Dr. Timothy Furnish, scholar of Islamic history, in an article entitled “Misunderestimating the Muslim Brotherhood: Media Malfeasance at its Most Malignant,” has done an excellent job of gathering together a handful of such embarrassing predictions.
Now that the smoke has cleared, despite all predictions to the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood has swiftly risen to the highest levels of power in Egypt, and Hillary Clinton has just returned from warmly welcoming them to the table. Let’s take a moment to remember how embarrassingly far off these so-called experts were from recognizing what was coming down the pike.
In an article posted on Jan. 31, 2011, titled “Fears of a Muslim Brotherhood Takeover of Egypt are Overblown,” Chris Harnisch, an “al-Qaida expert” and former staffer for Vice President Dick Cheney said that there is an “exaggerated fear that militant Islamists might fill a void left by an ousted President Hosni Mubarak.”
On the same day, I also wrote an article for WND entitled “What’s next in the Middle East?” in which I took precisely the opposite position of Harnish, apparently from the position of “exaggerated fears”:
“… in the short term, the Brotherhood, the ideological child of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan Al-Banna, will be the biggest winner. After the dust settles and the Egyptian government is reformed, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan) will certainly ease their way into significant positions of power, not at all unlike Hezbollah in Lebanon. This could take as long as a few years, as it did with Hezbollah, but in all likelihood it will be a rather quick rise.”
Ten days later, Feb. 10, 2011, Adam Serwer, of the Washingtopn Post, in an article titled “Poll: No Constituency for Muslim Brotherhood Takeover in Egypt,” claimed that, “[T]he argument that a transition to democracy in Egypt will lead to an Islamist takeover doesn’t seem to hold much water.”
Three months later, the experts remained adamant. Michelle Dunne, editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on May 23, 2011, in a Voice of America interview, piled onboard the Pollyanna bandwagon:
“I think it is very unlikely that there would be an Islamist president in Egypt. … if you ask the Muslim Brotherhood their goal, they say it is not to establish and Islamic state but rather to function within a democratic system.”
Finally, and perhaps the most embarrassing of all, came the mocking of Max Fisher (associate editor, International Channel), who on July 26, 2011, in “Chart of the Day: Muslim Brotherhood Deeply Unpopular in Egypt,” shot himself in the foot when he ignorantly jabbed that, “The Big Bad [Muslim] Brotherhood isn’t much more popular in Egypt than it is on Fox News.”
So here we are a mere year later. Where have all of these experts gone? Have they learned their lesson? Sadly, no. Now that the Brotherhood has in fact risen quickly to power, precisely as they claimed would never happen, they have simply adjusted their arguments to claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is not nearly as bad or radical as some of the ignorant right-wingers and fear-mongers would suggest.
Well, just for clarity, let’s take a moment to pause and consider the words of the newly elected Egyptian president. Remember, this is the man the Obama administration is now openly welcoming to power and promising to support. The following speech made by new President Muhammad Morsi himself was captured and translated by MEMRI during the election on May 13, 2012:
[In the 1920s, the Egyptians] said: “The constitution is our Quran.” They wanted to show that the constitution is a great thing. But Imam [Hassan] Al-Banna, Allah’s mercy upon him, said to them: “No, the Quran is our constitution.” The Quran was and will continue to be our constitution. The Quran will continue to be our constitution. The Prophet Muhammad is our leader. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration. Above all – Allah is our goal. The Shariah, then the Shariah, and finally, the Shariah. This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through the Islamic Shariah. I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text [of the constitution] … Allah willing, the text will truly reflect [the Shariah], as will be agreed upon by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic scholars, and by legal and constitutional experts. … Rejoice and rest assured that this people will not accept a text that does not reflect the true meaning of the Islamic Shariah as a text to be implemented and as a platform. The people will not agree to anything else.
The full clip can be seen in the following YouTube clip:
After my prediction that the Muslim Brotherhood would indeed quickly rise to power in Egypt, I added the following comment: “In a dramatic and portentous shift, the U.S. and even Israel will be forced to recognize and deal with the strengthened Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] Party in Egypt.”
So here we are. A little more than one year later, exactly as predicted, it has come to pass. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just completed her meetings with President Morsi, and on behalf of the Obama administration has welcomed him and his party to power. As the Daily Beast reported, it is now clear that despite our longstanding policies to the contrary:
“The United States has been impelled to evolve with the Arab world, engaging with Islamist groups it once shunned and hedging its bets with governments that bear no track record.”
Of course, the claim that the Brotherhood has no track record is simply silly. This is the group, after all, that is responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Sadat. It also helped to spawn al-Qaida. And now the man who Hillary sat down with is seen on film openly stating, “Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.”
How is this any different than sitting down with President Ahmadinejad or Osama bin Laden?
The lunatics are truly running the asylum. Our country is being led by fools. Its high time that all Americans fall to our knees and ask the Almighty God (of the Bible) to forgive us for our outright complicity with wickedness. Lord have mercy on this nation. Forgive us of our sins, and in the days to come, give us righteous and wise leadership.
Hillary Clinton Blesses the Brotherhood
By Robert Spencer
But instead of standing outside with those who were demonstrating for freedom against a radically repressive ideology, the Secretary of State was inside, having a friendly meeting with that repressive ideology’s foremost Egyptian exponent. It was a telling sign of how quickly America’s international stance has changed during the regime of Barack Obama. “Things change (at) kind of warp speed,” Clinton enthused to Morsi during their meeting. Indeed.
If Clinton had any comment on the demonstration, it was not recorded. During her meeting with Morsi she mouthed platitudes about the new Muslim Brotherhood government’s looming showdown with the Egyptian military, telling the President condescendingly that reaching a mutually acceptable agreement “requires dialogue and compromise, real politics.” She also assured him that the U.S. would do everything within its power to “support the democratically elected government and to help make it a success in delivering results for the people of Egypt.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether or not by “delivering results for the people of Egypt,” Clinton was referring to freeing the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a man who had plotted to murder Americans in the hundreds of thousands. Soon after his election, Morsi announced his determination to work for the Blind Sheikh’s freedom; Clinton was almost certainly far too polite and determined to hew to the rules of realpolitik to rebuke Morsi for this unmistakable insult to the United States. To have done so would have been a completely unexpected reversal of the line the U.S. has taken since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” uprisings that paved the way for the Brotherhood to come to power in Egypt.
Nor is Clinton likely to have upbraided Morsi for the implied contravention of the principles of democracy in his recent restatement before an enthusiastic crowd of the founding principles of the Muslim Brotherhood: “The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” But of course when Morsi finished nodding to Clinton’s platitudes, he no doubt went back to working on how to begin not making Egypt more democratic, but imposing Sharia upon it. After all, recently a Salafi leader, Yasser Borhamy, declared that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to implement Sharia as the main source for Egyptian law. Noting opposition to Sharia in Egypt, Borhamy said: “What is disturbing in the Islamic Sharia law, is Sharia bothering anyone? We do not say ‘our views on Sharia,’ but we say that we want the Sharia law revealed by God. Would anyone be afraid of the Sharia that establishes justice, [public] interest and wisdom? This is very strange. How is it said that people are afraid of Sharia?”
By “Sharia law revealed by God,” Borhamy meant the Sharia that stones adulterers, amputates thieves’ hands, mandates death for apostates from Islam, and institutionalizes subjugation of women and non-Muslims.
Hardly democratic principles, but Clinton didn’t seem concerned during her meeting with Morsi. And even the likelihood that Egypt, long a recipient of American largesse, will become an enemy of America as it throws off the Camp David Accords and goes to war with Israel is unlikely to shake the entrenched core assumptions in Washington that got us into this fix. The Obama Administration rejects, as a matter of repeatedly stated policy, the idea that Islam has anything to do with terrorism, or warfare against unbelievers, or the legal subjugation of non-Muslims. An Obama official who opined that a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt would likely be an enemy of the United States because of Islam’s core doctrines regarding the evil of the society of unbelievers would be reprimanded or fired outright for “Islamophobia.”
And so it fell to the handful of protestors outside the U.S. Embassy, rather than to Hillary Clinton, to state the obvious truths: that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohamed Morsi will begin to resemble the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where Christians live in fear of being accused of “blasphemy” and either tortured and killed by a raging Muslim mob or arrested and imprisoned by a thoroughly Islamized law enforcement apparatus; or Hamas-ruled Gaza, which encourages a culture of rage and hatred toward Israel and glorifies the murderers of Israeli civilians as heroes. Even Egyptian journalists have noted with alarm the looming Islamization of the nation’s media, which would mean the end of the free press.
Israel, meanwhile, is taking necessary steps to defend itself from a country that has maintained an imperfect but nonetheless real peace with it for thirty years. Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood is virtually certain to be a darker, bloodier, less hospitable place for women, non-Muslims, and anyone who dares to stand for a vision of society other than that dictated by Islamic law.
But the only ones who were concerned about all that on Sunday were the demonstrators outside the Embassy. Hillary Clinton certainly wasn’t.
Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood
By Robert Spencer
McCain declared in a statement on the Senate floor that “recently, it has been alleged that Huma, a Muslim American, is part of a nefarious conspiracy to harm the United States by unduly influencing U.S. foreign policy at the Department of State in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist causes.”
McCain, brimming with righteous indignation, thundered: “These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way. These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis, and no merit. And they need to stop now.”
He explained that the letter Bachmann and several other Representatives sent asking for an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood influence in the government “alleges that three members of Huma’s family are ‘connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.’ Never mind that one of those individuals, Huma’s father, passed away two decades ago.”
However, in her letter to Ellison, Bachmann explained that much more was behind her concern about Abedin than guilt-by-association based on family members: “The concerns about the foreign influence of immediate family members is such a concern to the U.S. Government that it includes these factors as potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining a security clearance, which undoubtedly Ms. Abedin has had to obtain to function in her position. For us to raise issues about a highly-based U.S. Government official with known immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations is not a question of singling out Ms. Abedin. In fact, these questions are raised by the U.S. Government of anyone seeking a security clearance.”
And in Abedin’s case, there are ample reasons for raising these questions. Her father, Syed Z. Abedin, was a professor in Saudi Arabia who founded the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an organization supported by the Muslim World League, a Brotherhood organization. Her mother, Saleha Mahmoud Abedin, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, the Brotherhood’s adjunct organization for women. The Brotherhood itself is in its own words, according to a captured internal document, dedicated to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.”
All that leaves McCain unmoved, for he goes on to assert that “the letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision, or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government. Nor does either document offer any evidence of a direct impact that Huma may have had on one of the U.S. policies with which the authors of the letter and the producers of the report find fault.”
However, it is odd that McCain would expect Bachmann to produce the outcome of an investigation before any investigation has even taken place. As Bachmann noted, “these questions are raised by the U.S. Government of anyone seeking a security clearance.” So why should Huma Abedin be exempt? Would an official who had family connections with the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations be similarly exempt from scrutiny? If not, why should someone with familial connections to a group dedicated to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within”?
As Bachmann pointed out in her letter to Ellison, the Muslim Brotherhood ties of Abedin’s mother, father and brother have never been a secret, and have long been noted in the international press. Abedin herself has never publicly distanced herself from the Brotherhood, or explained how her worldview or her vision of Islam differ from that of her parents or brother. So by what moral calculus can it possibly be “sinister,” as McCain put it, to ask that Abedin be subjected to the same scrutiny that would be focused upon anyone seeking a security clearance that would allow access to sensitive material comparable to that which she enjoys?
What’s more, the Obama administration’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is so obvious that Egyptian demonstrators just days ago pelted Hillary Clinton’s motorcade with tomatoes and shoes for delivering that country up to the rule of the Brotherhood and the imposition of Islamic law that is almost certain to come. Protestors held signs reading “Message to Hillary: Egypt will never be Pakistan”; “To Hillary: Hamas will never rule Egypt” and “If you like the Ikhwan [Brotherhood], take them with you!”
Did Huma Abedin have any influence over the Obama administration’s warm support for the Brotherhood? No one knows. Michele Bachmann doesn’t know, and doesn’t claim otherwise. John McCain, for that matter, doesn’t know that Abedin didn’t have this kind of influence. That is precisely why an investigation should be made.
In Abedin’s defense, McCain recounted: “Some years ago, I had the pleasure, along with my friend, the Senator from South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham, of traveling overseas with our colleague, then-Senator Hillary Clinton. By her side, as always, was Huma, and I had the pleasure of seeing firsthand her hard work and dedicated service on behalf of the former Senator from New York – a service that continues to this day at the Department of State, and bears with it significant personal sacrifice for Huma.”
In this McCain demonstrates a naivete that is astonishing if he really means what he says. That Abedin works hard and has served Clinton with dedication is not at issue. But the lingering question is: To what end? It may be that she is just as patriotic and loyal to American principles and American freedoms as McCain implies. It may also be that her familial loyalties have led her to take a positive stance toward the Muslim Brotherhood that is ultimately inimical to the interests of the United States. There simply isn’t enough to go on to answer that question either way at this point. That’s why there should be an investigation, and why John McCain is wrong, and Michele Bachmann is right.
How Obama Engineered Mideast Radicalization
By Amil Imani
After angry Egyptians pelted her motorcade with shoes, chanting "Leave!," Secretary of State Clinton insisted the U.S. wasn't there to take sides. Too late.
'I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot," Hillary Clinton intoned earlier this week.
Of course, the administration could, and it did, picking and even colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood. And one of its hard-liners, Mohammed Morsi, now sits in the presidential palace, where he refused to shake unveiled Clinton's hand.
This administration favored Islamists over secularists and helped them overthrow Hosni Mubarak, the reliable U.S. ally who had outlawed the terrorist Brotherhood and honored the peace pact with Israel for three decades. The Brotherhood, in contrast, has backed Hamas and called for the destruction of Israel.
Now the administration is dealing with the consequences of its misguided king-making. Officials fear the new regime could invite al-Qaida, now run by an Egyptian exile, back into Egypt and open up a front with Israel along the Sinai. Result: more terrorists and higher gas prices.
In fact, it was Hillary's own department that helped train Brotherhood leaders for the Egyptian elections. Behind the scenes, she and the White House made a calculated decision, and took step-by-step actions, to effectively sell out Israel and U.S. interests in the Mideast to the Islamists.
The untold story of the "Arab Spring" is that the Obama administration secretly helped bring Islamofascists to power. Consider this timeline:
2009: The Brotherhood's spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — writes an open letter to Obama arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.
2009: Obama travels to Cairo to deliver apologetic speech to Muslims, and infuriates the Mubarak regime by inviting banned Brotherhood leaders to attend. Obama deliberately snubs Mubarak, who was neither present nor mentioned. He also snubs Israel during the Mideast trip.
2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which supports the Brotherhood.
2010: State Department lifts visa ban on Tariq Ramadan, suspected terrorist and Egyptian-born grandson of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.
2010: Hussain meets with Ramadan at American-sponsored conference attended by U.S. and Brotherhood officials.
2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood's grand mufti in Egypt.
2010: Obama meets one-on-one with Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: "The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim."
2010: The Brotherhood's supreme guide calls for jihad against the U.S.
2011: Qaradawi calls for "days of rage" against Mubarak and other pro-Western regimes throughout Mideast.
2011: Riots erupt in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak's ouster, storm buildings.
2011: The White House fails to back longtime ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.
2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood's extremism. Clapper testifies the group is moderate, "largely secular."
2011: Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, is given a hero's welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad.
2011: Through his State Department office, William Taylor — Clinton's special coordinator for Middle East transitions and a longtime associate of Brotherhood apologists —gives Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamists special training to prepare for the post-Mubarak elections.
2011: The Brotherhood wins control of Egyptian parliament, vows to tear up Egypt's 30-year peace treaty with Israel and reestablishes ties with Hamas, Hezbollah.
2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians, while still refusing to visit Israel.
2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of U.S.-based Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas.
2011: In a shocking first, the State Department formalizes ties with Egypt's Brotherhood, letting diplomats deal directly with Brotherhood party officials in Cairo.
April 2012: The administration quietly releases $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian regime.
June 2012: Morsi wins presidency amid widespread reports of electoral fraud and voter intimidation by gun-toting Brotherhood thugs — including blockades of entire streets to prevent Christians from going to the polls. The Obama administration turns a blind eye, recognizes Morsi as victor.
June 2012: In a victory speech, Morsi vows to instate Shariah law, turning Egypt into an Islamic theocracy, and also promises to free jailed terrorists. He also demands Obama free World Trade Center terrorist and Brotherhood leader Omar Abdel-Rahman, a.k.a. the Blind Sheik, from U.S. prison.
June 2012: State grants visa to banned Egyptian terrorist who joins a delegation of Brotherhood officials from Egypt. They're all invited to the White House to meet with Obama's deputy national security adviser, who listens to their demands for the release of the Blind Sheik.
July 2012: Obama invites Morsi to visit the White House this September.
The Muslim Brotherhood's sudden ascendancy in the Mideast didn't happen organically. It was helped along by a U.S. president sympathetic to its interests over those of Israel and his own country.
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