The Obama administration believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is an acceptable player in forming a new government in Egypt despite the fact that about a dozen very public quotes from the former and current leaders of the Brotherhood, which I provided in a Pajamas Media article last week, reveal the Brotherhood’s Salafi-jihadi worldview and support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
These quotes are readily available to anyone who wants to take the time to look for them, but the Obama team’s acceptance of the Brotherhood is all the more mystifying due to the fact that the government’s own classified State Department cables document that Iran, our arch-enemy in the region, has been clandestinely supporting it as a proxy in Egypt.
This information is contained in a classified June 29, 2010, cable from the American Embassy in Cairo titled “General Petraeus’ Meeting With EGIS Chief Soliman,” in which General Petraeus, then the commander of Central Command, and Omar Soliman, then the chief of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, discussed this specific threat.
During the conversation, Soliman complained to Petraeus that:
- “Egypt suffers from Iranian interference through its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies, and its support for…the Muslim Brotherhood….We hope Iran will stop supporting Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other cells.”
It should be noted here that Hamas, listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. government, is not an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is simply a violent chapter of the organization as proven by Article 2 of its own charter which states:
- “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine.”
The Hamas charter and Iran’s use of the Brotherhood in Egypt as a proxy prove that it is a violent organization and that Iran is using it to destabilize Egypt. Given Iran’s operational style, it is only prudent to believe that our Middle Eastern nemesis is also providing clandestine support to Brotherhood chapters in Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, and elsewhere. Supplied with this information, it is difficult to grasp how President Obama thinks that the Brotherhood’s participation in forming a new Egyptian government is a good idea.
But our government’s own revelations about the dangers of the Brotherhood do not stop there. If the Obama administration needed any more proof that the Brotherhood poses a danger, it need look no further than a classified State Department cable titled “Scenesetter for Counterterrorism Coordinator Crumpton’s Visit to the UAE.” It written in 2006 by the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
In this cable, one of our most important allies in the region, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, felt it important enough to warn Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs C. David Welch of the “dangers of free elections in countries with a well-organized Muslim Brotherhood presence.”
Shedding light on how the Brotherhood threatens the security of the United Arab Emirates itself, the sheikh revealed just how precarious the situation is by stating that “if there were an election in Dubai tomorrow, the Muslim Brotherhood would take over.”
So clear is the Brotherhood’s danger to his country that the sheikh declared that the Emirati leadership will not allow Islamists to participate in any election.
Moving from elections to violence, in 2005, in a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid titled “Spain: An Active Front in the War on Terror,” the embassy’s political section provided an excellent history of Islamic terrorist groups in Spain that clearly blames the Muslim Brotherhood as the organization that started it all:
- “The first Islamic terrorist organizations were formed by Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had fled repression by the Asad regime and settled in Spain in the late 1980s.”
Finally, in a classified cable from the American Embassy in Qatar titled “Talking Points for Visit of Qatar’s Prime Minister to Washington January 4-5, 2010,” the embassy forwarded talking points for an upcoming meeting between American officials and Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani. Key among the talking points was one that chastised the prime minister for allowing Muslim Brother and Qatari resident Yousef Al-Qaradawi to continue to support Hamas.
A little background on Mr. Qaradawi is enlightening. Yousef Al-Qaradawi is considered to be the most influential Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world today as illustrated by the fact that he was offered the organization’s top position of supreme guide in 1975 and 2004. Qaradawi, however, turned down the offers because he said he had more freedom to operate out of Qatar.
In 1999, the U.S. government banned Qaradawi from entering the United States because of his support for suicide bombings against Israeli men, women, and children, and on May 15, 2010, Qaradawi urged Palestinian factions to unify ranks and launch a “jihad” against Israel and to consider the peace process as nothing more than a “mirage.”
Incidentally, this firebrand of jihad is directly connected to the American Muslim Brotherhood, as he is the chairman of the Muslim American Society’s Islamic American University, a position from which he helps shape the minds of young American Muslims.
So no longer does the Obama team have to rely on biased and meddlesome outside observers to advise it on the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood.
If it just reviews its own classified State Department cable traffic it will learn that the Brotherhood in Egypt is the clandestine proxy of our arch-enemy Iran, that our allies in the UAE regard it is as too dangerous to participate in free elections, that Muslim Brothers created Spain’s first Islamic terrorist organizations, and that the jihad-mongering Muslim Brother Qaradawi, who is closely associated with our own Muslim American Society, continues to support Hamas, which we ourselves list as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.
Mr. Obama, which of these Brotherhood qualifications convince you and your team that this organization would be a positive player in forming the new Egyptian government?
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