Steve Emerson's IPT News has published this piece describing how certain Middle East circles are resorting to the old tried and true tactic-blame the Jews. In this case, "Zionists" are being blamed for the New Years' Bombing in Alexandria, Egypt that killed 21 Christians attending mass.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2468/islamists-blame-jews-for-coptic-church-bombing
A few comments:
"The Brotherhood's English-language website summarized an interview spokesman Mohamed Morsy gave Al-Jazeera. In it, he cast the attacks as an attempt to undermine Egyptian unity, questioning whether Israel wants to undermine that. "In whose benefit and major interest is it to destabilize Egypt's stability and safety?" he asked."
I have some experience with the Muslim Brotherhood's English language website (Ikhwan Web). A couple of years back, one of their spokesmen, Ibrahim El Houdaiby, spoke at UC-Irvine. He was telling all those students about how the MB simply wanted to bring democracy to Egypt and how they condemned terror. When I confronted him with a Brotherhood memo seized by the FBI and used as a government exhibit in the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, he called it a forgery. (The memo called on US "brothers" to work to destroy the corrupt system from within (I am paraphrasing. See the link). Both of these links contain comments by El Houdaiby in the comments section.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/muslim-brotherhood-speaker-appears-at.html
El Houdaiby in his speech and in subsequent e-mails to me made reference to such "peaceful" figures as Hassan al Banna and Yusuf al Qaradawi as proof that the Brotherhood was not involved in terrorism. Al Banna, an MB founder and Qaradawi, the most significant MB Islamic scholar are well-documented for their anti-Semitic, pro-Jihad statements. He also claimed that the MB has no presence in the US.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/where-is-ibrahim-el-houdaiby.html
In other words, Ibrahim El Houdaiby came to the US and flat out lied to his audience at UCI. So much for the credibility of the MB English-language website when evaluating the above statement.
If you go to the Ikhwan Web site, you will see the the MB has condemned the bombing. There is also this link to the statement by Qaradawi, who also condemns the bombing but insists it was carried out by non-Muslims and implies a foreign involvement.
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=27726
Even misfit "scholar" Norman Finklestein, a man of Jewish background, doesn't hesitate to engage in similar tactics of blaming "Zionists" for specific outrages, as evidenced by his reply to my question at the January 31, 2009 Whither the Levant event at UC-Irvine.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/idiocy-of-norman-finkelstein-exhibited.html
What happened in Egypt did not happen in a vacuum. It is well-documented that the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt have long been subject to persecution. Recently, there have been numerous threats against Christian minorities coming from Al Qaida. In the below 20 second video, chants of Allah Akhbar!" are heard as the fire at the church rages (Hat tip to Weasel Zippers).
This is simply part of a continuing pattern. But there is always a convenient scapegoat. You see, it is always the "Zionists", the Jews who get blamed for everything.
Someone needs to remind the Muslim Brotherhood that it was the Jews who facilitated Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and other cities from the brutal imperialism of the Byzantine Empire, which had banned Jews from entering Jerusalem. Also, the Muslim armies could have been held up for years at Alexandria, but the Roman/Christian garrison said, what's in it for us, and negotiated a surrender.
ReplyDeleteWould that make any difference? Not really. People only respond to history when it is a useful tool for present prejudices and motives. But at least it will poke a hole in the pseudo-history they are resting on.
When in doubt blame the Jews. This has been the Gold Standard for the last 2,000 years!
ReplyDeleteWell, no, Romans blamed the Christians. Christians pioneered blaming the Jews. Then there were the Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, which was a rather good book.
ReplyDeleteIndeed I could Gary. A good place to start would be David Levering Lewis's God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215. Page 76 would be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteLewis also covers the role of the Jewish leader known simply as Kahina, alongside the Berber Kusayla, in throwing back Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya (which makes it a bit ironic that centuries later, a Berber Muslim sect introduced the first mystical anti-Jewish teaching in Islam). Page 102.
But then we move on to Iberia, where the Visigothic princes were already anti-Semitic, but became even harsher after observing the way Jews aided the conquest of what the Romans had renamed Palestina. Page 116. And so, the Jews welcomed the Muslim armies as liberators, providing valuable intelligence, and the base for municipal governance in newly conquered cities. Page 118, page 129.
See, Gary? When people ask you to back up your assertions, you can take Siarlys' example there as what we're looking for.
ReplyDeleteDarn that Siarlys - confusing the issue with facts again!