Muslim Brotherhood
Daniel Pipes on Egypt and the Meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hosni Mubarak
Media Mash-Sean Hannity and Brent Bozell on Egypt
Muslim Brotherhood=Christian Conservatives (Chris Matthews Update-Video)
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NewsBusters has this story:
Daily Beast’s Aslan: Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Like Christian Conservatives in U.S.
The Daily Beast contributor who once insisted that there’s “no such thing as sharia law” is at it again, dismissing the threat of radical Islam presented by the political instability in Egypt.
In a January 30 post at Washington Post/Newsweek’s “On Faith” feature yesterday, Reza Aslan dismissed fears that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical group that could take Egypt in a theocratic direction should strongman Hosni Mubarak be forcibly ousted from power, even though members of the Brotherhood have expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden.
Aslan, a creative writing professor at the University of California Riverside, particularly singled out two socially conservative Republicans who are rumored 2012 presidential contenders, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.):
GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is already drawing parallels between the young protesters calling for an end to the brutal and repressive Mubarak regime, and the popular protests that, three decades ago, brought down another despicable dictator and former American ally, the Shah of Iran. “We abandoned [the Shah] and what we got in exchange was… a radical Islamist regime,” Santorum said. Mike Huckabee, another GOP presidential hopeful, joined in the hysteria, warning Americans that, “if in fact the Muslim Brotherhood is underneath much of the unrest [in Egypt] every person who breathes ought to be concerned.”
[…]
[H]owever the current uprising in Egypt turns out, there can be no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing.
Despite the wide array of political and religious views on display on the streets of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, and Suez, the one thing about which the overwhelming majority of Egyptians agree – 95 percent according to a 2010 Pew Research Center poll – is that Islam should play a role in the country’s politics. At the same time, a similar Pew poll taken in 2006 found that while the majority of the Western public thought democracy was “a Western way of doing things that would not work in most Muslim countries,” pluralities or majorities in every single Muslim-majority country surveyed flatly rejected that argument and called for democracy to be immediately established, without conditions, in their own societies.
For Huckabee and Santorum, as well as for a large segment of the American public, these two polls present a contradiction. How could Egyptians want both a democracy and a role for religion in their government? After all, in the United States it is axiomatic that Islam is inherently opposed to democracy and that Muslims are incapable of reconciling democratic and Islamic values. Never mind that the same people who scoff at the notion that religion could play no role in the emerging democracies in the Middle East are the same people who demand that religion must play a role in America’s democracy. Ironically, one of the most vocal proponent of religious activism in politics is Mike Huckabee himself, who has repeatedly called Americans to “take this nation back for Christ” and who, while running for president, proudly declared that “what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”
In fact, when it comes to the role of religion in society, Americans and Egyptians are pretty well in agreement. An August 2010 Pew poll found that 43 percent of Americans believe that churches should express political views and play an active role in politics, while 61 percent agreed that “it is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs.”
There is no doubt that giving religiously inclined organizations and politicians a seat at the political table poses risks. And certainly, problems can arise when religion becomes entangled with the state, as those who recall the Bush administration’s evangelistic foreign policy can attest. Nevertheless, since a state can be considered democratic only insofar as it reflects its society, if the society is founded upon a particular set of values, then must not its government be also?
Of course Aslan (different from CS Lewis’ Azlan) is a radical in disguise. For instance, Jihad Watch has this story of Prof. Aslan calling Ahmadinejad a “liberal reformer.” I have posted on UC Irvine in the past, and since then the Muslim Student Union was suspended for their blatant antisemitism. Below is another event that went wrong at UC Irvine:
Freedom?
More Moderate Muslims Shown to be Radicals-Much To the LEFTS Chagrin
“The irony of groups like ICNA is that they take advantage of democratic values to spread a message that is monolithic, anti-democratic, and isolating. They want to implement Sharia law in place of Western government… Organizations like ICNA are also smarter than their parent organization, Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. Whereas the Pakistani group openly preaches its intolerant views, this group presents a smoother message in line with American values. However, its ideology and aims actually contradict democratic values and law.”
IPT – “Promoting Radical Ideas – What ICNA Demands of its Members“
BigPeace is helping blow the cover off of ICNA, really another “moderate,” “peaceful” Muslim organization shown to be radical (like its founder in the 600’s, Muhammad):
The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic Shari’a law over America to its members, according to the 2010 ICNA Member’s Hand Book. This is a very different message than the group’s public outreach efforts, and contradicts claims that the organization is a tolerant, mainstream Islamic group.
[….]
It’s not the first example of radicalism by one of America’s largest Muslim organizations. ICNA’s magazine has featured interviews with terrorist leaders in Pakistan, called on youth to fight abroad in Kashmir, and honored like-minded extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and South Asia’s Jamaat-e-Islami. Concerns have also been expressed about 5 young members of the group’s Virginia mosque, who were arrested and convicted on terrorism charges after attempting to link up with and fight for Pakistani terror groups in December 2009.
As the hand book explains, ICNA doesn’t just believe that religion is a private affair. “Establishment of the Religion” extends beyond the individual and family and into the society, state, and world. “These words [Establishment of the Religion] include not only practicing the religion in individual and collective life and propagating its true teaching to others, but also striving to make this Deen [religion] a way of life for all,” the hand book reads.
[….]
While this may seem like a farfetched concept of world domination, it is actually the same philosophy embodied by the group that ICNA admits founded it. Jamaat-e-Islami [JI], a radical South Asian group committed to the same purposes of a regional and then global Caliphate, promotes an identical message of Islamist domination of society, government, economics, and culture. ICNA maintains its connection to the group with a senior member of the JI from India, Yusuf Islahi, teaching in the organization’s headquarters. Likewise, the 2010 hand book and other membership reading lists repeatedly emphasize the radical literature of JI’s founder, Sayyid Abul ‘Ala Maududi.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), has been exposing ICNA for quite some time. In an April post, entitled “ICNA’s Radical Reading List,” they show that five young men were radicalized by a radical message:
When five young Americans disappeared from the greater D.C. area last November, only to be arrested a week later in Pakistan where they allegedly sought to join the jihad against Americans, people wondered why.
Why would five young men forfeit lives of comfort and opportunity to try to kill soldiers defending the nation that made all that possible? How could reportedly supportive families generate radical Islamists like Ramy Zamzam? Emerging from court in January, he declared, “We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”
Much of the initial focus was drawn to the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the organization to which all five young men belonged. This dissipated following assurances from ICNA and its local chapter that it had not engaged in any form of radicalization and, in fact, would launch programs to combat it:
“Extremism has no place in Islam, and ICNA works tirelessly to oppose extremist and violent ideology.”
The local youth director Mustafa Abu Maryam, who had worked with Zamzam in leading fundraising for the new mosque in Virginia, pointedly declared:
“Our group discussion never talked about politics, never talked about ongoing conflicts, never talked about fighting against anyone, indirectly or directly. On the contrary, we always promoted being compassionate toward others and good stewards of humanity.”
However, the recommended reading list for ICNA’s youth organization for boys, called “Young Muslims,” shows the opposite. The book list includes numerous works by authors such as the Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna, current spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, and Jamaat-e-Islami founder Abul ‘Ala Maududi. These works are not countered by books or essays which offer a more passive, peaceful message.
And since it is the Holidays (Holy Days), I figured a Christmas connection to ICNA was warrented. FrontPage magazine posted an article entitled “Radical Islam’s Defiling of Christmas,” the following can be found:
One of the main functions of ICNA is the spread of Islam. The group does this via its dawah or religious outreach program, Why Islam (WI). Too many times, though, ICNA’s religious outreach is used as a venue for the worst of bigotry. Common targets include Jews, Americans, Israelis, homosexuals, fellow Muslims and Christians. The following quotes are presently found on WI’s web forum discussing the latter:
“First of all, muslims do not believe in the G-d of the corrupted Bible, but we do believe in Allah… Anyone who says ‘la ilahe ilallah’ (there is not god but Him)… is guaranteed with eternal life in heaven… Abt penalty, there is no penalty to be done for our sins. This is [sic] wat u christians made up!!”
“[T]he Americans don’t care about their Allies… Even though, speaking Islamically, they are our enemies and not allies… no Kaffir can be an Ally to a Muslim against a Muslim… Like Allah says in the Quran, Baqarah 2, ‘Never will the Jews nor the Christians be pleased with you… till you follow their religion’… [T]hey are not friends of anyone besides themselves… their friendship is an illusion.”
“[T]he Christ that Christians believe will come before the Rapture is actually the anti-Christ who the Zionist-Jews will think to be their promised-Messiah… Most Christians don’t know this. They live in their capsule of ignorance that is hardened by the western main-stream media… [T]heir greed and covetousness for consumption is likened only with Satan in the Bible.
These statements are horrific on their own, but what makes the situation even worse is that the moderators for the group have used similar – even worse – rhetoric themselves, defending Hamas and discussing committing violence against American troops.
Yet another model of the tolerant Left has burned up in Jihadist flames. But hate is fine, as long as it is found on the progressive left. There are other parts to this video that can be found at The Religion of Peace, but here is the first one to set up some of the interviewees in the news story, this is an older video discussion, from June 2009, but what they are saying is shown time-and-time-again to be true:
Who Are the Muslim Brotherhood?
Segment 1: The Brotherhood’s History (top of the show)
Segment 2: The Brotherhood’s American Network (5:52 into the show)
Segment 3: The Brotherhood on Campus and Beyond (11:22 into the show)
Segment 4: The Brotherhood: An Insurgency with Nazi Ties (17:22 into the show)
Segment 5: The Brotherhood’s Leading American Front Group: CAIR (22:20 into the show)
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