New York Times Shills for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
In a recent New York Times article titled “As Islamists Gain Influence, Washington Reassess Who Its Friends Are,”
one Scott Shane does what the MSM does best: objectively list and
discuss facts, but then offer an interpretation that has little
grounding in reality.The prevailing theme of his article is that there is “great change” in the Middle East, which certainly is true, though he fails to explain the fundamental factors behind this change, including the primary one that should interest Americans—namely, a counterproductive, if not irrational, U.S. Mideast policy. Nor does he explain the philosophical underpinnings of this failed policy—namely, the belief, pounded in every American child’s head upon entering school, that all violence is a product of some grievance or material want: hence, all Islamic violence is a product of grievance and wants, all of which the U.S., under Obama, is going to satisfy by ensuring Islamists gain control of Egypt—even as many Egyptians yesterday protested against Hillary Clinton’s visit, insisting that “Egypt will not become Pakistan,” a reference to the U.S. administration’s obvious meddling in Egypt to empower the Sharia-enforcers.
Shane spends some time contrasting the Bush administration “stark” Mideast policy, including its unwillingness to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, with the Obama administration’s willingness to meet, not only the Brotherhood, but members from the terrorist organization Al Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which Shane describes as having “renounced violence.” Likewise, he argues that during the Bush years, “American officials did not always carefully distinguish between Islamists, who advocate a leading role for Islam in government, and violent jihadists, who espouse the same goal but advocate terrorism to achieve it.”
Shane fails to acknowledge that what both “Islamists” and “violent jihadists” want—“a leading role for Islam in government,” i.e., Sharia law—is in many respects the legal codification of terror: “a leading role for Islam in government” means whippings, beheading, amputations, sexual segregation, religious discrimination, death for apostates, and international hostility, even if only concealed, for the rest of the non-Islamic world, including the United States and especially its ally, Israel.
That Shane cannot—or will not—make this distinction is evident in the fact that he actually states that the Blind Sheikh’s “guilt is questioned by many Egyptians, who see him as the victim of a conspiracy by the United States and Mr. Mubarak.” Thus, here is the NYT giving voice to yet another “Muslim conspiracy theory” about how the terrorist sheikh—whose many terrors include his once issuing a fatwa permitting Muslims to ransack churches in Egypt to fund the jihad—may actually be “innocent.”
And what was the Obama administration’s excuse for secretly allowing another member of Al Gama’a al-Islamiyya—a group that, among other atrocities, slaughtered some 60 European tourists during the Luxor Massacre—to the White House? Simple: according to the State Dept, “It’s a new day in Egypt. It’s a new day in a lot of countries across the Middle East and North Africa.” Adds Shane: “Long-held assumptions about who is a friend of the United States and who is not have been upset.”
What does this utopian talk of a “new day” mean? What new event has caused “long-held assumptions about who is a friend of the United States” to be “upset”? In fact, a foremost factor is that, unlike former U.S. presidents, Obama threw the West’s traditional Mideast allies under the bus, helping empower America’s traditional enemies, the Islamists—all under the banner of “democracy.” This is why there is a “new day.” Yet Shane continues getting it backwards, writing, “American hostility to Islamist movements, in fact, long predated Sept. 11, in part because of the United States’ support for secular autocrats in Arab countries. During the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was officially banned…”
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