Posted by David Solway on Feb 10th, 2011 The turmoil we see on our screens daily enacted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square has its ideological counterpart in the skirmish of opinions among Western observers concerning its political significance for the future. Some commentators are apprehensive that the ultimate result of the popular uprising will be the gradual usurpation of power by the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist organization that has assassinated two Egyptian presidents, spawned terrorist movements such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, and, according to its 1991 Memorandum, harbors the intent of “destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” As Jamie Glazov reminds us, the Brotherhood “is, after all, an influential Islamist organization [whose] top objectives are to implement Sharia law and to annihilate Israel.”
Others respond to the thrill of revolutionary upheavals in the name of democracy, as does the Daily Beast’s Bruce Riedel who instructs us not to “fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” and comforts us that there is no danger of a fundamentalist takeover similar to what occurred in Iran in 1979. For such illusionists, whose numbers continue to grow, the Brotherhood is regarded as a largely benign institution which has shed its violent past and wishes only to share power in coalition governments.
A recent column by Doug Saunders in the Toronto Globe and Mail perfectly encapsulates this pleasant, soft-minded, complacent and entirely supercilious attitude toward Islamic fundamentalism as embodied in the Brotherhood. According to this expert, the Brotherhood is “sluggish and inarticulate” and “not exactly a formidable bunch.” What’s more, “there is zero chance of Egypt’s turning into the 1979 Iranian revolution or the terrorist violence of Hamas.” Where Saunders derives the evidence for his conclusions remains an impenetrable mystery. We are, presumably, to trust his prophetic afflatus. To befair, Saunders does render brief homage to George Washington Universitypolitical scientist, Nathan Brown, who affirms with counterfactual didacticism that the Brotherhood “is against a theocratic state.” Saunders does not mention that Brown is known for defending Palestinian textbooks demonizing Jews and Israel. Or perhaps he skimped on his research.
Saunders then proceeds to assure his readers that the Muslim Brotherhood would “participate in a government that recognizes Israel,” although spokesmen for the group have made it amply clear that the direct opposite would be the case. Brotherhood officials such as Mohammed Morsy, Kamel Helbawi and Rashad al-Bayoumi have indicated that the peace treaty with Israel would likely be “reviewed” or, in plain language, “abolished.”
Next, Saunders goes on to compare an Islamist Egypt to modern Turkey whose ruling party under Recep Tayyip Erdogan achieved electoral credibility by purging its Sharia faction, becoming “aggressively pro-European,” and cooperating with Israel. One may be forgiven for wondering under what conditions of sensory deprivation the poor man has been living, as Turkey turns its back on its Western allies, drifts into the Iranian/Syrian orbit, publiclyhumiliates Israel’s president, and sends a flotilla comprising a band of Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) thugs to break the Israeli blockade of the Hamas terrorist regime. Saunders also believes that outlawing the Brotherhood in the past led directly to “the attacks of 9/11,” revealing himself as no less insani than the Turkish incendiaries.
It is only in virtue of such twisted logic, blindness to the facts on the ground and a state of mental vacuity that such absurdities can be entertained. What we can also detect operating beneath these aerial conjectures is a kind of culturally inflected exhaustion, a desire to surrender to the forces of unreason rather than to engage in the continuous struggle to defend the traditions, usages and principles that guarantee our liberty. Thus we race to take onboard the velleities and misunderstandings that absolve us of having to think and to act.
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