|
Notify me of new HIR pieces!
|
|
||||||||||||||||
Short preface The Muslim Brotherhood organization is now all over
the Muslim world. It controls vast amounts of resources and has an enormous
membership. It is highly disciplined. And tremendously influential. As the Economist explains: “The Muslim
Brotherhood…, founded in Egypt in 1928, has been an important incubator of
Islamist movements, and has survived decades of repression.” In the recent
political upheaval “its highly disciplined youth
movement proved crucial to the protests that overthrew [former Egyptian
president] Mr [Hosni] Mubarak.”[1] What is the relationship between the Muslim
Brotherhood and the US ruling elite? And what does this relationship hold for
the future? This article will seek to explore these questions. The interpretation of diplomatic
language Historian Bernadotte Schmitt once wrote: “Diplomatic
records… never tell the whole story of a diplomatic transaction, as Bismarck
long ago avowed, for the motives of the negotiators are seldom declared.”[2] But if statesmen and their diplomats, even
in their one-on-one dealings, do not reveal what their real intentions are,
then their public declarations—speeches, interviews, press briefings,
etc.—will be even less transparent. Whoever says, “President Obama’s intention
is X because he declared his intention to be X” is not doing political
science but propaganda. If we wish to understand Obama’s—or, more precisely,
the US ruling elite’s—intentions vis-à-vis the Muslim Brotherhood, we must interpret their public statements. In
this regard, certain statements from the month of February 2011 are
especially useful. Interpretation (naturally) requires context: the context
of US actions. We shall provide it. Let us begin with Phillip Crowley, Assistant
Secretary of State for Public Affairs. At a February 2nd press briefing
reporters asked him about the US position on the Muslim Brotherhood. [Quote from
Press Briefing begins here] MR. CROWLEY: [...] If any figure wants to play a
role in this [new political] process [in Egypt], they can come forward. If
any -- if any group -- Q: They could? Does that include the Muslim
Brotherhood? MR. CROWLEY: If any group wants to come forward
and play a role in a democratic process, a peaceful process, that is their
right as Egyptians. It's not for us, the United States, to dictate this.[3] [Quote from
Press Briefing ends here] Let us unpack this. Consider the words: “It’s not for us, the United
States, to dictate…” Anybody who has followed US foreign policy over the
years will see the problem. When the US ruling elite does not like something,
it makes its wishes known, and then, if necessary, forces the outcome. It
dictates. Unhappy with a particular regime, it may bomb (Yugoslavia), invade
(Panama, Iraq), or else arrange a coup d’état (Guatemala, Iran). Or it may do
lots of other things. In the 1947 National Security Act, the US Congress gave
US Intelligence very broad authority to influence the media and political
processes of other countries with so-called “covert actions.”[4] Perhaps more to the point, just a few days before
the above quoted exchange, former US ambassador to Egypt, Frank G. Wisner,
explained the following on TV: “We [the US
ruling elite] have known that the end of the Mubarak period would be with us
in some reasonable time frame. We've been thinking in these terms. …the
situation is not a surprise.”[5] But if the US government was already expecting
(planning?) a transition to a post-Mubarak Egypt, who was the favorite to replace Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak? Rewind back to June 2009. Just a few months after
installing himself in the White House as the new president of the United
States, Barack Obama made a trip to Egypt, to give a speech, to send a
message to Muslims. This is very deliberate stuff. Dramatic stuff. (As
dramatic and deliberate, perhaps, as Obama giving his first interview as
president, just 6 days after assuming office, to Al Arabiya Television.) But
if Obama was there to address Muslims in general, was he speaking to (winking
at?) anyone in particular?
According to a number of reports in the Middle Eastern media, Obama insisted
that top representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend his
speech.[6] All by itself, this invitation to the Muslim
Brotherhood is pregnant with meaning. Egypt is a US client-state, whose
military has been built up, tremendously, with US largesse. And the client
military government, led at the time by Hosni Mubarak, had been trying to
keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power. So the Muslim Brotherhood
representatives, in the context of the dramatic invitation by the president
of the World Superpower (Egypt’s Big Boss), were bound to pay close attention
to the content of Obama’s speech. And producing such careful attention to
content, naturally, was the reason for inviting them. This is how diplomatic
language works. And what did Obama say to the leaders of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission is to make Islam the Law of State
in Egypt? Obama passionately praised the virtues of Islam, and
showed that he knows the Quran intimately, for he quoted extensively from it
without even glancing at his notes. And he produced the most remarkable
interpretation of his job: “And I consider it part of my responsibility as
President of the United States,” he said pointedly, “to fight against
negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”[7] As we said, public statements by government
officials are usually mired in deceit, subterfuge, and indirectness, but in
this case we have relatively clear diplomatic language. Unless the Muslim
Brotherhood leaders had fallen into a deep coma they were bound to hear Obama
loud and clear: Your turn is up. Get
ready. Now fast forward a year and a half later (in
political time, a few seconds) to the 2011 protests. Frank Wisner was sent to
Egypt to convey to Mubarak the desires of the US government, which Phillip
Crowley, speaking for the State Department, explained in a January 31
briefing: “President Mubarak pledged a -- you know, to undertake political
and economic reform. And, as we've said ever since, we want to see, you know,
concrete actions…”[8] The next day
Christiane Amanpour explained on ABC News what was
going on: “President Obama dispatched Frank Wisner, a former ambassador to
Egypt, to deliver a message directly to Mubarak suggesting he not seek
re-election.”[9] This is how the Empire dictates the outcome to its
client state. But pressing the Egyptian military government to 1) remove Mubarak, and 2) rush to hold elections, as everybody understands, will give the
upper hand to the Muslim Brotherhood. So, not surprisingly, the next day
(February 2), Phillip Crowley was asked by reporters to state the US position
on whether the Muslim Brotherhood should play a role in Egyptian politics. To
which he replied (as we saw): “If any group wants to come forward and play a
role in a democratic process, a peaceful process, that
is their right as Egyptians. It's not for us, the United States, to dictate
this.” So what does this mean, in context? It means this: The US ruling elite
WOULD LIKE (very much) for the Muslim Brotherhood to play an active role in
Egyptian politics. Not surprisingly, there were reports that Frank
Wisner had met with the Muslim Brotherhood during his trip to Egypt.
Reporters asked Crowley about this at the same press briefing, and he denied
it (he seemed a bit nervous).[10] On February 14th Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
was interviewed by Al Arabiya Television. This is “an Arabic-language
television news channel… partly owned by the Saudi broadcaster Middle East
Broadcasting Center (MBC).”[11] So Clinton was speaking here directly to
the Saudi-style salafists/wahabbists
allied with the Muslim Brotherhood. [Excerpt from
interview begins here] MR. MELHEM: […] Is the [Muslim] Brotherhood
welcome at the table as President Obama hinted last week? SEC. CLINTON: That is up to the Egyptian people.
[…][12] [Excerpt from
interview ends here] Translation: Yes, you understood President Obama’s hint
perfectly. On February 23rd, Clinton gave an interview to
Masrawy.com, an Egyptian website owned, through LINKdotNET,
by Orascom Telecom Holding, an Egyptian
multinational.[13] She was speaking directly to Egyptians. [Excerpt from
interview begins here] MR. GHANIM: […] What would be the reaction of the
United States if Muslim Brotherhood gained power in Egypt through a true
democratic election? SEC. CLINTON: Well, first, let me say that it's up to
the Egyptian people… any party that is committed to nonviolence, committed to
democracy, committed to the rights of all Egyptians, whoever they are, should
have the opportunity to compete for Egyptian votes. […] [14] [Excerpt from
interview ends here] Translation: We will all pretend that the Muslim
Brotherhood is committed to nonviolence and democracy. Muslim Brotherhood: no
problem. Mubarak resigned under US pressure. Then the US
pushed for a lightning quick timetable for a referendum on a new Constitution
followed by new elections. According to the Economist, “the referendum marked a big step towards sending the
army… back to barracks… [T]he speedy timetable laid out in the new deal may
help the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, among others, to dish secular
liberals and other fledgling parties in any early poll.” And this is the
reason, as explained by the Economist,
that Egyptian liberals voted against going for a new Constitution and early
polls in the referendum (which they lost).[15] (Let us not forget that the old Egyptian
Constitution forbids the formation of religious political parties, something
Egyptian liberals no doubt appreciated about it.) Now, given that the US ruling elite appears to be
pushing for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt, we should seek to
understand what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a widely known Somali author who,
in order to escape Islam, took refuge in Holland, where she became a citizen,
a political scientist, and a Member of Parliament. She now lives in the
United States, after a Muslim stabbed her friend Theo van Gogh to death in
the streets of Amsterdam. Pinned between the knife and her friend’s chest was
a letter addressed to Hirsi Ali: you
are next. The reason for the murder was that van Gogh had made a short
film with Hirsi Ali about Islam and its oppression of women. Hirsi Ali knows the Muslim Brotherhood well. In her
autobiography, titled Infidel, she
explains the role of this organization in Kenya, where she lived for a number
of years as a refugee from the Somali civil wars. In her Nairobi
neighborhood, the local Muslim Brotherhood preacher was one Boqol Sawm, whose strategy was
to recruit the women first, and then use the women to shame their husbands
into becoming good Muslims. If they wanted their wives to obey them again
(for wives need not obey husbands who do not accept true Islam), they would
have to follow the Brotherhood.[16] It was a powerful inducement. “Boqol Sawm,” explains Hirsi
Ali, “shouted that the men who rejected their wives’ call to
Islam would burn. The rich who spent their money on earthly things would
burn. The Muslims who abandoned their fellow Muslims—the Palestinians—were
not true Muslims, and they would burn, too. Islam was under threat and its
enemies—the Jews and the Americans—would burn forever. Those Muslim families
who sent their children to universities in the United States, Britain, and
other lands of the infidels would burn. Life on earth is temporary, Boqol Sawm yelled; it was meant
by Allah to test people. The hypocrites who were too weak to resist the worldly
temptations would burn. If you did not break off your friendships with
non-Muslims, you would burn.”[17] Hirsi Ali tells how one day she went with her
Islamic class, led by one Sister Aziza, to a new Muslim Brotherhood mosque
built in a poor neighborhood with the money of a Saudi millionaire. The
Muslim Brotherhood was converting many poor Kenyans to Islam with the hook of
social assistance (highly effective). A recently converted Swahili woman
began breastfeeding her child the way she used to prior to her conversion,
with her breast in the open. “All the girls
from Sister Aziza’s class shrieked in unison, and we transported this young
woman to a hall in the women’s section. An older woman of Swahili origin
[another convert to Islam], covered from head to toe in black, started to
instruct her in the Islamic way of breast-feeding. First you say Bismillah
before you put the nipple into the mouth. As the baby is feeding, beg Allah
to protect your child from illness, earthly temptations, and evil ways of the
Jews.”[18] Is an image worth a thousand words? Perhaps a
well-chosen anecdote is worth a thousand explanations: It is correct for a Muslim child to begin life suckling Jew-hatred
from mama’s teat. Hirsi Ali explains further: “[The Muslim
Brotherhood] taught that, as Muslims, we should oppose the West. Our goal was
a global Islamic government, for everyone. How would we fight? Some said the
most important goal was preaching: to spread Islam among non-Muslims and to
awaken passive Muslims to the call of the true, pure belief. Several young
men left the group to go to Egypt, to become members of the original Muslim
Brotherhood there. Others received scholarships from various Saudi-funded
groups to go to Quran schools in Medina, in Saudi Arabia.”[19] There was also much talk of jihad, “a word that may have multiple meanings. It may mean that
the faith needs financial support, or that an effort should be made to
convert new believers. Or it may mean violence; violent jihad is a historical
constant in Islam.”[20] Hirsi Ali never liked this kind of talk very much.
She was attracted to the West: “For me Britain and America were the countries
in my books were there was decency and individual choice. The West to me
meant all those ideas…”[21] She was hoping that Boqol
Sawm was exaggerating. She was hoping that he was
distorting the true content of the Quran, for she did not wish her religion
to preach death to all those will not convert. So she got the book. She could
not read Arabic, so “I bought my own English edition of the Quran and I read
it so I could understand it better. But I found that everything Boqol Sawm had said was in
there. Women should obey their husbands. Women were worth half a man. Infidels
should be killed.”[22] By the time the 9/11 attacks happened Hirsi Ali was
living in Holland. There is, of course, a controversy about the authorship of
those attacks. But that is not the point here. The point is how they were
perceived in the Muslim world, where it was assumed by many that Osama bin
Laden was the mastermind, and where the same people accepted that he had done
it in the name of Islam. Dutch TV cameras showed Muslim kids in Holland
jubilating in the streets over the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans.
Even so, Hirsi Ali’s Dutch friends—no doubt influenced by the constant
apologies for Islam that routinely flood the Western media—didn’t want to
believe that this had anything to do with ‘real’ Islam, a supposedly peaceful
religion. Talking to a friend on her way to the office the next day, Hirsi Ali
began what would become her lifelong duty: to inform Westerners about what
Islam preaches, and the danger that her former religion poses to liberty and
sanity everywhere. “I couldn’t help myself. Just before we reached the
office, I blurted out, ‘But it is
about Islam. This is based in belief. This is Islam.’ …I walked into the
office thinking, ‘I have to wake these people up.’ ” That’s what Hirsi Ali
has been trying to do ever since: wake up Westerners. As she explains about
the violence of 9/11, “This was not
just Islam, this was the core of Islam… There were
tens of thousands of people, in Africa, the Middle East—even in Holland—who
thought this way. Every devout Muslim who aspired to practice genuine
Islam—the Muslim Brotherhood Islam, the Islam of the Medina Quran
schools—even if they didn’t actively support the attacks, they must at
least have approved of them.”[23] Some of my readers may be wondering, ‘But then why
is Obama supporting a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt? Could it be that
he doesn’t understand what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for?’
Lots of people seem to think that objectionable US
foreign policy should be explained on the basis of the supposed ignorance or thick-headedness of US leaders. But if US policy appears to
contradict what you believe reasonable, there is an obvious alternative to
proposing that US leaders are misinformed madmen. The alternative says that
US leaders have different values than your own, but they lie in public about
their real intentions (so that you will think they do share your values). This alternative hypothesis has the
advantage of being reasonable. It does not force us to say that the most
powerful people in the world—in charge of a vast and sophisticated
information-gathering system—are stupider, crazier, or less well-informed
than the average blogger. The point is perfectly general, but in the case of
Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood we can give a rather sharp
demonstration. Some have argued that Obama is in reality a closet
Muslim, and they point to the words “My Muslim faith,” which did indeed slide
inadvertently from his lips during an ABC News television interview.[24] Others consider the error completely innocent:
Obama meant to say “My alleged
Muslim faith” and merely failed to pronounce the word “alleged.” But whatever
the facts of Obama’s inner religious convictions, the facts of his upbringing
and family background are not in dispute. President Obama spent his childhood
in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, and for this reason
alone one could expect him to be well informed about Islam. If that were not
enough, Obama is descended, on his father’s side, from Muslims.[25] As mentioned earlier, when he insisted that
representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood be present at a speech he gave in
Egypt in 2009, he went out of his way to praise Islam, repeatedly, and
demonstrated that he can quote from the Quran ex tempore. So Obama is not misinformed about Islam. And since he
knows the Quran, he knows, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali also does, that the book calls
for the slaughter of infidels. But, in particular, Obama cannot be misinformed
about the Muslim Brotherhood. For you see, his own Muslim family is from Nyang'oma Kogelo, in the
extreme Western end of Kenya. Islam is still a minority religion in Kenya (about
10%), and Muslims are mostly on the coast, in the East. In the West, the
first Muslim missionaries did not arrive until the very late 19th c. As a
consequence, Muslim converts in this area—the area from
which Obama’s family hails—are mostly the consequence of Muslim
Brotherhood proselytizing, which became especially intense from the 1970s
onward. So Obama’s Muslim family, and in particular his father (whom Obama
himself explains was “raised a Muslim” [25a])
must be quite familiar with the Muslim Brotherhood message that Ayaan Hirsi
Ali (above) witnessed in Kenya: death
to all infidels and, especially, death to the Jews. Also, Obama has to know that the terrorist
organization Hamas, in control of the Gaza strip, which has a border with
Egypt, and pledged to destroy the Jewish state, is a branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood. Why? Because Hamas makes no secret of this, and the information
is published in Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, which the Avalon Project at
Yale University has made public on the internet: “ARTICLE 2:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in
Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which
constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate
comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects
of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and
judgment, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the
occult and conversion to Islam.”[26] Here then are the facts of US foreign policy. After
sending billions upon billions of dollars in US armament to the Egyptian
military since 1974, Obama—or, more precisely, the US ruling elite—now wants
the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of all that armament. This, Obama—or, more
precisely, the US ruling elite—is doing with a perfect understanding of what
the Muslim Brotherhood is and what it intends to do: destroy Israel. Does this agree with the history of US foreign
policy? Perfectly. It has nothing to do with Obama per se but with the longstanding goals of the US ruling elite.[27] The future, coming soon Other Muslim countries besides Egypt have been
experiencing protests and revolts of late. In every case, it is the Muslim
Brotherhood taking the lead, and the Muslim Brotherhood taking over. In
Tunisia, the main opposition to the deposed president was the Islamist
movement Enahda, now legalized as a party. Enahda traces its roots to the Muslim Brotherhood.[28] In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood “is the
best-run opposition movement.”[29] And in Syria everything indicates that the
Muslim Brotherhood is the main force behind the recent unrest.[30] The US government is lending support to all of these
revolts. It appears, therefore, that the Brotherhood is poised to gain lots
of power in the Muslim world, in the short term. No surprise, then, that the
leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood is expressing such satisfaction with the
course of developments.[31]
The future, sooner than you think, will show us a
Muslim world universally run by the Islamist offspring of the Muslim
Brotherhood, where a child learns to hate and fear Jews, literally, at his
mother’s teat. Where the goal of everything is a Universal World Government
of Islam. Where killing the remaining obstacles—the infidels who will not
convert—is a glorious undertaking, and to die in the
process ensures a ticket to Heaven. All of this, courtesy of US leaders (who are
apparently in a great hurry).
Footnotes and further reading [1] A
golden opportunity?; Islam and the Arab revolutions;
The Economist, April 2, 2011, FRONT BRIEFING, 2162 words. [2] Schmitt, B.
E. (1936). Review: American Neutrality, 1914-1917. The Journal of Modern
History, 8(2), 200-211. (p.203) [3] Federal News
Service; February 2, 2011 Wednesday; STATE DEPARTMENT REGULAR BRIEFING;
BRIEFER: PHILIP J. (P.J.) CROWLEY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC
AFFAIRS; LOCATION: STATE DEPARTMENT
BRIEFING ROOM, STATE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.; SECTION: STATE DEPARTMENT
BRIEFING; LENGTH: 9136 words [4] “Did the
National Security Act of 1947 destroy freedom of the press?: The red
pill...”; Historical and Investigative Research; 3 Jan 2006; by by Francisco Gil-White [5] January 28
CNN interview with Frank Wisner: [Excerpt from
CNN transcript] MORGAN: Frank,
let me start with you. It seems everyone is trying to make out this is a huge
surprise and yet resentment towards Mubarak has been building for years.
President Obama warned him many times, he must do something about this. So,
it's not much of a surprise, is it really? FRANK WISNER,
FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT: Well, I think the slow developing situation,
even the incidents that have marked this year, the explosion at promise in
Alexandria, the beating and killing of a businessman earlier, all these were
events that signaled that on top of the disconnect, trouble was brewing. But
I don't think you can ever predict exactly when the crisis will erupt. And,
if you will, this crisis with its -- the predicate
in Tunisia, has come on very quickly. I don't think anyone, and certainly not
the Egyptian government, is completely taken by surprise. We have known that
the end of the Mubarak period would be with us in some reasonable time frame.
We've been thinking in these terms. So maybe the
day, but the situation is not a surprise. [Excerpt from
CNN transcript] SOURCE: “Crisis in Egypt”; CNN, January 28, 2011
Friday, NEWS; International, 6757 words, Piers Morgan, Ben Wedeman, Nic Robertson, Wolf
Blitzer, John King, Amir Ahmed, Fran Townsend, Richard Grenell,
Robin Wright, Mohammed Jamjoom, Mark Coatney, Sarah Sirgany [6] “…various
Middle Eastern news sources report that the administration insisted that at
least 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's chief opposition
party, be allowed to attend his speech in Cairo on Thursday.” SOURCE: "Brotherhood" Invited To Obama
Speech By U.S.”; The Atlantic; Jun 3 2009; By Marc Ambinder. [7] President
Obama’s Egypt Speech, 4 June 2009. To read the transcript: [8] STATE
DEPARTMENT REGULAR BRIEFING; BRIEFER: PHILIP J. (P.J.) CROWLEY, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS; LOCATION: STATE DEPARTMENT BRIEFING
ROOM, STATE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.; Federal News Service, January 31,
2011 Monday, STATE DEPARTMENT BRIEFING, 8733 words [9] “CRISIS IN
EGYPT; ANGRY BURST”; ABC News Transcript, February 1, 2011 Tuesday, 617 words [10] Federal News
Service; February 2, 2011 Wednesday; STATE DEPARTMENT REGULAR BRIEFING;
BRIEFER: PHILIP J. (P.J.) CROWLEY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC
AFFAIRS; LOCATION: STATE DEPARTMENT
BRIEFING ROOM, STATE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.; SECTION: STATE DEPARTMENT
BRIEFING; LENGTH: 9136 words [Excerpt begins here] Q: Can you talk about the Muslim Brotherhood? Can
you talk about the Muslim Brotherhood and whether there have been any
contacts with them, and whether you think that the Muslim Brotherhood should
be part of any political process? You say you're not going to anoint anybody,
but what if a figure from Muslim Brotherhood emerges as the primary candidate
to lead the country? MR. CROWLEY: All right, again -- Q: Specifically on the Muslim Brotherhood. MR. CROWLEY: We have not met with the Muslim
Brotherhood. Q: Have you spoken with -- (off mic)? (Cross talk.) Q: Okay, but -- no, but what if -- should they be
part of the political process? MR. CROWLEY: We have had no contact with the Muslim
Brotherhood. Q: But should they be part of a political process?
They obviously have a following in the country. MR. CROWLEY: Well, again, that is up to them. They
are -- they are a fact of life in Egypt. They are highly organized. And if they choose, and
if they choose to participate and respect the democratic process, that is a
-- those are decisions to be made, you know, inside Egypt. You know, the army obviously will play a role in
this transition. There are -- there are a broad variety of political figures,
political groups, political actors that can participate if they choose. These
are decisions to be made inside Egypt. Q: Have you met with -- Q: P.J. Q: Have you asked to meet the Muslim Brotherhood? MR. CROWLEY: No. Q: Why not? Q: (Off mic) -- that the army -- that the -- Q: I mean, you've met with
other opposition members. Who -- can you say who've you met with? Ayman Nour. You've met with -- can you give a -- MR. CROWLEY: I don't -- I don't have a list here. We
are doing an aggressive, active outreach to a broad range of figures. We have
always done that. We're going to continue to do that. We've been very active
in the last few days. I can't detail all the people we have and have not.
You asked a specific question. We have not had contact with the Muslim
Brotherhood. Q: Why don't you meet with the Muslim Brotherhood?
What's the reason not to meet with them? MR. CROWLEY: I'm -- you know, we will meet with
figures. If we -- if we meet with anyone on those lines, we'll let you know. Q: Did you give conditions before you meet the
people? Q: P.J., are you saying that the reports about the
meeting with -- that Ambassador Wisner has had with the Muslim Brotherhood
representatives if false? MR. CROWLEY: I was in touch with Ambassador Wisner
on the airplane as he was coming back. He had two meetings, one with
President Mubarak and one with Vice President Suleiman. Q: Why is -- Q: So is the report false or is it not false? MR. CROWLEY: I mean, I -- I'm just telling you he
had two meetings. So if you're -- if you're saying, did Mr. Wisner meet with
the Muslim Brotherhood, the answer is no. [Excerpt ends here] [11] “Al Arabiya”
| From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [12] Federal News
Service; February 14, 2011 Monday; INTERVIEW WITH SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY
RODHAM CLINTON (AS RELEASED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT) INTERVIEWER: HISHAM
MELHEM, AL ARABIYA LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C. DATE: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14,
2011; SECTION: STATE DEPARTMENT BRIEFING; LENGTH: 1512 words [13] Wikipedia
articles consulted Sunday, May 08, 2011. [14] Federal News Service; February 23, 2011
Wednesday; SOCIAL MEDIA DIALOGUE WITH SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY RODHAM
CLINTON AND AHMED GHANIM OF EGYPT'S MASRAWY.COM (AS RELEASED BY THE STATE
DEPARTMENT); LOCATION: DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.; SECTION: STATE
DEPARTMENT BRIEFING; LENGTH: 4532 words [15] Egypt and
Democracy: Yes they can; The Economist; March 26th, 2011; pp.55-56 [16] The Muslim Brotherhood
preachers among the Somali exiles in Nairobi, Hirsi Ali explains, first
targeted the women. The strategy was to get women to shame the men into being
more orthodox Muslims. She focuses on one Boqol Sawm, a preacher she knew well because he preached in her
Nairobi neighborhood of Eastleigh. “As Boqol Sawm’s following grew,
his sermons caused a lot of quarrels between spouses. At first, the Somali
fathers and husbands were amused and teased their wives, predicting that
after a week the silly, bored women would find some other pastime. After a
while, however, irritations arose. The living room, usually well furnished,
is the domain of the man. Somali men bring their male friends home and sit
with them in the living room having men-talk (honor, money, politics, and
whether to take a second or third wife) as they drink scented sweet tea and
chew qat. The evenings and Friday afternoons are
their preferred times, and Boqol Sawm chose to give his lectures especially at those
times. When Boqol Sawm was visiting a
house, the men were relegated to the women’s quarters: the kitchen, backyard,
and, in some of the bigger houses, the smaller and uglier living rooms
usually occupied by the women. And after their wives converted to the True
Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood believers, they began saying that chewing qat, smoking, and skipping prayers were forbidden. They
actually sent their husbands off, calling them unbelievers. When the men
shouted about disobedience, the women replied that in the hierarchy of
submission [‘Islam’ literally means ‘submission’ — HIR], we must follow Allah
even before husband and father: Allah and the Prophet decreed that wives
should obey only husbands who themselves obey Allah.” (p. 105) In this manner men acquired a powerful incentive to
become more orthodox Muslims: to regain control of their households. “The Muslim
Brotherhood believed that there was a pure, original Islam to which we all
should return. Traditional ways of practicing Islam had become corrupted,
diluted with ancient beliefs that should no longer have currency. The
movement was founded in the 1920s in Egypt as an Islamic revivalist movement,
then caught on and spread—slowly at first, but much faster in the 1970s, as
waves of funding flooded in from the suddenly massively rich Saudis. By 1987
the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas had reached the Somali housewives of Eastleigh in the gaunt and angry shape of Boqol Sawm. Within months the first divorces were occurring, and
secular Somali men were threatening Boqol Sawm for breaking up their families. Boqol
Sawm was chased away by angry husbands from the
living room sessions and from the Somali mosques, but copies of his tapes
continued to spread even as he was in hiding. …Boqol Sawm wasn’t the only
preacher who had come to our neighborhood to guide the lost back to Allah’s
Straight Path after a stint in Medina or Cairo. More and more young men of
the Muslim Brotherhood, dressed in ankle-length white robes and red-and-white
checked shawls, were striding through the streets. People who converted to
their cause started to collect money from family; some women gave their
dowries, and all kinds of donations came in. By 1987 the first Muslim
Brotherhood mosque was built in Eastleigh, and Boqol Sawm came out of hiding
to preach there every Friday, screaming at the top of his lungs through the
loudspeakers behind the white minaret topped with a green crescent and a
single star. Boqol Sawm shouted that the men who rejected their wives’ call
to Islam would burn…” (pp.105-07) SOURCE: Hirsi Ali, A. (2007). Infidel. New York:
Simon & Shuster. [17] Hirsi Ali, A.
(2007). Infidel. New York: Simon & Shuster. (pp.105-07) [18] Infidel, op. cit. (p.107) [19] Infidel, op. cit. (p.109) [20] Infidel, op. cit. (p.109) [21] Infidel, op. cit. (p.109) [22] Infidel, op. cit. (p.104) [23] Infidel, op. cit. (pp.268-70) [24] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQqIpdBOg6I&feature=related [25] PERSONAL HISTORY; Newsday (New York), November 9, 2008 Sunday, NEWS;
Pg. W04, 500 words. [25a] Taken from, “Barack Obama: My
Spiritual Journey”, his autobiography, excerpts of which were published in
Time Magazine (Monday, Oct. 16, 2006). [26] Hamas Charter, published by the Avalon Project, Yale University If you would
like to see a PDF of the original Arabic document, with its English
translation, see: [27] This is a good place to start: “PLO/Fatah's Nazi training was
CIA-sponsored”; Historical and
Investigative Research; 22 July 2007; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/cia-fatah.htm [28] The
recent uprisings in the Muslim world began in Tunisia, where regime change
has already been accomplished. In the wake of the revolt that brought this
about, the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda has
been legalized. About this, Al Jazeera writes: “The movement was founded in
1981 by Rachid Ghannouchi
and intellectuals inspired by the influential Muslim Brotherhood born in
Egypt.” How big is Tunisian Islamism? “Experts say it is hard to gauge the
strength of Islamism as a political force in Tunisia as it has been banned
for decades, but Islamists were its most powerful opposition force before the
persecution began.” After the deposed President Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali took power, Ennahda was briefly tolerated
but denied registration as a party. “Despite that, an Islamist-backed
coalition won 17 per cent of the vote in 1989 elections, even though the vote
was heavily falsified.”(a) So a
movement tracing its genesis to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood appears to
have been the strongest opposition force to the deposed president. The revolt
was therefore probably staged, in the main, by this group, which helps
explain why it has now been legalized, and also why, as the Economist
explains, the post-revolutionary government in Tunisia has freed “thousands
of Islamist political prisoners.”(b) SOURCES USED
IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a) Tunisia allows Islamist group to form
political party; BBC Monitoring Middle East - Political Supplied by BBC
Worldwide Monitoring, March 1, 2011 Tuesday, 295 words; Text of report in
English by Qatari government-funded aljazeera.net website on 1 March
["Tunisia's Islamists to form party" - Al Jazeera net headline] (b) A golden opportunity?; Islam and the
Arab revolutions; The Economist, April 2, 2011, FRONT BRIEFING, 2162 words [29] About the people fighting Qaddafi, the Economist recently writes: “The opposition’s
interim national council contains secular liberals, Islamists, Muslim
Brothers, tribal figures and recent defectors from the camp of Colonel
Qaddafi.” The above appears to suggest
a truly plural coalition (but notice that Islamists are listed twice:
“Islamists, Muslim Brothers”). The question is: How much of that opposition
consists of Muslim Brothers? In another piece, the Economist explains: “The
Muslim Brotherhood, which has branches all over the region, is the best-run
opposition movement in Libya and Egypt.” It appears, then, that in Libya too
the rebels are mostly Muslim Brothers. SOURCE: Islam
and the Arab revolutions; The Economist, April 2, 2011, LEADER, 1020 words [30]
The Times of London explains that Syrian president Hafez al-Assad “dealt with
a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the town of Hama in 1982, when thousands
were killed.” (a) The above is a
reference to the Hama massacre, which according to a Christian Science
Monitor article may have involved as many as 22,000 people killed. So back in
1982 the Muslim Brotherhood could already stage in Syria an uprising so large
that to put it down Hafez al-Assad had to kill thousands. In fact, according
to a scholar interviewed by the Monitor, this was an attempt by the Muslim
Brotherhood to activate its membership simultaneously in various cities and
depose the ruling Ba’ath party.(b) No such
attempt could even be imagined unless the organization was already quite
large in Syria. Certainly the bloody repression dealt a blow to the Muslim
Brotherhood’s ability to take power by force, but it does not appear to have
dented its appeal. In 2005, the New York Times wrote: “the fundamentalist
Muslim Brotherhood [is] the most popular organization among Syria's majority
Sunnis.”(c) Later that same year,
the New York Times wrote that “an unusually diverse collection of politicians
and activists” was calling for ‘democracy’ in Syria, and the motley group
included “the London-based Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned
in Syria for more than two decades but is believed to enjoy continuing
popular support.”(d) So it would
appear that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind the recent agitation in Syria as
well. SOURCES USED
IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a) Syrians unite under fire from Assad
clan's 'ghost' militia; The Sunday Times (London), April 3, 2011 Sunday,
NEWS; Pg. 24, 593 words, Hugh Macleod ; Uzi Mahnaimi (b) Memory of 1982 massacre casts a pall
over Hama, Syria, as town rebuilds; Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA),
March 27, 1984, Tuesday, International; Pg. 7, 698 words, By Conyers A. Moye, Special to The Christian Science Monitor (c) U.N. IS EXPECTED TO PASS MEASURE
PRESSURING SYRIA; The New York Times, October 31, 2005 Monday, Section A;
Column 6; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1, 1264 words, By WARREN HOGE and STEVEN R.
WEISMAN; Warren Hoge reported from the United
Nations for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Damascus. (d) “The New York Times”; October 20,
2005 Thursday; Late Edition – Final; “Syria's Opposition Unites Behind a Call
for Democratic Changes”; BYLINE: By KATHERINE ZOEPF; SECTION: Section A;
Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 15; LENGTH: 574 words; DATELINE: DAMASCUS, Syria,
Oct. 19 [31] In
a recent interview aired on Al Arabiyah Television,
Sadr-al-Din al-Bayanuni, former controller general
of the Muslim Brotherhood, celebrated that “...all
the factors and reasons which led to an uprising and a revolution in Tunisia,
Egypt, and Libya do exist in Syria. …These youth moved after having long
waited for this regime and for the opposition, which could not achieve their
demands. They rebelled and staged purely national demonstrations, in which
all sectors of the Syrian people participated. They have proven their
patriotism, peacefulness, and non-violent approach.” Pay no
attention to the words “peacefulness and non-violence.” SOURCE: Speech
by Syrian president "disappointed many" - Muslim Brotherhood
official; BBC Monitoring Middle East - Political Supplied by BBC Worldwide
Monitoring, April 2, 2011 Saturday, 2053 words |
Notify me of new HIR pieces!
|
|
