Posted on 06/28/2007 9:53:58 AM PDT by Realism
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has been quietly engaging the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Officials said the State Department has approved a policy that would enable U.S. diplomats to meet and coordinate with Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other Arab states. They said the program would first be restricted to elected officials from the Brotherhood and eventually be extended to their political chiefs.
"The region is going Islam," an official said. "We see this in nearly every country in the Middle East. We either understand it and engage with it or find ourselves completely out of the picture."
The Brotherhood has been regarded as the inspiration for Muslim movements throughout the Arab world. The organization, founded in Egypt, spread through Saudi financing and has served as the inspiration for Al Qaida. Many Arab countries have banned the Brotherhood. But in Egypt, a party composed of Brotherhood members has won 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly and plays a major role in domestic policy.
In 2007, officials said, the State Department was quietly fostering ties with the Brotherhood. U.S. embassy staffers in Cairo have attended sessions led by parliamentarians from the Brotherhood and invited the Islamists to official receptions.
"We respect the laws of this country," U.S. ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone said. "But, at the same time, we're ready to establish relations and hold meetings with all the legal political elements in the country.
Officials said a U.S. approach toward the Brotherhood was vital in wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in late June. They said the policy could encourage what officials have identified as a pro-Western wing of the Palestinian Islamic movement.
The administration policy has been supported by the Democratic-controlled Congress. On April 7, House leaders, including Democratic whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, attended a reception by the U.S. embassy in Cairo that included Brotherhood deputies. The reception took place at the ambassador's residence.
The State Department has been discussing the new policy with the U.S. intelligence community. On June 20, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research convened a meeting with members of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to expand dialogue with the Brotherhood.
The proposal was based on a study by Robert Leiken, a researcher at the Nixon Center. The study, commissioned by the National Intelligence Council, urged the United States to open a formal channel to the Islamic movement.
Such a channel would include formal meetings with Brotherhood leaders throughout the Arab and Islamic world and invite members to study or work in the United States. Officials said the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI, opposes the proposal, concerned that this would facilitate Al Qaida plots to attack the United States.
At the State Department forum, Leiken was opposed by Hillel Fradin, an Islamic expert from the Hudson Institute. Fradkin was said to have argued that engaging the rigidly ideological Brotherhood would dash any hope for reform within political Islam.
"You make them partners," Zeyno Baran, Fradkin's colleague at Hudson, told the New York Sun. "They might Islamize the Muslims, but it's okay because they can think or do what they want as long as they are not violent. That is the misunderstanding and mistake."
“The State Department Loses Contact With Reality”
The muslim brotherhood is an Arch enemy of Al Qaeda and their allies. We can use them to increase the infighting among the terrorists and also to tell us about some of the Al Qaeda terrorist leaders locations.
There is a push to pit (so-called) “moderates” against “radicals” at the same time as some Islamists are calling for unity between sects. Normally, I wouldn’t be against a strategy to separate them and marginalize the worst of them, but this administration has shown stunning naivete as to who or what group is moderate.
Cair.... recently linked to a plot to fund the terrorist group Hamas
They sound like some sort of supervillian group.
Who is the official? OBL?
So we are now friending the political wing of Al Qeda.
oh my, another 'out of touch' bureaucrat
This is probably one of the stupidest moves on the part of the Bush administration.
No. This is like having friendly relations with the NAZI party while fighting Hitler in WW2.
"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."—Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a 22-year-old elementary school teacher, as an Islamic revivalist movement following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent ban of the caliphate system of government that had united the Muslims for hundreds of years. Al-Banna based his ideas that Islam was not only a religious observance, but a comprehensive way of life, on the tenets of Wahhabism, better known today as "Islamism", and he supplemented the traditional Islamic education for the Society's male students with jihadia training.
Which we did through our embassy in Switzerland during WWII.
Al-Qaeda & the Muslim Brotherhood: United by Strategy, Divided by Tactics
By Lydia Khalil
Actually, it's debatable whether al-Banna based his movement on Wahhabism. One of the major leaders of the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, and his thought has been condemned by some followers of Wahhabism.
No, it is like striking a deal with the Soviet communist who were strategically our enemies to defeat a more imminent enemy which was the Nazis and their allies. However unlike the Soviet Union the muslim brotherhood will be easily destroyed when we get what we want from them which is to help us against Al Qaeda and their leaders, in particular Ayman AL Zwahiri.
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