http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28216 Going Global on the Muslim Brotherhood By Patrick <file:///C:/Program%20Files/Common%20Files/Microsoft%20Shared/Stationery/aut hors.asp?ID=3597> Poole FrontPageMagazine.com | May 10, 2007
The debate over the Muslim Brotherhood is going global, with the various exchanges here at FrontPage taking a central role. Last week, the Italian daily, Il <http://www.ilfoglio.it/> Foglio, concluded a 3-part series examining the controversy begun with the publication of Nixon Center fellows Robert Leiken and Steven Brookes article in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, The Moderate <http://www.nixoncenter.org/publications/LeikenBrookeMB.pdf> Muslim Brotherhood. The reporter, Guilio Meotti, examines in detail the various claims made by Leiken and Brooke, and interviews a wide range of international experts on the topic. Among those quoted are several past and present FrontPage contributors, including Daniel Pipes, Rachel Ehrenfeld, Lorenzo Vidino and myself. The concluding article cites my own 3-part refutation of the claims made by Leiken and Brooke: <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27876> Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 1 <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27898> Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 2 <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27964> Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 3 The following English translation of Meottis Il Foglio series is my own. Part 1 (04/27/07) The Two Faces of the Muslim Brotherhood (Which One to Trust?) For two analysts they accept democracy and have rejected violence. For others it is only tactical. By Giulio Meotti (trans. <http://patrickpoole.blogspot.com/> Patrick Poole) Rome. Their history begins one morning in 1928 in the village of Ismaliya, neighboring the Suez Canal. A group of Muslims gathers around fervent preacher by the name of Hassan Al-Banna. Egypt was a semi-colonial monarchy and Al-Banna, he wanted to free it through the return to salafist origins: "Islam is faith and cult, native land and citizenship, religion and state, spirituality and action, Book and sword". From this beginning, the Muslim Brothers have become the oldest and most influential Islamist organization, condemned in the West for fundamentalism and by the jihadists for their acceptance of democracy. Dedicating itself to "tarbiyya", preaching and instruction, the Brothers opened schools, clinics, mosques, and recommended one style of salafist life. The men began to grow beards, and the women wore the veil. One of their theoretical leaders, Sayyid Qutb (executed in Egypt in 1966), combined jihadist ideology with the Wahhabi faith: the Muslim must fight against the governments of "jahilyya", polytheists who are deprived of Koranic light, who they accuse of governing in impure way, "takfir", and for the Arabic world: "a permanent global jihad. To be Muslim means to be a warrior". Someone has said that September 11th was born in the Egyptian jails where the Muslim Brothers were imprisoned by the hundreds. The sufferings endured by Qutb are legendary amongst fundamentalists. It is a story that we are forced to travel over again from the beginning. It was experienced by everyone from Nobel Prize Winner Naguib Mahfuz to Qutb, then leader of the fundamentalist wing of the Brotherhood. The book Bitter Harvest" of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, number two of Al-Qaida (who ended up in prison for five years), is a treatise on the forfeiture of the Brotherhood. His father was a doctor, and he came from a family of engineers, university professors, ambassadors, judges and parliamentarians. Nearly all members of the Brotherhood. These are the same bourgeois quarters that today animate the hostile movement against Hosni Mubarak. From their ranks the murderers of Anwar Sadat departed; it is from their school where members of Al-Qaida and its defunct military head Mohammed Atef were formed. Today it is a more diffused movement in Arabic countries and Italian mosques. The Wall Street Journal reveals that even the architect of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, participated in a Kuwait camp organized by the Brotherhood. With Saudi petrodollars, they have set foot in the United States, represented by the Council on American Islamic Relations. The Palestinian section is better known as Hamas. After having failed at one revolution in Egypt and having lost the civil war in Algeria, Europe has become their priority. Their call is to "dar al shaada", land of evangelism. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Al-Jazeera fixture and guru of the Brotherhood, speaks clearly: "Islam will return to Europe, the conquest will not be with the sword, but with proselytism". From here the priority is "dawa", the call. The sheik has been offered the position of Supreme Guide of the [Muslim Brotherhood] movement. He refused saying that the European mission was more important. One of their bases is Switzerland. Here in the 1960s Said Ramadan founded an Islamic center and from here his son, Tariq, operates, an influential thinker and adviser to Downing Street. As they began their evolution to democracy and non-violence and he began himself to speak about that Zawahiri accused them to having "pushed the mass of young people to elections rather than to jihad". Then there was a tape of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in which he invited the Muslim Brothers of Iraq "to abandon the way of the perdition. Not pursuing peace through democracy. You will receive the sentence of apostates from Islam ". To renew the argument are two American scholars, Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, who recently had published in Foreign Affairs, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood". Also the Washington Post writes that "they [the Brotherhood] offer an opportunity in order to isolate the jihadists". In the meantime, Youssef Nada, backer of the Brotherhood, is accused by Mubarak of aiding terrorism. He has just been the subject of a PBS documentary. Leiken and Brooke think that the Brotherhood justifies democracy on the grounds that the umma, the Muslim community, is the source of sulta political authority. The Brotherhood has formed liberal alliances with secularists and nationalists. With the publication of Preachers, Not Judges, they have rejected violence. The French wing UOIF has collaborated with Nicholas Sarkozy. In England, the Muslim Association of Britain helps the government against radicals, such as in the Finsbury Park case. The jihadists brand democracy as idolatry. They say that a government that does not govern according to sharia is apostate. Zawahiri calls it deification of the people and Abu Al-Maqdisi, mentor of Zarqawi, polytheism. Bernard Lewis wrote that this is only tactical: one man, one vote, one time. What would they do once they were in power? Behind that warning is an extensive history: Bolshevik, Nazi, Baath, and Nasserite they write in Foreign Affairs. "But the Brotherhood differs from the previous ones: their road to power is not revolutionary, but depends on winning hearts through peaceful Islamization". Therefore they should read the book on Mohammad by [Tariq] Ramadan. Others speculate that the Brotherhood assists in the radicalization of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East. But the Brothers work in order to dissuade them from violence. One has said that the maxim could be: listen and obey. If one wants to commit violence, he leaves the movement. But the Brothers that leave move to embrace the center, not jihad ". The supporters of dialogue are betting on the opposition of "Takfir wal Hijra", the ideology of death by Mohamed al-Fazisi, who served thirty years in Morocco. "The national branches have divergent views on the United States. In Egypt and Jordan, the Brotherhood is critical of America. In Syria they are supportive in order to isolate Assad". They accept "defensive" jihad against foreign powers. "But the jihadist attacks the Brotherhood because it leads the jihad for territory and not for the sake of Allah'. This diversity suggests that Washington would have to adopt a case by case approach. Dialogue with the Brothers has a great significance. Just as Nixon went to China. The controversies between revisionist and maoist were necessary. Today those between jihadists and Muslim Brothers offer a similar opportunity". And in fact a group of Americans legislators has recently met with members of the Brotherhood. Newsweek also speaks about change. "Our demand is freedom of expression, elections and free government" says Zeki Arshead, leader of the Jordanian Brotherhood. Foreign Affairs does not take into account the words of Mohammad Mahdi Akef, Supreme Guide of the Brothers in Egypt. Akef has defined Israel as a "cancer" and has legitimized the "resistance" in Iraq, as Qaradawi blessed the Chechen jihad. In the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Akef claimed of being able to send thousands of Muslims to fight the Jews. The son of Al-Banna, Seif El-Islam, "Sword of the Islam", secretary of the Lawyers Syndicate, has echoed that "Allah assures us victory over the Jews". At the death of Zarqawi, the Jordanian Brotherhood made a condolence visit Zarqawis family. Foreign Affairs also forgets that Fouad Alaoui, secretary of the UOIF, has declared that the "Koran is our Constitution". But they will not speak about and are silent on the Sudanese Hassan Al-Turabi, benefactor of Osama bin Laden and a member of the Brotherhood, reported on by Thomas Joscelyn in an essay that we published in 2005. According to the French analyst Caroline Fourest, "whether they choose the jihadist option like Zawahiri, or a reformist approach, the Islamist inspiration from the Brothers pursues the same dream, expressed gives to Al-Banna: `For the flag of Islam to wave wherever a Muslim lives ". Another expert of Brotherhood more critical than Foreign Affairs is Zeyno Baran, analyst of the Hoover Institution, who gave the same review to the [International] Herald Tribune. "For them the Koran is not a law source, it is the only source" Baran tells us. "The Brotherhood has changed tactics, not objectives. They create a fifth column in order to weaken the Western systems. Qaradawi has advised to the Muslims to create ghettos against assimilation. We should not favor the Islamists by defining them as moderate. They say that they are not violent, but they have not condemned terrorism. The Brotherhood thinks it is necessary to diffuse Muslim concepts because they reject peace and they incite fighting". Their language is bifurcated: moderate in English, radical in Arab. For Baran, more than the reformist wing of the Brotherhood, we should value the liberal Arabs who in October 2004 asked the UN to institute court proceedings against the preachers of death. This was in reaction to the fatwa of Qaradawi against the Americans in Iraq. The Brotherhood was born four years after the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate. "Qutb thought that the decline could be inverted if a group of true Muslim would emulate the Prophet. Today the group wants to Islamize, which is incompatible with democracy ". The symbols often help. That of the Brotherhood is a Koran and two sharp swords. In the 2005 they published a map of the world. In the center a green area, the color of the Islam. In a lower panel: "After one hundred years". The field is completely green. Their mission statement is still more unequivocal: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. To die in the way of Allah is our supreme hope". Part 2 (05/01/07) Who identifies and who does not the (positive) evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood For Magdi Allam, "A mistake to grant them too much power". For Hamza Piccardo, They are Reformist like Erdogan By Giulio Meotti (trans. <http://patrickpoole.blogspot.com/> Patrick Poole) Rome. The debate on the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood began with the two American scholars Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke in their essay in Foreign Affairs, and continues while in Egypt some thirty supporters of the Brotherhood are on trial and Turkey debates between Europe and the Middle East, between secularism and the presidential political aspirations of the Islamist party premier Tayyip Erdogan (see article on page three). In Egypt the principal defendant is Khairat Al-Shater, the man who Leiken and Brooke like to identify as a "moderate example". The Egyptian Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Mufid Shihab, says that the government will use the iron fist against "anyone wants to establish an Islamic caliphate". In December, 50 militants of the Brotherhood marched hooded and dressed in black in front of Al-Azhar University. The director of [Egyptian daily] Al-Gomhouria, Muhammad Ali Ibrahim, said that "the black Ts-shirts are tied to fascism, Nazism and extremism. The Brotherhood has drawn inspiration from the past in order to best express itself". However, the two Nixon Center analysts, the center of a red-hot debate that has involved numerous figures, from Commentary to the New York Sun, ask the Department of State to begin a dialogue with the Brothers. The movement along the line between legality and terrorist fundamentalism remains subject to change. On June 8, 1992 terrorists of the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya assassinated in Cairo the intellectual Farag Foda. One of the leading Islamic theologians, Mohammad Al-Ghazali, a member of the Brotherhood, justified in court the "punishment of the apostate". In 1959, Al-Ghazali had condemned to death the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, which inspired the attempt to assassinate him in 1994. The Tunisian intellectual Lafif Lakhdar was also condemned to death by Rashid Al-Ghannouchi, leader of Al-Nahda, the Tunisian Brotherhood, referring to the UCOIF, the French branch of the Islamist movement. The guilt of Lakhdar was his demand for "bleeding away the cultural foundations of martyrdom, suicide and decapitations". In Italy, the Islamist movement controls and inspires the greater part of the mosques. Assistant manager of [Italian daily] Corriere della Serra, Magdi Allam, critic of the Brotherhood and its propaganda, condemns the thinking of Foreign Affairs. "The United States and Great Britain are mistaken in sponsoring the strategy that tends to, in one aspect, to corroborate the power of the Brothers on both sides of the Mediterranean and, from the other, to assert European multiculturalism", Allam explained to us. "This perspective empowers the southern and eastern Mediterranean and weakens the north. We are deceived that the Muslim Brothers are committed to Cartesian logic. But they only believe in one logic the Koranic type". Consider the relationship with Israel: "the maximum of the pragmatism to which they can arrive at is to say that Israel is a fact and that they are ready to support a truce. The reference is the truce of Mohammad in 628, which he accepted to stop the doors of Mecca [from being closed to him] on account of him not having sufficient forces to enter the city. Adopted with a commitment to a truce of ten years, it was violated a year after". Hamza Piccardo, leader of the Union of the organizations and the Muslim communities in Italy and editor of the Italian version of the Koran, speaks about the historical inclination to the reforming policy of the Muslim Brothers. "When it was confronted with despotic regimes, there were radical drifts in the Brotherhood. As it happened with Sadat. But the movement is not violent. The only country in which they took up arms was Syria in the 1970s. I am not astonished that they are drawing close to democracy. The writings of Hassan Al-Banna are reformist. Today his heirs continue the tradition. The Brothers are not the Third Internationale, but are confronted with local realities. From Morocco to Iraq, we find various strategies". According to Allam, we do not have to be astonished at the jihadist fatwa against the movement. "They have taken separate strategies for the conquest of the power. We can simplify the difference: for the jihadist, overthrow the reigning leaders; and for the Brothers, attend to establishing solid roots in the society to execute the brainwashing of the people. Their power must be entrenched, cultivated and solidified". For Piccardo, it is in Europe that the Brotherhood does its best. "They try to supply to Muslim youth reasons for life and to reform society. The Muslim young people rediscover values that adjust them to society. It keeps them from violence. But a radical movement on fighting the injustice in himself is not dangerous. The salafi reformer is birthing a movement which sees the values of his predecessors as a source to tap into. Today the salafi intends, like the Wahhabis, to throw away twelve centuries of elaboration in order to return to the original teachings of the Prophet. The Brothers are reformist, which endangers neo-conservatives, modern bourgeois and revolutionaries. They are like Erdogan in Turkey". The definitive thought of Piccardo on Tariq Ramadan. "The criticism that Ramadan offers to the Brothers is to accept injustice and not give in to alienation. If the West promotes materialistic society, there will always be irreducible antagonism. But the West is not solely consumerism, Barbie and McDonald's". Piccardo judges the writings of Sayyid Qutb dated among the founding fathers of the Brotherhood. "In `The Islamic Reform' of Ramadan he speaks about the gap between those who follow Al-Banna and adapted to the societies democracy and who, reading Qutb, are moved towards jihadism. To refer to Al-Banna in a literal way means to betray him ". Piccardo agrees with the analysis of Foreign Affairs. "Today the Brothers are divided. There are the leaders that act according to Arabic tradition, and the young people of the university that have to choose between civility and jihadism, but they know to reinterpret the story in a democratic path. Islam is continuously being reformed. The Prophet says to straighten the crooked thing. If you cannot make it with the word, at least make it so in your heart. There is a moral imperative in Islam to positively reform creation". More dangerous than the jihadist For Allam, their objective is to create a state within the state. "As they make in Europe. Going to vote is an integral part of this strategy. They also want the caliphate. In Europe we have allowed the Brothers to control the mosques and then deceive ourselves to rely upon them to contain the jihadists". To Allam, the danger of the Brothers is if we want to take seriously the threat of the jihadist. "The Brothers are subtle, ambiguous and reassuring. Winston Churchill has defined the person conciliating like he who feeds the crocodile in the hope of being eaten last. This is our attitude towards the Brotherhood. As their grassroots movement unifies we collude with them. One forgets that these Islamists, like what happened in Algeria, promote terrorism". The evidence for that claim begins and continues within the group in the decade of the 1970s in Egypt. "When he assumed the presidency, Sadat formed an alliance with the Brothers in order to eliminate the Nasserites. He freed the Islamist leaders from the jails and recalled those who were in exile in Saudi Arabia; they came back loaded with money. In a decade they constructed a thousand of mosques, entered into journalism and the syndicates, the legal profession, government and schools. When they were reestablished, extremism exploded. Islamic Jihad gave life to the group that assassinated Sadat. The Islamist jihadist emerges in the context of the Muslim Brothers. To forget it would be unforgivable, even fatal ". On the American front we speak with Steven Brooke, coauthor of the inquiry in Foreign Affairs. "Every national organization tied to the Brotherhood is free to elaborate their own politics. The Egyptian center is weak. There are two factions. The supreme guide, Muhammed Mahdi Akef, is conservative. The reformist range from Khairat Al-Shater to Abdul Moneim Abul Foutouh. Both are open to the dialogue with the West. Then there are the young members, many of which have a blog. One of them, Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, has been arrested. In Europe they work with the English government and in France they mediate between the Muslims and the government. During the violence of the banlieues [the French urban outskirts inhabited by North African immigrants], the Brotherhood issued fatwas against the rioters. In Middle East they are for reform, but what we do not know what they would do once they are in power. But we do not forget that the former Brother, [al-Qaeda no. 2] Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has written a book, `The Bitter Harvest', in order to denounce their renunciation of violence ". One who is not at all convinced of their evolution is Daniel Pipes, a leader in the campaign against the American branch of the Brotherhood, the Council on American Islamic Relations. "They want to impose an Islamist international order but not through violence. This has rendered them more acceptable', but their objectives are still the same. That is the totalitarian hegemony, the brutal destruction of human rights and the submission non-Muslims and women. There has not been some evolution. The Islamist ideas do not represent a departure from Islam as it has been alleged, originating from a long tradition of extreme intolerance that traces from centuries past into the recent age, and is associated with Wahhabism, the Brothers and Qutb. The Brothers deceive us as being an acceptable political force, moderates'. The Islamist considers democracy as an intermediary principle in order to promote their programs. They use the levers of state in order to satisfy theirs ends". This aim is the ideal for Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Brotherhood in Europe: "Allah makes us to prevail on the unjust Zionists and aggressors, on their Crusader allies who oppress and vex you, Allah will make to prevail our mujaheddin brothers that fight for you in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and every part of the world". In August of the 1995 the remains of Said Ramadan, father of Tariq, were transported to the mosque of Cairo, beside the tomb of Hassan Al-Banna, his father-in-law and founder of the Brotherhood. To deliver the funeral oration was appropriately Qaradawi. The July 24, 2005 edition of Avvenire [the Italian daily of the Roman Catholic Church] criticized the 2004 meeting at Sant' Egidio where a lecture was given by a celebrated apologist of suicide terrorism: Ahmad Al-Tayyib, chancellor of Cairo University and of Al-Azhar. The daily paper of the bishops attacked the agreement between the Italian university and Al-Azhar, which is one of most influential academic centers of the Sunni Muslim world and the intellectual epicenter of the Muslim Brothers. From whose library the "moderate" and "modern" Brothers have even banished "The Prophet" of Khalil Gibran, guilty of apostasy for the drawing [on the cover] of the likeness of Mohammad. Part 3 (05/03/07) For the Muslim Brothers, Democracy is a Tram Sooner or Later it has to Come Down Many criticize the proposal of dialogue launched by Foreign Affairs: it is only the flexibility of Islamic radicalism By Giulio Meotti (trans. <http://patrickpoole.blogspot.com/> Patrick Poole) Rome. In the October of 1981, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards named the road on which the Egyptian embassy in Tehran resides for Khaled al-Islambouli. Islambouli was the terrorist who killed Anwar Sadat. The Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has since dedicated a monument to his memory. When Sadat was struck down, Khomeini said that "a son of the Islam has to act in order to eliminate the apostate Pharaoh". It is one of the many examples that help us to understand history of the Muslim Brothers, from which the murders of Sadat came out of, how it feeds the fundamentalist fire in the Middle East. In recent days comes the explosive case concerning an essay by two scholars published by the journal, Foreign Affairs. Robert Leiken and Steve Brooke asked the American Department of State to begin a dialogue with the Brotherhood on the basis of their "non-violent evolution". Founded in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, the Muslim Brothers grew to a million supporters in the 1940s. Nasser banned them; Sadat granted them space, hoping to contain the terrorists who would eventually kill him. In 1954, after a coup attempt, they were tortured by the thousands. The cycle of repressions were repeated. Yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor told the history of Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, a blogger imprisoned along with a thousand Brothers. Nearly everywhere in the Arabic world, the Muslim Brothers would be the majority party if there were free elections, many say. "They are the lobby of the fundamentalist opposition", the Iranian exile and commentator of international reputation Amir Taheri tells us, saying that the more dangerous element is their Manichean vision: "Light and darkness, spirit and matter, Muslim and infidel. The Brotherhood says that the Koran is their Constitution and boils off the impurities of the other organizations. They are the godfathers of the Arabic and Pakistani terrorist movements. Their change of strategy has created a vacuum that has been filled up by al-Qaida". Taheri praises the transition of Hosni Mubarak. "Excluding the Brotherhood, Mubarak continues the historical tendency to prevent departures for making Islam a prerequisite. This was begun in Turkey and continued in Indonesia. The idea that the political movements do not have to be based on the religion finds consensus the Muslim world. Algeria and Tunisia have amended their constitutions in order to prevent the formation of religious parties. The Iraqi democracy imposes restrictions on the use of religion. The issue particularly is felt in Egypt, where the Christian community is shot at by the Brotherhood. Mubarak has defeated one dozen jihadist groups in one of the longest anti-terrorist campaigns in history ". Journalist Sylvan Besson, of the daily paper Le Temps of Geneva, has written a book on the hegemony of the Brotherhood: "The Conquest of the West". "The Brothers speak about reforms and democracy, Besson says to us, but does not condemn terrorism. For them the evil is Western Civilization, Israel and the Bush Administration. They deny that September 11th is the work of Muslims. They speak about the infinite suffering of Muslims, from Kabul to Baghdad. The world is a battlefield between materialism (from communism to Zionism) and Islam. History is the theatre of Muslim conquests. Their message is: Participate in public life, respect the laws and honor Islam'. They do not try to unhinge democracies, but to prepare the land for the radicalization". Often the report says the contrary. Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas was the mind behind Spains March 11th [attacks]. He was an associate of the Brotherhood in Syria. The Egyptian Osman Rabei was arrested in Milan on June 7, 2004. He was sentenced to ten years by the Court of assizes where he spoke about his inspiration. Rabei was in contact with two Wahhabi preachers who worked with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the theological leader of the Brotherhood. President of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, the European Council for Fatwa and Research and also the European Institute of Human Sciences of Nièvre [France], the central imam of the Brotherhood, Qaradawi is part of the innermost circle the Islamist movement. In a 1990 book he explains that in Europe they must create a Muslim public opinion" in order to prepare the community to receive the "life of the Muslim nation". Qaradawi has issued a fatwa against the Danish cartoonists: "Whoever offends Mohammad, if he is a dhimmi, he has violated the pact and it becomes lawful to kill him". On April 25, 2004, the theologian of the Brotherhood, Abd al-Muni'm Abu al-Futuh said on Al-Jazeera said "jihad is an individual duty". Against Qaradawi, Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, president of the faculty of Islamic law at the University of Qatar, pronounced: "the laws of the sharia that have prohibited making war against civilians have been enforced for centuries, until Qaradawi caused a dangerous shift on jihad. The moral deterioration has escalated to the point in which they kill children with bombs in Baghdad and bus passengers in London. These fatwas are a moral and ideological brand of shame". "The crimes that have been perpetrated are still vivid in our memory and the innocent blood that they have caused to flow is remembered in our hearts" says the dissident Wafa Sultan to Il Foglio, witness of the execution of her university professor by a Brotherhood partisan in Damascus. "He was killed in the classroom right in front of my eyes to the cry of Allah Akhbar'. The Muslim Brothers believe in verses that do not incite the struggle against the infidel'? They have changed ideas on those who incur the anger of Allah'? Perhaps they have given up accusing others of apostasy? They truly invoke a pluralistic society and democracy based on justice and equality?". In December 2005, in an interview with London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, the head of the Brothers, Mohammed Akef, said that "we are a comprehensive movement whose members cooperate together based on the same vision: the spread of the Islam until it dominates the world". Flexibility is a trait. "In the West violence is substituted by a mixture of penetration through appeasement and radicalization," Lorenzo Vidino tells us, author of "Al-Qaeda in Europe". "Appealing to the darura', the Muslim concept of necessity, they legitimize participation in the democratic process. They are introduced publicly as moderates to you, partners in the dialogue and representatives of the Muslim communities. If in English, French and Dutch they speak about democracy; in Arabic, Turkish and Urdu they preach a politicized interpretation of the Islam. A 1995 citation by the Turkish premier Erdogan, supporter of the Islamist party connected to the Muslim Brotherhood network, says it all: `democracy is a tram: we will use as long as it serves us, then it must come down' ". Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of "Funding Evil" and director of the America Center for Democracy, is tough with Foreign Affairs: "the chameleonic attitude of the Brotherhood is instrumental to the Islamization of society". Abu Qatada, spiritual head of al-Qaida in Europe in the 1990s said: "Rome will not be conquered from the word, but by arms". Qaradawi has said: "Not with the sword, but with the preaching will Islam return to conquer Europe". The difference is in the methods. Bat Ye' or, scholar of Egyptian origin on the fate of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, speaks about abuse of the term democracy. "If we mean to adopt sharia through elections, this is the democracy of Gaza. If we mean independence of the judiciary, freedom of speech and religion, equality and dignity of the sexes, about this the Brothers never speak. Their writers, from Qutb to Mawdudi, urge hatred towards the Jews". The American analyst Patrick Poole remembers that "in 2004, when the Kuwaiti authorities attacked the radicals, the government discovered that the source of the jihadist preaching were the imams associated with the Brotherhood". Fiammetta Venner has written many books on Islam and the UOIF, the French branch of the Brotherhood: "Even if they always wear Western dress rather than a jellabah [a North African hooded cloak] and reassure the media of their peaceful intentions, they carry out a fundamentalist imprint of Islam. If they are destined to control Egypt and Syria, there is a fear of a dramatic realignment of the world-wide order. The writings of Qutb have justified the killing of tyrannous apostates' and inspired bin Laden and the murderers of Sadat. The rise of the Brothers promises an Islamization that could destabilize the world, and they really constitute an antidote to terrorism?". "We have burnt houses and killed women and children". That is the confession of a janjaweed to the Times of London. He is called Dily, a twenty years old Sudanese Arab who has fought in Darfur to the cry of "Kills the slaves, kills the slaves". The Sudanese regime is inspired by the Muslim Brothers, whose primeval message of hatred reemerges, anonymously, from dunes of Darfur. The Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, Mohammed Akef, in September 2006 rejected the UN resolution on the shipment of men and arms to their Sudanese guru, Hassan Al-Turabi, who has identified Tariq Ramadan as "the future of the Islam". How much forgotten blood has been spilled to the earth due to pacifist policies is the recrudescent example of the danger that the Brotherhood poses to Christians, where in Darfur wine cannot be used in the Mass, but also to Muslims. After the bombardment the horde of devils arrives on horse: nursing women are separated, the old have their heads broken and infants are slammed against the walls. Hundreds of women are deflowered with long knives and branded on their hands. In Tawila, in a single day, forty-one girls were killed, raped together with their teachers, some as young as fourteen, all while their parents were forced to watch. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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