Yet the West is ready to talk shop with them. How grotesquely stupid is that? KGS
H/T Barry Rubin
NOTE: What’s also interesting to witness, is Sadat placing the ultimate trust of Islamic teaching with the then grand mufti of Egypt, who is only a slightly shade different from the Muslim Brotherhood in his Islamic fundamentalism.
Hey, President Obama, Watch What Anwar al-Sadat Said About the Muslim Brotherhood!
Barry Rubin: […] Some ironies: Of course, Sadat was the leader who let the Brotherhood operate again after two decades of being banned. Even then, in the 1970s and until just about today, it has remained illegal but the group still operated and even ran candidates in elections albeit not under its own name. (Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Syrian, and Iranian dictatorships didn’t let their opponents run under any name, which tells something about the comparative harshness of dictatorships.)
I haven’t seen a single mention in the Western media as to the reason given by Egyptian governments for keeping the Brotherhood from running candidates in the past. It was this: no party should be allowed to claim a monopoly on “proper” Islam. Remember that point because it is going to be important in future, although the Brotherhood’s new party–to make itself less scary–doesn’t have the word “Islam” in its name either.
The second irony is that Sadat was assassinated by Islamists. It is important to correct an error many have made recently. The terrorists were not Brotherhood people. But many of those terrorists who killed Sadat, joined al-Qaida, or carried out massive terrorism in Egypt in the 1990s (people now being released from prison to renew their activities) are former Brotherhood members. Radicalized and learning Islamist ideology in the Brotherhood they then went on to form or join separate radical Islamist groups.
The Brotherhood has not committed terrorism within Egypt directly (though it has, at times, endorsed terrorist murders of those deemed to be too secular) but it has been the cradle of terrorism in Egypt and even (al-Qaida; Hamas) abroad.
Finally, if you watch the brief film, keep in mind one poor piece of translation. At just before the two-minute mark, Sadat refers to the Brotherhood as viewing governments and societies as pre-Islamic. The significance of this–not explained–is that “pre-Islamic” societies are viewed by Islam as pagan and evil.
The Ikhwan murdered Anwar Sadat. Yet Sadat was a religious and observant Muslim.
This is another classical example of how the conflict is not merely between Islamism and the West. The most violent conflict today is between Islamism and Muslim Nationalism.
Muslim Nationalists may embrace Sharia, but they do not embrace the concept of an international Caliphate. That is why Islamists murder Muslims who appear equally religious and totalitarian in their outlook.
Hi TINSC, I agree with you. I however don’t use the misnomer of “Islamist”, they are fundamentalist Muslims who believe in the world caliphate, or at least in an Islamic global community with a hegemony in every sector. But don’t get locked down in that thought, it only takes a slight divergence in belief for the knives to come out, just look at the Sunni and Shiite divide. The House of Saud and his imams that back up his regime are as far reaching in their goals of Islamic domination as those who weild the sword for the global caliphate. There isn’t really much that divides their thinking, its mostly power struggle, with the aim being basically the same, the spreading of Islam everywhere.