Egypt blames U.S. for fomenting uprising

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TEL AVIV – The Egyptian government suspects elements of the current uprising there, particularly political aspects, are being coordinated with the U.S. State Department, WND has learned.

A senior Egyptian diplomat told WND today the regime of President Hosni Mubarak suspects the U.S. has been aiding protest planning by Mohamed ElBaradei, who is seen as one of the main opposition leaders in Cairo.

...

He is seen as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt.

The Brotherhood seeks to spread Islam around the world ... Hamas and al-Qaida are violent Brotherhood offshoots.

Last week, ElBaradei gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the Brotherhood.

...

Yesterday, the London Telegraph reported the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in 2008 helped a young dissident attend a U.S.-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

The Telegraph would not identify the dissident, but said he was involved in helping to stir the current protests. The report claimed the dissident told the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that an alliance of opposition groups had a plan to topple Mubarak's government.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=257213

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Obama drew a fine line in his speech so as not to completely alienate either side, yet still manage to reprimand both the leadership of Egypt, and the protesters. Given that speech, I have no doubt that all the players have been independently assured that if they should prevail, the US would recognize and support them as allies.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader

by Avi Yellin

Follow Israel news on and .

The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism. The administration later dropped the terror endorsement claim and linked the ban to $1,336 in donations Ramadan made between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss charity that was later blacklisted by the US.

Although the White House asked the court last March to uphold the Bush-era entry ban on Ramadan, the administration has now decided to lift the ban and possibly allow both Ramadan and South African Muslim activist Professor Adam Habib onto American soil. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters that the government no longer views Ramadan or Habib as representing threats to the United States. “The next time Professor Ramadan or Professor Habib apply for a visa, they will not be found inadmissible on the basis of the facts that led to denial when they last applied.”

(IsraelNationalNews.com)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com//News/News.aspx/135654

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Tariq Ramadan, the scary terrorist, speaks:

Q: According to the surveys, what Germans are most bothered by is the way they see women treated in Islam: You believe that a woman can find liberation in Islam, that Islam was originally a feminist religion. Germans see it as patriarchal and oppressive in its practice. How do you explain this gulf?

A: Because both are right. When you study the scriptural sources then you understand that there is a message of equality and liberation. But when you look at what Muslims are doing, Germans are not completely wrong to see a problem. In Muslim communities, I can see myself that there is a lot of discrimination; women are not involved in education, the mosque, not always respected as human beings and within marriages. There is a problem. I constantly repeat: Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do. This is why I train Muslim women in the way they deal with the scriptural sources and they way they deal with the community.

The missing discourse in Islam is about women: not as mother, not as daughter, not as sister, but woman as woman. What does spiritual liberation of the being mean? What do we mean by femininity and liberation? As a woman, I don't want to be reduced to my body but you have to accept that I have a heart, I have a soul.

Then there is the question of commitment within the community, in mosques, in the scholarship and the legal Islamic authority. Women need to be involved. We can't just repeat: we are equal before God and complementary in society. The relationship between the master and the slave is complementary, but the master is the master, and the slave is the slave.

But our fellow citizens also have a responsibility not to essentialize the Islamic discourse and say: all Muslims are like this or this. There are very practicing Muslim women liberating themselves from cultural oppression and literalist understandings.

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More from the scary terrorist, Tariq Ramadan:

[Ramadan] called on Muslim immigrants to Canada and other Western countries to stop acting like misunderstood "victims" and get on with "contributing" to Western society.

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A champion of women’s rights, Ramadan believes moderate Moslems around the world, including among Canada’s 700,000 Muslims, need to show the world that Islam promotes equality, shuns hierarchy (since it has no single leader, like a Catholic pope) and is essentially a "democratic" religion.

One of Ramadan’s key messages is that the Muslim holy book, the Koran, is open to interpretation.

Like liberal Christians and Jews, he wants to see faithful Muslims transform their spiritual practices based on where they find themselves in the world.

For instance, instead of importing clergy from developing Muslim-majority countries, Ramadan wisely supports educating European Muslim imams in Europe, and Canadian imams in Canada.

"We shouldn’t just duplicate Pakistan," he said.

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Ramadan ... currently teaches in the theology department at Oxford University.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader

by Avi Yellin

Follow Israel news on and .

The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism. The administration later dropped the terror endorsement claim and linked the ban to $1,336 in donations Ramadan made between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss charity that was later blacklisted by the US.

Although the White House asked the court last March to uphold the Bush-era entry ban on Ramadan, the administration has now decided to lift the ban and possibly allow both Ramadan and South African Muslim activist Professor Adam Habib onto American soil. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters that the government no longer views Ramadan or Habib as representing threats to the United States. “The next time Professor Ramadan or Professor Habib apply for a visa, they will not be found inadmissible on the basis of the facts that led to denial when they last applied.”

(IsraelNationalNews.com)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com//News/News.aspx/135654

If Tariq is an MB leader, I'm Tinkerbell. He suffers from guilt by association because his maternal grandfather founded the group. His visa was declined on the basis that he contributed to terrorist organizations that were not designated as terrorist organizations at the time. Many Muslims have done the same because we are required by our faith to be charitable, and the US government was a little slow in telling us which charities they didn't like anymore. In fact, when Tariq appealed, they told him that he should have known beforehand which charities would be banned.

I've met him on several occasions and have followed him for many years. He is outspoken in his criticism of practices that contradict the egalitarian values in Islam, and is not at all scary or rigid in his views. We share many positions, including that Muslims must learn to separate culture from religion. I've read his books,attended several of his lectures which I listen to frequently during my work day. I do the same with Reza Aslan, Asma Barlas, Abdullahi An-Na'im, John Esposito, Haroon Moghul and many other bright lights in theological thought. You guys who frequent hysterical right-wing websites are missing a whole world of information that others are not.

Edited January 30, 2011 by Sofiyya

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

But of course!

Obama drew a fine line in his speech so as not to completely alienate either side, yet still manage to reprimand both the leadership of Egypt, and the protesters. Given that speech, I have no doubt that all the players have been independently assured that if they should prevail, the US would recognize and support them as allies.

As long as they are no threat to Isreal. Then we would have to step on them again.