THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD'S PATIENT JIHAD

Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Jewish Ideas Daily, July 25, 2012

Mohamed Morsi’s recent election as president of Egypt has proved a matter of concern.  A candidate from the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, many fear that Morsi’s victory, along with the Brotherhood’s parliamentary successes, will threaten Egyptian-Israeli peace. More generally, it is unclear whether the Brotherhood, now empowered in its native state, will prove a moderating or destabilizing force in the Arab world.

And so observers listened carefully to Morsi’s inauguration speech, in which he seemed to be addressing these two concerns.  Part of his speech, widely interpreted as a reference to future relations with Israel, emphasized ‘the state of Egypt's commitment to international treaties and agreements.  More broadly, he declared that ‘we carry a message of peace to the world.’

Encouraging as these statements may be, in fact they accord neatly with the Brotherhood’s sophisticated strategy for dealing with outsiders. That strategy is laid out comprehensively in Mustafa Mashhur’s Jihad is the Way. Mashhur, leader of the Brotherhood in Egypt from 1996 to 2002, explains the movement’s religious beliefs and aspirations in detail—especially the role of violent jihad in bringing about a world under a unified Islamic Caliphate.  It gives reason to doubt Morsi’s reassurances.

Jihad is the Way defines Israel and Israelis as ‘the criminal, thieving gangs of Zion,’ and Mashhur stresses that the notion of Israel’s foundation on stolen land is not an opening position for negotiations, but a non-negotiable article of ‘faith and religion.’ Further, the land was stolen not only from Palestinian Arabs but from Islam:

‘Know that the problems of the Islamic world, such as Palestine . . . are not issues of territories and nations, but of faith and religion. They are problems of Islam and the Muslims, and they can be resolved neither by negotiation nor by recognizing the enemy's right to the Islamic land he stole.’… [Emphasis ours – Ed.]

As for the Brotherhood’s impending effect on the wider Arab world, Morsi’s ‘message of peace’ is also not what it seems. Mashhur explains: ‘Jihad and preparation for jihad are not only for the purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks against Muslims by Allah's enemies, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state, strengthening the religion, and spreading it around the world.’

‘Martyrdom for Allah,’ Mashhur writes, ‘is our most exalted wish.’  Jihad is indeed the way, and not only has Morsi never rejected this ideology—he is now its most senior political representative in Egypt.

So how are these contradictions to be understood? Why does Morsi talk peace when he explicitly adheres to an ideology of war?

The answer lies in the fundamental principles of the Muslim Brotherhood—principles largely overlooked in the West. As opposed to the ideology of al-Qaeda, which preaches continuous confrontation and attacks on infidels regardless of the immediate political costs, the Brotherhood places the highest priority on careful preparation and the strategic timing of political and military activity. Jihad is the Way stresses the necessity of timing the eventual jihad prudently; as a proof text, it cites a Quranic passage in which Muhammad does not rush to fight until the timing is right:

When the Muslims were a persecuted minority, the Prophet Muhammad did not instruct the Muslims to retaliate. Instead, he taught them ‘Sabr,’ patience and resolve . . . and when the conditions were right, permission was given to fight in the words of Allah . . .

Timing, therefore, is an integral part of the Brotherhood’s political and military decisions:

When the Brotherhood sends their youth to jihad at the appropriate time, they are not pushing them towards destruction. Rather, abstaining from jihad at its appropriate time is destruction . . . Similarly, it is not necessary for the Muslims to repel every attack or damage caused by the enemies of Allah immediately, rather [this is required] when ability and the circumstances allow for it.

In this context, Morsi’s statements look more like stratagems.  Standing by Egypt’s international commitments now does not preclude war later; and assurances of peaceful intent do not jettison jihad from the agenda—in fact, as far as the Brotherhood is concerned, they advance it. Morsi does not have to change his opinions, nor does he have to reject the Brotherhood’s fundamental beliefs when he speaks of peace. Since nullifying its treaty with Israel might isolate Egypt politically and bring it economic ruin, Morsi can instead apply the Brotherhood’s principle, as learned from Muhammad: ‘’Sabr’—patience and resolve.’ The necessity to strengthen and stabilize Egyptian society is an adequate priority now—it is, moreover, the very means by which to prepare Egypt to lead the Islamic world and to fulfill Islam’s global destiny.

Peaceful statements released from Egypt over the next few years should not deceive observers into believing that the Brotherhood has abandoned its religious ideology and its comprehensive Islamic vision. Talking peace, while preparing for jihad, is an integral part of jihad.

So when will Egypt break its treaty with ‘the criminal, thieving gangs of Zion’? Morsi will make the same calculation as Muhammad: when conditions are right.

THE BROTHERS AND THE MUSLIMS

Mordechai Kedar.

Israel Against Terror, June 28, 2012

A Short History of the Muslim Brotherhood

In 1928, group of Islamist zealots established the Muslim Brotherhood movement in response to the challenges that were presented by new trends that rocked the cultural life in post WWII Egypt. In those days Egypt was under British occupation and Britain pulled on the strings of power as it pleased, in an effort to influence the society in a secular, Western direction.

As a result, new socio-political trends emerged in Egyptian society: there were those that saw the Egyptian character as based on Pharaonic heritage (a symbol of heresy in Islam) as the source of inspiration of modern Egypt; others saw the Arab nation (of Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, all of whom speak Arabic) as the province of affiliation; and there were also those who saw the Greek (Alexander, Ptolemy) and the Roman (Cleopatra) past as the source of European identity of the Egyptian people.

All of these trends were anti-Islamic, and the Brotherhood – headed by the founder of the movement, Hassan Al-Banna – saw the occupation by the Christian, wine-drinking and pork-eating British, as the source of all the cultural problems of the Land of the Nile, so they placed the struggle against the foreign occupation at the top of their priorities.

…[T]he Brotherhood saw the purification of Egyptian society from the influence of Western culture as a secondary task, that in their opinion is rotten corrupt, permissive and not suitable to Islamic society. The struggle over the culture placed the Brotherhood in conflict with the new socio-political theories about the source of collective inspiration of the Egyptian people, which is noted above. In answer to all of these trends the Brotherhood claimed that ‘Islam is the Solution’; it is forbidden for a Muslim society, whose guide is on high, to search among other cultures for solutions and arrangements that are the mere works of man.

The third task that the Brotherhood took upon themselves is to prove that indeed ‘Islam is the solution’, by imposing Islamic Shari’a in all areas of life, private, family, political, economic and diplomatic. This task, which aspires to impose the rules of Islam on the politics and the state, has created the concept of ‘political Islam’ in contrast to other religions, which separate between religion and state…The symbol of the organization expresses this ideology well: the color of green represents Paradise, two swords in the center express the two basic avowals of Islam – there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger – and one word, which appears in the Qur'an just once, written above: ‘Wa-aidu’ – ‘and prepare’.

This word is the beginning of the passage from the Qur'an (chapter 8, verse 59) ‘and prepare’ whatever you can of your strength and your harnessed horses in order to impose fear (ie. terror) in the hearts of Allah's enemy and your enemies’…

When the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, King Fuad the First ruled, and in 1936 his son Farouk succeeded him, and ruled until the Officers' Revolution in July 1952. During the monarchy, the Brotherhood acted very freely, because the regime was incredibly ineffective. In December 1948 an activist from the movement assassinated the prime minister, Nukrashi, and two months afterward the movement's founder and leader – Hassan al-Banna – was murdered, apparently by agents of the regime.

The regime of the Officers was much more determined and decisive, and in general, conducted a stubborn battle against the Brotherhood because it saw them and their activities as an attempt to undermine its legitimacy and stability. In1966 President Gamal Abd al-Nassar hung the ideologue of the movement, Sayyid Qutb, because in his writings, he claimed that any regime that does not implement Shari'a is like the heresy that preceded Islam, or idol worship, and therefore it is justified to conduct a jihad against it…

Because the Brotherhood was marginalized politically during the years of the Officers' Regime, they found their fertile field of activity within the economically and politically marginalized people, and turned their energies to charitable activities within the society of the tens of millions of Egyptians living in the poor, unplanned neighborhoods at the margins of the cities, without running water, without sewage, without electricity, without telephone lines, without medical services or educational services, without work and without hope.

It was the Brotherhood who supported these miserable people for years, out of a feeling of commitment, responsibility and mutual trust rooted in Islamic values, which does not differentiate between religion, society, politics, economics and culture. The regime allowed them to operate among the weak neighborhoods, since it did not see acts of charity and kindness as a danger to the stability of the regime, and because the burden on the state of caring for the poor population was eased because of the Brotherhood's activities. The people held the Brotherhood in high regard, because for many years, the Brotherhood supported the poor among the people wholeheartedly; and because they are not corrupt and greedy like the ‘fat cats’ who ruled the state and because they relate to the people with respect, unlike the regime, which humiliated them and oppressed them cruelly.…

Those who initiated the street riots that broke out in Egypt on the 25th of January, 2011, which some call the ‘Arab Spring’, were throngs of Egyptian secular youth, some of whom were educated, who were sick of the corrupt and cruel regime, which was slated to be passed down to the son of the ruler. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ did not take a meaningful part in the demonstrations, but rather sat on the sidelines watching to see which side would win. After the military forced Mubarak to resign on the 11th of February, the Brotherhood went out to al-Tahrir Square in order to take advantage of the opportunities that it had awaited patiently for many years.

The Qur'an (Chapter 2, Verse 152) states that ‘Allah is with the patient’, and indeed Allah is with them: in the period that preceded the November 2011 elections to parliament, the Brotherhood activated Operation Da'wah’ (Islamic outreach), in order to translate their investment of years of community efforts into political support by the public. Spokesmen of political Islam, headed by Yosef al-Qaradawi, mobilized themselves in support the Brotherhood, and the result was that almost half of the seats of parliament were won by the ‘Party of Freedom and Justice’, the representative of the Brotherhood, and a quarter more of the seats were won by the ‘Party of Light’, the representative of the more conservative Salafi groups. This is how the decisive majority of the Egyptian parliament was suffused with the color green, the color of Islamic Paradise, in a truly democratic way.

It is important to note here that one of the most eloquent spokesmen of the Brotherhood, Sheikh Safwat Hijazi, appeared on the 1st of May this year, and gave a speech that was broadcast live for thousands of people to see, as part of the Brotherhood's preparations for the elections. In his fiery discourse Hijazi announced that the goal of the Brotherhood is the unity of all the Arab states into one giant Islamic Caliphate, under Morsi's flag, whose capital will be ‘not Mecca and not Medina but al-Quds [Jerusalem]’. His words reflect very well the goal of the movement – to erase the heritage of colonialism, principally the borders marked by colonialist interests, which damaged both the Arab world and Islam; the elimination of Israel; and imposition of Islam on Judaism.

It might be that this referred to a far-off hope and not immediate plans, but the cheers of support from the throats of the masses who crowded into the street expressed the collective energy behind the idea, just waiting for the suitable moment to turn it into reality. Besides this, we must take very seriously the hopes of others, because the state of Israel is exactly the realization of hopes (‘If you will it, it is not a legend’), and our enemies learn from us how to realize hopes as well.

With the winning of the presidency of Egypt…, they have conquered another position on their way to the realization of their Islamic program, and the question of how they will continue from here disturbs the sleep of many in Israel and in the world…

Who are you, Muhammad Morsi?

Muhammad Morsi was born in 1951 in the village of al-Adwa…to a hard-working rural family, the first of its six children. He served as a soldier in the chemical warfare unit in the second Army in the years 1975-6. He is married to Naglah Mahmoud, and they have a daughter, four sons, and three grandsons. He excelled in his studies from a young age and earned a Master's degree in engineering from the University of Cairo and a doctorate in California in the United States, where he also taught. (Another proof that western studies do not turn a Muslim to an adherent of Western culture.)

Morsi joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement in 1979, and served as a member of its ‘board of instruction’ and endured persecution and harassment by the Mubarak regime. Like many other leaders of the movement, he was tried and imprisoned a number of times…Between the years 2000 and 2005 he was the head of a group of independent members of parliament who were people of the Brotherhood…

In 2006 he was imprisoned and when he was subsequently freed, he was put under house arrest. In January 2011, immediately after the demonstrations broke out, he was sent again to prison…Before the elections for the presidency he resigned his position in parliament, and after he won 51.7% (compared to 48.3% for Shafiq) he left the Muslim Brotherhood in order to be the ‘president of everyone’. [for the complete article see Link below in On Topic – Ed.]

SAUDIS TO MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: DROP DEAD

David P. Goldman

Gatestone Institute, Aug 8, 2012

‘The uneasy modus vivendi between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military most likely will fail, and probably sooner than later,’ I argued July 9, and the aftermath of the terrorist execution of sixteen Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai peninsula supports this conclusion. The funeral service for the dead soldiers erupted in rage against the Brotherhood, Al Ahram reports today from Cairo:

In a tense scene, hundreds of Egyptians gathered at Al-Rashdan Mosque in Cairo's Nasr City district around midday on Tuesday to attend the funeral service held for the 16 Egyptian guards killed at the Egypt-Gaza border on Sunday. Security forces were heavily deployed around the mosque, and several of the surrounding streets were blocked off.

Getting close to the mosque, Ahram Online found families of the killed soldiers, as well as some public figures, mourners and many angry protesters. The group was split between those who had made it inside the mosque to pray for the killed soldiers and the rest who waited outside in anger, chanting almost without pause, and at times fighting with each other.

Protesters mainly chanted against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, describing them as ‘betrayers of the country’ and claiming that the Brotherhood collaborated with Hamas, which they accuse of involvement in the killing of Egyptian soldiers. ‘Down with the rule of the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood’ and ‘The Brotherhood are agents and betrayers’ were among the slogans that were chanted. The infuriated protesters also kicked out any citizen whom they suspected to be a member of the Islamist group. Most bearded men were labelled as members of the Brotherhood and were forced to leave.

Crucial to understanding Egypt's internal wrangling between the Brotherhood-dominated elected government and the military in the wings is the harsh reality of Egypt's economy: the country is nearly dead broke, and close to the point where it no longer can finance its $36 billion annual trade deficit. Egypt imports half its food, and is the world's largest wheat importer. Wheat and other food prices went through the roof due to the American drought and poor harvests elsewhere. Egypt is almost out of money. It also has trouble financing its enormous internal budget deficit (around 12% of GDP).

The most likely outcome will be a substantial currency devaluation before year-end, with a sharp rise in food and energy prices, all of it laid at the door of the Muslim Brotherhood. The military will consolidate its grip over Egyptian politics in one fashion or another. As I wrote in the cited July 9 post: ‘The economic context is necessary to make sense of Egypt's politics: it points to an important conclusion, that no path exists to stable rule by the Muslim Brotherhood.’

The most important news to come out of Egypt in the past several weeks was yesterday's central bank announcement that foreign exchange reserves fell sharply during July. Liquid reserves fell by a quarter, from $7.8 billion to $5.9 billion. Al Ahram reported:

Egypt's net international reserves fell in July after inching up for three months in a row. Figures from the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) published on Tuesday showed that Egypt's foreign currency reserves stood at some $14.42 billion by the end of July, down from $15.53 billion in June.   The CBE said on its website that the fall was due to maturing Egyptian bonds and payment of the Paris Club member countries' debt totaling some $1.64 billion.

Saudi Arabia…didn't peel off a single dinar for the flailing Egyptians during the month of July, despite Prime Minister Morsi's high-profile trip to Riyadh during the middle of the month. With liquid reserves below $6 billion (the rest is gold, credits at the IMF, and a few other illiquid items) Egypt can pay for another two months' of its trade deficit. The Saudis do not want to feed the mouth that bites their hand.

…The Saudis fear the Muslim Brotherhood, though, as much as they fear Iran: the Brotherhood's updated Islamism combines traditional religious authority with the organizing methods of modern totalitarian parties, and represents the most credible internal challenge to the Saudi monarchy. Saudi Arabia supported deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and bitterly rued his overthrow.

Evidently the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and its Saudi backers intend to let the Morsi government take the blame for Egypt's impending economic disaster. The assault on Egypt's prime minister at the soldiers' funeral may mark the decline of the Islamist organization. The only friend the Muslim Brotherhood has left is the Obama administration, which cannot–in an election year–give the Morsi government what it needs the most–enough money to get through the next few months.