An Op-Ed: "There's a scimitar behind the smile" - Greg Sheridan on the Muslim Brotherhood - Polidicks

[i]The Australian[/i] foreign affairs editor assesses the malevolent undertones of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover. [quote][b]JUST now the pendulum stops for a breathless second, seemingly uncertain which way it will swing. In Egypt, in the first week of the demonstrations, everything was clear.[/b]The dictator Hosni Mubarak was finished, his remaining time in office measured in days, if not hours. Then the old boy manoeuvred, cleverly for a cornered dictator, with moderate shows of force, a promise to resign at the next presidential election in September, a raft of reforms and a dialogue on transition with the opposition. The demonstrations dissipated, the shops reopened. It looked like he might hang on. But no, then the demonstrators came roaring back. Go now! Washington's line has faithfully tracked this strange arc. First Mubarak was "family" to Hillary Clinton, and the Egyptian government stable. Then there had to be transition straight away, and that meant yesterday. Then Barack Obama said Egypt had already changed, and the priority now was on orderly procedure towards proper democratic elections. No one, you see, can tell exactly how this crisis will unfold, though perhaps the longer Mubarak stays, the longer it seems likely he will stay. Which may not be altogether a bad thing. After Suharto left in Indonesia, there was enormous pressure for immediate revolution. Instead Indonesia proceeded to democracy constitutionally, including in due course thorough renovation of the constitution. As a result, the democracy it now has is much more stable, much more full of checks and balances, than a populist and lawless revolution would have been. While all analysts, the present writer most assuredly included, need to recognise they cannot predict what will happen, there is one element of popular analysis which I am sure is wrong. That is the presentation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a sort of slightly old-fashioned Baden-Powell Boy Scouts movement with a Country Women's League branch. The correspondents in Cairo, understandably caught up in the emotion of the revolt, as well as analysts in the West, desperately determined that the alternative to Mubarak is something nice, have simply closed their eyes to all the evidence about the Muslim Brotherhood. Two Muslim Brotherhood names may be familiar to you. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qa'ida, came from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man behind the 9/11 terror atrocities, emerged from the Kuwaiti branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Much has been made by wishful thinkers in the West - themselves half seduced by the Brothers' history of violence and half in love with the idea that the revolutionary extremist provides redemption and then becomes a prophet of peace - of the Brothers' formal renunciation of violence within Egypt. But Hamas, the terrorist death cult that rules the Gaza Strip, is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its manifesto, which you can read on the internet, is a bizarre amalgam of traditional anti-Semitism and grotesque conspiracy theory. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt fully endorses all Hamas terrorism. Within Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, it has a long history of violence and terrorism, though these actions were often undertaken by front or clandestine branches of the organisation. In the 1980s it formally renounced violence within Egypt. This was partly a response to Mubarak's pressure and partly tactical. Its spokesmen say vastly different things to different audiences, but even in its most moderate and emollient moments, it is clear that it wants an Egypt of sharia law in which the Koran is the only guide to life, and that means not religious life but social and political life, and all life really. The Muslim Brothers are totalitarian. Their chief theologian and theorist was Sayyid Qutb, the author in many ways of the modern, violent, terrorist interpretation of jihad. Qutb spent two years in the US, 1948 to 1950, and was horrified especially by its permissiveness. Indeed his writing has a perverse obsession with sex and what he saw as the "animal-like mixing" of the sexes. He went on at great length about the seductive and sexual nature of the American girl, how utterly disgusting he found this and what an offence it was against religion and Islam. Qutb's writings have remained popular and influential, and the Muslim Brothers often talk in their publications about their plans for world domination, their plans to purify Islam, their plans to properly Islamise notionally Islamic societies, their plans to win over Europe, their plans to destroy American influence and the rest. Of course, everybody changes over time, even the Muslim Brotherhood. But the history of revolutions is not particularly reassuring. In the 20th century, in almost every society in which communism came to power - except through foreign invasion - there was a stage of coalition government in which the communists coexisted for a time with social democrats and the like. During these coalition governments, the communists always promised to respect constitutional processes. But in truth they were always the best organised and most ruthless actors in the political drama, and they used a combination of the ballot box and revolutionary violence to eventually establish one-party states. Something very similar happened with the Islamists of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. Before he came back to Iran, the Ayatollah said in Paris he had no interest in a government position and that no cleric would occupy any position of government power. Iran in 1979 was a vastly more liberal, cosmopolitan and sophisticated society than Egypt is today. And within the ayatollah's movement there were indeed some sincere moderates who wanted a more Islamic Iran but not the theocratic dictatorship that finally emerged. Extremists, be they Marxists or Islamists, often have had a degree of popular support and a wholly utilitarian view of democracy: one man, one vote, one time. None of this guarantees the Muslim Brotherhood will gain power in Egypt, but I am sure it wants to gain power, and if it succeeds it won't behave like a Boy Scout movement. Egypt's best chance remains a constitutional transition, with enough time for secular democrats to get organised, and an eventual constitution that produces a weak president and a proportionally elected parliament in which no one party is likely to gain a majority. Here's hoping.[/quote] [url]http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/theres-a-scimitar-behind-the-smile/story-e6frg6zo-1226003211731[/url]

Good thing they aren't running for the presidency huh.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not for a democracy. This is a hostile takeover to soon be ruled by an iron fist and oppress the nation [b]Edit:[/b] lol I see the standard 5 Newsboard diehards were quick to dumb me this time

I said GOOD THING THEY AREN'T RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY HUH.

This is welcome news scimitars are awesome Pirates used them too and pirates are great

pirates use cutlasses...

[QUOTE=Habsburg;27966567]I said GOOD THING THEY AREN'T RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY HUH.[/QUOTE] He said GOOD THING THEY AREN'T RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY, HUH?

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;27966660]pirates use cutlasses...[/QUOTE] I've seen both used shut up I used to be a pirate I know what I'm talking about

no you havent pirates ONLY use cutlasses you friggin liar

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;27966840]no you havent pirates ONLY use cutlasses you friggin liar[/QUOTE] quiet or you'll be walkin the plank ye scurvy dog

uh i used to play runescape i am a expert in scimitar and scimitar accessories

I'm hopeful that no religious fanatics gets into power. Might be asking for to much.

[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;27966949]uh i used to play runescape i am a expert in scimitar and scimitar accessories[/QUOTE] Scimitars forged by mortal hands are only of good quality when made of Rune ore, but there are myths of rarer, Dragon-Forged scimitars. Truly, these are the weapons of gods.

hopefully there won't be a muslim brotherhood take over or else my dream of an egyptian anarchist post-punk band will never come true

[QUOTE=thisispain;27967190]hopefully there won't be a muslim brotherhood take over or else my dream of an egyptian anarchist post-punk band will never come true[/QUOTE] A quick search turned up 10 Egyptian metal bands so finding some post-punk from there isn't a stretch

[QUOTE=Lachz0r;27966840]no you havent pirates ONLY use cutlasses you friggin liar[/QUOTE] wot about egyption pirates??

[quote]But Hamas, the terrorist death cult that rules the Gaza Strip, is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.[/quote] Quit reading right around there. I can dimly recall a time when posting far-right-leaning op-eds in the News section resulted in a permaban.

[QUOTE=Madman_Andre;27968871]Quit reading right around there. I can dimly recall a time when posting far-right-leaning op-eds in the News section resulted in a permaban.[/QUOTE] Must have been before Glaber started posting.

[QUOTE=Madman_Andre;27968871]Quit reading right around there. I can dimly recall a time when posting far-right-leaning op-eds in the News section resulted in a permaban.[/QUOTE] It's still in the rules sticky that you shouldn't post op-eds, but that's kinda been ignored.

wts rune scimmy

[QUOTE=Megafanx13;27966667]He said GOOD THING THEY AREN'T RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY, HUH?[/QUOTE] They said GOOD THING THEY AREN'T RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY, HUH?