It is surely a lie to say that Huma Abedin, a Muslim who serves as an aide to Hillary Clinton, is working for the Muslim Brotherhood, as rightwing congresswoman Michele Bachmann has done.
But that doesn’t mean you should smear the Muslim Brotherhood. Notice how easily liberal Democrats do just that. Here Chris Matthews says that the Muslim Brotherhood are “the terrorists,” while also on the Matthews show, Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism characterized the Muslim Brotherhood as among “our enemies.” They throw these charges off– Matthews even implying last night that they are against Israel. No one challenges these liberals on these claims. Surprise– there are no Muslims in the conversation.
The Muslim Brotherhood is now the leading political bloc in Egypt. They helped bring about a historic revolution. The president of Egypt is a brother. They are a legitimate political organization whose values are changing before our eyes. Obviously the left should defend Huma Abedin. But doing so doesn’t require throwing the Muslim Brotherhood under the bus. That’s just straight up Islamophobia.
Philip, if your livelihood was not dependent on supporting Palestinians and Muslims ( how much money do you receive from Iran and generous Muslims from friendly countries?), we could then start taking you seriously.
ROFLMAO! Srsly. You’re like the oil men who say global warming is a conspiracy by greedy scientists trying to get their filthy hands on lucrative research grants.
I hope this is a parody… If so, it’s a good one. :)
giladg, while your charges are of course so obviously true on the face of it that it’s a presumption to ask for further details, would you mind telling us if Mondoweiss:
1) receives money from individuals in Iran, or from the Government of Iran?
2) Why shouldn’t, (in any moral, ethical, legal or political sense you want to put it in) Mondoweiss receive money from generous Muslims from friendly countries?
3) why are you referring to yourself as “we”. You’ve been hitting the slivovitz haven’t you? Well, it seems to be hitting you back, and winning the fight.
Has Sheldon again forked you some small changes to buy access to web media in AIPAC run internet cafe? You still can use your brain.Dont have to morgage that to King or Bachmann.
Hear! Hear!
Sorry, here I depart.
The muslim brotherhood is a very old organization. It was founded in 1928 by a vicious, yet intelligent, anti-Semite who admired Hitler. A lot of today’s contemporary anti-Semitism in the Arab world, arguably the only place left on the planet where significant and lethal levels of this poison still exists, has been transfered from Nazis to willing local Arab intellectuals, like the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
True, a lot of Nazis fled to the region after the war and helped the early propaganda efforts, but have anyone forgotten that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the de-facto leader of the Palestinians at the time of war was so enthralled by Hitler that he voluntered his own people to a SS division?
He also personally made the promise to help Hitler complete his ‘final solution’ once the British had been defeated. If Rommel had not been routed by the British, it’s hard to tell what would have happened. In 1942, there was still ample time to kill Jews for the Nazis. It’s very unlikely that the Arab states would not have co-operated with the Nazis and handed them over their Jews in their own countries, as well as to help prevent the Jews living in Palestine at the time to flee the oncoming genocide.
So, you might say, times change. Well, the spiritual leader of the brotherhood recently led a mass prayer in Tahrir Square, drawing over 1 million people where he literally made some remarks that, included the following:
“Throughout time, Allah had punished the Jews. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler, even if they exaggerate it. I pray the next punishment will be by the hand of the believers”(meaning muslims).
This man, Yousef al-Qaradawi should be understood in the same way as the chief rabbi of the Shas party in Israel. He doesn’t have a hand in the day-to-day operations but he has huge influence among the followers and in some ways is more powerful than the party leader because he rarely makes direct statements like these and focus more on religion.
The only difference is that Shas is a tiny party, while the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s regional offshoots is a massive apparatus in comparison.
A short word on the revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood did not create the revolution in Egypt, that was disproportionally the liberals in Cairo.
Only when Mubarak was faltering did the senior leadership, who had been on the fence up until that point, join in because they knew they had to be there in the final stretch in order to claim the revolution for themselves.
The left should not let our standards that we rightly apply to the Israeli extremist elements suddenly slip when it comes to non-Westerners, including Arab muslims.
If we do so, and this post is an example Phil, then we rightly open ourselves up for the charge that we have double standards. I sure don’t. And I hope you don’t either.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a vicious organization, whose spiritual leader has called for muslims worldwide to literally ‘carry out the punishment that Hitler started’. That is a call to genocide in my ears. And it should be noted with the long and poisonous history of pro-Nazi sentiment within the Arab world. Just take the fact that Mein Kampf is a perennial bestseller on the Arab street.
This does not mean we should condemn the entire Arab world for it’s (sizeable) reactionary and racist elements. But it also does mean that we have an obligation to apply equal standards to the parties.
And I doubt that your tone would be so sanguine if some of the statements that I’ve quoted by, say, a spiritual leader of the Likud(if they had one) called for genocide against the Arabs. Would to be so quick to paper over these statements and call for universal acceptance?
No, because that would paint you as insensitive to Arabs at best or an outright Islamophobe at worst. So why should Jews be exempt from this standard, Phil?
I don’t believe you’re a self-hating Jew(that’s BS and propaganda) but you do have a propensity to judge Jews far harsher than the Arabs. This is a classic trap many on the left make. They mistake the inequality of power by a direct correlation of morality. The world is more nuanced than that.
I’m in no way, shape or form associated with “The Left.” A common misconception by self-righteous liberal progressives who think they hold a monopoly on compassion and respect for human-rights.
I’m liberal in the classical sense of the word, which encompasses both the American Right and the American Left, by the way. Neither of which I pledge my allegiance to. Partisanship (or ideological purity) is the scourge of any democratic society.
Now, as for the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna was a “vicious, yet intelligent, anti-Semite?”
From Richard Wolin, a professor of history and political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York:
link to chronicle.com
Your post is, at minimum, one-sided, Krauss. You seem to think the Muslim Brotherhood is like the Communist Party of the USSR.
On the contrary, it is a very loose grouping of Islamists, with many different trends and tendencies within it. It has no centralized authority that imposes a single view of Islam on its followers, as the CP did.
Sure al-Qaradawi has said some disgusting anti-semitic nonsense. The quote you cite is actually from a speech he gave at the height of the Gaza war to a rally to condemn the massacre in Gaza, and yes, it was a massacre. Here’s the clip: link to memritv.org
That the IDF had killed 27 members of the Samoumi family the day before does not excuse his words, but it puts them in a context.
He has also said the following, during less fraught moments: “There is no enmity between Muslims and Jews….Jews who believe in the authentic Torah are very close to Muslims.” “Muslims are against the expansionist, oppressive Zionist movement, not the Jews.” He condemned the 9/11 attacks and has supported women’s participation in the political leadership of the Brotherhood. His views on gender issues are remarkably progressive for a fundamentalist. link to en.wikipedia.org
Rather than demonize the Brotherhood, we westerners should be cautiously optimistic. This is not some monolithic Taliban-type movement.
“It was founded in 1928 by a vicious, yet intelligent, anti-Semite who admired Hitler.”
Wow, that’s one hell of a lifespan. I magine a guy who could found an organisation in 1928, and then rule and direct its actions for 85 years! And imagine founding the Brotherhood when you were less than one year old! My, the Jews have powerful enemies!
I wonder if Nazi ideology was seen this negatively by the world in 1933 or even in 1941. Subhas Chandra Bose courted Hitler. Some 300 hundreds Indian soldiers swapped support to Hitler to fight British.(link to news.bbc.co.uk). did they know the details of what was going on within Germany? They sure knew what Hitler was saying and what Nazi attitide was to Jewish people. Ghandhi and Nehru knew .So its sure that Indian leaders at some level were aware of Hitler’s attitude.
Second Mufti possibly wanted to use Hitler without any broad entanglement in the Jewish question of Europe. It is also should not be forgotten that Mufti was foisted upon Palestinian by Britsh Postmaster General Samuel . He did not win the election that was held. Another issue was that the secular revolution taking place at that time in Turkey was offerring help to Arabs to fight againt Sultan and intorduce democratic reforms in Arab.These secular forces were villified by British.British and French depicted them as anti Muslim,atheist,and agents of anti Arab of foreign culture. The void created , was filled by the religious bodies that worked quite well for British which was replicated later in Afghanisdtan by US in 1980s. Brotherhood may be anti Jewish but are no Jewish peopel left in Egypt.But I worry about their attitude to Coptics and Shites and women. Reality of the current world might force them to change. Again the revolution was hijacked by them for they were monolithiccally organized and structured.
“Another issue was that the secular revolution taking place at that time in Turkey was offerring help to Arabs to fight againt Sultan and intorduce democratic reforms in Arab.”
In fact religious reformers had a great hand in pushing for reform. Even a prominent secular Egyptian feminist admitted that she learned about women’s rights from Muhammad Abduh. Muhammad Abduh was a religious scholar. Quote from LoonWatch:
link to loonwatch.com
“The Young Ottomans had a long-lasting effect on Islamic discourse, and gave birth to the modernist school of thought. Arguably the key figure of modernist Islam was Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who served as rector of al-Azhar University (the foremost Sunni institution) and who held the position of Grand Mufti of Egypt (the highest ranking religious position in the country). Abduh issued a fatwa declaring Muslims and non-Muslims “to be equal under the law, with full citizenship rights.” He further supported parliamentary democracy and constitutionalism as a means to protect these individual rights. In 1908, Mehmed Emaleddin Efendi (Turkey, 1848-1917)–the chief religious authority of the Ottoman Empire, appointed directly by the caliph–concurred with Abduh. During this period, numerous Islamic reformers emerged, and reconciled Islam with modernity. They revised traditional opinions dealing with jihad, women’s rights, human rights, science, and interfaith relationships.”
Thank you for this piece of information. I will not be surprised if these very leaders that you mentioned were marginalized by the Brtish/French in favor of more sectarian,fanatics,obscurantist elements of Saudi Wahabism . The so called Young Turk were not atheist.They were religious but they had a different vision of what Turkey and Arab would be like.
You’re right, it was never in the interests of colonial powers to see the colonised or the post-colonised to diminish the prevailing hegemony. Men like Muhammad Abduh, fortunately, were very successful. Abduh was despised by both the colonial authorities and the puritanical establishment. Mark Sedgwick, Abduh’s recent biographer, has commented that Abduh was absolutely fearless. This tide of egalitarian, rights-based Islam was destroyed in the mid-20th century when obscurantist, sectarian fanatics like Maududi in Pakistan used the fall of the British empire and a naive community looking for direction to elevate themselves. Maududi would go on to influence Qutb in Egypt and even Banna to some extent. He cut short the movement for women’s rights, personally instigated sectarian violence, articulated capital punishment for apostasy, founded the world’s first Islamist party, and would go on to influence a generation of Islamists from Saudi Arabia to Iran. He would go on to fuse “revolution” and “Islam” together even though Islam did not have the concept of revolution. Ethical theologians would critique this notion as early as 1950. Ayatollah’s revolution was grounded in Maududi’s thesis. An incredibly sad history of the degeneration of Muslim ethics.
I’m no fan of the Muslim Brotherhood, but let me get this straight:
“It was founded in 1928 by a vicious, yet intelligent, anti-Semite who admired Hitler.”
That’s highly inaccurate. It’s the Paul Berman tirade. Not only was Banna not the first Islamist (look up Maududi), but he was more anti-British than anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism was political capital in those days and was also employed by some celebrated Indian freedom fighters. Germany was seen as an opponent of Britain by some of these people. In no way am I a fan or sympathiser of Banna, quite the opposite (am opposed to any form of identity politics), but to reduce personalities whose concern , however unethically expressed, was developed in the background of British colonialism to “anti-Semite” is downright silly.
You know Krauss i am gonna pay more attention
to your comments from now on.
It’s really rare to find a guy on the left (whatever that means nowadays)
that takes car to not apply double standards
and actually reads about the subjects that he talks about.
Not sure you will appreciate the compliment but you have it anyway.
Memo to Islamofascism Central:
My brothers! The Zionists are on to our Manchurian Journalist P Weiss. Somehow, their almost supernaturally powerful intelligence gathering has triumphed again. They have uncovered what had been our ace in the hole, a compliant Jewish writer whose hatred of his own people is matched only by his dewy-eyed adoration of medieval Salafism.
How do they do it? Well, there’s an upside to all this – we now kick Weiss off the payroll and save the…hey, Ahmed, how much does this guy get?…..we save the 2 million he’s been costing us. Maybe we can give Beinart a raise.
Death to the West, etc etc,
Yours,
Bob
Do you plan to abolish the position, or will you throw it open for bids?
Philip,
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Ghandhi
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Ghandhi
Keep your pants on, Phil. There’s a limit to admiration, even for the Mahatma Ghandi.
There is a piece missing here.
“Then you get shot by guys who thought you weren’t radical enough”
Phil, I have higher hopes for you, hold out until they send out the Neocons after you, these gilads and assorted other zioworshipers they have assigned to you thus far are the lightbrigade not worthy of the price you will bring when they finally realize the affect you are having within “the community”.
Don’t shoot till you see a name you recognize from the neocon circles high up in their hubris filled stratosphere.
@atime forpeace
Love the paranoia “they have assigned to you”.
It wasn’t Gandhi, it was a trade unionist named Klein.
link to barrypopik.com
Labeling the Muslim Brotherhood as “the enemy” is certainly dubious at this point of time while the wheel is still in spin. Unlike Hamas which is under occupation and therefore proved unworthy of expectations of moderation (to my mind), Egypt is not occupied and we shall now truly see how responsibility changes the Brotherhood. To have low expectations is therefore a form of Islamophobia? Not necessarily. Calling them terrorists might be Islamophobia, but having low expectations might be common sense or not, and only time will tell.
That’s a curious statement given:
a) Israel’s past support for Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah.
b) The United States’ backing of the Mujahideen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
c) The simple fact that NOW the U.S. and Israel are using the Salafis to do their bidding against Bashaar al-Asad.
You would do well to immerse yourself in some reading about the 20th century instead of limiting yourself to religious texts. Expand your horizons a little.
But, yeah, let’s hope for “moderation” while Shass and many many more religious fanatics in the Israeli government run amok without drawing any criticism from the same person who with an air of arrogance is passing judgment as though he is some well-seasoned, astute political analyst.
I dont think “the left” owes anything to Anthony Weiners wife. Sorry, Phil, my brother.
Are you still drinking the kool-aid on Egypt? Sheee-it. Historic? Sure. The so called arab spring has shown western “liberals” to be “historically naive.” They rearranged the patio furniture, BFD.
DAN CROWTHER- “Are you still drinking the kool-aid on Egypt? Sheee-it. Historic? Sure. The so called arab spring has shown western “liberals” to be “historically naive.” They rearranged the patio furniture, BFD.”
I agree. Furthermore, I think that whoever has power in Egypt, their options are severely limited. Egypt is dependent upon outside financial assistance to survive, currently the US (who pays the generals salaries) and the GCC (primarily Saudi Arabia and Qatar), with the IMF in the wings. I don’t foresee either Russia or China challenging the US in Egypt. In other words, Egypt’s hands are tied. Of course, nothing is certain, however, I still feel it unlikely that Egypt has the wherewithal to extricate itself from empire and the global matrix of financial control.
>> Former GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and four other conservative members of Congress are charging that people with ties to Muslim extremists have infiltrated the federal government.
I’m charging that people such as Ms. Bachmann and her four colleagues – who, in addition to having ties to dangerously moronic and hateful people, are themselves dangerously moronic and hateful – have infiltrated the federal government.
I don’t remember when the Democratic Party wasn’t an Israeli occupied territory.
Let’s not smear them for things they haven’t done, no, but let’s also analyze and criticize them in the same way we would similar elements in our own country. They’re a legitimate political organization, but so is the U.S. Republican party.
It is ironic to pass judgement on the Egyptians and their support of the brotherhood. On the one hand, we(the collective west)prattle on and on about democracy, then condemn it because we do not like the results?
From what I have heard from the new head of Egypt, I have been impressed. He – in public- welcomed the Copts and has pledged continued treaty obligations as opposed to abrogating the Camp David Accords.
When one looks at Mubarak with his corruption, bashing Israel using anti-semitic films/video while oppressing the Copts and the Islamists… all the while making money for the family enterprise, then compare him to Mosri’s firsts steps, I prefer Mosri.
From my many posts here, I believe I have rightfully earned a reputation as someone who is concerned with anti-semitism and for the survival and prosperity of Israel. I would rather negotiate and deal with a leader who is honest and represents the wishes of his own people as opposed to the wishes of my people. This is why I would trust Hamas far more than Fatah and the well-loved Jordanian boy King. They obviously represent someone I might be more comfortable with, but not the Jordanians or Palestinians. Same is true with Basahr Assad.
To malign Mosri for having a conservative version of Islam is beyond disgusting. To condemn Weiner’s wife is beyond disgusting. I’m also getting sick and tired of idiots bashing Mormons as well for being cultish or whatever.
The results of democracy include Hitler. So let’s not pretend that democracy is some omniscient, omnibenevolent force that only produces good governments.
Biorabbi, I hope you optimism is justified. But is it? Many Egyptians are far less sanguine than you are.
The rapid diabloical foreign -supported rise of Salafist in Libya and in Syria contrast well with slow steady rising non- violent compromise- seeking MB now being thretatened with cuts by US in case they decide not to honor Camp David traety.The absence of large scale violence against women /Shia/Coptics in Egypt contrast well also with merciless killings of foreign workers and migrant Africans by Libyan militia and killings of Chrsitians and civilans in Syria by the salafist.. I guess NBC and FOX have made up thier minds who to love and who to hate.
traintosiberia, you have no idea what you are talking about. Woman in Egypt have it very rough and are worried about the muslim brotherhood. Shias and Coptics and other minorities are scared of the brotherhood.
So far Libya is going better than Egypt. But a good outcome in Egypt is still possible.