28-Jan-15: In Washington DC, a red carpet for the Islamists

Waleed Sharaby: Image taken from his Facebook page;

the four-fingered salute, called "R4BIA", signifies

"those who wake all the Islamic world

with their death". He was standing inside the US State

Department when this picture was snapped

We wrote several posts here over the past year and a half about the inexplicable difficulty the management team at the US State Department seem to have with calling terrorism 'terrorism', at least so far as it pertains to Islamist and radical Palestinian Arab practitioners of lethal terror. 

Some sample articles (among many) include

• 14-Aug-13: Are the Palestinian Arab murderers who are being released at this moment, freedom fighters or terrorists? Let's check with the State Department
• 17-Nov-13: Is Washington going to make up its mind whether it sees the killers as freedom fighters or as terrorists?
• 10-Dec-13: Can Kerry and his State Department colleagues not hear what's being said clearly in Arabic? 
• 9-Apr-14: Analyzing the failure, what role did the Kerry State Department play?

This morning, we have a scoop from the Washington Free Beacon where Adam Kredo has uncovered some remarkably close canoodling between unabashed proponents of Islamist strategies (with all that entails) and senior figures in the US government's foreign policy establishment. This, we freely admit, sends shivers of horror down our spines, knowing what we do about the terrorism-laden agenda of the Brotherhood and its various local editions, in particular Hamas.

Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department | Brotherhood seeks to rally anti-Sisi support | Adam Kredo | Washington Free Beacon | January 28, 2015 5:00 am | The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013. One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page. That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood...  Another member of the delegation, Maha Azzam, confirmed during an event hosted Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)—another group accused of having close ties to the Brotherhood—that the delegation had “fruitful” talks with the State Department... Assam also said that the department expressed openness to engagement, according to one person who attended the event... When asked to comment on the meeting Tuesday evening, a State Department official said, “We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt.” The official declined to elaborate on who may have been hosted or on any details about the timing and substance of any talks...
Patrick Poole, a terrorism expert and national security reporter, said the powwow at the State Department could be a sign that the Obama administration still considers the Brotherhood politically viable, despite its ouster from power and a subsequent crackdown on its members by Egyptian authorities.
“What this shows is that the widespread rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East, particularly the largest protests in recorded human history in Egypt on June 30, 2013, that led to Morsi’s ouster, is not recognized by the State Department and the Obama administration,” Poole said. “This is a direct insult to our Egyptian allies, who are in an existential struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, all in the pursuit of the mythical ‘moderate Islamists’ who the D.C. foreign policy elite still believe will bring democracy to the Middle East,” Poole said.

Ahlam Tamimi, self-confessed murderer of Jewish children including

our daughter Malki who was 15 when killed in the massacre

engineered by Tamimi, is photographed hanging out with

some jihad-friendly pals in 2013. Notice her proudly giving 

the same hand sign that Sharaby did, though we think she was not inside

the US State Department at the time. But we're checking that.

It may be helpful to people in the State Department to take a look at a photograph of one of the most notorious of the Hamas murderers, the unrepentant and now-free killer of our teenage daughter. Her name is Tamimi.

In the photo at right, taken from a social media site in 2013, Tamimi too flashes those four fingers, surrounded by like-minded admirers. What she intends by it has to be understood against a background in which she praises her own handiwork - the murder of 15 Jews in the Sbarro pizzeria massacre which she engineered and for which she was convicted on her own confession, and then released in the extortionate Gilad Shalit Transaction in 2011. She did what she did in the name of Hamas, whose first-ever female terror-operative she is said to be, and in the name of Islam. A television program presenter these days, with a show praising jihadist terror and terrorists that is beamed throughout the world, she is a person who knows how to communicate messages.

She too travels widely, not yet to Washington (as far as we can tell) but certainly throughout the Arabic-speaking world, from her home base in Jordan. As the 'success model' of the students at Jordan's only graduate school for journalism, she probably has the skills to explain to the foreign policy officials at State the things they ought to know (but evidently don't) about the Brotherhood's aspirations and the role that their religion plays in their actions. They should call her in.

22-Jan-12: Islamism in Egypt: That was then, this is now

Moslem Brotherhood political activist hands out fliers for
an election candidate in northern Cairo
suburb of Shubra [Image source: David
Degner/IncendiaryImage.com]

Time to reflect on how badly those big-name experts misunderstand the role of radical Islamism in the Arab world - or perhaps even misrepresent it.

USA Today ran an analytical piece a year ago under the headline "Mubarak or Muslim Brotherhood not Egypt's only choice", evidently seeking to allay concerns that Egypt was going in the direction of radical Islamism:

"Will the next government that emerges from the tumult in Egypt be Islamic or Islamist? There's a critical difference, say experts, who caution against knee-jerk fears that Mubarak might be replaced by Islamists -  Muslim political extremists."

In a February 5, 2011 blog article entitled "Should We Worry about Egypt Becoming Democratic?", prominent New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof starts this way: "My answer is: No." He goes on:

"I agree that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be a good ruler of Egypt, but that point of view also seems to be shared by most Egyptians."

How about the frequently-heard expert voice of Olivier Roy, described in a recent Bret Stephens Wall St Journal column as "arguably Europe's foremost authority on political Islam". He published an essay days after Hosni Mubarak was forced from power in February 2011, in which he wrote:

"This is not an Islamic Revolution... Look at those involved in the uprisings, and it is clear that we are dealing with a post-Islamist generation... This is not to say that the demonstrators are secular; but they are operating in a secular political space, and they do not see in Islam an ideology capable of creating a better world."

Also last February, Jimmy Carter, a one-time president of the United States, speaking at a University of Texas forum was asked how the United States should view the Muslim Brotherhood in view of its ties to Hezbollah (that's how the Austin American-Statesman framed it):

"I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely... They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy."

Turns out that reality mugged the experts, and the new Egypt is looking very Islamist indeed. "Subsumed in the overwhelming show of democracy"? Fears of Islamists gaining control are "knee-jerk"? The young and secular protestors of Tahrir Square are the face of the new direction?

Not so much. Today's new Egypt is described today by the Telegraph (UK):

The Muslim Brotherhood won by far the biggest share of seats allocated to party lists in Egypt's first freely-elected parliament in decades, final results confirmed, giving it a major role in drafting the country's new constitution. Banned under former leader Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors, the Brotherhood has emerged as the winner from his overthrow. Islamists of various stripes have taken about two thirds of seats in the assembly, broadly in line with their own forecasts... The Brotherhood's electoral alliance took a 38 percent share of the seats allocated to lists. The hardline Islamist Al-Nour Party won 29 percent of list seats. The liberal New Wafd and Egyptian Bloc coalition came third and fourth respectively. The Revolution Continues coalition, dominated by youth groups at the forefront of the protests that toppled Mubarak, attracted less than a million votes and took just seven of the 498 seats up for grabs in the lower house.

Quite some distance from the optimism of the mass demonstrations of a year ago in Tahrir Square. And from among the various images that were published today to depict the changes in the Egyptian political landscape, the one that we found most striking was this rather ordinary looking press photo of two like-minded leaders embracing.

The caption reads:

CAIRO, EGYPT - JANUARY 21: In this handout photo provided by Khaled Meshaal's Office of Media, the leader of Hamas Khaled Meshaal (L) meets with Supreme Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie (R) to congratulate him on their victory in the Egyptian Parliamentary elections on January 21, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt's Islamists the Muslim Brotherhood who were once banned, ran as the Freedom and Justice Party and claimed two thirds of the seats in Egypt's first free elections in decades and since the dimise, almost a year ago, of their president Hosni Mubarak.

Call us parochial, but for us it's the embrace above that, far more than the published comments and analysis of optimists and orientalists, betokens the dangerous new reality down south.