Thursday 2 May 2019

“Is the Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group?” | NYT

I just picked up my morning international print edition of the New York Times and see the front page headline "Examining a group Trump calls terrorists". I thought I'd guess the contents, before reading it. Not much of a challenge, TBF. After all, the mention of "Trump" means that the NYT will say the opposite, no matter what it is. In this case Trump calls the Brotherhood terrorists, so the Times will say they are not. Then there's the give away in the sub-head of the online version, below:
The group says it isn't [terrorist], an assessment that many experts share.
Riiiiight… the Brotherhood itself says it's not a terrorist outfit....hmmm. And some "experts" agree. It will be interesting to see just who these are. Esposito? Armstrong?  [LATER: neither.  No expert is mentioned by name.  Suspicious?]
The facts (from memory) are that the Brotherhood was established by Hassan al-Banna in 1921 1928 as an Islamist organisation and it remains one to this day. Sayyid Qutb ran it for years after Banna's death, and set it on a solidly extremist Islamist path. Which al-Banna's grandson, the oleaginous Tariq Ramadan, continued, at least until his recent imprisonment for student sexual abuse. (He only abused women and girls, mind you. None of this homosexual nonsense for Brother Tariq).
Some countries, like Egypt, see the Brotherhood as such a threat to its secular society, that they ban it. Other Muslim countries ban it. [Added: Russia, CSTO, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE]
The Brotherhood has spawned terrorists organisations like Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS. 
The Brotherhood's aim in the United States is to overthrow the "infidel" secular government and have America ruled by Islamic Sharia law. They dream of the black flag of jihad flying over the White House, fluttering on the Congressional flagpole.
So, yeah, I'd say they're a terrorist outfit.  Or at least — to use terminology of the Left — they are "terrorists adjacent".
But I'm going to go ahead and guess that to the NYT there's nothing to see here, move on....
Now, let me read it!...
Well, now I’ve read it and it’s pretty much like a Wikipedia article, and I've also corrected a few points above.  And I'm right that they completely downplay the MB threat to the west.
Nothing much new in the article; according to the NYT, it's all fine with the Brotherhood.
Slipped into the article, but just in glancing and passed by, is that the Brotherhood supports Hamas’s suicide bombs and rockets aimed at civilian Israelis. Hamas’s genocidal hatred of Israel has destroyed the dreams of their own state for all Gazans under its rule. Apologists say Hamas was  "democratically elected”. Right, for a four-year term, fourteen years ago. And it is born straight out of the Brotherhood. It is boneheaded, inflexible, unyielding, and... unsuccessful.  And who suffer are its people.  Well done Brotherhood, well done Hamas.
Not mentioned at all is the Brotherhood strategic aim of “destroying the United States and its miserable house”.
ADDED: the Muslim Brotherhood "strategic goals for America" document:
“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”
“[W]e must possess a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’, the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”  From here.
In other words, not really "terrorist" but more dangerous because of that, precisely because they will get the New York Times and its "many experts" to assure us that the Brotherhood is just fine, while they, the Brotherhood, proceed with the "art" of "coalitions" (CAIR comes to mind) and the art of "absorption" while all around are blissfully, determinedly perhaps, unaware.
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President Trump wants to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. The group says it isn't, an assessment that many experts share.