I can say that anything Juan Cole is for I am almost certain to be
against. Why should anyone pay attention to him. I reember when he
spoke about the previous Lebanon revolution that even the Lebanese came
out and told him he was full of it and had no idea what he was talking
about. If the progressives did not listen to everything he says with
bated breath we would be a whole lot better off. The man has no
integrity and no credibility whatsoever IMNSHO. Everything he has
written about in the past 5 years has been totally wrong.
On 02/16/2011 12:23 PM, MJ wrote:
*Fear Not the Muslim Brotherhood Boogeyman
*Posted on Feb 15, 2011
By Juan Cole <http://www.truthdig.com/juan_cole>
The hysteria in American media about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is not
only ignorant and demagogic, it is hypocritical. The United States has
actively promoted Muslim Brotherhood branches in other countries when
it suited its purposes, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover,
the Turkish and Indonesian cases of democratic transition in the
Muslim world should have taught us something about how Muslim
fundamentalist parties are themselves transformed in a democratic setting.
As recently as 2005, the pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood had 88 seats
<http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20110203_Who_s_afraid_of_the__big_bad__Egyptian_Muslim_Brotherhood_.html>in
the lower house of the parliament, about 20 percent, and so has been
at some points a junior partner in Egypt’s governance. It has been so
establishment that it declined to support the Facebook campaign on
April 6, 2008, for better wages and working conditions for Egypt’s
textile factory workers. Out of that campaign came the April 6
Committee that called for this year’s Jan. 25 demonstration. The
Brotherhood joined this year’s protest movement only at the last
minute and was not a leading force in it.
On Sunday, the Brotherhood called upon the new military regime to
release all prisoners of conscience
<http://www.aljazeera.net/Mob/Templates/Postings/NewsDetailedPage.aspx?GUID=4769D9EC-28D9-4A56-BDC1-F586D9E2324E>,
including young protesters incarcerated during the past three weeks.
Its leaders also asked for an end to the state of emergency laws that
allow the government to suspend civil liberties. It further suggested
that a cabinet minister be appointed to investigate government
corruption under the old regime.
On Saturday, the Brotherhood had issued a statement
<http://www.alwatan.com.sa/Politics/News_Detail.aspx?ArticleID=41549&CategoryID=1>
praising the Egyptian military high command for its role in
stabilizing the country and taking it toward democratic civilian rule.
The fundamentalist group denied that it sought to dominate Egypt, and
pledged that it would field no candidate for president in the upcoming
elections, and would have no strategy of trying to dominate the new
parliament.
The Brotherhood can afford to be magnanimous here, since it is not
clear that the clause in the constitution that forbids it from running
as a religious party will be abrogated, and it may depend, as in the
past, on other parties being willing to run popular Brothers in
certain constituencies. There is no indication from the opinion
polling in Egypt
<http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2011/ss_egypt0137_02_11.asp>,
moreover, that it would be able to dominate parliament even if that
were its goal. Some of its leaders have spoken of putting the peace
treaty with Israel to a popular referendum. But the still-powerful
Egyptian military probably would not allow any such step, and even if
it did, the polling suggests that the peace treaty would win. In any
case, the Brotherhood is not speaking the sort of language that
Ayatollah Khomeini preferred in 1979 in Iran’s revolution, when he
rejected phrases such as “democracy” as un-Islamic.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fear_not_the_muslim_brotherhood_boogeyman_20110215
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
