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The international press cried foul on October 19 after the U.S. denied a visa to a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader. Newsweek, Reuters, ABC News, The National Interest
and other media complained that the “moderate” Muslim Association of
Britain (MAB) founder Kamal Helbawy was barred from appearing at New
York University’s Center for Law and Security. The U.S. also barred entry to Egyptian doctor and MB “guidance counsel” Abd El Monem Abo El Fotouh, who was scheduled to speak in the same discussion on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Helbawy claims to be “moderate.” The U.S. should not prevent “moderates from talking and discussing,” Helbawy stated after being pulled off his flight. El Fotouh is purportedly also temperate.
“At the end of
the day, [Islam and the West] have a set of common humanist values:
justice, freedom, human rights and democracy,”
he told The Economist in September 2003. Arabists consider El Fotouh “one of the brightest stars” of the MB’s so-called “middle generation.”
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t explain their actions. One can only surmise—and applaud. Consider:
• In 2005, Prime
Minister Tony Blair denounced suicide bombings everywhere-even in
Israel. “Well he is wrong,” Helbawy replied. “He is not a Mufti,”
he told the Jamestown Foundation. In the same interview, Helbawy blamed
“[T]he events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine” as “a factor” behind
the July 7, 2005 London bombings-along with U.K. participation in Iraq
and its “policy toward the issue of Palestine.”
• “[T]he United States … invaded Iraq to divide Muslims,” El Fotouh told the New York Times on August 3, 2006. It was “better to support a Hezbollah-Iranian agenda than an ‘American-Zionist’ one,” he added.
• Islam’s
war against Israel is not “a conflict of borders and land only. It is
not even a conflict over human ideology and not over peace,” Helbawy told
a December 1992 Muslim Arab Youth Association gathering, taped by
terror expert Steve Emerson. “[I]t is an absolute clash of
civilizations, between truth and falsehood. Between two conducts-one
satanic, headed by Jews and their co-conspirators-and the other is
religious, carried by Hamas, and the Islamic movement in particular and
the Islamic people….” Muslims should never befriend “Jews and
Christians,” who are only “allies to each other,” he warned.
• Islamic scholars had performed their “basic religious duty”
in calling on Muslims to join jihad against the U.S., El Fotouh stated
in March 2003. Al Azhar had rightly urged them to “defend themselves
and their faith” against an “enemy” stepping “on Muslims’ land”—which
the scholars called “a new Crusader battle targeting our land, honour,
faith and nation.” Al Azhar’s decree, El Fotouh stated, was “no more
than an attempt on the part of its scholars to fulfill their duty
before God.” The U.S. had “plans to enslave the Arab nation,” he also
claimed.
The New York Post, Counterterrorismblog.org and New York Sun likewise saw through the MB facade.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood describes itself as a political and social revolutionary organization, the group is widely (and correctly) recognized as the parent of most Islamic terror groups. Indeed, U.S. authorities most worry about the MB defense of “the use of violence against civilians,” said security and terrorism adviser Juan Zarate recently.
Founded in March
1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the MB rejected the West and sought return to
the “original Islam.” Its philosophical and ideological ideas should
cause even academics serious concern. The recently exposed 1982 “Muslim Brotherhood ‘Project’” orders members worldwide
“To channel thought, education and action in order to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.”
Today, the MB still calls for “Building the Muslim state…Building the Khilafa…Mastering the world with Islam.”
MB spiritual
leader Yusuf Qaradawi, an Egyptian member of the European Council for
Fatwa and Research, likewise calls for an Islamic conquest of Europe
(starting with Rome and Italy). “[T]he patch of the Muslim state will
expand to cover the whole earth....,” he writes. Qaradawi also praises suicide bombing, readily accepts wife beating and calls upon Muslim women to detonate themselves in order to kill Jews.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, on Oct. 19, the Open Forum on The Muslim Brotherhood
nevertheless praised Helbawy and El Fotouh as peaceful moderates, and
their organization as a peaceful, just, and moderating influence on
Middle East and global politics. Their absence was yet another strike
against the Bush administration, executive director Karen Greenberg
stated. “This center tries to educate one another, policy makers and
the public,” she added—a job Greenberg apparently considers more
important than public security.
Former Sunday Times
senior reporter Nick Fielding then took the floor. He denied the risks
the MB poses to the West. Helbawy is “a wonderful human being,” he
stated, adding that the 2005 election of 22 Muslim Brothers to Egypt’s
parliament-and the Hamas victory in the January 2006 Palestinian
Authority votewere cause for celebration. Fielding objected only to
“the reward” Muslims received for their free elections-”the silence of
the U.S. State Department in the face of Egyptian government abuse,”
and the U.S. and international boycott of the Hamas-controlled PA.
The MB is
“reformist,” according to Fielding. It provides “the best possibility
in the Middle East of leaders who can make deals and stick to them,” he
stated, noting their solid political backing in Jordan, Tunisia,
Morocco, Algeria Kuwait and Yemen. The MB, he insisted, has “for the
past 30 years…[consistently] followed a non violent” path. The
brotherhood’s only problem, Fielding claimed, is its ostracization by
such analysts as “The Counterterrorism blog,” whose data he derided.
True democracy
would never take root in the Middle East, Fielding predicted. It’s
“about as likely as Shari’a being adopted in Washington D.C.,” he
joked.
Despite Islam’s
inherently political nature—“Muslims want Islam to be a central part of
life,” Fielding stated-he dismissed concerns over calls for a global
Islamic caliphate. “We shouldn’t terrify ourselves with this rather
silly point,” he said. “Refusing to recognize state Shar’ia law in
Islamic [nations]” is what has caused intensifying radicalism.
“Countering the spread of jihadist organizations” requires that the
West “address the grievancesmany of them legitimate-of the jihadist
movement,” Fielding concluded.
Sharing
Fielding’s view is Nixon Center Senior Fellow and ABC news consultant
Alexis Debat—a former adviser to the French transatlantic defense
minister. “Let’s stop hyperventilating about the Muslim Brotherhood,”
he said. “I hear the same things in a church as I hear in a mosque.”
Debat concluded, “Islam is a source of enlightenment.”
Debat also
recognized Islam’s centrality—as both the Middle East’s “primary source
of political action” and “universal”—that is, encompassing every aspect
of life. “We don’t know where it starts and where it ends,” he
observed. Strangely, however, Debat denied that the Muslim Brotherhood
is “religious.” It’s chiefly a “political movement, not a party,”—a
“liberation” movement. He admired the group’s “highly pragmatic”
approach to becoming “the leader in Egypt.”
Islamist cleric
Yusuf Qaradawi, Debat allowed, “is the single most influential Islamic
thinker today.” He did not condemn Qaradawi’s views. Almost without
missing a beat, Debat maintained that the Muslim Brotherhood is a
“progressive” movement, whose ultimate goal “is a better, more just
society.” He added, “Social justice is the cornerstone of Islam.”
Regarding the MB
vision of a global Islamic caliphate, Debat insisted this “is
completely absent from Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric,” even that of
Qaradawi.
“I guarantee you that no serious official of the Egyptian ikhwan today would even mention the Caliphate as a program,”
he reiterated in a follow-up email, neglecting the worldwide Brotherhood, which claims membership in more than 70 countries.
Despite his
assurances, Debat opened with a troubling disclaimer: He admitted
“failing to understand the Middle East.” His five-year “journey to
understand the Muslim Brotherhood … will be lifelong,” Debat stated.
And “there’s a limit to what we [Westerners] can understand about the
Middle East,” he said.
Thank goodness
Homeland Security does not take advice from those who admit their
failure to understand the Middle East, believe Westerners incapable of
comprehending it—and with such an obvious disregard for established
facts.
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