Posted on 04/03/2005 10:21:48 PM PDT by ColdWarNavyVet_dirsup
CAIRO, April 3, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The US State Department has drawn up a memo calling for direct and permanent political dialogue with the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a leading Arabic newspaper reported on Sunday, April 3.
The US administration sees the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the most powerful opposition movements in Egypt, unnamed Western diplomatic sources in the Egyptian capital told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.
The memo recommends inviting the group’s representatives to the United States for better communication and common grounds on Egypt’s reform policies and the pressing issues in the region, they added.
The State Department believes that Washington can contain the group and its ilk through dialogue.
The memo, according to the Western diplomatic sources, maintains that it is about time that the administration looked differently at religious groups and avoided any further clash with them, because this would only fan hatred and incite more attacks against US interests.
They added that the State Department has asked the US Embassy in Cairo to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders as a preliminary step for an organized dialogue.
The memo recommends that after reaching common understandings with the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington should pressure the Egyptian government to let the group members speak out their minds freely and play a role on the country’s political landscape, according to the sources.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned since 1954, has 16 deputies in Egypt ’s 454-member parliament, making it the main opposition force in Egypt.
Alleged Bugaboo
The memo maintains that it would be a “historical mistake” to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood or treat the group as an enemy to the US, said the sources.
It recognizes that the group enjoys a soaring popularity in Egypt which necessitates regular meetings with its leaders.
The State Department cautions against listening to the warnings of the Egyptian government which have not proved “serious” in all cases.
The memo asserts that the Egyptian government has been describing the Muslim Brotherhood as a “bugaboo” to justify rigging election or scaling down reforms.
“They (government) fear that free and fair election will bring about opposition figures and undermine the privileges they have been enjoying for years,” the Western diplomatic sources told the London-based daily.
Egyptian Minister of Justice Mahmoud Abu El-Leil said last week that the Egyptian judiciary would supervise the multi-candidate presidential election to be held in September.
President Hosni Mubarak has not indicated whether he would run for a fifth term in office.
But a senior official from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) told the official MENA news agency that Mubarak would announce his decision after the result of a referendum in May on a proposed amendment to the constitution allowing multi-candidate presidential election.
Conditional Dialogue
Mohammad Habib, the first deputy of the Muslim Brotherhood Guide-General, signaled conditional welcome to a dialogue with Washington.
“It should take place under the supervision of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry,” he told the mass-circulation newspaper.
Habib denied that the group had been locked in talks with the US, stressing that the Muslim Brotherhood rejected any reform recipe from abroad.
“Egypt’s reform agenda should come from within,” he said emphatically.
The Muslim Brotherhood leader further denied knowledge of any contacts between officials from the US embassy in Cairo and the group’s leaders.
“Make no mistake about it: we don’t deal with the US embassy and any [foreign] contacts should be done via the Foreign Ministry,” Habib said.
He reaffirmed his group’s readiness for dialogue with all political parties in Egypt, including the NDP, for the welfare of Egyptian society.
Despite the arrest of at least 55 members, including leading figures, several thousand members of the group took part in three demonstrations in Cairo last Sunday to press for constitutional reforms and the lifting of restrictive emergency laws.
When do we sign up for dhimmi status?
This has to be the most patently absurd idea to have come out of the State Department in a long while. What are these people in State smoking??
I believe the Muslim Brotherhood were Al Qaeda's forebearers. Didn't Aiman al-Zawhiri (AQ #2) come from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood?
Qat (imported from Yeman)?
i believe so - philosophically they are the same
courtesy of Destro's link to JohnathanGaltfilms.com...
US officials are saying it is difficult to make the connection between a well known terrorist organisation like AlQaeda and the raft of outfits operating in Kashmir,some of them indigenous.
The Indian side has responded that they all come from the
same swamp and have the same ideological orientation.
A terrorist who works for Al-Qaeda one day can be with Al-
Badr the next day and Lashkar-e-Taiba the third. Or the other way around.
"When do we sign up for dhimmi status?"
hmmmm... there's a line in Dearborn, Michigan
or the way things are going in DC, perhaps parts of kongress will soon figure out a way to rake in a percentage...
Hey - it's "democracy" at work, don't you see? It's entirely plausible that the Muslim Brotherhood would win if Egypt held a real election instead of the King Country Washington style elections they've been holding for many decades to keep Mubarak as president.
According to the latest in Wilsonian Foggy Bottom theory, jihadis like the MB and AQ will put down their AK-47s and swords once they start having to run the schools, fix the roads, keep the used-camel salesmen in business, etc. We saw how well that worked with the PA once the Oslo "peace process" set them up in charge of places like Gaza and Ramallah. The Oslo idea worked so well in Gaza and the West Bank (The camel trails in Gaza are surely a model of contemporary infrastructure design!) that the Foggy Bottom gang is now talking to Hamas (Lebanon) and the MB (Egypt) as well.
Liberalism just can't tolerate the idea that there are people who are evil, you see (apart from "vigilantes" with cell phones on the US border, that is). The concept of a huge group of folks who will gladly kill so they can bring the entire planet under Dar-al-Islam is just too hard to take for our professional diplomat corps in Foggy Bottom.
Yup. Al-Qaeda started and still is just a loose association of these type of Muslim organizations.
I think it's actually the reverse. The Muslim Brotherhood started it's activities in the 1920s when Egypt was under British rule.
i'm confused?!
are you saying that AQ is a MB forebearer?
The MB came before AQ - sort of like how the Nazi SS came from the SA.
Oh, I forgot they are the very few and selected carp of Government!
I know, the first comment was that MB was a AQ forebearer, then he said it was the reverse, so i was just asking for a clarification from him ;-)
No. the opposite. MB is the earlier one (1920s). Al Quaeda (lit: "the Base" or "the foundation") didn't start until 50 years later or so.
probably the same as some of our wonderful guys that ok'ed an admitted MB dude to teach at the Def Lang Insti in Monterey. they later kicked the guy out for being toooo obvious, but for a while it was weird. the guy's name was ali rageb from egypt
was just making sure that's what you meant, check the guy's orig post that you responded to for the source of my confusion...
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