Foreign By Tim Collie W
HETHER THE POPULIST REVOLTS NOW sweeping the Middle East portend a new era of Arab democracy remains to be seen, but it certainly has awak- ened the region’s largest radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood could be fairly described as the mother ship for nearly every radical Islamic group of the last century.
It has been widely blamed for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in response to his peace overtures at Camp David. Its early leaders were cited as sources of inspiration for the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Today, the Brotherhood is quietly
gaining infl uence in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen, thanks in no small part to the Obama Administration. The Brotherhood claims to have eschewed violence in favor of democracy, but not everyone is buying it.
Former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Andrew C. McCarthy, who convicted “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, tells Newsmax that the notion of an enlightened “Arab Spring” is a myth. “It is wishful thinking,” he says,
“as most recently demonstrated by the Egyptian referendum, in which the secular reformers [whom] we would like to believe are the driving force of the upheaval, were routed 78-22 percent, by advocates of the Muslim Brotherhood’s demand for quick elections that are certain to favor Islamists.
“What is happening in the region is an Islamist ascendancy, not an ‘Arab Spring.’”
The Brotherhood’s organization, funding, street smarts, and decades in the shadows as an underground group is paying off
as 44 NEWSMAX / SEPTEMBER 2011 creaking
regimes across the region collapse, leaving a dangerous void. There is no
Obama Gives Peace a Chance With Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
The Obama administration advocates direct dialogue with the organization, though the group has been linked to radical Islam.
group better organized to take advan- tage of the current political chaos in the Middle East. In Egypt alone, the Brotherhood has an estimated 100,000 members.
In Tunisia, the Brotherhood seems to be morphing into a main- stream political
party. In other
nations — Libya, Syria, and Yemen — its members reportedly are amass- ing weapons and territory in a bid to seize power. But it is in Egypt, home to 80 million people, roughly one- quarter of the Arab world’s popu- lation, where the fate of both the Brotherhood and U.S. policy in the region may ultimately be decided. In late June, the Obama admin-
istration surprised many observ- ers by announcing that U.S. diplo- mats would henceforth be permit- ted to meet with members of the
Brotherhood in Egypt. In doing so, it lifted a ban on recognizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s
legitimacy
that had been in place since 1954. The Obama administration insists
that given the changing political landscape in the Middle East, it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that aren’t actively engaged in terrorism. U.S.
diplomats downplay the
importance of diplomatic recogni- tion of the Brotherhood, describing it as a mere expansion of current policy, while emphasizing that con- tacts would be “limited.” But that recognition is widely seen as an American acknowledgement that the Brotherhood is a formidable force. Founded in Egypt
in 1928 by
the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood has been the most
BROTHERHOOD (L TO R): JOURNALISTS/MARCO LONGARI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/-/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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