Category Archives: Iran

The New York Times has an article this morning regarding the difficulty Washington is having in sorting friend from foe in the wake of the”Arab Spring”.    The article mentions a State Department visit of Hani Nour Eldin, a now-member of Egypt’s Parliament, but also a member of a designated terrorist organization, Gamaa al-Islamiyya.

Pressed by reporters after the visa quickly became a Congressional controversy, a State Department spokeswoman, Victoria J. Nuland, said Mr. Eldin had been judged to pose no threat to the United States.

“It’s a new day in Egypt,” she added. “It’s a new day in a lot of countries across the Middle East and North Africa.”

The Times article then begins a full-court press of making the case for America’s (meaning George W. Bush’s) failure to delineate between Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Jihadists.

The overthrow of dictators across the Arab world and the rise of Islamists to new influence or power is forcing Washington to reassess decades-old judgments.

Which strongly suggests those judgments were somehow incorrect.  Indeed, the article goes on to assert:

In the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans largely viewed the Middle East and Islam through the lens of the terrorism threat. The United States exercised stark judgments, encapsulated by President George W. Bush’s warning to the world nine days after the attacks: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Foreign Muslim scholars were denied visas because of outspoken views at odds with American policy. American officials did not always carefully distinguish between Islamists, who advocate a leading role for Islam in government, and violent jihadists, who espouse the same goal but advocate terrorism to achieve it.

While such words seem to provide some measure of comfort to those who might have been viewing the situation in the Middle East with increasing alarm, the very foundation of the assertion by the article’s author is an unfounded and foolishly optimistic premise.  The goal of the Islamists has never been simply for Islam to have a “leading role in government”, and the author of the article likely knows this.  So, indeed, should those members of this nation’s Foreign Policy team, including the President, his National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, and all those whose responsibility is the direction of American statesmanship.   There can be no other views expressed, at least publicly, that will not reinforce the fact that President Obama’s “Muslim Reset” and his ill-advised Cairo apology was a dreadful mistake that America’s enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere rightfully viewed as an act of submission and example of the naivete of an inexperienced and arrogant Chief Executive who lacks a basic understanding of Realpolitik and international affairs.

The premise of the Times piece (cloaked in the familiar meme of blaming the previous administration), that there are critical differences between Islamists and Jihadists, and that our failure to understand them was out of willful blindness, is shot absolutely full of holes by the publishing of a pamphlet by an Islamist group that spells out the true goals of the Islamists.  The United Muslim Nations International is an Islamist organization closely aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the publication in question, “The Global Islamic Civilization: The Power of a Nation Revived”, sheds some rather harsh light on the true goals of these Islamists:

None will resist, you will submit! Islam will conquer the hearts of all Christendom, this is a definite reality. Every government has surrendered to the Revived Global Caliphate and those nations who resist will be placed under a police state within their realm!

The author, Sheik Farook al-Mohammedi, spares no hatred for Christianity:

“Christianity should be destroyed and wiped from the face of the earth,” al-Mohammedi said. “It is an evil demonic and Anti-Christ system, all Christians are in complete Ignorance.”

“Islamic Power has returned upon the face of the earth and the Revived Global Caliphate has set eyes on the West to once and for all rid the world of Christianity and there is nothing you can do about it,” al-Mohammedi said.

While Farook al-Mohammedi is not Egyptian, and his organization is ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood but not actually a part of the Brotherhood (that we know of), Youssef al-Qaradawi is both.  What is Qaradawi’s contribution to the Islamist/Jihadist discussion?

Qaradawi advocates establishing a “United Muslim Nations” as a contemporary form of the caliphate and the only alternative to the hegemony of the West. He hates Israel and would love to take up arms himself. In one of his sermons, he asked God “to kill the Jewish Zionists, every last one of them.”

In January 2009, he said: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler.”

So, it would seem hearkening to a systemic extermination of an entire peoples is merely “advocating for a leading role for Islam in government” and should not, in any way, be confused with the “violent jihadists” who might use terrorism to achieve that leading role for Islam.   That should be nothing new, by the way.  The Muslim Brotherhood were open supporters of Hitler’s Third Reich, and have never moderated their views in any way.

The complete bankruptcy of those who continue to insist on telling us that Islamists and Jihadists are not the same thing cannot be overemphasized.   The failure (or refusal) of this Administration to face the facts about the nature of America’s enemies has been little short of criminal.  Blaming the last administration is sophomoric, and reeks of the immature and unprofessional atmosphere that is the shambles of American foreign policy.

Wiping out Christianity?  Calling openly for another Holocaust?  A police state for the non-believers?

It seems one can take Egypt’s Jibril telling us “There are no extremists” one of two ways.   Either he is lying because he knows we are too stupid and naive to realize it, or he doesn’t consider the above views to be extreme.    Perhaps both.   Whichever, those in our government who continue to insist on the differences between Islamists and Jihadists won’t believe either.

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“Our loved Egyptian night?”

From Raymond Ibrahim of FrontPage:

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax.    Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”

This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641.  Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity.  While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.

Read the rest.    It is to weep.