisers. And although the Brotherhood was never a monolith, its leadership is more internally diverse today than ever before.
The factions defy easy categorization, but there seem to be three major groups. The first may be called the da’wafaction. It is ideologically conservative and strongly represented in the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau and local branch offices. Its main source of power is its control over bureaucratic operations and allocation of resources. Because it has also managed to control the socialization of new recruits, it has cultivated loyalty among the youth, particularly in rural areas. The second faction, who we might call pragmatic conservatives, seems to be the group’s mainstream wing. This group combines religious conservatism with a belief in the value of participation and engagement. Most of the Brotherhood’s members with legislative experience, including such long-time parliamentarians as Saad al-Katatni and Muhammad Mursi, fall into this category. The final faction is the group of reformers who chose to remain with the Brotherhood rather than breaking off. Advocating a progressive interpretation of Islam, this trend is weakly represented in the Guidance Bureau and does not have a large following among the Brotherhood’s rank and file. Yet ‘Abd al-Mun’em Abu Futuh, arguably the Brotherhood’s most important reformist figure, has become an important model and source of inspiration for a new generation of Islamist democracy activists — inside and outside the Muslim Brotherhood. Interestingly, Futuh first suggested that the Brotherhood throw its weight behind a secular reform candidate last February, prefiguring the Brotherhood’s support for Mohamed El Baradei, the opposition’s de facto leader, today.
Individuals affiliated with the reformist faction of the Brotherhood, whether still active in the group or not, appear to be the most involved in leading Egypt’s popular uprising. It is not surprising, for example, that the reformist blogger Mustafa Naggar is one of the chief spokesman for El Baradei’s National Coalition for Change. Still, the Brotherhood’s participation has been low profile. It did not officially mobilize until January 28, days after the protests began. And unlike in previous demonstrations, when members of the Brotherhood held up copies of the Koran and shouted slogans such as “Islam is the solution,” religious symbols have been conspicuously absent this time.
The Brotherhood knows from experience that the greater its role, the higher the risk of a violent crackdown — as indicated by the harsh wave of repression that followed its strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary elections. Its immediate priority is to ensure that President Hosni Mubarak steps down and that the era of corruption and dictatorship associated with his rule comes to an end. To achieve that, the Brotherhood, along with other opposition groups, is backing El Baradei. The Brotherhood also knows that a smooth transition to a democratic system will require an interim government palatable to the military and the West, so it has indicated that it would not seek positions in the new government itself. The Brotherhood is too savvy, too pragmatic, and too cautious to squander its hard-earned reputation among Egyptians as a responsible political actor or invite the risk of a military coup by attempting to seize power on its own.
Still, it is unclear whether the group will continue to exercise pragmatic self-restraint down the road or whether its more progressive leaders will prevail. Such reformers may be most welcome among the other opposition groups when they draft a new constitution and establish the framework for new elections, but they do not necessarily speak for the group’s senior leadership or the majority of its rank and file. It remains to be seen whether the Brotherhood as an organization — not only individual members — will accept a constitution that does not at least refer to sharia; respect the rights of all Egyptians to express their ideas and form parties; clarify its ambiguous positions on the rights of women and non-Muslims; develop concrete programs to address the nation’s toughest social and economic problems; and apply the same pragmatism it has shown in the domestic arena to issues of foreign policy, including relations with Israel and the West. Over time, other parties — including others with an Islamist orientation — may provide the Brotherhood with some healthy competition and an impetus to further reform itself.
The Brotherhood has demonstrated that it is capable of evolving over time, and the best way to strengthen its democratic commitments is to include it in the political process, making sure there are checks and balances in place to ensure that no group can monopolize state power and that all citizens are guaranteed certain freedoms under the law. In the foreign policy domain, the Brotherhood rails against “U.S. and Zionist domination,” demands the recognition of Palestinian rights, and may one day seek to revise the terms of Egypt’s relationship with Israel through constitutional channels. The Brotherhood will likely never be as supportive of U.S. and Israeli interests in the region as Mubarak was. Yet here too, the best way for the United States to minimize the risk associated with the likely increase in its power is to encourage and reward judiciousness and pragmatism. With a track record of nearly 30 years of responsible behavior (if not rhetoric) and a strong base of support, the Muslim Brotherhood has earned a place at the table in the post-Mubarak era. No democratic transition can succeed without it.
CARRIE ROSEFSKY WICKHAM is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University.
Copyright © 2002-2010 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

Five myths about the Muslim Brotherhood

Washington Post | By Lorenzo Vidino

Even before Hosni Mubarak gave in to the throngs in Tahrir Square and stepped down as Egypt’s president on Feb. 11, officials in Western capitals were debating what role the Muslim Brotherhood would play in a new Egypt and a changing Middle East. Yet much of what we know – or think we know – about the group’s ambitions, beliefs and history is clouded by misperceptions.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a global organization.

1Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood saw its ideas quickly spread throughout the Arab world and beyond. Today, groups in more than 80 countries trace their ideologies to the Brotherhood, but these entities do not form a cohesive unit. Globally, the Brotherhood is more a school of thought than an official organization of card-carrying members.

Attempts to create a more formal global structure have failed, and the movement instead has taken on various forms. Where it is tolerated, as in Jordan, it functions as a political party; where persecuted, as in Syria, it survives underground; and in the Palestinian territories, it took a peculiar turn and became Hamas.

Though they interact through a network of personal, financial and ideological ties, Brotherhood entities operate independently, and each pursues its goals as it deems appropriate. What binds them is a deep belief in Islam as a way of life that, in the long term, they hope to turn into a political system, using different methods in different places.

The Brotherhood will dominate the new Egypt.

2With most political forces in Egypt today discredited or disorganized, many assume that the Brotherhood’s well-oiled political machine will play a major role in the country’s future.

This is not far-fetched, yet there are reasons to believe that the group will hardly dominate post-Mubarak Egypt. When I interviewed members of the Brotherhood’s Shura Council in 2009, they estimated that about 60 percent of Egyptians supported the group – seeing it as the only viable opposition to Mubarak – but that only 20 percent or so would support it in a hypothetical free election. And even that might have been optimistic: A poll of Egyptians by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy after Mubarak’s fall found that only 15 percent of respondents approved of the Brotherhood, while the group’s leaders received barely 1 percent in a presidential straw vote.

Over the past decade, aging hard-liners and a second generation of 50-somethings have wrestled for leadership of the Brotherhood. Then there are the younger cadres, which took part in the protest movement against Mubarak and deplored their leaders’ late participation in it. How these divisions develop will determine the role of the Brotherhood in Egyptian politics.

The Brotherhood seeks to impose a draconian versionof sharia law.

3All Brotherhood factions will now push to increase the influence of sharia – Islamic law – in Egypt. However, the generational battle will determine what vision of sharia they will pursue.

The old guard’s motto is still “the Koran is our constitution.” The second generation speaks of human rights and compares itself to Europe’s Christian Democrats – embracing democracy but keeping a religious identity. The third generation, especially in urban areas, seems to endorse this approach, even if skeptics contend that younger militants are simply offering a moderate facade to the West.

So far, the old guard is prevailing. The Brotherhood’s first major political platform, released in 2007, paid lip service to democracy and stated that women and non-Muslims could not occupy top government posts, and gave a body of unelected sharia experts veto power over new laws. How long this old guard remains in control will shape the group’s positions on sharia’s most debated aspects, from women’s rights to religious freedoms.

The Muslim Brotherhoodhas close ties to al-Qaeda.

4Historically, yes. But recently, those ties have frayed.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Brotherhood was brutally repressed by the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Understanding that violence against Nasser was a losing proposition, most of the group opted for nonviolent opposition, seeking to Islamize society through grass-roots education and mainstream politics.

But a smaller wing, led by theologian Sayyid Qutb, opted for violence. This faction argued that Islamization from below was too slow and would be impeded by local and foreign powers. For generations, Qutb’s idea of religiously justified violence has inspired jihadists worldwide. Several al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, were influenced by the Brotherhood early in life, only to grow disillusioned with the organization later on.

While the Brotherhood has not completely rejected violence – supporting its use in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan and other places where it believes Muslims are under attack – the two groups have recently clashed over tactics and theology. Al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, even wrote a book attacking the group for replacing bullets with ballots.

Washington can’t workwith the Brotherhood.

5U.S. and Brotherhood officials have taken tough public stances against each other recently. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the Brotherhood a “nefarious element” in Egyptian politics, while Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badi said America is “heading toward its demise.”

But posturing aside, there may be room for engagement with the Brotherhood’s more moderate players. It has happened before: Since early in the Eisenhower administration, parts of the U.S. government have reached out to the group, seeing its religious message as a potential bulwark against communism. It wasn’t a true partnership, but during the Cold War, Washington and the Brothers occasionally put distrust aside to establish limited cooperation.

The White House took criticism last month when it said it would be open to a role for the Brotherhood in Egyptian politics, if it rejected violence and accepted democratic goals. But even after Sept. 11, 2001, some elements within the CIA and the State Department toyed with the idea of working with the Brotherhood against al-Qaeda, convinced that only radicals could defeat other radicals.

Even if Washington and the Brotherhood find ways to live with each other, big foreign-policy breakthroughs are unlikely. Wielding more power in Egypt could make the Brotherhood more pragmatic, but opposition to U.S. policy in the region is the cornerstone of its agenda – and that probably won’t change.

Lorenzo Vidino, a visiting fellow at the Rand Corporation, is the author of “The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West.”

Why Is it Impossible to Call it “Islamic”?

Abdelrahman Ayyash

P.S: This article was written in the middle of the Egyptian revolution.

*Photo By: Hossam Al Hamalawy

Two Christian protesters are walking around a group of Muslim worshippers to protect them. This is a very common scene now in Tahrir square.

During the last 11 days, the Egyptian people have started their very first public revolution in their long history. Mubarak’s regime, which suppressed the Egyptian people for more than 29 years, is now on the edge of an abyss. Egyptians pushed the regime to this edge by protesting through the last two weeks all over Egypt with about 10 million demonstrators.

The nationwide protests were announced by the administration of the Facebook page: “We are all Khaled Said”. Khaled Said is a 22-year-old youth who was tortured to death by two police informants in Alexandria. The administration of the Khaled Said page announced the protests on January 25th which is Police Day in Egypt. The page of Khaled Said has more than 470.000 members.

“We are all Khaled Said” administration was publicly unknown till last Friday when the state security arrested “Wael Ghonim” the head of Marketing at Google Middle East. The police transferred Wael to an unknown place and since then Wael has completely disappeared.

“Wael Ghonim was the admin of Khaled Said’s page” said an activist from Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. “Wael is a conservative liberal,” the activist continued.

Those who know Wael Ghonim, believe that he does not belong to any political parties in Egypt. After Khaled Said’s case, Wael became one of the most important people in Egypt, calling people to march throughout Egypt, Tens of thousands of Egyptian youth participated in a number of protests that Khaled Said’s admin called for.

The youth who participated in Khaled Said’s marches knew about the marches from Khaled Said’s page. The only commonality between them was that they all have a Facebook account! They did not belong to any political party; most of them have no previous political experience and the most important thing is that they were really expressing a new generation of Egyptian youth that believe in civic engagement as a solution for a lot of Egypt’s problems.

During Friday Prayer from Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said before thousands of people:
“Today’s events in the North of Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and certain other countries have another sense for the Iranian nation. They have special meaning. This is the same as ‘Islamic awakening,’ which is the result of the victory of the big revolution of the Iranian nation.” The Supreme Leader was quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

The Iranian supreme leader’s quote is very dangerous from more than one perspective:
First: The Iranian leader said that the Tunisians and Egyptians “inspired their revolution from the Islamic revolution in Iran”, which is absurd! The Tunisian revolution was very different, and the Egyptian experience was built on a very different basis.

Egyptians started the uprising in a very different way. This is a Zero-leaders revolution; there is no one leader for this revolution, and we have no Egyptian Khomainy!
On the other hand, no one can say that the Egyptian revolution was inspired by any other revolution. This is Khaled Said’s revolution, and it is owned by all those who were tortured to death by Mubarak’s regime.
Second: This statement from Khamenei is sending a very wrong message to the west about Islamism in Egypt.

As we know, the most influential opposition movement in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is used as a scarecrow for the west to support the autocratic regimes in the region.

If we are going to document the revolution, we would say that the revolution started with the invitation from Khaled Said page’s administration to sweep Egypt with protests on January 25. The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t participate in the demonstrations against the regime till Friday January 28, So, It’s unjust to say that the Muslim Brotherhood owns this revolution.

Clearly, the Muslim Brotherhood would be honored if they were a part of forcing Mubarak to step down, but the truth is that the Egyptian youth made the first move, and the “traditional” opposition followed the movement of the youth and participated in the protests and gave them very powerful support.

This traditional opposition does not only include the MB, but also includes other opposition parties in Egypt (i.e. Wafd Party, Tagamo’ Party, Ghad Party and Gabha Party) as well as all the non-Islamic partiesl.
In a phone call with Khaled Hamza, the editor in chief of Ikhwanweb.com, the official English website for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, he commented on khamini’s speech by saying: “This is the Egyptian people’s revolution. No one can claim that he has the upper hand in this revolution”.

When you enter Tahrir square, you will nott find any of MB slogans. It is clear that there are thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members in the square, but when you come closer, you will see what the Muslim Brotherhood members are doing. The Muslim Brotherhood is supporting protesters with logistic support, food and medical aid.

You will see that the Muslim Brotherhood is not dominating the protests when you notice the religious protesters praying and the Copts are protecting them from the mobs. You will see unveiled women standing beside those wearing the veil, chanting with one voice.

You will know what it means when you see the leftist artist standing beside the Muslim Brotherhood activist and chanting against the Mubarak regime. It is the first protest in the history of Egypt that gathers every color of the political spectrum for one goal: the departure of Mubarak and his regime.

Mohammed Badei, the chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, stated that the MB will not participate in the coming presidential elections. The Muslim Brotherhood is not interested in being in power in Egypt. This reassuring message should be delivered to the west.

The role of western politicians right now is to rethink their stance concerning the Muslim Brotherhood, the moderate Islamic movement in Egypt, which won one fifth of the PA seats in the 2005 Parliamentary elections. Undoubtedly, the coming alternative in Egypt will never be worse than Mubarak’s regime, Even if this alternative was the Muslim Brotherhood.

Noam Chomsky: It’s not radical Islam that worries the US — it’s independence

Noam Chomsky | The Guardian

“The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies “are quickly losing their influence”. The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.

Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt’s vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan’s dictators and President Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).

“The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control,” says Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. “With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground.”

Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.

The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against “a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems”, ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.

Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks “documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren’t asleep at the switch” — indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)

“America should give Assange a medal,” says a headline in the Financial Times, where Gideon Rachman writes: “America’s foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the US on any given issue is usually the private position as well.”

In this view, WikiLeaks undermines “conspiracy theorists” who question the noble motives Washington proclaims.

Godec’s cable supports these judgments — at least if we look no further. If we do,, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec’s information in hand, Washington provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere.

Heilbrunn’s exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.

Unmentioned is what the population thinks — easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).

Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington’s policies that a majority (57%) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, “there is nothing wrong, everything is under control” (as Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored — unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.

Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington’s nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of “legal and constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya.”

The embassy concluded that “there is no doubt that the military, supreme court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch”. Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.

Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.

The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also “risks destabilising the Pakistani state” and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn’s words) — while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.

Noam Chomsky: “This is the Most Remarkable Regional Uprising that I Can Remember”

Source

AMY GOODMAN: For analysis of the Egyptian uprising and its implications for the Middle East and beyond, we’re joined now by the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books, including his latest, Hopes and Prospects.
Noam, welcome to Democracy Now! Your analysis of what’s happening now in Egypt and what it means for the Middle East?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, what’s happening is absolutely spectacular. The courage and determination and commitment of the demonstrators is remarkable. And whatever happens, these are moments that won’t be forgotten and are sure to have long-term consequences, as the fact that they overwhelmed the police, took Tahrir Square, are staying there in the face of organized pro-Mubarak mobs, organized by the government to try to either drive them out or to set up a situation in which the army will claim to have to move in to restore order and then to maybe install some kind of military rule, whatever. It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen. But the events have been truly spectacular. And, of course, it’s all over the Middle East. In Yemen, in Jordan, just about everywhere, there are the major consequences.
The United States, so far, is essentially following the usual playbook. I mean, there have been many times when some favored dictator has lost control or is in danger of losing control. There’s a kind of a standard routine — Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, strongly supported by the United States and Britain, Suharto: keep supporting them as long as possible; then, when it becomes unsustainable — typically, say, if the army shifts sides — switch 180 degrees, claim to have been on the side of the people all along, erase the past, and then make whatever moves are possible to restore the old system under new names. That succeeds or fails depending on the circumstances.
And I presume that’s what’s happening now. They’re waiting to see whether Mubarak can hang on, as it appears he’s intending to do, and as long as he can, say, “Well, we have to support law and order, regular constitutional change,” and so on. If he cannot hang on, if the army, say, turns against him, then we’ll see the usual routine played out. Actually, the only leader who has been really forthright and is becoming the most — maybe already is — the most popular figure in the region is the Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan, who’s been very straight and outspoken.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to play for you what President Obama had to say yesterday.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We have spoken out on behalf of the need for change. After his speech tonight, I spoke directly to President Mubarak. He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that a change must take place. Indeed, all of us who are privileged to serve in positions of political power do so at the will of our people. Through thousands of years, Egypt has known many moments of transformation. The voices of the Egyptian people tell us that this is one of those moments, this is one of those times. Now, it is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders. Only the Egyptian people can do that. What is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak, is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama speaking yesterday in the White House. Noam Chomsky, your response to what President Obama said, the disappointment of many that he didn’t demand that Mubarak leave immediately? More importantly, the role of the United States, why the U.S. would have any say here, when it comes to how much it has supported the regime?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Obama very carefully didn’t say anything. Mubarak would agree that there should be an orderly transition, but to what? A new cabinet, some minor rearrangement of the constitutional order — it’s empty. So he’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides.
The U.S. has an overwhelmingly powerful role there. Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first. Obama himself has been highly supportive of Mubarak. It’s worth remembering that on his way to that famous speech in Cairo, which was supposed to be a conciliatory speech towards the Arab world, he was asked by the press — I think it was the BBC — whether he was going to say anything about what they called Mubarak’s authoritarian government. And Obama said, no, he wouldn’t. He said, “I don’t like to use labels for folks. Mubarak is a good man. He has done good things. He has maintained stability. We will continue to support him. He is a friend.” And so on. This is one of the most brutal dictators of the region, and how anyone could have taken Obama’s comments about human rights seriously after that is a bit of a mystery. But the support has been very powerful in diplomatic dimensions. Military — the planes flying over Tahrir Square are, of course, U.S. planes. The U.S. is the — has been the strongest, most solid, most important supporter of the regime. It’s not like Tunisia, where the main supporter was France. They’re the primary guilty party there. But in Egypt, it’s clearly the United States, and of course Israel. Israel is — of all the countries in the region, Israel, and I suppose Saudi Arabia, have been the most outspoken and supportive of the Mubarak regime. In fact, Israeli leaders were angry, at least expressed anger, that Obama hadn’t taken a stronger stand in support of their friend Mubarak.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what this means for the Middle East, Noam Chomsky. I mean, we’re talking about the massive protests that have taken place in Jordan, to the point where King Abdullah has now dismissed his cabinet, appointed a new prime minister. In Yemen there are major protests. There is a major protest called for Syria. What are the implications of this, the uprising from Tunisia to Egypt now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, this is the most remarkable regional uprising that I can remember. I mean, it’s sometimes compared with Eastern Europe, but that’s not much of a comparison. For one thing, in this case, there’s no counterpart to Gorbachev among the — in the United States or other great powers supporting the dictatorships. That’s a huge difference. Another is that in the case of Eastern Europe, the United States and its allies followed the timeworn principle that democracy is fine, at least up to a point, if it accords with strategic and economic objectives, so therefore acceptable in enemy domains, but not in our own. That’s a well-established principle, and of course that sharply differentiates these two cases. In fact, about the only moderately reasonable comparison would be to Romania, where Ceausescu, the most vicious of the dictators of the region, was very strongly supported by the United States right up ’til the end. And then, when he — the last days, when he was overthrown and killed, the first Bush administration followed the usual rules: postured about being on the side of the people, opposed to dictatorship, tried to arrange for a continuation of close relations.
But this is completely different. Where it’s going to lead, nobody knows. I mean, the problems that the protesters are trying to address are extremely deep-seated, and they’re not going to be solved easily. There is a tremendous poverty, repression, a lack of not just democracy, but serious development. Egypt and other countries of the region have just been through a neoliberal period, which has led to growth on paper, but with the usual consequences: high concentration of extreme wealth and privilege, tremendous impoverishment and dismay for most of the population. And that’s not easily changed. We should also remember that, as far as the United States is concerned, what’s happening is a very old story. As far back as the 1950s, President Eisenhower was —

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds in the segment, Noam.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Pardon?

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds left in the segment.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh.

AMY GOODMAN: Make your point on Eisenhower.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, shall I go on?

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds. If you could — we’ll save that for our web exclusive right afterwards. We’ve been speaking with Noam Chomsky. You can go to our website at democracynow.org, and we’ll play more of our interview with him tomorrow on Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, you were just talking about the significance of what’s happening in the Middle East, and you were bringing it back to President Dwight Eisenhower.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, in 1958, Eisenhower — this is in internal discussions, since declassified — Eisenhower expressed his concern for what he called the “campaign of hatred against us” in the Arab world, not by the governments, but by the people. Remember, 1958, this was a rather striking moment. Just two years before, Eisenhower had intervened forcefully to compel Israel, Britain and France to withdraw from their invasion of Egyptian territory. And you would have expected enormous enthusiasm and support for the United States at that moment, and there was, briefly, but it didn’t last, because policies returned to the norm. So when he was speaking two years later, there was, as he said, a “campaign of hatred against us.” And he was naturally concerned why. Well, the National Security Council, the highest planning body, had in fact just come out with a report on exactly this issue. They concluded that, yes, indeed, there’s a campaign of hatred. They said there’s a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports harsh and brutal dictators and blocks democracy and development, and does so because we’re interested in — we’re concerned to control their energy resources.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to go for a minute to that famous address of the general, of the Republican president, of the president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER: My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. The total — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. Special thanks to Eugene Jarecki and his film Why We Fight, that brought it to us in the 21st century. Noam Chomsky, with us on the phone from his home near Boston, Noam, continue with the significance of what Eisenhower was saying and what the times were there and what they have to teach us today about this Middle East uprising.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, the military-industrial complex speech, the famous one, was after what I’ve just been talking about. That was as he was leaving office and a important speech, of course. Needless to say, the situation he described not only persists but indeed has amplified.
It should be mentioned that there’s another element to the military-industrial complex issue, which he didn’t bring up. At that time, in the 1950s, as he certainly knew, the Pentagon was funding what became — a lot of Pentagon funding was going into creating what became the next phase of the high-tech economy at that time: computers, micro-electronics, shortly after, the internet. Much of this developed through a Pentagon subsidy funding procurement, other mechanisms. So it was a kind of a cover for shifting — for a basic theme of contemporary economic development. That is, the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and eventual profit is privatized, in the case of computers and the internet, after decades. So that’s another aspect of the military-industrial complex which is worth keeping in mind.
But Eisenhower was speaking particularly about the military aspect, what’s called “defense,” though in fact it’s mostly aggression, intervention, subversion. It doesn’t defend the country; it harms it, most of the time. But that’s separate from the — not, of course, unrelated, but distinct from the Middle East problem. There, what Eisenhower and the National Security Council were describing is a persistent pattern. He was describing — they were describing it in 1950. And I’ll repeat the basic conclusion: the United States does support brutal and harsh dictatorships, blocks democracy and development; the goal is to maintain control over the incomparable energy resources of the region — incidentally, not to use them. The U.S. — one of the things that Eisenhower was doing at exactly the same time was pursuing a program to exhaust U.S. energy reserves, rather than using much cheaper Middle East energy, for the benefit of Texas oil producers. That’s a program that went on from the late ’50s for about 15 years. So, at the time, it was not a matter of importing oil from Saudi Arabia, but just ensuring the maintenance of control over the world’s major energy resources. And that, as the National Security Council concluded correctly, was leading to the campaign of hatred against us, the support for dictators, for repression, for violence and the blocking of democracy and development.
Now, that was the 1950s. And those words could be written today. You take a look at what’s happening in the Middle East today. There’s a campaign of hatred against the United States, in Tunisia against France, against Britain, for supporting brutal, harsh dictators, repressive, vicious, imposing poverty and suffering in the midst of great wealth, blocking democracy and development, and doing so because of the primary goal, which remains to maintain control over the energy resources of the region. What the National Security Council wrote in 1958 could be restated today in almost the same words.
Right after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal, to its credit, did a — ran a poll in the Muslim world, not of the general population, of the kind of people they are interested in, I think what they called the moneyed Muslims or some phrase like that — professionals, directors of multinational corporations, bankers, people deeply embedded in the whole U.S.-dominated neoliberal project there — so not what’s called anti-American. And it was an interesting poll. In fact, the results were very much like those that were described in 1958. There was tremendous — there wasn’t a campaign of hatred against the U.S. among these people, but there was tremendous antagonism to U.S. policies. And the reasons were pretty much the same: the U.S. is blocking democracy and development; it’s supporting dictators. By that time, there were salient issues that — some of which didn’t exist in 1958. For example, there was a tremendous opposition in these groups to the murderous sanctions in Iraq, which didn’t arouse much attention here, but they certainly did in the region. Hundreds of thousands of people were being killed. The civilian society was being destroyed. The dictator was being strengthened. And that did cause tremendous anger. And, of course, there was great anger about U.S. support for Israeli crimes, atrocities, illegal takeover of occupied territories and so on, settlement programs. Those were other issues, which also, to a limited extent, existed in ’58, but not like 2001.
So that — and in fact, right now, we have direct evidence about attitudes of the Arab population. I think I mentioned this on an earlier broadcast, strikingly not reported, but extremely significant. Now, last August, the Brookings Institute released a major poll of Arab opinion, done by prestigious and respected polling agencies, one of them. They do it regularly. And the results were extremely significant. They reveal that there is again, still, a campaign of hatred against the United States. When asked about threats to the region, the ones that were picked, near unanimously, were Israel and the United States — 88 percent Israel, about 77 percent the United States, regarded as the threats to the region. Of course, they asked about Iran. Ten percent of the population thought Iran was a threat. In the list of respected personalities, Erdogan was first. I think there were about 10. Neither Obama or any other Western figure was even mentioned. Saddam Hussein had higher respect.
Now, this is quite striking, especially in the light of the WikiLeaks revelations. The most — the one that won the headlines and that was — led to great enthusiasm and euphoria was the revelation, whether accurate or not — we don’t know — but the claim, at least, by diplomats that the Arab dictators were supporting the U.S. in its confrontation with Iran. And, you know, enthusiastic headlines about how Arab states support — the Arabs support the United States. That’s very revealing. What the commentators and the diplomats were saying is the Arab dictators support us, even though the population is overwhelming opposed, everything’s fine, everything’s under control, it’s quiet, they’re passive, and the dictators support us, so what could be a problem? In fact, Arab opinion was so antagonistic to the United States in this — as revealed in this poll, that a majority of the Arab population, 57 percent, actually thought the region would be better off if Iran had nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the conclusion here, and in England and the continent, was it’s all wonderful. The dictators support us. We can disregard the population, because they’re quiet. As long as they’re quiet, who cares? People don’t matter. Actually, there’s an analog of that internal to the United States. And it’s of course the same policy elsewhere in the world. All of that reveals a contempt for democracy and for public opinion which is really profound. And one has to listen with jaws dropping when Obama, in the clip you ran, talks about how, of course, governments depend on the people. Our policy is the exact opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to read to you what Robert Fisk has written from the streets of Cairo today. Robert Fisk, the well-known reporter from The Independent of London. He said, “One of the blights of history will now involve a U.S. president who held out his hand to the Islamic world and then clenched his fist when it fought a dictatorship and demanded democracy.” Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Fisk’s reporting, as usual, has been inspiring and phenomenal. And yeah, he’s exactly right. And it is the old pattern. As I say, it goes back 50 years right there in Egypt and the region, and it’s the same elsewhere. As long as the population is passive and obedient, it doesn’t matter if there’s a campaign of hatred against us. It doesn’t matter if they believe that our official enemy can perhaps save them from our attacks. In fact, nothing matters, as long as the dictators support us. That’s the view here.
We should remember there’s an analog here. I mean, it’s not the same, of course, but the population in the United States is angry, frustrated, full of fear and irrational hatreds. And the folks not far from you on Wall Street are just doing fine. They’re the ones who created the current crisis. They’re the ones who were called upon to deal with it. They’re coming out stronger and richer than ever. But everything’s fine, as long as the population is passive. If one-tenth of one percent of the population is gaining a preponderant amount of the wealth that’s produced, while for the rest there 30 years of stagnation, just fine, as long as everyone’s quiet. That’s the scenario that has been unfolding in the Middle East, as well, just as it did in Central America and other domains.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to ask you if you think the revelations from WikiLeaks, — right? — the U.S. diplomatic cables, before that, Iraq and Afghan war logs, this massive trove of documents that have been released, Julian Assange talking about the critical issue of transparency — have played a key role here. I mean, in terms of Tunisia, a young university graduate who ended up, because there were no jobs, just selling vegetables in a market, being harassed by police, immolates himself — that was the spark. But also, the documents that came out on Tunisia confirming the U.S. knowledge, while it supported the Tunisian regime, that it was wholly corrupt, and what this means from one country to another, Yemen, as well. Do you think there is a direct relationship?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, the fact of the matter is that WikiLeaks are not really telling us anything dramatically new. They’re providing confirmation, often, of reasonable surmises. Tunisia was a very interesting case. So the ambassador did have a — one of the leaks comes from the ambassador, July 2009, and he describes Tunisia. He says it’s a police state with little freedom of expression or association, serious human rights problems, ruled by a dictator whose family is despised for their corruption, robbery of the population and so on. That’s the assessment of the ambassador. Not long after that, the U.S. singled out Tunisia for an extra shipment of military aid. Not just Tunisia, also two other Arab dictatorships — Egypt and Jordan — and of course Israel — it’s routine — and one other country, namely Colombia, the country with the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere for years and the leading recipient of U.S. military aid for years, two elements that correlate quite closely, it’s been shown.
Well, this tells you what the understanding was about Tunisia — namely, police state, a bitterly hated dictator and so on. But we send them more arms afterwards, because the population is quiet, so everything’s fine. Actually, there was a description by — a very succinct account of all of this by a former high Jordanian official who’s now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment, Marwan Muasher. He said, “This is the principle.” He said, “There is nothing wrong. Everything is under control.” Meaning, as long as the population is quiet, acquiescent — maybe fuming with rage, but doing nothing about it — everything’s fine, there’s nothing wrong, it’s all under control. That’s the operative principle.
AMY GOODMAN: He’s a former Jordanian diplomat.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Former Jordanian official, high official.

AMY GOODMAN: What about what’s happening now in Jordan, what you think is going to happen, and also in Saudi Arabia, how much it drives this and what you feel Obama needs to do and what you think he actually is doing?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Jordan, the prime minister was just replaced. He was replaced with an ex-general who seems to be — is claimed to be moderately popular, at least not hated by the population. But essentially nothing changed. There are changes of the Jordanian cabinet frequently, and the basic system remains. Whether the population will accept that, whether the Muasher principle will work — nothing’s wrong, everything’s under control — that, we don’t know.
Saudi Arabia is an interesting case. Saudi Arabia — the king of Saudi Arabia has been, along with Israel, the strongest supporter, most outspoken supporter of Mubarak. And the Saudi Arabian case should remind us of something about the regular commentary on this issue. The standard line and commentary is that, of course, we love democracy, but for pragmatic reasons we must sometimes reluctantly oppose it, in this case because of the threat of radical Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, you know, there’s maybe some — whatever one thinks of that. Take a look at Saudi Arabia. That’s the leading center of radical Islamist ideology. That’s been the source of it for years. The United States has — it’s also the support of Islamic terror, the source for Islamic terror or the ideology that supports it. That’s the leading U.S. ally, and has been for a long, long time. The U.S. supported — U.S. relations, close relations, with Israel, incidentally, after the 1967 war, escalated because Israel had struck a serious blow against secular Arab nationalism, the real enemy, Nasser’s Egypt, and in defense of radical Islam, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Egypt had been in a proxy war just before that, and there was a major conflict. And that’s quite typical.
Probably the most — going back to WikiLeaks, maybe the most significant revelation has to do with Pakistan. In Pakistan, the WikiLeaks cables show that the ambassador, Ambassador Patterson, is pretty much on top of what’s going on. There’s enormous — the phrase “campaign of hatred against the United States” is an understatement. The population is passionately anti-American, increasingly so, largely, as she points out, as a result of U.S. actions in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the pressure on the Pakistani military to invade the tribal zones, the drone attacks and so on. And she goes on to say that this may even lead to the — what is in fact the ultimate nightmare, that Pakistan’s enormous nuclear facilities, which incidentally are being increased faster than anywhere else in the world, that these — there might be leakage of fissile materials into the hands of the radical Islamists, who are growing in strength and gaining popular support as a result of — in part, as a result of actions that we’re taking.
Well, this goes back to — this didn’t happen overnight. The major factor behind this is the rule of the dictator Zia-ul-Haq back in the 1980s. He was the one who carried out radical Islamization of Pakistan, with Saudi funding. He set up these extremist madrassas. The young lawyers who were in the streets recently shouting their support for the assassin of the political figure who opposed the blasphemy laws, they’re a product of those madrassas. Who supported him? Ronald Reagan. He was Reagan’s favorite dictator in the region. Well, you know, events have consequences. You support radical Islamization, and there are consequences. But the talk about concern about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whatever its reality, is a little bit ironic, when you observe that the U.S. and, I should say, Britain, as well, have traditionally supported radical Islam, in part, sometimes as a barrier to secular nationalism.
What’s the real concern is not Islam or radicalism; it’s independence. If the radical Islamists are independent, well, they’re an enemy. If secular nationalists are independent, they are an enemy. In Latin America, for decades, when the Catholic Church, elements of the Catholic Church, were becoming independent, the liberation theology movement, they were an enemy. We carried out a major war against the church. Independence is what’s intolerable, and pretty much for the reasons that the National Security Council described in the case of the Arab world 50 years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to read to you what two people are writing. One is Ethan Bronner in the New York Times, saying, “Despite [Mr.] Mubarak’s supportive relations with Israel, many Israelis on both the left and right are sympathetic [to] the Egyptians’ desire to rid themselves of his autocracy and build a democracy. But they fear what will follow if things move too quickly.” He quotes a top Israeli official saying, “We know this has to do with the desire for freedom, prosperity and opportunity, and we support people who don’t want to live under tyranny, but who will take advantage of what is happening in its wake?” The official goes on to say, “The prevailing sense here is that you need a certain stability followed by reform. Snap elections are likely to bring a very different outcome,” the official said.
And then there’s Richard Cohen, who’s writing in the Washington Post. And Richard Cohen writes — and let me see if I can find this clip. Richard Cohen writes that — let’s see if I can find it — “Things are about to go from bad to worse in the Middle East. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is nowhere in sight.”
Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: The comment of the Israeli official is standard boilerplate. Stalin could have said it. Yes, of course, the people want peace and freedom, democracy; we’re all in favor of that. But not now, please. Because we don’t like what the outcome will be. In fact, it’s worth bearing — in the case — it’s the same with Obama. It’s more or less the same comment. On the other hand, the Israeli officials have been vociferous and outspoken in support of Mubarak and denunciation of the popular movement and the demonstrations. Perhaps only Saudi Arabia has been so outspoken in this regard. And the reason is the same. They very much fear what democracy would bring in Egypt.
After all, they’ve just seen it in Palestine. There has been one free election in the Arab world, exactly one really free election — namely, in Palestine, January 2006, carefully monitored, recognized to be free, fair, open and so on. And right after the election, within days, the United States and Israel announced publicly and implemented policies of harsh attack against the Palestinian people to punish them for running a free election. Why? The wrong people won. Elections are just fine, if they come out the way we want them to.
So, if in, say, Poland under Russian rule, popular movements were calling for freedom, we cheer. On the other hand, if popular movements in Central America are trying to get rid of brutal dictatorships, we send — we arm the military and carry out massive terrorist wars to crush it. We will cheer Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia standing up against the enemy, and at the very same moment, elite forces, fresh from renewed training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, under command of the military, blow the brains out of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, in El Salvador. That passes in silence. But those are the — that’s exactly the pattern that we see replicated over and over again.
And it’s even recognized by conservative scholarship. The leading studies of — scholarly studies of what’s called “democracy promotion” happen to be by a good, careful scholar, Thomas Carruthers, who’s a neo-Reaganite. He was in Reagan’s State Department working on programs of democracy promotion, and he thinks it’s a wonderful thing. But he concludes from his studies, ruefully, that the U.S. supports democracy, if and only if it accords with strategic and economic objectives. Now, he regards this as a paradox. And it is a paradox if you believe the rhetoric of leaders. He even says that all American leaders are somehow schizophrenic. But there’s a much simpler analysis: people with power want to retain and maximize their power. So, democracy is fine if it accords with that, and it’s unacceptable if it doesn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, there’s a sign, a big banner that people are holding in the square, in Tahrir, that says, “Yes, we can, too.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: Let’s what? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.

AMY GOODMAN: The banner says, “Yes, we can, too.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh, “Yes, we can, too.” Yeah. You know where they got that from. Well, except that they mean it. Whether they can or not, no one knows. I mean, the situation has — we should recognize, has ominous aspects. The dispatch of pro-Mubarak thugs to the square is dangerous and frightening. Mubarak, presumably with U.S. backing, feels that — clearly feels that he can reestablish control. They’ve opened the internet again. The army is sitting by. We don’t know what they’ll do. But they might very well use the conflicts in the streets, caused by the pro-Mubarak gangs that have been sent in, to say, “Well, we have to establish military control,” and they’ll be another form of the military dictatorships that have been, you know, the effective power in Egypt for a long time.
Another crucial is how long the demonstrators can sustain themselves, not only against terror and violence, but also just against economic crisis. Within a short time, maybe beginning already, there isn’t going to be bread, water. The economy is collapsing. They have shown absolutely incredible courage and determination, but, you know, there’s a limit to what human flesh can bear. So, amazing as all this is, there’s no guarantee of success.
If the United States, the population of the United States, Europe — if there is substantial vocal, outspoken support, that could make a difference. Now, remember the Muasher principle: as long as everyone’s quiet, everything’s under control, it’s all fine. But when they break those bonds, it’s not fine. You have to do something.

AMY GOODMAN: If you were president today, what would you do right now, president of the United States?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, if I were — if I had made it to the presidency, meaning with the kind of constituency and support that’s required to be a president in the United States, I’d probably do what Obama’s doing. But what ought to be done is what Erdogan is doing. Turkey is becoming the most significant country in the region, and it’s recognized. Erdogan is far and away the most popular figure. And they’ve taken a pretty constructive role on many issues. And in this case, he is the one leading public figure, leader, who has been frank, outspoken, clear, and says Mubarak must go now. Now is when we must have change. That’s the right stand. Nothing like that in Europe, and nothing like that here.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think of the role of the U.S. corporations? We spoke to Bill Hartung, who wrote this book, Prophets of Power, P-R-O-P-H-E-T-S, about Lockheed Martin. The overwhelming amount of money, the billions, that have gone to Egypt, haven’t really gone to Egypt; they’ve gone to U.S. weapons manufacturers, like General Dynamics, like Lockheed Martin, like Boeing, etc. In fact, Boeing owns Narus, which is the digital technology that’s involved with surveillance of the cell phone, of the internet system there, where they can find dissident voices for the Egyptian regime. And who knows what they will do with those voices, just among others? But these corporations that have made such a killing off the repression, where are they standing right now in terms of U.S. policy?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, they don’t issue press releases, so we have to speculate. But it’s pretty obvious that they have a major stake in the dictatorships, not just Egypt. So, for example, a couple of months ago, Obama announced the biggest military sale in history to Saudi Arabia, $60 billion worth of jet planes, helicopters, armored vehicles and so on and so forth. The pretext is that we have to defend Saudi Arabia against Iran. Remember that among the population, if anyone cares about them, 10 percent regard Iran as a threat, and a majority think the region would be better off if Iran had nuclear weapons. But we have to defend them against Iran by sending them military equipment, which would do them absolutely no good in any confrontation with Iran. But it does a lot of good for the American military-industrial complex that Eisenhower was referring to in that clip you ran a while back. So, yes, William Hartung was quite right about this.
In fact, a part of the reason why there is such strong support for Israel in the military lobby, in the military-industrial lobby in the United States, is that the massive arms transfers to Israel, which, whatever they’re called, end up essentially being gifts, they go from the U.S. — the pocket of the U.S. taxpayer into the pocket of military industry. But there’s also a secondary effect, which is well understood. They’re a kind of a teaser. When the U.S. sends, you know, the most advanced jet aircraft, F-35s, to Israel, then Saudi Arabia says, “Well, we want a hundred times as much second-rate equipment,” which is a huge bonanza for military industry, and it also recycles petrodollars, which is an important — a necessity for the U.S. economy. So these things are quite closely tied together.
And it’s not just military industry. Construction projects, development, telecommunications — in the case of Israel, high-tech industry. So, Intel Corporation, the major — the world’s major chip producer, has announced a new generation of chips, which they hope will be the next generation of chips, and they’re building their main factory in Israel. Just announced an expansion of it. The relations are very close and intimate all the way through — again, in the Arab world, certainly not among the people, but we have the Muasher principle. As long as they’re quiet, who cares? We can disregard them.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of Mubarak in the Israel-Palestine-Egypt axis? I mean, going back to 1979, if you could briefly remind people why he’s so important, as the media keeps saying he has meant peace and stability with Israel, he gives the U.S. access to their air space, he guarantees access to the Suez Canal. Talk about that and what the change would mean.

NOAM CHOMSKY: We should actually go back a little further. In 1971, President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty in return for withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. He cared about the Sinai, not — but Israel considered it, rejected it. Henry Kissinger, national security adviser, supported the rejection. State Department then supported Sadat. And Israel — it was a fateful decision. That’s the point at which Israel quite explicitly chose expansion over security. They were then expanding into the Sinai, planning to build a city of a million people, Egyptian Sinai, settlements driving farmers out into the desert and so on. Well, that was the background for the 1973 war, which made it clear that Egypt can’t simply be dismissed. Then we move on to the negotiations which led, in 1979, to the U.S. and Israel pretty much accepting Sadat’s offer of 1971: withdrawal from the Sinai in return for a peace treaty. That’s called a great diplomatic triumph. In fact, it was a diplomatic catastrophe. The failure to accept it in 1971 led to a very dangerous war, suffering, brutality and so on. And finally, the U.S. and Israel essentially, more or less, accepted it.
Now, as soon as that settlement was made, 1979, Israeli strategic analysts — the main one was Avner Yaniv, but others, too — recognized right away that now that Egypt is excluded from the confrontation, Israel is free to use force in other areas. And indeed, it very soon after that attacked Lebanon, didn’t have to worry about an Egyptian deterrent. Now, that was gone, so we can attack Lebanon. And that was a brutal, vicious attack, killed 15,000, 20,000 people, led finally to the Sabra-Shatila massacre, destroyed lots of — most of southern Lebanon. And no defensive rationale. In fact, it wasn’t even pretended. It was an effort to — as it was said, it was a war for the West Bank. It was an effort to block embarrassing Palestinian negotiation, diplomatic offers, and move forward on integrating the Occupied Territories. Well, they were free to do that once the Egyptian deterrent was gone. And that continues. Egypt is the major Arab state, the biggest military force by far, and neutralizing Egypt does free Israel — and when I say Israel, I mean the United States and Israel, because they work in tandem — it frees them to carry out the crimes of the occupation, attacks on Lebanon — there have been five invasions already, there might be another one — and Egypt does not interfere.
Furthermore, Egypt cooperates in the crushing of Gaza. That terrible free election in January 2006 not only frightened the U.S. and Israel — they didn’t like the outcome, so turned instantly to punishing the Palestinians — but the same in Egypt. The victor in the election was Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. That was very much feared by the Egyptian dictatorship, because if they ever allowed anything like a free election, the Muslim Brotherhood would no doubt make out quite well, maybe not a majority, but it would be a substantial political force. And they don’t want that, so therefore they cooperate. Egypt, under Mubarak, cooperates with Israel in crushing [Gaza], built a huge fence on the Egyptian border, with U.S. engineering help, and it sort of monitors the flow of goods in and out of Gaza on the Egyptian side. It essentially completes the siege that the U.S. and Israel have imposed. Well, all of that could erode if there was a democratic movement that gained influence in Egypt, just as it did in Palestine.
I should mention that there’s one other semi-democratic election in the Arab world, regularly. Now, that’s in Lebanon. Lebanon is a complex story. It’s a confessional democracy, so the Shiite population, which is the largest of the sects, is significantly underrepresented under the confessional system. But nevertheless the elections are not just state elections under dictatorships. And they have outcomes, too, which are suppressed here. So, for example, in the last election, the majority, a popular majority, was the Hezbollah-led coalition. They were the popular majority in the last election. I think about 53 percent. Well, that’s not the way it was described here. If you read, say, Thomas Friedman, he wrote an ode about the election about — he was practically shedding tears of joy at free elections, in which Obama won over Ahmadinejad. Well, you know, what he meant is that in the representation under the confessional system, which seriously underrepresents the Shiite population, the pro-U.S. coalition won the most seats. That again reflects the standard contempt for democracy. All we care — we don’t care that the majority of the population went the other way, as long as they’re quiet and passive. And interestingly, Hezbollah quietly accepted the outcome, didn’t protest about it at the time. But since then, their power has increased, and now there’s a serious threat in Lebanon, which we should not overlook.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, finally, as we wrap up, I’ve asked you a lot about what this means for the Middle East, this rolling revolution, from Tunisia to Egypt, what we’re seeing in Jordan, in Yemen and beyond. But what about what these mass protests mean for people in the United States?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think they mean a lot, and I’ve been trying to hint about that. The doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States. For the last 30 years, we have had state-corporate policies specifically designed — specifically designed, not accidentally — to enrich and empower a tiny sector of the population, one percent — in fact, one-tenth of one percent. That’s the basic source of the extreme inequality. Tax policies, rules of corporate governance, a whole mass of policies, have been very explicitly designed to achieve this end — deregulation and so on. Well, for most of the population, that’s meant pretty much stagnation over a long period. Now, people have been getting by, by sharply increasing the number of work hours, far beyond Europe, by debt, by asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. But those things can’t last.
And as soon as Obama came into office, he came in in the midst of the worst crisis since the Depression. In fact, Ben Bernanke, we know from recent testimony that was released, head of the Fed, said it was even worse than the banking crisis in 1929. So there was a real crisis. Who did he pick to patch up the crisis? The people who had created it, the Robert Rubin gang, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, basically the people who were responsible for the policies that led to the crisis. And it’s not surprising. I mean, Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.
Meanwhile, the population, much of the population, is literally in depression. If you look at the unemployment figures, among the top few percent, maybe 10, 20 percent, unemployment is not particularly high. In fact, it’s rather low. When you go down to the bottom of the income ladder, you know, the lower quintiles, unemployment is at Depression levels. In manufacturing industry, it is at Depression levels.
And it’s different from the Depression. In the Depression, which I’m old enough to remember, it was very severe. My own family was mostly unemployed working class. But there was a sense of hopefulness. Something is — we can do something. There’s CIO organizing. There’s sitdown strikes, that compelled New Deal measures, which were helpful and hopeful. And there was a sense that somehow we’ll get out of this, that we’re in it together, we can work together, we can get out of it. That’s not true now. Now there’s a general atmosphere of hopelessness, despair, anger and deep irrationality. That’s a very dangerous mix. Hatred of foreigners, you know, a mix of attitudes which is volatile and dangerous, quite different from the mood in the Depression.
But the same governing principle applies: as long as the population is — accepts what’s going on, is directing their anger against teachers, you know, firemen, policemen, pensions and so on, as long as they’re directing their anger there, and not against us, the rulers, everything’s under control, everything’s fine. Until it erupts. Well, it hasn’t erupted here yet, and if it does erupt, it might not be at a constructive direction, given the nature of what’s happening in the country now. But yes, those Egyptian lessons should be taken to heart. We can see clearly what people can do under conditions of serious duress and repression far beyond anything that we face, but they’re doing it. If we don’t do it, the outcome could be quite ugly.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Noam, author, Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, and most recent book, Hopes and Prospects, has written more than a hundred books.

What You Need to Know About the Muslim Brotherhood

Robert Dreyfuss | Source

As the revolutionary upsurge in Egypt builds toward its conclusion, some of the key questions involve the role of the Muslim Brotherhood—the Islamic movement that has been characterized as anything from a benign prodemocracy force to a terrorist-inclined radical group with designs on establishing a global Caliphate.

What, exactly, is the Brotherhood? How strong is it inside Egypt? If the regime falls, will the Brotherhood take over, or is Egypt too modern, too secular, and too diverse to tolerate an Islamist-dominated government? And finally, if the Brothers did seize power, either in the streets or through elections, what kind of rulers might they be? To answer these questions, we need some grounding in history.

Teachers, Players, Assassins, Spies

The group known formally as the Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, who from the very start promoted the slogan: “The Koran is our constitution.” Banna, a teacher, described this as “a Salafiyya message,” meaning that the Brothers intended to restore Islam to the alleged purity of its earliest days. They adhered to an ultra-orthodox view of Islam, and in the 1930s Banna established the Secret Apparatus, an underground intelligence and paramilitary arm with a terrorist wing. The Brotherhood had enormous power behind the scenes in monarchical Egypt, playing politics at the highest level, often in league with King Farouk against his political opponents, including the left, the communists, and the nationalist Wafd Party. In 1937, at Farouk’s coronation, the Brotherhood—in Arabic, the Ikhwan—was enlisted to provide “order and security.”

For the next five decades, the Muslim Brotherhood would serve as a battering ram against nationalists and communists. Despite the Brothers’ Islam-based anti-imperialism, the group often ended up making common cause with the colonial British. It functioned as an intelligence agency, infiltrating left-wing and nationalist groups. But it was also fiercely independent, at times clashing violently with the ruling authorities. On several occasions, Ikhwan assassins murdered top Egyptian officials, including Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi in 1948. (Brotherhood founder Banna was assassinated by agents of the regime just weeks later).

Revolution, Terrorism, and American Friends

In the 1950s, the Brothers initially coexisted with the revolutionary regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who toppled the king in 1952. Gradually, however, Nasser sidelined the group, and by 1954 Nasser and the Brotherhood were at war. Reverting to its terrorism days, the Brothers twice tried to assassinate Nasser. The Brotherhood’s vicious anti-Nasserism synced up conveniently with British and then American hatred for Nasser, and there’s evidence that London spies may have collaborated with the Brotherhood against Nasser.

By then, the group’s chief international organizer and best-known official was Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan had come to the attention of both the CIA and MI-6, the British intelligence service. In researching my book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, I came across an unusual photograph that showed Ramadan with President Eisenhower in the Oval Office. By then, or soon after, Ramadan had likely been recruited as a CIA agent. Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson has since documented the close ties between Ramadan and various Western intelligence services in his book, A Mosque in Munich. In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, Johnson writes: “By the end of the decade, the CIA was overtly backing Ramadan.” On the run from Nasser, Ramadan—a peripatetic traveler who’d been the chief organizer of the Muslim Brotherhood’s chapters in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Pakistan—settled in Geneva, Switzerland, where he established an Islamic Center that for a quarter-century would serve as a hub for the Brotherhood’s worldwide efforts.

“He used to come to Saudi Arabia for money”

From its early days, the Brotherhood was financed generously by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which appreciated its ultra-conservative politics and its virulent hatred of Arab communists. Hermann Eilts, who served as US ambassador to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, told me that he once encountered Hassan al-Banna in the offices of the Saudi deputy minister of finance in 1948. “He used to come to Saudi Arabia for money,” Eilts said.

The relationship between the Brotherhood and the House of Saud was always tense. Though the royal family bankrolled Ramadan and the Ikhwan, they never allowed the organization to set up a chapter in Saudi Arabia. For their part, the Muslim Brotherhood chafed under Saudi tutelage and probably harbored ideas about toppling the royals, but the Saudi intelligence service kept close watch on them. Martha Kessler, a former CIA officer who has studied the Brotherhood, told me: “The Egyptian Brothers in Saudi Arabia were [far] removed from any sense of loyalty to the House of Saud.”

Does Egypt Have the Brotherhood to Thank for Mubarak?

Guided by Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, Anwar Sadat—who’d been a member of the Brotherhood in the 1940s—reintroduced the Ikhwan to Egypt. At the time, Sadat had no political base, and he wanted to undermine the influence of the Nasserites and the communists. To that end, he calculatedly unleashed the power of right-wing political Islam. The Brotherhood’s youth wing, often using physical force to intimidate its opponents, helped Sadat recapture ideological control of Egypt’s universities. The Brotherhood also took the reins of Egypt’s professional societies—doctors’, engineers’, and lawyers’ groups. But because Sadat did not formally allow the Ikhwan to set up a political party, it fragmented into various components, some of which—inspired by Sayyid Qutb, a violent Salafi theoretician who was hanged by Nasser—turned to nihilist violence. One of these offshoots murdered Sadat in 1981, and then Vice President Mubarak took over.

For Mubarak, the Brotherhood served primarily one purpose: To justify Egypt’s unending state of emergency. Like clockwork, Mubarak would tell his critics, foreign and domestic: It’s me or the Brotherhood. Though formally banned in Egypt, the organization has been by turns tolerated and repressed—its members arrested, then released, then arrested again.

Where’s the US Been in All of This?

Throughout the Mubarak era, the United States has had a contradictory, uncertain policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood. Robert Pelletreau, who served as ambassador to Egypt from 1991 to 1993, told me in an interview several years ago that he sought to open a dialogue with the group during his tenure in Cairo, and when Mubarak visited Washington, Pelletreau asked then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to raise the issue with the Egyptian leader. “I’ll never forget what happened next,” he told me. “Mubarak sat up sharply, rigidly. ‘These people killed my predecessor!’ Then he raised this huge fist, and he slammed it down on the table hard, and everything on the table jumped and rattled. Bang! ‘When they come out, we have to hit them.'” Edward Walker, who succeeded Pelletreau as US envoy in Cairo, was far more skeptical about dialogue with the Brotherhood, and for the most part, he supported Mubarak’s efforts to suppress it. “I can’t count the number of times Mubarak yelled at me about how the British were giving the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists safe haven,” Walker told me in 2005.

Since then, there’s been little or no official contact between the US and the Muslim Brotherhood (though a few years ago, the Bush administration convened a series of meetings to discuss whether or not to engage them). The Obama administration has walked a fine line, too, signaling a willingness to make sure that the Brotherhood is included in any negotiations with the Egyptian military, while declaring that there have been no direct contacts between US officials and the Brothers. Obama administration officials have also expressed concern about the possibility that the group could come out on top once the dust settles in Cairo.

“Changed by the system”?

By the 1990s, despite the off-again, on-again repression by Mubarak’s regime, the Brotherhood had completed what many observers say was a transformation. Step by step, its leadership renounced its violent past, engaged in politics, and tried to reinvent itself as a collection of community organizers who operated clinics and food banks, building a network of Islamic banks and companies. Writing last week in Foreign Affairs, Carrie Rosefsky Wickham noted: “Although the Brotherhood entered the political system in order to change it, it ended up being changed by the system.” In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats—20 percent of the Parliament—and probably could have won even more had it run more candidates.

All of a sudden, the Brothers had emerged as Egypt’s most potent opposition force. Though they still faced the wrath of the secret police—and in last year’s parliamentary elections, the game was so rigged that the Brotherhood virtually opted out—they became vocal supporters of liberalizing Egypt’s calcified system, and it made common cause with other pro-democracy groups.

Nathan Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University and an expert on political Islam, is optimistic that the Brotherhood has evolved from its fundamentalist roots: “Their agenda is to make Egypt better,” he told Salon recently. “And their conception of what’s good and bad has a religious basis. So that means increasing religious observance, religious knowledge. It also means probably drawing more heavily on the Islamic legal heritage for Egypt’s laws. They don’t want to necessarily completely convert Egypt into a traditional Islamic legal system. But if the Parliament’s going to pass a law, they want it to be consistent with Islamic law.” No doubt many officials and members of the Muslim Brotherhood would endorse this characterization.

But it’s also fair to ask if Brown’s interpretation is too charitable. In 2007, the Brotherhood released a draft political program that included several very troubling proposals, including the idea that Egypt’s government be overseen by an unelected council of Islamic scholars who would measure the country’s laws against the Koran and sharia to make sure governance would “conform to Islamic law.” Since then, various Muslim Brotherhood officials have also made conflicting statements about anything from the role of women to the treatment of non-Muslim minorities.

In the end, there’s no getting around the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is, if not an anachronism, a profoundly reactionary force. Its views on marriage, the family, homosexuality, and the like are distasteful to most Western minds and many Egyptian ones. And it harbors a strong current of overt anti-Semitism, along with a penchant for conspiracy theories. Despite Egypt’s drift toward a more conservative Islamic outlook since the 1970s—which paralleled similar trends across the Muslim world—the Egyptian people, especially the middle class, may in the end not be receptive to the Brotherhood’s message.

It’s also worth remembering that when the Egyptian uprising began in January, the Muslim Brotherhood was not among the leaders. At the forefront of the movement were young Egyptians, including those organized around a popular Facebook page memorializing the murder of a young man named Khaled Said in Alexandria. They were joined by a panoply of secular, socialist, Nasserite, and pro-democracy groups, and eventually by Mohammad ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nearly all of the movement has been relentlessly secular, though it admittedly gained a great deal of momentum when the Muslim Brotherhood—which had initially held back—threw its weight behind the protests.

So Could They Take Over Egypt?

Because the Muslim Brotherhood is still a secretive, cell-based organization, and because it operates mostly underground, there are no reliable estimates either of its strength or its potential electoral base. Analysts have placed its membership as low as 100,000 nationwide and as high as a million or more. Similarly, some experts say that in a free and fair election the Brothers would win as little as 10 percent of the vote or as much as 20 to 40 percent—and their share will probably be higher the sooner the election is held, since they are by far the best-organized force at the moment.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former CIA analyst Daniel Byman notes that whatever its numbers, the Brotherhood’s potential role is not to be discounted. “Most Egyptians are not members of the Brotherhood, but the group probably represents a healthy plurality of the country, and its strength goes beyond its popularity,” writes Byman. “The Brotherhood is highly organized and has street power, enabling it to out-organize or intimidate its weak potential rivals. In parts of the Middle East where relatively free elections have been held, such as Iraq, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip, this mix of popularity and superior organization has served Islamist parties well.”

What Does This Mean for US Foreign Policy?

Whatever its ultimate political beliefs, there are several things that the Muslim Brotherhood is not: It is not Al Qaeda or the Taliban. It is a conservative, even ultra-orthodox Islamist group, but it’s irresponsible to compare it to the terrorist groups and armed insurgencies that have preoccupied American foreign policy since 2001. Nor is the Brotherhood the Egyptian equivalent of the Islamic force that seized power in Iran in 1979. For one thing, political conditions are much different; for another, the Brotherhood lacks the network of highly politicized clerics that helped Ayatollah Khomeini succeed in 1979. The group itself is almost entirely made up of laymen, often highly educated, and scholars of Islamic law, not members of the clergy.

To the extent that the Muslim Brotherhood’s power in Egypt grows, it is certain to infuse the country with a stronger strain of anti-American and anti-Israel politics. Officially, the Brotherhood has proclaimed that it will abrogate or shelve the Egypt-Israel peace treaty signed in 1978, although in practice doing so might be difficult. It’s also likely to align Egypt more closely with other Islamist groups in the Arab world, especially Hamas, which began as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. That would be part and parcel of a growing anti-American trend throughout the region, which has been picking up steam since the US invasion of Iraq and the American refusal to challenge Israel’s stonewalling of a Palestinian state. If after Mubarak Egypt does indeed move away from the United States, it will only be joining Turkey, Lebanon, and even Iraq and the Gulf states.

One thing is certain. Having been an important player in Egypt’s political landscape for nearly a century, the Muslim Brotherhood is a force to be reckoned with. It cannot be ignored, and no amount of Glenn Beck-style hyperventilating will change that.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of “Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam” (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).

Muslim Brotherhood calls for protection of churches

Source

By AFP

CAIRO: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood urged the state to protect Christian places of worship after an Al-Qaeda group in Iraq, which claimed a deadly attack on a church in Baghdad, issued a threat against Egypt’s Coptic church. Al-Azhar also condemned the attacks in statement on Tuesday.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is stressing to all, and primarily Muslims, that the protection of holy places of all monotheistic religions is the mission of the majority of Muslims,” the group said in a statement on its website late on Tuesday.

“The Brothers reject all stupid threats against Christian places of worship in Egypt issued by anyone and under any pretext,” the group said.

“The Egyptian state and the Egyptian people must protect holy places of all worshippers of monotheistic religions,” it added.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has declared Christians “legitimate targets” as a deadline expired for Egypt’s Coptic church to free women allegedly held after converting to Islam.

ISI said in an internet statement its threat was justified by the church’s refusal to indicate the status of the women it said were being held captive in monasteries, the US-based monitoring group SITE said.

“All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) wherever they can reach them,” said the statement.

The group which claimed the capturing of Christians in a Baghdad church that ended Sunday with the killing of 46 worshippers in a rescue drama, had said that the attack was to seek the release of the alleged converts in Egypt.

An Egyptian security source told AFP that security around Coptic places of worship had been “discreetly reinforced with plainclothes police and patrols.”

Egypt’s top cleric condemned on Tuesday the massacre of hostages by Al-Qaeda gunmen in a Baghdad church, calling it a “heinous act,” his spokesman said.

Ahmed al-Tayyeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar, the oldest Islamic seat of learning, affirmed that “Islam and Muslims have nothing to do with such acts, which harm Islam and violate Islamic precepts,” state news agency Mena quoted spokesman Mohamed Al-Tahtawi as saying.

“Regarding the threat to target Egyptian churches, Al-Tayyeb affirmed that this is something to be rejected and strongly denounced, and it serves none but those who want to spark discord and target national unity,” Al-Tahtawi said.

Emerson’s Paranoiac Approach Toward the Muslim Brotherhood

By Omar Mazin | Ikhwanophobia

Steven Emerson, One of the prominent members of the Islamophobic dirty dozen, The founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), wrote a new phobic article to show the world how dangerous is the Muslim Brotherhood (!!).
Emerson, and as usual, alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood has produced Osama Bin Laden to the world, who is created originally by the CIA during the Afghan-Soviet war.

The Brotherhood’s affiliates include the terrorist organization Hamas. Its alumni include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist mentor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaida’s second in command, is said to have been heavily influenced by the ideology of the Brotherhood’s Egyptian chapter.

In this quote, Steve Emerson alleges that “it’s said” that Ayman Al Zawahri” had been heavily influenced by the MB’s ideology.

In the coming quote, Emerson is imagining the relations between MB and Islamic Centers and Organizations working in the US:

Some of the most prominent Muslim organizations in the United States have close, longstanding relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. And the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was linked in court papers to a Brotherhood-organized Hamas support effort.

Now, Emerson, with a very innocent article, he linked directly between the American Islamic organizations such as CAIR and ISNA, to the Muslim Brotherhood, which created Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist Group!

Now we should announce these critical facts !!

1- Muslim Brotherhood is not a violent organization, and MB doesn’t have any anti-western agenda!

3- Muslim Brotherhood has no organizational relations with any of the American Islamic organizations working in the United States, and the Moderate form of Islam is the only thing common between the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic organizations active in the US.

Emerson, by these allegations, doesn’t want Obama’s administration to take any aggressive actions against MB, But actually he is pushing the American Administration to suppress the Islamic activities in the United States, which is serving millions of Americans on the American soil.

This who so called ‘expert’ is trying his best to fight the Muslim minority in the US, and this won’t lead to the good of the United States in the near future.

It’s the duty of the moderate Americans to stop these waves of hatred and racism, to return America to its glorious principles, to Justice, to Equality and to Tolerance.

MB: Burning Quran will increase anti-Americanism in the Muslim world

Ikhwanweb

In a recent statement, media spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood Dr. Essam l-Erian described the scheduled “Quran burning” as a “barbaric act, reminiscent of the Inquisition” .

Al-Erian, a member of the group’s executive bureau, warned that the event planned by the Dove World Outreach Centre, a small church in Gainesville, Florida, would definitely fan Muslim hatred of the United States. The MB, which enjoys much popularity despite being targeted by Egypt’s regime holds a fifth of the seats in parliament where they ran as independents in the 2005 elections.

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, condemned the event stressing that the plans which are scheduled to take place on September 11 in commemoration of the attacks nine years earlier are nothing short of a disgrace.

Should We Be Afraid Of Egyptian Democracy?

Source: The New Republican
Aroop Mukharji

Egypt’s Regime Will Change
Here’s how to cushion the blow.

Sometimes, it seems like the United States is more interested in giving aid to Egypt than Egypt is to receive it. This year, for example, Egypt objected to a $250 million civilian aid package if USAID funded unregistered NGOs. Many human rights groups in the country have trouble receiving official sanction from the Egyptian government and thus require outside support to be effective. So, instead of standing firm, the Obama administration agreed to cut their USAID support, departing from U.S. policy elsewhere in the world and breaking its own law as stipulated under the Brownback Amendment.

This perverse exchange is just one of many accumulating signs that U.S. policy toward Egypt desperately needs change, and soon. Currently, America gives Egypt over $1.3 billion every year in military aid alone, fortifying a cruel dictatorship in the hope that this friendship helps the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, contributes to stability in the Middle East, garners more Arab alliances, and fends off religious extremism. And with Egypt’s upcoming elections and indications that Mubarak may be unlikely to live out the next few years, the benefits of incremental reform are increasing, while the costs of sticking with the status quo remain very high.

There are a host of reasons for the United States to reconsider its policy. Morally, it’s clear that Egypt’s three-decade emergency law has engendered a police culture devoid of restraint, as evidenced by the sad case of Khaled Said, a young man who was recently publicly beaten to death by Egyptian police. Such treatment, in varying degrees, is commonplace—and the United States cannot, in good conscience, continue such aid when Egypt refuses to respect fundamental human rights. Washington should make it clear that its sympathies lie with the Egyptian people, especially in this delicate time of transition, when the political environment is being reshaped, and when the public is increasingly demanding a larger voice in policy making. Moreover, American support for Mubarak brands Washington as a fickle and hypocritical champion of democratic principles, and the United States would do well to seize this moment to restore its credibility.

Meanwhile, democratic reform would not be all that harmful to U.S. interests. President Mubarak has successfully sustained the perception that any democratic opening equates to devolution of power to Islamic extremists. But the truth is rather different: The current incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood is neither fanatical nor self-destructive. It has formally renounced violence, and it sees itself as part of a broader opposition effort in Egypt. The group has formally thrown its weight behind the renowned moderate Mohamed ElBaradei and its electoral platform this year is exclusively concerned with democratic reforms that are supported by a broad coalition of opposition parties, including El Ghad, Wafd, and AlWasat. While freer elections could increase the representation of Muslim Brothers in parliament, they almost certainly would not swamp Egypt’s brand of moderate secularism. This year, according to Essam al-Arian, a member of the Brotherhood’s guidance bureau, the Brotherhood plans to field candidates for only 40 percent of the contestable seats—and, highlighting the group’s moderation on social issues, 20 to 25 of those nominees will be women.

The belief that reform would bring radical Islamists to power misreads Egyptian society and underestimates the Egyptian people. Unlike the Gazans, who voted for rule by Hamas in 2005, the Egyptian populace has choices between many political parties, and the average Egyptian is not a religious extremist. On the contrary, 70 percent of Egyptians say they are concerned about the global rise of Islamic extremism, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

From a national security standpoint, too, it turns out that the costs of supporting democracy are fairly low. The Bush administration saw this firsthand in 2005, for example, when it pressured Egypt to hold free and fair elections. To a small extent, the policy worked. The election was far from free and fair, it represented an important step forward. As the first multi-candidate election in Egypt’s history, it increased political space for opposition parties from nothing to something, and it opened up the campaign atmosphere more than ever before, while the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was unaffected. As a former administration official explained, “Egypt will continue to make those policy choices based on national interest alone, and not on the United States.” Furthermore, the primary opposition parties and movements in Egypt, in their current statements, demands, and actions, have so far expressed themselves as moderates. Thus, deciding between healthy democratic reform in Egypt and a stable Middle East is a false choice.

Plus, the scope of policy changes required would not actually be that radical. Successful democratic reform is a gradual process. And the Obama administration has already performed some advocacy on behalf of Egypt’s democrats, quickly denouncing the government’s brutal response to the April 6 protests, its renewal of emergency law, its flawed upper house elections, and the murder of Said. In June, the State Department even released a YouTube video of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Wittes reaffirming U.S. support for democracy in Egypt—although Wittes’ video has only been viewed 250 times, five of which were by this author.

What is needed instead is an escalation in the profile and priority of our democracy-promotion efforts, and insistence upon modest but important deliverables. Working-level conversations with the Egyptians have been ineffective. The administration should do more and engage the government of Egypt at the highest diplomatic levels to encourage small but real steps toward democratic reform.

In addition, it’s clear that United States cannot discontinue aid, but it can leverageit, which would at least align rhetoric with action and improve our image. The White House should ramp up financial assistance to human rights and democracy groups. And, for the upcoming parliamentary elections, it should push for immediately executable changes. Inviting international observers to increase election transparency would be an easy step forward, as would encouraging security forces to keep a distance from polling places, lifting emergency law, and allowing all political parties free campaigning and access to media.

In the longer-run, the United States will have to concern itself with creating a freer environment for political succession. For the presidential election, which is a year away, the scope for reform can expand. In particular, Articles 76, 77, and 88 of the constitution establish high barriers for presidential nomination, remove term limits, ban political rallies, and reduce effective judicial supervision of the election. The United States should support the Egyptian people in their call to amend these.

Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009 gave many Egyptians hope. Obama spoke of supporting human rights “everywhere,” and “power through consent, not coercion.” However, in the months following Obama’s landmark address, these priorities were absent from the agenda. Now is a perfect time to redouble efforts, build on the gains made in 2005, and follow up on Cairo. Otherwise, we risk alienating the world’s largest Arab population.

Aroop Mukharji is a former Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and currently a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Wahabi Imam to burn the Bible in Cairo!

What if some Wahabi Imam in a mosque decided to burn the holy Bible after Friday prayer in Cairo .

Let’s imagine the headlines of the highly ranked newspapers, websites and dozens of bitter Islamophobes on their websites truly they would have a field day.

CNN
Extremist Muslims decide to burn the holy Bible in Egypt

FOX
Muslim Brotherhood set to burn the Bible in the Muslim World!

Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
Exclusive: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood call for anti-Christian actions in Egypt .

Family Security Matters
GMBDR: Exclusive: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Call for anti-Christian actions in Egypt .

Jihad Watch
Hamas Leaders to burn Torah synchronously with Muslim Brotherhood Bible Burn Day

Daniel Pipes
Turkish Islamist teacher beats Christian student carrying Bible!

Pamela Geller
CAIR’s mother group to burn Bible!

Dallas News
Holy Land Foundation supported Bible Burn Day in Palestinian Territories

Steven Emerson
IPT monitored Al Qaeda preparation for Bible Burn Day

Sean Hannity
Ground Zero Imam will participate in Bible Burn Day!

Sarah Palin
Oh Peaceful Muslims! Please refudiate Bible Burn Day!

Religion of Peace
Photo: Islam Orders Muslims to burn Bibles and to Kill Christians

,,,,,,,,,,,

That was hypothetically speaking, now back to reality and what has in fact happened in the US to be precise a church in Florida was planning to burn the Quran, however the appalling truth is that all news bulletin corporations and smearcasters failed to report such incidents abstaining from writing or publishing a word on this subject.

In a tilting of scales, it seems to be normal and acceptable to have a Church burn Quran Day but in the event of a Muslim burning Bible Day imagine the uproar and scandal.

The question is why didn’t the western and most influential mediacomment on this racist and discriminatory incident? The diehard bigots and hypocrite racists who want to burn Quran and smear Islam are the real terrorists.

Although terrorism cannot and will not be justified the burning of the Muslims Holy Quran may lead to such undesirable actions in response to the provocative actions illustrating anti-Islamic tendencies.

The Independent websites, who discussed the Quran burning day, unfortunately are not high profiled or effective news sources. They focused mainly on the lack of exposing of the incident wondering why the more famous agencies abstained from discussion.

Throughout Islam’s long history, Muslims have never been involved in any actions of religious suppression against Jews and Christians. The Ottoman Empire received thousands of Spanish Jews refugees after the defeat of Muslims in Andalusia, And within this history, Muslims didn’t try even once to fight the ideas by sword! they always were trying to oppose ideas by ideas.

Current events in the US with the burning of the holy Quran reveal some Christians’ lack of tolerance to a different religion and culture exposing their true ignorance. Rather than discuss and engage in open dialogue with Muslims they chose to burn the Quran demonstrating pure hatred and animosity

Many questions will be asked, and the true, factual answers will not be in favour of news corporations such as CNN and FOX News. Do they support these bigots? Are the smearcasters supporting the Christian bigots? And the most important question remains … What if they were Muslims how would they react?