Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood government seeking "total control of the media"

I expect that some of our hopelessly compromised pro-jihad pseudo-journalists such as Christiane Amanpour, Manya Brachear, Bob Smietana, Kari Huus, Dave Weigel, Michael Kruse and their ilk are hurrying over to Cairo now, eager to aid the Muslim Brotherhood in its conversion of the nation's media into its own propaganda organ.

"Brotherhood’s Shater seeks ‘total control’ of media: Egypt’s opposition group," from al-Arabiya, December 29:

Egypt’s opposition group, the Popular Front, said on Wednesday that it had laid hands on a leaked document signed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy chairman Khairat al-Shater in which he urged the government to claim “total control of the media.”
Shater, who was the Brotherhood’s main presidential candidate before he was disquieted by the election committee, reportedly also called for shutting down TV channels owned by opposition groups.

Al-Tahreer newspaper reported that Shater even advised his brethren at the helm of Egypt’s policy making to find ways to contain the more radical Salafi Islamists. Salafis have strongly stood by the Brotherhood in recent constitutional battles, but the Brotherhood see extremist Islamists as potential future threats....

« Previous Entry | Home Page | Next Entry »

13 Comments

| Leave a comment

justbeingman | December 28, 2012 3:53 PM | Reply

The truth is that the media in Egypt was never free, and the MB will only make it worse. But the main point is how can anyone say there were free elections in Egypt? A prerequisite for free elections is freedom of the press, and that hardly exists in any of the Muslim countries. Without a free press voters do not get the information they need to cast an informed vote. They are voting on the basis of censored and distorted news. Yes, let's have free elections in Egypt and the Muslim world, but first things first -- a free press.

Canto28 | December 28, 2012 4:26 PM | Reply

Maybe they'd like to be a Islamic version of North Korea. After all, their phoney baloney Islam is so fragile it needs all the protection it can get.

duh_swami | December 28, 2012 4:38 PM | Reply

but the Brotherhood see extremist Islamists as potential future threats....

When Allah is in charge, it becomes difficult to tell the players apart without a score card...

Wellington | December 28, 2012 5:00 PM | Reply

Ah, "total control of the media." Well, no surprise here since Islam mandates "total control" of everything about human life, even down to how one should wipe his ass.

Sensible and informed folks should regularly denounce total control types---and total control type ideologies. But we live in a world where "sensible" and "informed" people are increasingly beconing scarce. Such a world is good for Islam but bad for good things---like liberty and equality under the law.

Islam is, with great consistency, aligned against concepts like freedon and equality. Speaks volumes for those who still can hear.

gravenimage | December 28, 2012 6:10 PM | Reply

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood government seeking "total control of the media"
............................

Well, nothing says "freedom and democracy" like seizing total control of the media...sarc/off

Salafis have strongly stood by the Brotherhood in recent constitutional battles, but the Brotherhood see extremist Islamists as potential future threats....
............................

The Muslim Brotherhood has just instituted Shari'ah law, and now appears to be in the process of gaining total control of the press.

Hence, the distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and the "Salafists" on ideological grounds may be pretty much illusory.

As in so many parts of Dar-al-Islam, this may be more about rival gangs of Jihadists jockeying for power than about either side actually being "moderate".

sheik yer'mami | December 28, 2012 6:12 PM | Reply

Yes of course.

And they're eliminating the opposition too:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/12/27/Egypts-opposition-leaders-under-investigation

The Obama-Clinton cabal would like to do likewise in America and they are succeeding.

dumbledoresarmy | December 28, 2012 6:31 PM | Reply

The obsessive control-freak aspect of Islam is one of the things that tells us it is evil.

Think about what we're seeing all over the dar al Islam and beyond, as dead-eyed Mohammedans with guns and machetes try to force the unruliness of humanity into the procrustean bed that is Sharia; then read this, from M Scott Peck, on evil as the attempt to control others, to suppress 'life and liveliness':

M Scott Peck: People of the Lie – the Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983; Arrow Paperback 1990).

From ‘Toward a Psychology of Evil’. Pp. 46-47

"Evil is in opposition to life.

"It is that which opposes the life force. It has, in short, to do with killing.

"Specifically, it has to do with murder – namely, unnecessary killing, killing that is not required for biological survival…

"When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to/ restrict myself to corporeal murder.

"Evil is also that which kills spirit.

"There are various essential attirubtes of life – particularly human life – such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may ‘break’ a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head.

{And this is *exactly* what Muslims seek to do to the dhimmis, and also to women within the Ummah; to kill their souls, to make them absolutely compliant and submissive such that they will endure the grossest of abuses without complaint and without resistance - dda}

'Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when **he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others – to make them controllable, to foster their dependence, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish the unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line** {my emphasis - dda}.

'Distinguishing it from the ‘biophilic’ person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual,

'he demonstrated a ‘necrophilic character type’,

'**whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity** {my emphasis - dda} [Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man (Harper & Rose, 1964)].

'Evil, then, for the moment, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.

'And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.” END QUOTE.

jewdog | December 28, 2012 6:32 PM | Reply

Just the thought of hearing Christian Amanpour reminds me of fingernails on a blackboard. Please!

dumbledoresarmy replied to comment from dumbledoresarmy | December 28, 2012 6:41 PM | Reply

And pursuant to my posting above, after reading what Peck and Fromm have to say about the psychodynamic of evil, its obsessive will-to-kill, to dominate and control, here is what an astute 19th century western scholar, one Mr Palgrave, as cited in James Freeman Clarke's 'Ten Great Religions', chapter 11 (Mohammed and Islam), section 6, had to say about Islam, and the god of Islam, allah"

"Mr. Palgrave, who has given the latest and best account of the condition of Central and Southern Arabia, under the great Wahhabee revival, sums up all Mohammedan theology as teaching a Divine unity of pure will.

'God is the only force in the universe. Man is wholly passive and impotent.
'He calls the system, "A pantheism of force."
'God has no rule but arbitrary will.
'He is a tremendous unsympathizing autocrat, but is yet jealous of his creatures, lest they should attribute to themselves something which belongs to him.
'He delights in making all creatures feel that they are his slaves.

'This, Mr. Palgrave asserts, is the main idea of Mohammedanism, and of the Koran, and this was what lay in the mind of Mohammed.

"Of this," says he, "we have many authentic samples: the Saheeh, the Commentaries of Beydāwee, the Mishkat-el-Mesabeeh, and fifty similar works, afford ample testimony on this point.

'But for the benefit of my readers in general, all of whom may not have drunk equally deep at the fountain-heads of Islamitic dogma, I will subjoin a specimen, known perhaps to many Orientalists, yet too characteristic to be here omitted, a repetition of which I have endured times out of number from admiring and approving Wahhabees in Nejed.

'"Accordingly, when God—so runs the tradition,—I had better said the blasphemy—resolved to create the human race, he took into his hands a mass of earth, the same whence all mankind were to be formed, and in which they after a manner pre-existed; and, having then divided the clod into two equal portions, he threw the one half into hell, saying, 'These to eternal fire, and I care not'; and projected the other half into heaven, adding, 'And these to paradise, and I care not.'...

""The Wahhabee reformer," continues Mr. Palgrave, "formed the design of putting back the hour-hand of Islam to its starting-point; and so far he did well, for that hand was from the first meant to be fixed. Islam is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain.

"Sterile like its God, lifeless like its First Principle and Supreme Original, in all that constitutes true life,—for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these the Koranic Deity has none,—it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development.

"To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the 'written book' is the 'dead man's hand,' stiff and motionless; whatever savors of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection..."...

'And finally, in section 7, Mr Clarke observes:

"The merits and demerits, the good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be found in this, its central idea concerning God.

" It has taught submission, obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism.
" It has made social life lower. Its governments are not governments.
" Its virtues are stoical.
" It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty.

"**It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to an infinite despotism."** {my emphasis - dda}.

In other words: Islam is a system of soul-killing, a system that in every respect qualifies, from the point of view of Erich Fromm and M Scott Peck, as fundamentally Evil.

jewdog | December 28, 2012 7:36 PM | Reply

Actually, Egypt could well turn out to be much worse than Iran. Much of the Iranian population is educated and not at all fanatical, in contrast to a poorer and less literate Egyptian populace, which has a far larger preference for Sharia.
Egypt may prove to be the planet's darkest human nightmare, a toxic mix of belligerence, extreme poverty, corruption, and primitive fanaticism.
Will it devolve into an autocracy or degenerate into chaos?

minoria | December 28, 2012 8:53 PM | Reply

I am not a bit surprised.The Western media won't say anything,they will bring the same excuses for Islam and Islamism.Check out this:

"Dihya Kahina(7th Century),Female Warrior Chief of North Africa against the Muslim Invasion"

http://www.antisharia.com/2012/12/29/dihya-kahina7th-centuryfemale-warrior-chief-of-north-africa-against-the-muslim-invasion/

AND ALSO

"Article IV about the Enslavement of Christians by Muslims in Literature:French Novelist Lesage and Islam"

http://www.antisharia.com/2012/03/10/article-iv-about-the-enslavement-of-christians-by-muslims-in-literaturefrench-novelist-lesage-and-islam/

Kepha | December 29, 2012 7:22 AM | Reply

I don't think that controlling the media will be a very difficult task for the MB. Egypt under Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak had a government-controlled press at least. They also got advice on how to control the media from some of the best, such as the Soviets and East Germans.

gravenimage replied to comment from dumbledoresarmy | December 29, 2012 11:30 AM | Reply

DDA, excellent posts on Islam, evil, and the urge to control.

There are a few exceptions and arguable gray areas, but for the most part civic behavior is not at all tightly controlled in the West, and only becomes an issue if an individual harms others—in which case, he is infringing on others' freedoms.

But with totalitarians such as pious Muslims, *every* aspect of behavior is the Ummah's business—there is no real private life or individuality at all.

The degree of veiling (it is a given that women will be veiled), the length of one's trousers, the exact style of one's beard (it is a given that men must wear beards), listening to music, creating art, openly airing an opinion on the mildest of matters can all be grounds for imprisonment, flogging, and *murder*.

And then there is the concept of collective punishment, where an individual's family, fellow villagers, tribespeople, far-flung coreligionists or countrymen may pay the price for what is often no more than a malicious rumor.

And we see these very factors becoming much, much worse wherever there is increased Islamization—in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Pakistan, in Islamic parts of India, in Iraq, in Turkey, in Syria, in the "Palestinian" territories, in Tunisia, in Somalia, in Mali, in the "No Go" area of Europe, in Muslim neighborhoods in cities all over the West, and, most notably, in post-"Arab Spring" Egypt.

God, I hate Islam.

NOTE: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.

FrontPageMag.com

Books by Robert Spencer

The Muslim Brotherhood in America, by Robert Spencer

Islamophobia: Thoughtcrime of the Totalitarian Future

Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Robert Spencer

The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks

“My comrade-in-arms, my pal, my buddy.”
— Oriana Fallaci

“Robert Spencer incarnates intellectual courage when, all over the world, governments, intellectuals, churches, universities and media crawl under a hegemonic Universal Caliphate’s New Order. His achievement in the battle for the survival of free speech and dignity of man will remain as a fundamental monument to the love of, and the self-sacrifice for, liberty.”
— Bat Ye’or

“Robert Spencer is indefatigable. He is keeping up the good fight long after many have already given up. I do not know what we would do without him. I appreciate all the intelligence and courage it takes to keep going despite the appeasement of the West.”
— Ibn Warraq

“America's most informed, fearless, and compelling voice on modern jihadism.”
— Andrew C. McCarthy, Senior Fellow at National Review Institute

“Robert Spencer is the leading voice of scholarship and reason in a world gone mad. If the West is to be saved, we will owe Robert Spencer an incalculable debt.”
— Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

"The consummate Islam critic and expert." — Bruce Bawer

“Over the years, we have become friends, and I have received his assistance on several pieces of legislation I proposed.”
— Former Congressman Tom Tancredo

“Few people are capable of applying scholarship, analytical reasoning, and objectivity to their topic -- while simultaneously being readable and witty -- as can Robert Spencer.”
— Raymond Ibrahim

“A national treasure...The acclaimed scholar of Islam.”
— Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy

“I am indeed honored to call him my friend.”
— Brad Thor, novelist

“A top American analyst of Islam....A serious scholar...I learn from him.”
— Daniel Pipes

“A brilliant scholar and writer.”
— Douglas Murray

"One of my best teachers."
— Ashraf Ramelah, Voice of the Copts

“Thank God there’s at least one man with balls left in the West.”
— Kathy Shaidle, Five Feet of Fury

“I read people like [Mark Steyn] and Bob Spencer and the rest of them, and I say, ‘Boortz, you’re pretending you’re an author. These people really are. They really write some entertaining, some standup stuff.’”
— Neal Boortz

“Robert Spencer is the Stephen King of Jihad.”
— Chris Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia

“Armed with facts and fearlessness, Spencer stands up for Western civilization.”
— Michelle Malkin

“Widely read in conservative foreign policy circles.”
— New York Times

“Widely read in many quarters in Washington.”
— Washington Post

“A canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House.”
— New York Magazine

“A hero of the American right.”
— Karen Armstrong

"The leading anti-Islamic intellectual in the United States....The go-to Islam expert for the right wing."
— Salon Magazine

“Robert Spencer is an Edward Said turned upside down.”
— Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

“One of the nation's most notorious Islamophobes.”
— Hamas-linked CAIR

"Geller and Spencer are probably the most important propagandizing Islamophobes in the world. These people's voices speak very loudly — not just here in the United States but overseas."
— Heidi Beirach, Southern Poverty Law Center

“Satanic ignoramus.”
— Khaleel Mohammed

“The Likud anti-Christ.”
— Dar al-Hayat newspaper (Saudi Arabia)

“Zionist Crusader, missionary of hate, counter-Islam consultant.”
— Al-Qaeda’s Adam Gadahn, “Azzam the American”