Not Blacklisting Muslim Brotherhood Carries Risk
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Those claiming the Muslim Brotherhood is popular and
nonviolent are wrong on both counts.
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In a January
26 Wall Street Journal article titled "Blacklisting Muslim Brotherhood Carries Risk,"
Yaroslav Trofimov writes that the Trump administration's proposed
designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist group "could trigger a
slew of unexpected consequences" due to its "millions of
supporters." He then further defends the group by quoting supporters
who proudly testify to its nonviolence. Both claims – that the
Brotherhood is popular and nonviolent – are deeply misleading.
It is true
that current, card-carrying members of the Brotherhood do not openly
support violence and condone terrorism when addressing their Western
targets, but they certainly do openly support terrorism and violence when
speaking in Arabic. The Brotherhood went as far as declaring that it will
establish a "war committee" following the 2013
ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood's television stations have not only attacked current
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, they have called for his assassination. In 2015,
the Muslim Brotherhood channel also threatened mass terrorist attacks in
Egypt and vowed to target foreigners in Egypt and their embassies.
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Nearly every Sunni Islamist terror
group in history was established fully or in part by Muslim Brotherhood
members.
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The official,
public-facing Brotherhood institutions are designed to win political
power, and their leaders and spokespeople have learned to play the game
well. But nearly every Sunni Islamist terror group in history was
established fully or in part by leaders associated with the Brotherhood.
In 1985, three Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Abdullah Azzam (1941 –1989), Osama Bin Laden (1957 –2011), and Ayman al-Zawahiri, founded Maktab
al-Khidamat (MAK), in Pakistan, which later became al-Qaeda. In a 2014 interview, Brotherhood spiritual leader
Yusuf al-Qaradawi admitted that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
was indeed a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Qaradawi
and other associated with the Brotherhood issue fatwas legitimizing suicide bombings.
Rex
Tillerson, President Trump's nominee for secretary of state, rightly
lumped the Brotherhood alongside jihadist groups in his Senate
confirmation hearing, saying "The demise of ISIS will also allow us
to increase our attention on other agents of radical Islam like al Qaeda,
the Muslim Brotherhood and certain elements within Iran."
Mr. Trofimov
notes that the Brotherhood and its affiliates were "winning
elections" in the wake of the Arab Spring, but this was hardly
"across the Middle East" as he claims. The Brotherhood's most
celebrated triumph – the election Morsi as president of Egypt – was
short-lived, precipitating the largest anti-terrorism protests in Middle
East history. Islamists are great at whipping passions against this or
that government, but even Muslims panic when Islamists are put in power.
Enough about
the nonviolence and peacefulness of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Trofimov.
Given the Brotherhood's ties to the vast majority of Sunni terrorist
organizations in the world today, not blacklisting it is what's really
risky.
Cynthia Farahat is a fellow at the Middle
East Forum and a columnist for the Egyptian daily Al-Maqal.
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