Actually, the statement: ‘The Muslim Brotherhood is against “Al-Qaida-like terrorism” ‘, is actually *better* than “deploring terrorism in general”.
Muslim apologists generally play a semantic game, when some Muslim commits a loathsome act of terror against innocent people.
Instead of condemning them for their acts on behalf of Islam, as “bad Muslims”, they will “deplore all terrorist acts”, as if what the Muslims did in the name of Islam had nothing to do with Islam.
This gets even more galling when, in the face of unambiguous facts, they finally insist that the terrorist was “mentally ill”, even encouraging him to pretend so, in the hopes of evading punishment.
But they will never, ever, blame Islam for such things. And this is why the wording of the Muslim Brotherhood statement is so important.
That they are willing to condemn al-Qaeda says two things. First of all, there is a lethal level of hatred between the two organizations, and second, that the MB questions the *doctrines* of al-Qaeda. Since al-Qaeda insists its doctrines are all Koranic, this radically accuses them of being “bad Muslims”. Muslims will often call those of other sects “heretics” before it calls them “bad Muslims”.
MB has officially renounced violence to achieve its goals since 1928. And they have held to this even in hard times, when many of its members wanted to be violent. This has resulted in violent splinter organizations leaving the MB in a huff.
This has also prevented the West from ever seriously turning against the MB, though they are deeply distrustful of them. Though individuals within the MB have made belligerent statements in past, they have never had the support of the entire organization.
And while their goals are clearly Islamist, they are politically Islamist, and they are even loathe to form a political party as such. Even right now, in Egypt, they have stated that there will be no MB candidate for president.
This is a very cagey strategy. While they are not a political party, Mubarek saw them as a dire *political* threat. Ironically, the MB were issue oriented, and did not always oppose Mubarek’s government.
The bottom line is that they are very hard to get a handle on. They are large, powerful, multinational, and could become a very dangerous terrorist organization overnight. And their splinter groups have indeed been deadly. But they, themselves, have not.
This explains why in past, even diplomats have treaded lightly around them.
The goal of the MB is the imposition of Islam (which is essentially nothing but a theocratic political system with a heavy Arab superiority component) throughout the ME and the world. Terrorism is simply a tool; the MB may affiliate with groups that use it when it advances their purposes, and when it doesn’t, they renounce these groups.
I think their main objective is the rebuilding of what they regard as their glory days, the Caliphate, and that they then plan to use these now completely Islamified states to attack the West directly through military action. So this means that they need to consolidate their control over states, rather than over ragged terrorist bands up in the mountains.
At the same time, they are working to infiltrate and take over the political apparatus even of states that are currently non-Muslim. It is well known that Obama is very favorably disposed to them, and I’d suspect that we’d all be stunned if we knew how many people in this current government may share this opinion and, furthermore, may even be members of or connected with the MB. Remember, Obama is surrounded by unelected, unvetted “advisors” whose names rarely even appear in the press and are probably completely unknown to most Americans.