BY JOSEPH KLEIN
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 10 2011 5:00 PM
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 10 2011 5:00 PM
The New York Times ran an op-ed column today entitled “What the Muslim Brothers Want.” Its author is Essam El-Errian, a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whom the Times described in a prior article as the council’s “lone ‘reformist.’” This appears to be the same Muslim Brotherhood member who reportedly met with Frank Wisner, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, recently at the U.S. embassy in Cairo during Mr. Wisner’s fact-finding mission on behalf of the Obama administration.
stands firmly behind the demands of the Egyptian people as a whole
Don’t be fooled. This lone ‘reformist’ is engaging in the time-honored Muslim tradition of lying about their own faith to conceal its true nature – a practice known as taqiyya.
Let’s start with the claim to a history of non-violence. El-Errian asserts:
Our principles, clearly stated since the inception of the movement in 1928, affirm an unequivocal position against violence.
Hamas, a violent terrorist organization, is the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have endorsed suicide bombing as part of jihad. A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam last week that
the [Egyptian] people should be prepared for war against Israel
You see, the Muslim Brotherhood has created a vast loophole to its profession of non-violence. Going to war with a country that has been at peace with Egypt for thirty years or sanctioning suicide bombings that kill innocent women and children is not violence in their perverted world – it is the ‘resistance’ of freedom fighters. In the words of El-Errian’s boss, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Muhammad Badie:
Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny
And in the words of the Muslim Brotherhood’s credo:
Allah is our goal; the Prophet is our guide; the Quran is our constitution; Jihad is our way; and death for the glory of Allah is our greatest ambition.
El-Errian also writes in his New York Times op-ed column that
We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians
How does that square with what El-Errian’s boss, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Muhammad Badie, has said about Islamic supremacy?
According to the Islamic shari’a that Allah [has bequeathed] to mankind, the status of the Muslims, compared to that of the infidel nations that arrogantly [disdain] his shari’a, is measured in a kind of scale, in which, when one side is in a state of superiority, the other is in a state of inferiority
Or how does El-Errian deal with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s decision in its 2007 party platform to exclude women and Christians from being considered for Egypt’s highest political office? As its deputy leader Mahmoud Ezzat explained:
The Muslim Brotherhood hasn’t invented any new text or ruling in Islam, and it hasn’t presented any kind of deviation from the right path of Islam…The majority of scholars agreed that the highest office in the state cannot be run by a woman or non-Muslim.
So much for looking out for the rights of all Egyptians, not just Muslim males.
El-Errian argues that Egypt has more choices than just secular democracy or tyranny:
As our nation heads toward liberty, however, we disagree with the claims that the only options in Egypt are a purely secular, liberal democracy or an authoritarian theocracy. Secular liberal democracy of the American and European variety, with its firm rejection of religion in public life, is not the exclusive model for a legitimate democracy.
In Egypt, religion continues to be an important part of our culture and heritage. Moving forward, we envision the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, which are central Islamic values. We embrace democracy not as a foreign concept that must be reconciled with tradition, but as a set of principles and objectives that are inherently compatible with and reinforce Islamic tenets.
That might be fine if it were only true. Then perhaps Turkey would be the first country to come to mind when a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader looks around for a model of a democracyincorporating Islamic principles. But when a senior member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Kamal al-Halbavi, had a chance recently to cite a model of good government, he said he hoped Egypt would have
a good government, like the Iranian government, and a good president like Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is very brave
So much for the Muslim Brotherhood’s vision of an Islamic state free of “authoritarian theocracy.”
As for El-Errian’s assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood would draw “on universal measures of freedom and justice,” has El-Errian read his Muslim Brotherhood’s website concerning its view of intellectual freedom? Here is what it said:
intellectual freedom can’t be cited in matters related to beliefs
How does El-Errian reconcile his assertion that “universal measures of freedom and justice” are “central Islamic values” with the statement by the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi , that apostates (Muslims who decide to leave their faith) and married adulterers and adulteresses are subject to punishment – often the death penalty – under sharia law?
I can go on and on. But suffice it to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is not what its “lone ‘reformer’” says it is or what the left-leaning opinion-makers in the West would like us to believe it is. Stripped of its slick ’moderate’ facade, the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist-sponsoring, Islamist supremacist, misogynist enemy of individual freedoms, self-government and equality of all under the law.
Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam.
