The Faces of the Muslim Brotherhood and "The Israel Lobby"
I recently was browsing the English-language website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It has quite a different look than the Arabic version. The former has a western look and red highlighting and the latter a far more militant and Islamist look with a traditional green background. The more important and obvious difference is that on the English-language site you'll find references to Israel as “Israel,” and Israelis as “Israelis;” on the Arabic site the terms used (if my Google translator is working properly) are “Zionist entity” and “Zionists.”
But what I found most interesting involved the section on the English language site called “Online Library.” Two things surprised me about the collection of available readings.
The first was the absence of anything written by Sayyid Qutb, a former Muslim Brother who is now generally considered the “Godfather” of the jihadist movement. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former member of the Ikhwan and now Qaeda al-Jihad’s number two man, wrote in 2001: “Sayyid Qutb’s call for loyalty to God’s oneness and to acknowledge God’s sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day.” Qutb’s brother, Mohammad, who fled Egypt, later taught at a Saudi university where one of his students was Osama bin Laden.
The second was the inclusion of a downloadable PDF copy of John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen M. Walt's “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a report they wrote under the sponsorship of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. For a discussion and critique of the report read Martin Kramer’s commentary on his website.
It is unfair to presume “guilt by association.” But I would be a tad uncomfortable if I wrote something about the “Jewish lobby” in the United States deemed appropriate for the websites of both the Muslim Brotherhood and David Duke.
But what I found most interesting involved the section on the English language site called “Online Library.” Two things surprised me about the collection of available readings.
The first was the absence of anything written by Sayyid Qutb, a former Muslim Brother who is now generally considered the “Godfather” of the jihadist movement. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former member of the Ikhwan and now Qaeda al-Jihad’s number two man, wrote in 2001: “Sayyid Qutb’s call for loyalty to God’s oneness and to acknowledge God’s sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day.” Qutb’s brother, Mohammad, who fled Egypt, later taught at a Saudi university where one of his students was Osama bin Laden.
The second was the inclusion of a downloadable PDF copy of John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen M. Walt's “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a report they wrote under the sponsorship of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. For a discussion and critique of the report read Martin Kramer’s commentary on his website.
It is unfair to presume “guilt by association.” But I would be a tad uncomfortable if I wrote something about the “Jewish lobby” in the United States deemed appropriate for the websites of both the Muslim Brotherhood and David Duke.
