The latest disclosures about what is going on in Egypt paint a stark contrast to the previous representations that have been made about the Muslim Brotherhood, both by themselves and our own leaders. The Brotherhood was established in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al Banna, who was a proponent of a world-wide Islamic caliphate under sharia law. It was eventually outlawed in Egypt due to a series of violent attacks, plots, and assassination attempts against Egyptian leaders. In recent years, they have attempted to portray themselves as moderate reformers. The reality suggests otherwise.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/05/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-accused-paying-gangs-to-rape-women/
In October 2008, Ibrahim el Houdaiby, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, was invited to address Professor Mark LeVine's class at UC Irvine. (LeVine is a harsh critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinian cause.) The session was open to the public. In this class, Houdaiby presented the Brotherhood as a reform movement trying to bring democracy to Egypt. In fact, he told several lies to the audience that day.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/muslim-brotherhood-speaker-appears-at.html
Below you can see the video of my exchange with el Houdaiby.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/david-horowitz-and-mark-levine-uc.html
LeVine was actually present in Cairo and at Tahrir Square during the protests that led to Mubarak's ouster. Afterward, I attended an open presentation at UCI, in which he told of his experiences there and meeting with protest leaders during one of their planning sessions. He then made the statement that "if all this results in some sort of capitalist system with the military running things, it will have been for nothing" (I am paraphrasing, but that is very close if not exactly to the words he used.).
But if LeVine became enamored of the Brotherhood, even our current administration was guilty of the same error, as President Obama himself reached out to them when he spoke at Al Azhar University during his visit to Cairo before the revolution. He made sure representatives of the Brotherhood were invited. In addition, his clueless National Intelligence director, James Clapper, described the Brotherhood to Congress as some sort of "secular" group that "eschewed violence..."
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/02/director-of-national-intelligence-james-clapper-muslim-brotherhood-largely-secular/
One thing is clear: Obama's flirtation with the Muslim Brotherhood has backfired, as has his entire Middle East policy. Just as Jimmy Carter greased the skids for the Shah and helped usher in the ayatollahs and mullahs in Iran, Obama greased the skids for Mubarak in Egypt. This is the result-another hostile Islamic government taking charge and a nation becoming a force for instability in the region, where once it had been a force for stability.
3 comments:
So you support(ed) Mubarak then?
Anonymous,
When it comes to that region, with the exception of Israel, all those countries have been ruled by nothing but tyrants. The Sha was a tyrant who was replaced by a different form of tyranny. Here it is going so in Egypt. If we are going to have nothing but tyrants in the region, I prefer ones who keep the peace and stability.
So to answer your question, I would prefer Mubarak to what Egypt has now.
Mubarak was going. That wasn't a question. The question was whether the Egyptian people, who clearly despised him, would hate the U.S. for sustaining him. As to what comes next, its not ours to say - not even practically. President Obama is sensible enough to deal with the real situation on the ground, not with California Dreaming about "If I were the Egyptian People I would..."
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