Yemen’s Nobel Laureate Faces Questions about Muslim Brotherhood
As Nobel laureate Tawakkol Karman arrived in New York Tuesday, twelve protesters lay dead in Yemen’s capital Sana’a. Medics reported 70 more were shot by roof top snipers. The Saleh regime’s latest bloody rampage began Saturday when the UN Security Council’s toothless draft resolution became public.
Ms. Karman had learned of her Nobel Peace Prize in a tent. Since February she and millions lived in protest squares across the nation demanding democracy. The Nobel was a grand moment for Yemen and Yemeni women.
For them, the award recognized the Yemeni Youth Revolution’s commitment to peace. The movement seeks to depose the Sana’a regime and establish a civil state and parliamentary system to empower minorities, independents, and small parties.
Month after month, unarmed protesters marched in 17 of 21 provinces. State security forces killed hundreds and shot nearly 20,000.
On Swedish radio, one ecstatic Yemeni blogger responded to the Nobel announcement with, “In your face, Saleh!”
Coming days after a U.S. drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al Awlaki, Yemenis felt vindicated that the dignified nation was finally recognized as more than a terrorist safe haven.
However the Nobel Committee’s political agenda soon became clear. Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland highlighted Karman’s membership in the Islah party, which contains Muslim Brotherhood members. Jagland asserted the Muslim Brotherhood, which condones terrorist violence, is “an important part” of the Arab Spring.
Islah, the Islamic Congregation for Reform, encompasses tribal elements, political and Islamic reformists, progressive students, anti-regime activists, Muslim Brotherhood and more fundamentalist Salafis.
Jagland’s remarks set off alarm bells in western conservative circles. Some commentators noted that Sheik Abdelmajid al Zindani was a founding member of Islah in 1990. Al Zindani is a UN designated terrorist financier, a charge he rejects. He publicly advocates jihadist violence. But al Zindani should be hung around President Ali Saleh’s neck, not Tawakkol Karman’s.
In 2004, Islah joined with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), Ba’athists, Nasserites, and two small Shia parties to form the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). In 2006, when the JMP’s presidential candidate was Faisal bin Shamlan, al Zindani campaigned for Saleh, who announced his candidacy from al Zindani’s hard-line al Iman University. Saleh never froze al Zindani’s banks accounts as mandated by the UN.
Observers noted the Muslim Brotherhood tweeted that its member, Ms. Karman, had won the Nobel. But remarks by Mohammed al Zindani, son of Abdelmajid, were less well publicized. He said the Nobel Peace Prize is given to “Jews and their collaborators,” who undermine Muslims, promote mixing of the genders, and hatch plots against female modesty.
While I agree that Ms. Karman’s record shows her commitment to liberty is beyond reproach, I don’t think it’s “unfair” to question her (admittedly tenuous) connections to the MB. It would be unfair to condemn her for the agenda of the MB, true, but is it really such a crime for those unfamiliar with her work to ask about it? Asking just gives her another chance to condemn the extremists.
I’m sorry but I agree with the 1st poster as well. The bottom line is that your ARE in fact tainted by the friends you keep (or, alternately, elevated them). Had she hung out with the Mother Teresa’s, the Gandhi’s, and the Dali Lama’s — WOW, great for her then. But once you TOUCH the radioactive Muslim Brotherhood, your then tainted as well and I’m sorry, please don’t return with the classic argument used for Hezbollah that “well there’s a political arm and a militant arm” — that’s pure fig leaf claptrap nonsense that everyone in Lebanon and the entire Arab world knows all too well (they tolerate it b/c they unite behind their hatred of Israel, period).
If ANYONE mentions, “oh well the MB has a ‘political arm’ and a ‘militant’ arm or ‘wing’ as is so often used, as if it were a beautiful bird flying through the air, with but one wing slightly tainted… OY! Please, the Muslim Brotherhood has been plotting PURE destruction of Jews and Christians and the West since their INCEPTION in the 1920′s. There isn’t a single, not a single good thing one can say about them.
If I were a Yemeni protester (with visions of potentially peacefully leading my country out the abyss), I wouldn’t touch the MB with a 10-foot pole. But she did, and this “reaction” frankly, is a mild one given that sin — and it is an unpardonable sin given what the MB has plotted for 90 years now.
She should not have been granted a Nobel simply for touching that Terrorist — and please, let’s not quibble about who they really are: a terrorist organization.
If you enter politics, (gasp) even in the Arab world and (gasp) even in a tent, you must still have the smarts to stay away from those who kill people in their sleeps, who burn down Christian churches and defectively kidnap and marry Coptic daughters (forcing them to be Muslims for the rest of their lives and denying contact with their families). I’m not Christian, yet what the MB is either doing to the Copts explicitly or turning a blind eye to is frankly sickening (in Egypt).
And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what the MB is doing. HUGE documents were uncovered in Europe which, if you look for them lay out a multi-DECADE plan for taking over Europe. The list just goes on and on.
She is not a ignorant woman. Au Contraire, she knew exactly what she was doing by associating herself with the MB among others, but the others unfortunately for her do not erase the radioactivity, or the Coptic blood that was transferred to her by touching the MB, i.e. it’s irrelevant who else she may have known).
Why can there NOT be an Arab Gandhi? It seems since the rise of Islam, that has been simply impossible. All Arab leaders use heft amounts of violence. And again, even if she never rose her had against a single person, when you walk hand in hand with those who DO raise their hands and stab others, drawing blood, that blood splatters on you as well.
I think I’ve made my point.
The US is reaching, delving into areas where we have no business.
Nation building for our enemies is a lame effort to bring about stability, and is convoluted foreign policy. This long standing policy of our hapless leaders has drained the moral of the American people as well as our finances.
When did it become America’s objective to build and finance the world?
Only a crack-pot could reason building schools and hospitals is what makes people happy. Heck they’ve been shoveling the same crapola at us for my entire life, as they do now shouting from roof tops- Education blah blah blah, Hospitalization blah blah blah, and I’m not happy about it. Why would they?
How do you feed a nation of scholars? Coast to coast scholars with chalk dust on their fingers. Finger licking good…
Have you never heard of working from within? Yes, she belongs to the Islah group but has been doing everything she can to bring about change in the group. Even now the MB is hurting from the youth movements inside it working for moderation and change. Ms. Karman is part of that change. Those outside yelling at them do nothing but strengthen their resolve, those working from inside by way of facts and common sense and education can bring about the downfall of all that is bad in that brotherhood. She and all like her should get our complete support.
I should think she would welcome non-hostile questioning. It would be a perfect way to get her message out. Even if the questioning was hostile it would give her a chance to voice her views.
Can we please dismiss the “Nobel Laureate” bestowal bit, as it is no longer credibile to assign “greatness”? Like MOST good ideas, with good intentions, and of course, other peoples money, the inevitable usurpation and co-option, by less-than-honorable/ self promoting folk, desperately clinging to fleeting glory, or OTHER less-than- altruistic “investment” of SOME sort.
Granted, though “Peace through superior firepower” has it’s merits, I suspect that was NOT the original intent when Mr. Nobel was deciding what to do with the procedes of his “Oh crap, what have I done?” fortune.
Kinda’ like the Oscars on those years when there’s no-one who’s talent actually stands out. “Well, we’ve got to “bestow” the “honor” to SOMEBODY, and have a self-promoting gala doing it, maintaining for the little people how um….important-to-the-universe and worthy-of-entry-at-”54″ we are.
Inevitably, the dogma that gloriously jumps the shark subsequently gets run over by the Karma.
Her main efforts seem decent up front. I suspect her intentions are fairly honest in most regards. What I am wondering is whether these same beliefs, and policies she advocates for are also for Jewish people. It’s the old, “Freedom for us, not them They’re evil.” Also, what’s her stance on conversions from Islam to any other religion, or gays, etc. Her advocacy appears, to me, to be narrow in scope unless I see otherwise.
thank u Jane
we want the world 2 read what u write
u r our ambassador 2 the world