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Robert Spencer in PJ Media: D.C. ‘Terror Analyst’ Still Thinks Muslim Brotherhood ‘Firewall Against Violent Extremism’

May 6, 2016 10:09 am By Robert Spencer

In PJ Media, I discuss yet another mainstream analyst’s attempt to whitewash the terrorist character of the Muslim Brotherhood:

Marc Lynch

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, or one of the world’s foremost bulwarks against terrorism? Numerous mainstream terror analysts in Washington contend that it is the latter.

They have to ignore a mountain of evidence to do so.

Arguing in the Washington Post that Congress should not designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, Marc Lynch of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political Science asserts:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s firewall against extremism [was] a very real thing in the decade following 9/11.

However, Lynch thinks that, because of the al-Sisi government’s crackdown on the Brotherhood:

… the key mechanisms by which the firewall operated have now dramatically eroded.

More from Lynch:

Prior to the Arab uprising, I argued that mainstream Islamists served as a firewall against more violent extremists … [because] the Brotherhood publicly articulated an ideology of nonviolence and democratic participation. It competed with al-Qaeda for recruits and for public influence, and kept its members tightly embedded within its institutional structures. The Brotherhood could compete with al-Qaeda and other extreme groups in ways that liberals and state elites could not.

Hmm.

Lynch is apparently unaware that al-Qaeda founders Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, as well as its current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, were all members of or trained by the Muslim Brotherhood. Even more importantly, in building his case that the Muslim Brotherhood is a competitor to and bulwark against al-Qaeda and other jihad terror groups, Lynch ignores the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda have exactly the same ultimate goal.

In his 2002 letter to the American people, Osama bin Laden wrote:

The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. … You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

The Muslim Brotherhood shares the goal of replacing democratic rule with Sharia, as even CNN acknowledged in 2013:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious and political group founded on the belief that Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life. It advocates a move away from secularism, and a return to the rules of the Quran as a basis for healthy families, communities, and states.

The key difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda — and other jihad groups — is that the Brotherhood works through the democratic process in order to undermine that process and ultimately destroy it. The jihadis choose the path of violently attacking the installations of democratic governments, but with the same goal of ultimate destruction.

For Lynch and other Washington policy analysts, this is an all-important distinction. In reality, it is a distinction without a difference. The Brotherhood and the jihad groups are two sides of the same coin, working for the same goal via different means.

What’s more, the assertion that the Brotherhood eschews violence is egregiously false.

Lynch writes:

[D]espite post-coup propaganda and arrests by the Egyptian regime, there is very little to substantiate the charge that the Brotherhood behaved like a terrorist organization during Egypt’s transition or embraced violence either ideologically or strategically.

Beltway fantasy, meet reality: Egypt’s El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence documented 359 cases of torture by the Muslim Brotherhood regime during its one year in power. By way of comparison, this was ten times more than the number of cases documented annually during the notoriously brutal Mubarak regime — the regime Obama and his Beltway terror analysts helped replace with the Brotherhood.

Even worse, when the Brotherhood was toppled from power, it blamed its failure on Egypt’s Christians – and that’s when Lynch’s “bulwark” against terror really began its campaign of, yes, terror.

Brotherhood members and supporters burned and looted nearly seventy churches, and destroyed 1,000 Christian businesses and homes. According to the Rev. Khalil Fawzi of Kasr El Dubarrah Evangelical Church, the Middle East’s largest evangelical church:

The Muslim Brotherhood were the ones who called for aggression. They are responsible.

In light of the Brotherhood’s willingness to engage in violence to further its ends, and the Sharia goal it shares with violent jihad organizations, Lynch’s recommendation that the U.S. work to strengthen the Brotherhood as a bulwark against al-Qaeda is the height of folly. It would be tantamount to aiding Mussolini in order to defeat Hitler, or electing Hillary Clinton to roll back the policies of Barack Obama….

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, Muslim Brotherhood, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Marc Lynch


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Comments

  1. William says

    May 6, 2016 at 10:38 am

    Good cop, bad cop: Muslim Brotherhood, jihad terrorists.

    • Myrtle Linder says

      May 6, 2016 at 2:29 pm

      Jihad terrorists, best remember!!

  2. Jay Boo says

    May 6, 2016 at 11:27 am

    What if Hillary becomes President?
    Will the Muslim Brotherhood win a Nobel Peace Prize.

    Past Nobel Peace Prize winners:

    1 — Yasser Arrafat
    Thanks to Jimmy (the dhimmi) Carter

    2 — Barack Hussein Obama
    For doing nothing.

    3 — Cordell Hull (anti-Semite)
    Helped to start the UN

    “Hull was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State during the S.S. St. Louis crisis when 950 Jewish refugees, seeking asylum from Nazi persecution, set sail for the U.S. from Hamburg. Despite FDR showing willingness to help, Hull, together with Southern Democrats, voiced strong opposition and threatened to withdraw support for FDR in the forthcoming election if he didn’t follow suit. On June 4, 1939, the President denied the ship entry, forcing it to return to Europe, where more than a quarter of its passengers subsequently died in the Holocaust.”

    Quoted from Time Magazine
    http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2096389_2096388_2096379,00.html

    • TruthWFree says

      May 6, 2016 at 1:03 pm

      Did not know that about Cordell Hull or that he helped start the UN…a good intention gone bad. (Saw a Milton Friedman video on that subject related to socialism verses capitalism. I did know about the boatload of Jews turned back. A crime just like Obama’s not allowing Christians in from Syria.

  3. TruthWFree says

    May 6, 2016 at 11:59 am

    Idiot blinded by Satan…no other rational explanation makes any sense.

  4. Westman says

    May 6, 2016 at 12:35 pm

    That “firewall” is made from the same fabric as the Hindenburg and the Jihadists are pyromaniacs. Spread enough Jihad and the walls come tumbling down.

  5. Angemon says

    May 6, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    Prior to the Arab uprising, I argued that mainstream Islamists served as a firewall against more violent extremists … [because] the Brotherhood publicly articulated an ideology of nonviolence and democratic participation.

    Translation: “These people are moderates because they say they are”. With such superb analysis techniques what could possibly go wrong?

    • underbed cat says

      May 13, 2016 at 9:51 pm

      Isn’t that the truth, what was gained by the HL trial investigation…according to experts, it appears an election came and all was forgiven. and……what was the purpose of the MB, hmmmm.

      Like you say Angemon:,,With such superb analysis techniques what could possibly go wrong.”

      But it sure did further the cause to suppress information and put all the right people in place.

  6. linnte says

    May 6, 2016 at 1:16 pm

    Keeps people “tightly embedded within its institutional structures”. What a load of gas! He forgets people, whether they belong to a group of not, still ACT individually on their convictions. And in the case of Islam, with its nearly fifty different sects, how can any one even conceive of such a loony idea?

  7. mortimer says

    May 6, 2016 at 3:09 pm

    Who is paying the salary of Marc Lynch of George Washington University to say such errant nonsense. The MB is Egypt’s version of the Nazi Party. It is a fanatical criminal conspiracy disguised as a political party. The purpose of the MB is to remove human rights and civil liberties of kafirs and women.

  8. RonaldB says

    May 6, 2016 at 5:59 pm

    The Muslim Brotherhood is non-violent in this stage of its subversion for tactical reasons. In fact, it is doing so well in its penetration of the US government that it undoubtedly looks on violent incidents as a distraction from its progress.

    So far, MB agents have succeeded in penetrating the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the White House. MB agents have openly convinced the government to shut off all study of Islam as a rationale for terrorist groups. Instead, the “Countering Violent Extremism” narrative is pushed, that attributes terrorism to a lack of money, education, or social status.

    Furthermore, Sayyid Qutb, the MB foundation theorist, talked about the stages of jihad. It was only the last stage, where the Muslims were strong enough to take over politically, that offensive violence could be used.

    So, if we have come to the point where it is only the lack of violence, today, (who cares about tomorrow), that we care about, the MB may indeed be something of a help.

  9. mortimer says

    May 6, 2016 at 7:55 pm

    The MB showed what they would do once in power: massive political arrests, torture, importing terrorists, promoting the invasion of Israel, the leasing of parts of Egypt’s borderlands to finance their programs, the sacrificing of tourism and the economy to create a terrorist hub, etc. à

    Does anyone but an academic bribed by Saudi cash think otherwise?

  10. Kepha says

    May 6, 2016 at 8:30 pm

    It’s deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.

    Back in the Silly ‘Sixties, sober analysts said that the Soviet Union under Nikita Khruschev was so much more sane and moderate than fanatical Maoist China (shades of the “Yellow Peril” from good liberals?). Maybe it was, but the bar was set pretty low. However, come the Sillier ‘Seventies, Mao’s China is supposedly the good, peace-loving Communism compared to the Soviet Union of Brezhnev (and I often wonder if, in the late ‘Seventies, the one-eyed Pole Zbigniew Brzezinski saw only Russia, the ancient enemy, rather than Communism as the problem). Now, we have our sane and sober analysts saying that the MB is moderate. Maybe it is–compared to the guys who’d throw all Christians out of the fertile crescent rather than merely force them to pay jizya and acquiesce in the abduction, rape, forcible conversion, and marriage to Muslims of their most attractive daughters.

    Our wise, talking heads are merely putting a brave face on an extremely bad situation, folks.

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