This just in on the BBC:
Egypt protests: Muslim Brotherhood 'to join talks'
Egypt's most influential opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, says it will enter talks with officials on ending the country's political crisis.
The group told Reuters the talks would begin on Sunday and would assess how far the government was "ready to accept the demands of the people".
The negotiations would be the first ever to be held between the government and the officially banned Brotherhood.
President Hosni Mubarak has rejected protesters' demands that he quit now.
Mr Mubarak - who has been in office since 1981, tolerating little dissent - has said he will not stand in elections due in September. ...(More here)
Organization: The Muslim Brotherhood has gone through several incarnations. It was founded as a youth group that used education and propaganda to spread its messages. In 1939, the organization was organized as a political party. In 1942, the group created a created a militia called the "Secret Apparatus." that used terrorist tactics within Egypt. It was outlawed by the Egyptian government in 1948, recognized in 1950 as a religious group, and banned again in 1954. In 1984, it was recognized as a religious organization but it still has not been recognized as a political party (members in parliament ran as independents).
A number of groups and figures who espouse terrorist tactics were taught or influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, such Ayman Al Zawahiri, who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (in part because he wanted an organization that would make more effective use of violence in the service of jihad), and Hamas, the Palestinian group that began as a branch of the Muslim Brothers.
However, currently, as Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke point out in the March/April 2007 Foreign Affairs magazine, "jihadists loathe the Muslim Brotherhood … for rejecting global jihad and embracing democracy."
A Powerful Social Welfare Organization: The Muslim Brotherhood has always provided social welfare to poor Egyptians, from health care to books and subsidies for university students. [all emphases mine] (source)
Doesn't that all sound terribly familiar? It does to me... Today I have been reading that the Muslim Brotherhood is not on the US State Dept list of banned terrorist groups. Some people have gone to great lengths to paint them all as benevolent social agencies. But there could well be a good reason why there is no listing of the MB on any US terrorist watch list. From Canada Free Press - and this is not a recent article:
This year a friend of mine from the CIA, named Bob Baer wrote a very good book about Saudi Arabia and terrorism, it's called Sleeping with the Devil. I read the book and I got about a third of the way through and I stopped. Bob was writing how when he worked for the CIA how bad the files were.
He said, for example, the files for the Muslim Brotherhood were almost nothing. There were just a few newspaper clippings. I called Bob up and said, "Bob, that's wrong. The CIA has enormous files on the Muslim Brotherhood, volumes of them. I know because I read them a quarter of a century ago." He said, "What do you mean?"
Here's how you can find all of the missing secrets about the Muslim Brotherhood -- and you can do this, too. I said, "Bob, go to your computer and type in two words into the search part. Type the word "Banna," B-a-n-n-a. He said, "Yeah." Type in "Nazi." Bob typed the two words in, and out came 30 to 40 articles from around the world. He read them and called me back and said, "Oh my gosh, what have we done?"
What I'm doing today is doing what I'm doing now: I'm educating a new generation in the CIA that the Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist organization that was hired by Western intelligence that evolved over time into what we today know as al-Qaeda...(This article, titled The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda, has as it's sub-header 'Read it and weep.' It IS a must read here.)
Hamas IS on the Public Safety Canada current listing of 'terrorist entities.' Go take a look, here. No the MB is not specifically listed, (and Hamas is) but it is no surprise since much of what the MB do is "secret."...
For those who would shrug and say that what happens over there is nothing to do with us, I offer this from TerroristPlanet.com:
The Muslim Brotherhood In America
Many American Commentators have labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as "radical Islamists" deeply hostile to America. Hostile to any government that is unwilling to convert to Islamic Law and governing. So why in the 1960's did the organization establish a chapter in the United States? After all America is a democracy. There was not a strong Muslim presence in the United States. America is friend and ally to Israel the arch enemy of fundamental Islam. Well the answer is complex but we will do our best to shed light on this very secretive movement that has changed the face of American Islam.During the 1960's an influx of Muslims arrived in the United States to study at American Universities. Some of the students were members of the Muslim Brotherhood in their homelands and decided the best way to create unity among Muslims in America and to recruit from this pool of possible candidates for the Muslim Brotherhood was to create the Muslim Students Association in 1963. The main concentration was in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan schools. They hoped to spread the Brotherhood's ideology with other Muslims in America and provide support for the new Muslims arriving yearly to take advantage of the American education system and to gain life experience. To many the transition from the Muslim world to American culture was too dramatic and they felt too isolated due to their beliefs. The purpose of creating these types of organizations in America was to make the transition for Middle Eastern Muslims easier.
There was not a lot of attention paid by Americans to the influx of the Muslim students arriving more and more frequently as each year passed. Many believed it was an educational and a cultural exchange. To many Muslim students this was exactly what it was. However much light was revealed on the organization at the university level of the Muslim Brotherhood Chapter in the United States. In government exhibits presented in the United States of America vs. Holy Land Foundation it presented the following information:
This is a very interesting article for the scope of MB in the US. Go here.
In Canada? You betcha. Found an interesting article:
Muslim Brotherhood infiltrates Canada with lawfare — and RCMP approval
These are the folks set to jump into the gaping chasm now being created by BHO's rush to push Mubarak out the 'door' of power in Egypt.
From the BBC comes this:
Analysis
Mr Wisner is a veteran diplomat who knows Egypt and President Mubarak well. He urged people to control their rhetoric - the more Egyptians hear demands from outside the country for Mr Mubarak to stand down, he argued, the more it could have negative consequences.
The former ambassador set out the familiar US demands - changes to the Egyptian Constitution; respect for minority rights; a free press; free and fair elections and so on.
Crucially he said that, in his view, Mr Mubarak should stay in office to steer these changes through. So is this the view of just a well-informed expert on Egypt? Or a glimpse from Mr Obama's special envoy of the real game plan in Washington?(here)
The Beeb has a profile piece on the MB:
The Ikhwan's most frequently used slogan is: "Islam is the solution"
The Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is Egypt's oldest and largest Islamist organisation.
Founded by Hassan al-Banna in the 1920s, the group has influenced Islamist movements around the world with its model of political activism combined with Islamic charity work.
The movement initially aimed simply to spread Islamic morals and good works, but soon became involved in politics, particularly the fight to rid Egypt of British colonial control and cleanse it of all Western influence.
Today, though officially banned and subject to frequent repression, the Ikhwan lead public opposition to the ruling National Democratic Party of President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981.
While the Ikhwan say that they support democratic principles, one of their stated aims is to create a state ruled by Islamic law, or Sharia. Their most famous slogan, used worldwide, is: "Islam is the solution". (more here)
Islam, as we are frequently told, is the 'religion of peace,' but just a brief look around the world today, lends great weight to the following, in my opinion:
Are The Muslim Brotherhood Terrorists?
At this point the Muslim Brotherhood of America as a group has not been indicted and convicted of any acts of terrorism on American soil. Nor has it been proven as a group to be financing terrorist groups. The problem with this logic is the same as saying the Godfather is not tied to the crime that his organization commits.. The problem as mentioned in previous pages of this article is that the code of secrecy to the point of not knowing who is and who is not members of the Muslim Brotherhood even within the mosques they have built. [my emphasis] Federal authorities say they have scrutinized the U.S. Brotherhood for years. Agents currently are investigating whether people with ties to the group have raised and laundered money to finance terrorism abroad. No terrorism-related charges have been filed...
There follows a very interesting video of an interview with the wife of a Muslim Brotherhood. Go watch, here.
A couple of excerpts from the rest of this compelling article:
[...]Some terrorist groups—including Hamas, Jamaat al-Islamiyya, and al-Qaeda—have historic and ideological affiliations with the Egyptian Brotherhood. In addition, some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists were once Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members. It is hard to deny that the Brotherhood is not a terrorist spawning organization. There is just too much evidence to suggest that this large and determined group is not involved in terrorism through raising money from the many charities to the recruitment of their members in secrecy and the exposed members that are in terrorist organizations world wide.. .
[...]
The Brotherhood appears to be using clandestine groups as Jihadist militias on one end of the spectrum and creating mosques and operating charities to assist the poor on the other end. This multi faceted attack is more than likely the fastest way the Brotherhood feels it can achieve it's ultimate goal of not only establishing Islamic rule and law in the Middle East, but also in Europe, America and the rest of the world.
"President Mubarak of Egypt knows them better than everyone," says a senior figure in NATO, "he was there when they fired at Sadat, he saw them slaughter with their own hands hundreds of Egyptian policemen at the beginning of the 1990s. He saw them cross every time anew the borders of sophistication. He knows for years already with whom he is dealing. For a decade, Mubarak is warning that these savage beasts will also catch the western countries with their pants down, tries to convince that the Jihad, the Jemah Al Aslamiya, and the "Front" of Bin Laden are not only his private trouble....
[...]
It seems like every other news report acts as if it is unclear on this organizations status as a terrorist group. The U.S. State Department lists them as a terrorist organization. Terroristplanet.com believes it is a no brainer. Of course they are and it is time that they are exposed in America as they are in Egypt and stopped before they recruit the next generation of terrorists that carry out deadly attacks on U.S. soil. ..
If you read nothing else about the Muslim Brotherhood, read the rest of this article here. It is very easy to read in language we can all understand. If we choose to. I read somewhere that the Muslim Brotherhood is in 70 countries. More than time for us to wake up.
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