Tag Archives: Democracy in Islam

The Bipartisan Folly of Our Islam Delusion

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86004211-be40-42d5-8ab0-d557e539ae34By Michael Youssef:

Politicians accuse each other of failure, which is to be expected. Each side has their “narrative,” and the truth often loses out (although I am thankful for the honest and courageous ones who do speak the truth).

But since I’m not a politician, but instead have a prophetic journalistic voice, I will speak the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

There is one area in particular where it is hard to find the truth spoken by either Republicans or Democrats: namely, this whole idea that Muslim people yearn for democracy. It is a glaring short-sightedness that both sides hold in common.

To be sure, many of my Muslim friends long for Western-style democracy and freedom. But they are always thwarted (and always will be) by the majority view. That is why even those friends of mine would admit that democracy is incompatible with Islamic ideology.

Knowledgeable people will agree that democracy and freedom is a delicate rose that was planted in the soil of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation turned the people of the dark ages back to the Bible, with its deeply-rooted respect for the individual.

The Bible unequivocally declares that God values “the individual.” God not only created a man and a woman to be compatible in every way, but God gave man the management responsibility for His creation—thus God placed “the individual” at the helm of importance.

The Christian faith testifies to the fact that although humans fell in the Garden of Eden, God saw fit to redeem them at a colossal cost to Himself—such is the value he places on us.

That is the soil that gave Western democracy its ideals.

Now enter some misguided Republicans and Democrats who think that the ideology of Islam can be rehabilitated and made compatible with Western Christian values.

Neither political side understands that, contrary to the biblical view of man, the root of Islamic ideology declares that man is of no consequence. Allah is. The human individual is of no value; he is only to serve the whim of Allah, his prophet, and the successors (caliphates) of the prophets of Islam. Democracy and freedom rise from the bottom up, whereas Islam is a top-down ideology—Allah, whose words they claim to have received, is all that matters.

So when George W. Bush often said that freedom is “God’s gift to humanity,” thoughtful people needed to ask some important questions.

Such as, which God? Yahweh, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or Allah of 7th century Arabia?

As well-intentioned as his administration was, a cursory look at our effort to bring democracy to Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Egypt offer proof of the apparent impossibility of the task.

And when President Obama speaks of Muslims yearning for freedom as we do, one must ask: whosedefinition of freedom is he talking about?

Well over 90 percent of the Islamic states that signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights—and the right to freedom of religion contained within it—would immediately qualify it by declaring that “freedom” means freedom to be a slave of Allah and nothing more.

Read more at Town Hall

 

Islam and the ballot box

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IslamOnlyBy William J. Murray:

On January 30th the Wall Street Journal carried a column by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht which made the preposterous assertion that Islam would become moderate in a democratic setting. Gerecht went so far as to state that Israel would eventually be accepted by its Islamist neighbors when they are all “free men voting.

The alarming nature of the column was the fact that this is the advice that has been given to presidents and Congress for many years, and the results have been disastrous, as can clearly be seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and other Middle East nations.

I authored a very lengthy rebuttal to Mr. Gerecht which I knew would not be published by the Wall Street Journal, since their editors drink the Kool-Aid that makes them believe the ballot box will eliminate poverty and war worldwide — never mind the fact that Adolph Hitler was duly elected to office by the German people.

Because I believe it is so important to expose the thought processes of those in the establishment CIA and State Department who advise the White House and the Congress, I am reprinting my WND.com column in this edition of the Chairman’s Report. The headline of the column makes reference to the “Pickle Factory,” the insiders’ name for the Central Intelligence Agency. The name comes from code for the daily CIA briefings to the President which are called Pickles. (WND.com changed the title to The ballot box will not tame Islamism.)

Contrary to CIA specialist, democracy will not “diminish” Islamic imperatives
How a Wall Street Journal column rationalizes delusional thinking at the Pickle Factory

By William J. Murray

The Wall Street Journal used a half page of its editorial space on January 30th to publish a totally illogical, if not delusional, column (Israel’s New Islamist Neighborhood: If Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives) by former CIA Middle East specialist Reuel  Marc Gerecht regarding the future “moderation” of Islam in the Middle East. It appears the Wall Street Journal’s editors, economic conservatives who can see no wrong in the human rights abuses in wealthy Islamic nations, wanted to highlight the column to justify U.S support of the Muslim Brotherhood in the takeover of half a dozen nations in the vicinity of Israel.

Gerecht asserts that:

“Israel may one day be accepted by its Arab neighbors and by its most deadly foe, Iran—but only when Arab and Iranian Muslim identities allow for it. At best, that change is decades away. Modern Islam’s great internal tug of war, between the search for authenticity and the love of modernity, must quiet before the Israeli-Palestinian clash can end.”

The key word in this paragraph is “modernity” which brings in the assumption that Islam will move out of the 7th Century and somehow accept a Martin Luther who will “fix” Islam with a reformation that will bring about the equivalent of same-sex marriages in the Episcopal Church.

On what does Gerecht base his assumptions? Later in the column he writes:

“Yet if Western history is any guide, the growth of democracy slowly diminishes religious imperatives. Representative government demystifies politics and ethics, as the here-and-now takes precedence over abstract aspirations. It makes the mundane transcendent. It promotes healthy division because it puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote. It localizes ambitions and focuses people’s passions on the national purse.”

Western history is no more a guide for modernizing Islamic nations through democracy than Stalinist history was a model to modernize China. It took over 500 years, from the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 until the ratification of the American Constitution in 1789, for cultural acceptance of democratic thought despite a Judeo-Christian religious base which promotes the dignity of the individual’s rights. Islam has no such history or character.

And to what “national pulse” does Gerecht refer? The Super Bowl? Europeans are less in touch than even Americans with any political pulse other than to demand even more benefits from their governments.

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Apparently Gerecht sees a morally splintered Western society in which citizens have the power to vote themselves lavish entitlements as the model for the Middle East. His discussion of democracy shows his total lack of understanding that the words democracy and freedom have different definitions. Democracy is merely a process of selecting leaders and is in no way synonymous with freedom, as can be seen in the United Kingdom where even politicians are jailed for their Facebook comments which are deemed politically incorrect.

In that same paragraph be asserts that democracy “puts competing visions, even competing fundamentalist visions, to the vote.” When has this ever happened anywhere? Are the views of Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Baptists, conservative Catholics or murderous mullahs put to the vote in Western democracies? This is nonsense.

Read more at Religious Freedom Coalition

William J. Murray is the chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Coalition and the author of seven books including “My Life Without God,” which chronicles his early life in the home of destructive atheist and Marxist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Will Egypt become a totalitarian state?

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by Robert R. Reilly

The Muslim Brotherhood has made another giant step forward in consolidating its rule in Egypt through the successful passage of the newly drafted constitution by some 64 percent of those who voted. Next come the parliamentary elections in two months through which the Brotherhood will regain control of the legislative branch. In the interim, it has stacked the upper house of Parliament, called the Shura Council, with its own members who will have the power to legislate until the new lower house is elected.

President Mohammed Morsi has already successfully decapitated and made peace with the powerful Egyptian military. The new constitution has given him the power to purge the Supreme Constitutional Court by reducing its size from 18 to 11 members. The president of the Lawyers’ Syndicate, Sameh Ashour, pointed out the goal: “These are monopolistic plans. The Brotherhood wants to control all aspects of the state.”

In other words, this will be a clean sweep.

Why worry? Isn’t Islamist democracy just a step on the way to democracy as it is understood in the West? Isn’t that why the United States is supporting Egypt, and why the US administration has courted the Muslim Brotherhood since President Barack Obama seated its members in the front row for his famous speech in Cairo in 2009? Isn’t this all part of the Arab spring?

The novelist Saul Bellow once wrote that, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” To maintain the illusion that the Muslim Brotherhood is intent on transforming Egypt into a democracy requires the application of considerable ignorance. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in reaction to Kemal Ataturk’s abolition of the caliphate in 1924. Its ultimate aim is to restore the caliphate. Its vehicle for doing so, according to founder Hassan al-Banna, is a one-party system akin to that of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Al-Banna envisaged a bottom-up strategy in which people would be Islamized at the local level first. For this purpose, he created his party. After winning the masses, the Muslim Brotherhood would take total control.

Why is total control necessary? The chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, wrote that, “Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system.” What does this mean? It means that the separate realms of the divine and the human have collapsed into each other, and that it will now be possible, as Qutb said, “to abolish all injustice from the earth.”

This, of course, is a millenarian vision similar, in many ways, to the Marxist dream of creating a classless society based on the abolition of scarcity. If perfect justice is to be achieved here, rather than before God’s throne in the final judgment, several things will be required by those who institute it. They will, in fact, need the very same things that God is thought to possess in his ability to achieve perfect justice. Those two things are omnipotence and omniscience. The omnipotence will be gained through the establishment of a totalitarian regime. The omniscience will be obtained, as it always has been in totalitarian regimes, through an extensive secret police apparatus.

What does the Brotherhood’s version of Islam look like in this scheme? As indicated above, it does not look like a normal religion, which preserves the distinction between the earthly and the transcendent. It is a revolutionary ideology aimed at the total transformation of reality. Here is its view, as expressed by the de facto spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi: “Islam is a comprehensive school of thought, a creed, an ideology, and cannot be completely satisfied but by [completely] controlling society and directing all aspects of life, from how to enter the toilet to the construction of the state.”

However, some analysts suggest that, since its founding 84 years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and, when in power, will evolve even more. This is always the hope of those who fail to recognize the essentially totalitarian nature of certain political movements and principles that are not subject to change. Similar hopes were expressed about the Nazi Party and various Marxist parties. They would mature in power, the exercise of which would transform them in a moderate direction. This, of course, did not happen, though these parties often fostered the impression that it was. Rather, these widely held illusions actually enabled these totalitarian parties to consolidate their power.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-core cadre party. It takes eight years of training to become a full member. Let us listen to the Brotherhood’s leadership today concerning its mission and its prospects of changing. The Deputy Guide of the Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater, said: “The mission is clear: restoring Islam and its all-encompassing conception; subjugating people to God; instituting the religion of God: the Islamization of life, empowering of God’s religion; establishing the Nahda of the Ummah [Muslim nation] on the basis of Islam.”

As for change, al-Shater proclaimed that, “no one can come and say: ‘let’s change the overall mission’… No one can say, ‘forget about obedience, discipline and structures’… No. All of these are constants that represent the fundamental framework for our method; the method of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not open for developing or change.”

So, this is where Egypt is now headed. Some, such as Alber Saber, 27, who was accused of blasphemy this past fall, say of the Brotherhood, “They are no different from the former regime. The weapons have changed, but they are both oppressive regimes.” He might very well wish this were so, but it is common experience that authoritarian regimes are considerably more limited in their reach and cruelty than totalitarian regimes. They wish to maintain power, but do not have the metaphysical ambition of transforming reality. This, in other words, will be worse than Mubarak.

Read the rest at IPT

Robert R. Reilly is a member of the board of the Middle East Media Research Institute and the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

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Burned Again: Benghazi and Myth of ‘Nation Building’

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The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns during the terrorist attack of Sept.11, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)

by Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

What happened or did not happen when our consulate in Benghazi was attacked has become a contentious and partisan issue. This horrible attack on a diplomatic urban outpost is not the first in our dealings with the Muslim world. The international standards that foreign diplomats must be protected by the host country have been violated a number of times since the 19th century, not only for American but also to British diplomats, and only in Muslim countries.

The British Embassy was regularly attacked by mobs stirred up by Muslim clerics in Iran in the 19th century and most recently in 2011. Embassy guards are reluctant to shoot to kill rioters, particularly if they are unarmed, because this response could further enrage the mob. An embassy must depend upon the host country to disburse the mobs and arrest ringleaders. Western countries always protect the embassies under their jurisdiction, whether we like the visiting country or not. It is the responsibility of modern countries to do so, and we expect reciprocity for all of our diplomatic outposts in other countries.

Recently, Egyptian mobs attacked both the American and Israeli embassies, and new Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi was very slow to respond. But after sharp words from both the American and Israeli governments, Morsi finally realized that if he wished to be a respected international leader, he had to act like one. The Muslim Brotherhood has finally won an election and they are faced with the job of running a country, not just attacking those who preceded them.

Because of the dangers of having embassies in Muslim countries, the United States has turned our embassies into fortresses. I remember with nostalgia the American Embassy in Tehran before the Islamic Revolution, open to expatriates like me to visit the cafeteria and have a real American breakfast, or to attend parties for American holidays to which many Iranians were invited.

However, after the Islamic Revolution, our embassy was overrun, trashed, documents confiscated, and diplomats held as prisoners for 444 days. The only other country to close its embassy in protest was Canada, which should still shame the rest of the diplomatic world for its cowardice or reluctance to be principled.

The 52 American hostages (shown here upon their release) that were held hostage from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981 by a group of Islamist students and militants who took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution

There is no way that the United States can protect our consulates, which by their nature are homes, not fortresses, against a rampaging mob. Furthermore, when the attack is staged by the likes of Al Qaeda, even an armed drone cannot kill only Al Qaeda operatives and not bystanders. The new government of Libya probably meant well and would have protected our consulate if they could, but they are inexperienced, inept and already run the risk of inflaming Islamists if they protect us.

The real problem is the 75-year old American policy that promotes “nation building” and “democracy,” lovely ideas, but doomed for failure in Islamist world. This is not just an issue of the religion (i.e. sharia) itself, which is antithetical to democratization, but the very cultures that support it, cultures with a very different standard of honorable behavior than ours. For example, in Afghanistan, police and soldiers whom we are training have turned on their trainers, making them impossible to trust.

Read more at Radical Islam

The Islamic Threat Doctrine and 9/11/2012

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Arab “Spring”

By Alan Kornman

A dark feeling of betrayal and stunned disbelief washed over me as I read the newspaper headline, “Jordanians press for democratic reforms” in the October 6, 2012 Orlando Sentinel.

The Myth of Islamic Democratic Reforms

The mainstream media, U.S. State Department, and President Obama fed us a steady stream of news in 2011 that Egyptian youth were protesting in the streets for an Arab Spring of democratic reforms in Egypt.  Fast forward to 2012 and we learned The Muslim Brotherhood orchestrated the propaganda of democracy in Egypt to get support from the Obama Administration in the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

While the press was printing gallons of ink reporting the Muslim Brotherhood would pursue democratic reforms in Egypt, Mohammad Morsi was consolidating his political base with the Salafi Islamist fundamentalists, whose objective was to institute a Sunni-led Shariah-compliant Islamic State in Egypt by overthrowing the colonialist dictator and friend of the United States, Hosni Mubarak.

The utopian mantra from the liberal left of democratic reforms blooming in Egypt on a warm and sunny Arab Spring day were proven wrong. Now these same journalists and politicians are falling for the same lie again out of Jordan.

When will our mainstream press learn that Shariah compliant political Islam and our Jeffersonian democracy are not compatible? Understanding the PLO’s failed coup of Jordan in the 1970′s will help you to see what Jordan can expect from the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012-2013.

Black September in Jordan

In September of 1970, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Yasser Arafat, nephew of Nazi collaborator Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, tried unsuccessfully to violently overthrow the Kingdom of Jordan from King Hussein.

Arafat’s PLO organization lost over 2,000 Muslim men in the attempted Black September coup of their Jordanian Muslim brothers and were violently expelled from their native Jordan.

History seems to be repeating itself again,  except now The Muslim Brotherhood is making a play to wrestle control of Jordan from the colonialist dictator and friend of the United States, King Abdullah II.

If King Abdullah II tries to appease The Muslim Brotherhood he will find himself either dead or in exile wondering how he lost his throne.  King Abdullah II need look no further than Qaddafi, Mubarak, and Assad to see his future, if he continues on his current path.

Understanding The Islamic Threat Doctrine

Understanding the Islamic Threat Doctrine (click here to read it) is essential in predicting events as they unfold on the ground and anticipating what to expect will happen in the future. Fortunately for the American people, our Islamist adversaries are more than happy to tell us exactly what their doctrine and objectives are.

We will now learn the Islamic Threat Doctrine from a well respected Islamic Jihadist who was tops in his class amongst his Jihadi peers.  Today’s teacher of the doctrine is Sheikh Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi or by his title, “Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers.”  On June 7, 2006 Mr. Zarqawi was killed when a USAF F-16 dropped two 500 pound guided bombs on his safe house in Baqubah, Iraq prematurely ending his career of violence and butchery to achieve his political objectives.

Shortly before his death, Mr. Zarqawi conducted an in depth interview with the Al-Furican Foundation for Media Production, an entertainment arm of Al-Qaeda. Hidden deep in the interview Mr. Zarqawi explains clearly what the Islamic Threat Doctrine is and its objectives.

These two paragraphs below should change your life forever and how you view the world around you.  Al-Qaeda terrorist Musab Al-Zarqawi says,

“We fight in the way of Allah, until the law of Allah is implemented, and the first step is to expel the enemy, then establish the Islamic state, then we set forth to conquer the lands of Muslims to return them back to us, then after that, we fight the kuffar (disbelievers) until they accept one of the three (conversion, death or dhimmitude).
“I have been sent with the sword, between the hands of the hour”; this is our political agenda.”
“It is necessary to accept the fact that it is an obligation for every Muslim to rush to help each other and it is also very necessary to agree that the houses of Muslims are just one house. The enemies (the disbelieving nations) have imposed boundaries and divided the lands of Muslims to tiny nations — however we do not believe in them and the boundaries of Sax Bacon do not restrict us. We, the Muslims, are one nation and the lands of Islam are one land, we fight for the sake of “there is no god but Allah”.

The Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and Northern Africa are “expelling the enemy” and establishing an Islamic State as they did in Egypt.  Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood consider the Muslim colonialist dictators as enemies of Shariah-compliant political Islam.

The Islamic Threat Doctrine Mr. Zarqawi articulated above is being implemented in coordinated steps to achieve their short-term objective of unifying, “Muslims to rush to help each other…and Muslims are of one house.”  The coordinated attacks on 9/11/12 on U.S. interests in the Middle East and Northern Africa was the real warning to America, not the red herring of an internet movie.

When the Islamist enemies of the United States tell you exactly what they want to do and why — believe them. When the soldiers of Allah conducted 20+ coordinated attacks on U.S. interests in the Middle East and Northern Africa on 9/11/2012,  they were telegraphing they can recreate these coordinated attacks at any time of their choosing — in law enforcement circles they call that a clue, as John Guandolo likes to say.

What Our Islamist Enemies Fear Most

The one thing our Islamist adversaries fear most is an American public that understands the basics of The Islamic Threat Doctrine (watch a ten-part video course about it by clicking here). Thomas Jefferson read the Qur’an to fight and defeat the Muslim Barbary Pirates in Tripoli back in 1801. Now you must learn The Islamic Threat Doctrine to understand the Islamists who attacked our embassy in Tripoli on 9/11/2012.

Conclusion

The future of America rests on how many Americans learn The Islamic Threat Doctrine as articulated by Mr. Zarqawi. Then you must teach your friends, family, and community what Mr. Zarqawi and his Islamist ideological brothers consider their definition of Victory.

We, the Muslims, are one nation and the lands of Islam are one land, we fight for the sake of “there is no god but Allah”.

What we believe as Americans and our man made laws is of small concern to our Islamist enemies. The followers of Islam believe “there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger” and that was the message on the black flags that flew above our overrun embassies and consulates when they were attacked on 9/11/2012.
God Bless America and God Bless Our Troops.

Published at Citizen Warrior
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Alan Kornman is the regional coordinator of The United West — Uniting Western Civilization for Freedom and Liberty. His email is: alan@theunitedwest.org

 

Muslim Brotherhood ‘Democracy’: Slapping, Stabbing, and Slaying for Sharia

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by Raymond Ibrahim Special to IPT News July 9, 2012

Prior to the presidential elections, it was revealed how Egypt’s Islamists viewed democratic elections as an obligatory form of “holy war.” Then, any number of Islamic clerics, including influential ones, declared that it was mandatory for Muslims to cheat during elections—if so doing would help Islamist candidates win; that the elections were a form of jihad, and those who die are “martyrs” who will attain the highest levels of paradise. Top Islamic institutions and influential clerics, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, issued fatwas decreeing that all Muslims were “obligated” to go and vote for those candidates most likely to implement Sharia law, with threats of hellfire for those failing to do so.

The point was simple: democracy, elections, voting, even the individual candidates, were all means to an end—the establishment of Sharia law. Cheat, fight, and kill during elections, as long as doing so enables Sharia; vote only for whoever will enable Sharia; avoid hell by enabling Sharia. (It is precisely for this reason that the very first demand made by Islamic leaders is that President Morsi implement the totality of Sharia law in Egypt. That is, after all, why so many voted for him.)

That many Egyptian Muslims heeded these commands to lie, cheat, steal, and kill in order to empower Sharia, there is no doubt. Story after story appeared in the Egyptian media—much of it missed in the West—demonstrating as much.

Those dealing with brutal violence speak for themselves. For example, a Muslim man “beat his pregnant wife to death upon learning that she had not voted for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Morsi.” According to police reports, “despite her pleas,” the husband “battered and bruised” her after discovering she had voted for the secularist candidate, Ahmed Shafiq. She died later in the hospital “from injuries sustained.”

Likewise, a farmer was stabbed by a “supporter of Morsi,” simply for putting up a picture of the secular Shafiq on his motorcycle. Another 52-year-old man and “supporter of Morsi” slapped his mother for voting for Shafiq. The man took his elderly mother to the voting booth, informing her that she must vote for Morsi; after she voted, he pressed her to confirm that she did in fact vote for the Islamist—only to be told that she did not. The man “lost his temper” and slapped her in front of the other voters and electoral supervisors.

Finally, and in accord with the Muslim Brotherhood’s own directives, whole segments of Coptic Christians were prevented from voting. According to Al Ahram, Egypt’s national newspaper, in Upper Egypt, where millions of Copts live, “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote.”

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Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum

Egyptian Philosopher Murad Wahba: “The Muslim Brotherhood Is Ideologically Required To Start Wars”

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Atlas Shrugs:

The Obama-led and supported Muslim Brotherhood revolution in Egypt continues careening down its collision course. Remember it was Obama that invited the then-banned Muslim Brotherhood to his speech in Cairo in June 2009 (at the same time as he was ignoring the plaintive, bloodthirsty, cries of the Iranian people fighting, dying to be free). It was Obama that had mid-level administration officials meeting with the Brotherhood all through 2009, 2010, until the revolution of January 2011. There are no accidents.

We have got to get the enemy out of the White House.

Egyptian Philosopher Murad Wahba: ‘The Muslim Brotherhood Is Ideologically Required To Start Wars’ MEMRI

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian philosopher Murad Wahba, which aired on Sada Al-Balad TV on April 20, 2012.

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3442.htm.

“We’re Not Even In The Ballpark” Of The Components Of Democracy

Murad Wahba: “Democracy has four components.”

Interviewer: “Where does Egypt stand with regard to these four components?”

Murad Wahba: “We’re not even in the ballpark. This is not an exaggeration. There are four components: Secularism and relative thinking do not exist. They are considered heresy. As for a social covenant, the religious authorities interfere in everything. Enlightenment is forbidden – from the days of Sheik Abd Al-Razeq, through Taha Hussein, and all the way to Naguib Mahfouz.”

Interviewer: “And others too.”

Murad Wahba: “Enlightenment is thwarted all the time. They eradicate any sign of rational thinking. As for liberalism – there is no room for individualism. Everybody moves like a herd of sheep. […]

“Today, there is a bloc of Gulf states against the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a new phenomenon.”

Interviewer: “What do you mean?”

Murad Wahba: “Some declarations have been issued on this.”

Interviewer: “I think that the Dubai police [chief] was very clear on that.”

Murad Wahba: “Right. The Gulf states, along with the Asian countries, may be able to ‘besiege’ the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Under these circumstances, I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood ideology will face a crisis – how will they cooperate, when they are in power, with neighboring countries – the Gulf states – and with Asia, given its current relations with the Gulf states, in light of the present problems, in which the U.S. and Europe are also involved? Today, the U.S. and Europe are closer to the Gulf states and to Asia than they are to Egypt.”

“There Will Be A Crisis Between The Leadership Of The Egyptian Army And The Muslim Brotherhood”

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REILLY: Dangerous illusions about Islamism

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By Robert R. Reilly, Washington Times:

Ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver famously wrote. If one misconstrues the ideas of the Islamists who are coming to power in the Middle East, one inevitably will misjudge the consequences. Take Reuel Marc Gerecht’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Islamist Road to Democracy.” In it, Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA hand now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the Islamists are winning but we shouldn’t worry. The West went through worse and came out democratic. In fact, he says, the Middle East has suffered from Western communist and socialist ideologies, which left Islam as the last refuge. So what did we expect? They will work it out on their own terms. This transition may not be pretty to watch, but in the long run, it will “evolve” organically to real democracy. In fact, Mr. Gerecht says, “[The Islamists] are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region.”

Come again? Mr. Gerecht admits his thinking is “counterintuitive,” but it comes closer to missing reality altogether. How do you miss a target this big? Mr. Gerecht’s misplaced optimism is based on two things: misconceptions about the West – particularly the historically unjustified view that upheaval ultimately and necessarily leads to improvement – and a profound misunderstanding of the Islamist Shariah agenda.

Mr. Gerecht thinks we in the West got so tired of killing one another in religious wars that we secularized ourselves and became democratic. The same can happen in Islam, even though “Islam hasn’t seen the sustained barbarism that plagued” Europe. This construction of history is faulty in two ways. This is not the way democracy developed in the West, and the history of Islam is not as sanitary as he implies.

As the outcome of religious wars in other civilizations has shown, alternative pathways to democracy were and are available. Secularism did not, as he suggests, bring forth liberal values – rather, liberal values produced secularism. The idea of freedom of conscience preceded secularism and was based on the very Christianity that he holds accountable for the killing. Also, the conception of a secular state is uniquely Christian.

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Obama embraces Islam – If Islamism is OK for Egypt, why not America?

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The Washington Times: h/t Iran Aware

The Obama administration is doing its utmost to promote the fortunes of the Islamist parties in Egypt. A State Department official declared that with the rise of these radical groups after the Arab Spring, “people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.” They see this as a victory. The problem is, so do the terrorists.

Last year, the White House began peddling the line that the uprisings in the Middle East were a repudiation of the al Qaeda model of seeking change through terrorism. The argument was that while America opposed violent extremism, the rise of nonviolent radical movements was just fine, and even commendable. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri quickly dismissed this claim, saying that from the terrorists’ point of view, it didn’t matter whether an Islamist victory came through violence or not. The means were unimportant except as they related to the end state: the imposition of hard-line Shariah-based laws and policies.

From Zawahri’s point of view, it makes no difference whether the caliphate is born of the ballot, bomb or bullet. The important thing is the victory of Islamism, which the White House also seems to endorse.

The notion that there is a legitimate form of Islamism reflects a serious intellectual failing on the part of the Obama administration. President Obama seems to believe the Islamists are legitimized simply by participating in the political process. Some argue that the demands of electoral politics will moderate the Islamist parties, whose members will evolve from stern-eyed theocrats into social reformers. Others believe the only path to modernity is through embracing the Muslim Brotherhood’s barbarous values.

No matter what the source of the delusion, no political movement that exalts the Koran can peaceably coexist with the concept of freedom at the root of Western governance. Islamist notions of democracy are constrained by the strictures of their religion. Radical Muslims reject the humanistic values that gave birth to modern Western government; the self-evident truths regarding everyone’s inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are just so much infidel heresy to the Islamists. There are no inalienable rights under political Islam, only submission to the will of Allah.

The Islamist parties in Egypt and elsewhere are promoting democracy simply as a means of consolidating their power. They see the process as a ratchet effect, with every gain they make as one more step toward erecting a Shariah-based theocracy. Increased power will not lead – and in fact, never has led – to moderation, but to further demands to implement their blueprint for Koranic rule. The model is the Iranian Revolution, in which a brief period of openness was followed by the ascent of Islamic hard-liners who snuffed out any hint of liberty and executed those who had the nerve to differ.

To anyone who believes in the Western concept of freedom, Islamism by its nature cannot be legitimate. The White House needs to answer the question: If Islamism is a legitimate political movement, should it come to America, and if so, how soon?

Sudanese Writer Al Haj Waraq Warns against the Rise of Islamists in Egypt

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h/t Sharia Awareness Action Network

Sudanese Writer Al-Hajj Warraq Warns Egypt about the Danger of the Rise of Islamists: “Arab Spring Countries Are Heading towards a Harsh Winter”