Obama Admin Embracing 'Legitimate Islamism'

The National Journal reports:

In an article in the current National Journal called “The Post Al Qaida Era,” I write that the Obama administration is taking a new view of Islamist radicalism. The president realizes he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively “moderate” Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. (The Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago, leading then-dissident radicals such as Ayman al-Zawahiri to join al Qaida.)

It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists. “The war on terror is over,” one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

The new approach is made possible by the double impact of the Arab Spring, which supplies a new means of empowerment to young Arabs other than violent jihad, and Obama’s savagely successful military drone campaign against the worst of the violent jihadists, al Qaida.

Keeping some of them locked up at Gitmo has probably helped, too.

The administration’s quiet pro-Islamist approach goes hand in hand with something Rep. Allen West has been warning about lately: That the Obama administration is allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to influence policy in the US.

Rep. Allen West warned Monday that reports of the FBI’s training manual being edited to scrap portions considered offensive to the Muslim community signaled an increasingly “one-way street” level of tolerance that could lead to “cultural suicide.”

“We have to understand when tolerance becomes a one-way street, it will lead to cultural suicide and we should not allow the Muslim Brotherhood-associated groups to be influencing our national security strategy,” the Florida Republican said on “Fox & Friends.”

West noted that the report of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan— who has been accused of the fatal shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 and wounded dozens more — makes no reference to Islamic Jihadism or Muslim extremism, and also fails to mention the suspect’s alleged association with Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

Strange times we live in: The American administration steps up drone attacks on one type of violent Islamist, it lies that Republicans have declared “war” on women, while it is working with Islamists in Egypt and elsewhere who actually do wage war on women (along with non-Muslims of all types) wherever they can, every single day.