Obama's Intel Chief: Muslim Brotherhood Non-Violent, 'Secular' Group

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Obama's Intel Chief: Muslim Brotherhood Non-Violent, 'Secular' Group

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Egypt's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement "largely secular."

In response to questioning from Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) about the threat posed by the group, Clapper suggested that the Egyptian part of the Brotherhood is not particularly extreme and that the broader international movement is hard to generalize about.

"The term 'Muslim Brotherhood'...is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam," Clapper said. "They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera.....In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally."

http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2011/02/10/obamas-intel-chief-muslim-brotherhood-non-violent-secular-group

[Jenn! 918]

What!?!? That's not what the news told me!!!!

[LaL 418]

omg WHAT???!! This article is total bunk. Everyone knows that across thousands of members and across multiple countries - this party is all absolutely the same. 100% ideologically the same. No deviation at all and of course they are all completely violent.

Just like any group that has thousands of members across all socioeconomic lines, education, nationality, etc. All the same. Full stop.

[Ban Hammer 13,344]

apparently obama's intel chief didn't get a briefing by nefa

[lostinblue 1,989]

Amateur hour in DC is consistantly embarassing nowdays

[JohnSmith2007 353]

The denial by some is interesting.

[LaL 418]

The denial by some is interesting.

Yes, yes it is.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Yes, yes it is.

Secular? Really?

The Society of the Muslim Brothers (often simply الإخوان Al-Ikhwān, The Brotherhood or MB) is an Islamist transnational movement and the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. The group is the world's oldest and largest Islamic political group,[1] and the "world's most influential Islamist movement."[2] The Brotherhood has as its slogan "Islam is the solution".[3] It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood

[^_^ 5,021]

Yes, yes it is.

The responses here that appear to insist on the evilness of the Muslim Brotherhood are all part of The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first written in 1964 but still true today.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

The responses here that appear to insist on the evilness of the Muslim Brotherhood are all part of The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first written in 1964 but still true today.

I am disputing the "secular" part of the position. Lets see what kind of Egypt has come about in a few years. I doubt if it will be a kinder, gentler government.

[LaL 418]

What about violent bit?

(for the record - of course they are not secular, if it wasn't patently obvious - I was poking a bit of fun?).

[^_^ 5,021]

Violence.

The Muslim Brotherhood renounced terrorism and violence in the 1970s, at least partially because of brutal repression from the Egyptian government. "They've since become a much more benign organization despite their history," says Malcolm Nance, a former Navy intelligence officer and author of An End to Al Qaeda. A breakaway group for those still committed to violence, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, formed in response and has been responsible for many acts of terrorism in Egypt since, as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

But while the Muslim Brotherhood has condemned the September 11 attacks, it continues to justify violence against Israel and against American troops in Iraq. The problem is, as Marc Lynch noted in a report for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, that those views are squarely within the Arab mainstream:

For instance, an opinion survey from spring 2009 found that 83 percent of Egyptians approved of attacks on American troops in Iraq (as did the MB), but only 8 percent approved of attacks on American civilians in the United States (as did al-Qa'ida).

Isolating the Muslim Brotherhood as "extreme" for these views obscures a much more disturbing issue -- that those views aren't all that "extreme" in their own context. The Pew Global Attitudes Project found in a 2010 survey that 52 percent of Egyptians have a positive view of Hamas. Any diplomatically elected government of Egypt is likely to be more hostile to Israel and the U.S. for this reason, whether or not the Brotherhood is in charge. While it may seem strange in the American political context, many Egyptians make a serious moral distinction between Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda.

The Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda hate each other. The former view the latter as terrorists, and the latter view the former as traitors to the cause. Critics of the Muslim Brotherhood often cite a common ideological ancestor of both the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, Sayyid Qutb, to draw connections between them. But this obscures the depth of the ideological and religious gulf between the two. The willingness of the Brotherhood to pursue its goals through legitimate democratic means, without violence, is precisely the point -- and precisely why the Egyptian uprising threatens more extreme groups even if it empowers the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The entire bin Laden jihad is about the triumph of Islam over democracy, that only Islam can bring about what we're seeing in Egypt," Nance says. By acknowledging the legitimacy of civil society, the Brotherhood is committing a kind of heresy that for its extremist rivals is unforgivable. That's the reason the two groups hate one another.

"The radicals, including al-Qaeda, consider them to be unbelievers, because they have accepted the legitimacy of democratic elections, and when you do that, it means that you're abrogating the sovereignty of god for the sovereignty of people," Hamid explains. "That's one of the red lines for radical Islamist groups." That line hasn't been erased even where self-identified branches of the Brotherhood like Hamas have engaged in terrorism -- Hamas has crushed attempts by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups to gain a foothold in Gaza.

Conservatives point out that some former Brotherhood members have become terrorists, most notoriously al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has since written screeds denouncing the Muslim Brotherhood -- but the need to form extremist splinter groups also highlights the lines the Brotherhood has refused to cross. As Lynch notes, "Its hostility to al-Qa'ida is not based on a desire to please the United States -- which makes it more, rather than less, valuable."

...

No, they're not liberals.

The point of this piece isn't to give the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood should give everyone the warm fuzzies. Members of the group's leadership hold some truly awful beliefs about Jews and Israel, and as Lynch notes, both the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda "want to Islamicize the public domain and create Islamic states ruled by sharia." But the Brotherhood's willingness to play by the rules of a democratic society is more than a disagreement over "tactics"; it is the difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Even if the U.S. could dictate the outcome in Egypt, a democracy in which the Brotherhood were not allowed to participate would probably do more to marginalize pragmatists and empower the group's extremist rivals than it would to make the Muslim Brotherhood more moderate.

"They aren't even talking Islamic state anymore," Hamid says. "Their priority right now is having freedom to operate, freedom of movement, and if a secular government provides that, then that's precisely what the Brotherhood wants at this juncture." Their alliance with Mohammed ElBaradei seems to support this point.

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_primer_on_the_muslim_brotherhood

Edited February 11, 2011 by \

[JohnSmith2007 353]

What about violent bit?

(for the record - of course they are not secular, if it wasn't patently obvious - I was poking a bit of fun?).

That remains to be seen. If Israel is attacked after they take over then you will have your answer.

[LaL 418]

But I didn't need no learnin'. Thanks anyway?

[^_^ 5,021]

That remains to be seen. If Israel is attacked after they take over then you will have your answer.

I don't think the MB's anti-Israel stance is being questioned here. In the Arab being anti-Israel is pretty mainstream. You're not going to have a democratic government in Egypt that isn't anti-Israel. Whether that anti-Israel stance translates into an actual attack is a whole other matter.