Breaking
from the U.S., the U.K. Condemns the Muslim Brotherhood, Calling It a
Terrorist Group
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Following an intensive 18-month governmental study, the United Kingdom
issued a startling indictment of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). It described
the organization as fiercely anti-democratic, openly supportive of
terrorism, dedicated to establishing an Islamist government, and opposed to
the rule of law, individual liberty, and equality.
We use the word "startling" not because this is news but
because, in such a politically correct world, it took guts for a world
leader to acknowledge the obvious about a movement that purports to
represent more than a billion people. If anyone at all — in particular our
own president, former secretary of state, and high priesthood of political
correctness, the New York Times — had simply bothered to read the
Brotherhood's own words, they would have inescapably reached the same
conclusion.
The new account, resulting from an exhaustive investigation by respected
foreign-policy experts, presents a brutally honest and in-depth examination
of the movement. In breaking from the U.S., the U.K. has ironically shifted
closer to Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia in identifying the MB as a
terrorist group.
"Aspects of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology and activities . . .
run counter to British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual
liberty, equality and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths
and beliefs," Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement.
Compare this to the description of the Muslim Brotherhood by James
Clapper, America's and the world's top intelligence official, the director
of National Intelligence. The MB was "largely secular," Clapper
said just a few years ago, and it "has eschewed violence."
After years of witnessing the anti-democratic agenda of the MB firsthand
and simply taking at face value the writings and sayings of its leaders and
its offshoots, the Obama administration still clings to an Alice in
Wonderland view of the organization that gave us al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas,
Islamic Jihad, al-Shabaab, and nearly every Sunni terrorist affiliate in
the world.
Moreover, the Obama administration brazenly ignored every word of the
detailed findings by the British team. Within minutes of the release of the
U.K. report, the Obama administration condemned it in an e-mail to the
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), citing the MB's stated commitment
to nonviolence and arguing that pushing back against the organization would
lead to the radicalization of some of its followers. The "political
repression of non-violent Islamist groups has historically contributed to
the radicalization of the minority of their members who would consider
violence," the statement reads. "The de-legitimization of
non-violent political groups does not promote stability, and instead
advances the very outcomes that such measures are intended to
prevent."
Now read the words of the U.K.-government report, which manifestly
demonstrates that the MB's so-called non-violence was due not to its
participation in an open society but rather to a calculated campaign based
on "expediency" and using democracy as a means to take away
freedoms and to institute "Islamisation." On this complex
subject, Sir John Jenkins, a co-author of the report, concluded that
for the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood have preferred non-violent
incremental change on the grounds of expediency, often on the basis that
political opposition will disappear when the process of Islamisation is
complete. But they are prepared to countenance violence — including, from
time to time, terrorism — where gradualism is ineffective.
This goes to the heart of the problem. Ever since it took office, the
Obama administration has accepted Islamist groups and regimes run by the
Muslim Brotherhood into its fold, under the belief that, when allowed to
participate in government, Islamists will no longer feel repressed and
forced to engage in brutality. Rather, they will channel their frustrations
into peaceful political action, support a pluralist form of government, and
forgo any violence.
Really? Perhaps that is why the record of the administration's Islamist
regime change throughout the Middle East has now brought the United States
to the precipice of World War III. It has allowed for the destabilization of
our close Arab ally Egypt, the alienation of Jordan, the evisceration of
Israel's national security, and the ascendancy of the most ruthless,
despotic, terrorist-supporting regime in the world, Iran.
During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's four years in office, the
Obama administration effusively embraced the top financial supporter of
Islamist terrorist syndicates in the world, the oil-rich potentate of Qatar, which was simultaneously
providing safe haven to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were issuing
fatwas to kill Americans and Jews. Don't take our word for the evils and
duplicity of the Brotherhood and its real agenda. Just read a select few
bullet points from the U.K. report.
o
"The founder and first Supreme Guide
(spiritual leader), Hassan al Banna, called for the religious reformation
of individual Muslims, the progressive moral purification of Muslim
societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under
sharia law."
o
"There is little evidence that the
experience of power in Egypt [in 2012-13] has caused a rethinking in the
Muslim Brotherhood of its ideology or conduct. UK official engagement with
the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood produced no discernible change in their
thinking. Indeed even by mid 2014 statements from Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood–linked media platforms seem to have deliberately incited
violence."
o
€œLiterature
in the Muslim Brotherhood movement in this country continues to reflect
some of the concerns of the foundational Muslim Brotherhood ideology,
notably that western society is inherently hostile to Muslim faith and
interests and that Muslims must respond by maintaining their distance and
autonomy.
o
€œMaterial
still being promoted by UKIM [U.K. Islamic Mission] as of July 2014
continued to explicitly claim that it is not possible for an observant
Muslim to live under a non-Islamic system of government (and anticipated
the forthcoming '€˜victory'€™ of Islam over communism,
capitalist democracy and secular materialism). €œ
o
However, in common with the Muslim
Brotherhood elsewhere, Muslim Brotherhood–related organisations and
individuals in the UK have openly supported the activities of Hamas. . . .
Aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and
overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national
interests and our national security.
None of this should surprise anyone alive in the past 90 years. Former
schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in
1928, €œaccepted the
political utility of violence, and the Brotherhood conducted attacks,
including political assassinations and attempted assassinations against
Egypt state targets and both British and Jewish interests during his
lifetime, the report
states. The British government is the first Western government to
acknowledge the Muslim Brotherhood'€™s
international reach and how its network promotes its ideology.
Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb promoted the stigmatization of other
Muslims as infidels and their states as un-Islamic. He advocated extreme
violence in pursuing the perfect Islamic society. The MB never officially
disowned Qutb'€™s
doctrine, known as takfir, and it continues to consist of those who
support savagery and want to overthrow the West.
The British government is the first Western government to acknowledge
the organization'€™s
international reach and how its network — particularly in the U.K. –
promotes its ideology, raises funds, and provides safe haven for members
who left their home countries to support Brotherhood activity. The U.K.
report describes the MB'€™s
shadowy and secretive front groups in its home country. It รข€œshaped the new Islamic
Society of Britain (ISB), dominated the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB)
and played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim
Council of Britain (MCB).
Their shadowy and secretive counterpart in the U.S. is the Council for
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Hundreds of newly declassified documents obtained and
analyzed last week by the IPT provide an overwhelming amount of evidence
that CAIR was formed as an extension of the Brotherhood in the United
States. The IPT has extensively documented CAIR'€™s
ties to the MB and its Palestinian affiliate Hamas.
The White House, which continues to welcome the organization as a
participant in policy discussions, recently invited to a meeting on
religious discrimination a CAIR official who accused the FBI of killing two men in
cold blood in separate incidents.
To this day, the FBI, our nation'™s
top law-enforcement agency, refuses to engage with CAIR because of its
relationship to Hamas, while the Obama administration treats CAIR as if it
were the Rotary Club.
The release of the British study is only the latest in a string of
embarrassments to our nation, which is flawed by a fatal error in its
understanding of who its allies and partners are. Iran and Islamist regimes
are the enemies of free peoples, of women, of Christians, of democracy, and
of the West. The Obama administration, in its embrace of Iran and other
Islamist regimes in the Middle East and of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas
fronts in our homeland, has eviscerated U.S. national security and
increased our vulnerability to Islamic terrorism and future Iranian
aggression more than at any other time in our history. The shootings in San
Bernardino and the rise of ISIS are only the beginnings of what we fear are
much more horrific and lethal developments.
The Obama administration, in its embrace of Iran and other Islamist
regimes in the Middle East and of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas fronts in
our homeland, has eviscerated U.S. national security and increased our
vulnerability to Islamic terrorism and future Iranian aggression more than
at any other time in our history. The shootings in San Bernardino and the
rise of ISIS are only the beginnings of what we fear are much more horrific
and lethal developments. America is accustomed to its role as the Shining
City on that Hill. In the past seven years, however, it has receded to
being a mole hiding under a rock and waiting for an attack. We have only
ourselves to blame. We need to remove from power those whose blind ideology
placed the American people in such a vulnerable position.
America is accustomed to its role as the Shining City on that Hill. In
the past seven years, however, it has receded to being a mole hiding under
a rock and waiting for an attack. We have only ourselves to blame. We need
to remove from power those whose blind ideology placed the American people
in such a vulnerable position.
— Steve Emerson is the executive director of the Investigative
Project on Terrorism. Pete Hoekstra is the Shillman Senior Fellow at the
Investigative Project on Terrorism, and the author of Architects
of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya.
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