In fact, the Brothers’ bait-and-switch gambits are standard operating procedure for their secretive organization. After all, from the Muslim Brotherhood’s inception in Egypt in 1928, it has been a revolutionary organization committed to the imposition worldwide of a totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah.
The unattractiveness of that brutally repressive agenda to non-Muslims and even many Muslims, has forced the group to operate largely in the shadows. It wages a stealthy, pre-violent “civilization jihad” to advance its goals until circumstances are ripe for conquest via violent jihadism.
In the hope of attenuating the military’s opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood rise, the latter has utilized myriad subterfuges. In previous rounds of elections, the Brotherhood promised that it would not seek a parliamentary majority. Then, it did. It promised not to run a candidate for president. Then, it actually ran two of them.
As its power grew, the Brotherhood cynically abandoned others in the opposition in the hope of cutting deals with the junta that ruled Egypt following the overthrow of long-time U.S. ally, Hosni Mubarak: the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). When the SCAF cracked down on the eve of the second round of the presidential election, however, the Brothers were back in Tahrir Square making nice with those unlikely to fare well under shariah – Christians, secular liberals and women to whom Morsi’s soothing words are obviously intended to appeal.
Khairat Al Shater revealed one more gambit in his interview with the Journal. Mr. Kaminski quoted him as saying that “the priority is ‘a close partnership’ with the U.S. which the [Brotherhood] expects to help it unlock credit markets and gain international legitimacy.”
The Muslim Brotherhood appears to have a most willing partner for such purposes in President Obama and his administration. On the occasion of Mr. Obama’s first “outreach to the Muslim world” speech at Cairo’s al-Azhar University in June 2009, he insisted that Brotherhood operatives be in the audience. He threw Mubarak under the bus within a few days of demonstrations erupting in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt (in stark contrast to his indifference to far larger and longer-running ones in Iran).
What is more, since the first “Arab Spring” uprisings in February 2011, Team Obama has engaged with the Brotherhood extensively – both here and in the region – and signaled its willingness to do so in government. Notably, in April 2012, after the Brotherhood dominated parliamentary elections, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered the transfer of $1.5 billion in a lump-sum, no-strings-attached grant to Egypt.
The best hope for those who legitimately fear the Muslim Brotherhood and its unwavering – if only intermittently acknowledged – determination to impose shariah in Egypt may be for the military there to continue to resist pressure to yield power to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unfortunately, that pressure will be immense. It will emanate from, among others, the Obama administration. Team Obama’s support for the Brotherhood has become more and more aggressive, and reckless. In the process, it is empowering not only the most serious enemy of any hope for freedom in the Middle East, but avowed enemies of this country, as well.
The next shoe to drop in that regard may be a decision by President Obama to agree to a demand from Egyptian Islamists to free one oftheir most dangerous leaders, Omar Abdul Rahman, the notorious “Blind Sheikh” who ordered the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. That unrepentant terrorist subsequently tried to use his attorney, Lynne Stewart, to communicate from federal prison an order to his followers to conduct still further, murderous jihadist acts.
Abdul Rahman’s return to Cairo – a jihadist triumph that would likely make the Islamists’ rapture at the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979 pale by comparison – has been urged most recently during high-level meetings in Washington by Hani Nour Eldin. Eldin is a member of the Blind Sheikh’s designated terrorist organization, Gama’a al-Islamiyya. An incredulous House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) has written HomelandSecurity Secretary Janet Napolitano asking why such a dangerous individual was granted a visa by the Obama administration and for her position on the release Abdul Rahman.
Subterfuge, subversion and sedition in the name of shariah are the tradecraft of the Muslim Brotherhood. Team Obama’s enabling of the Brothers’ ascendancy in Egypt and its embrace of their operatives and those of other Islamist organizations in this country (see www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) is, if not actually illegal, certainly dangerous in the extreme.