Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Says “Decisive Battle” Has Begun In Damascus…

The big question:  If/when Assad falls, will the Muslim Brotherhood come to power as they have in Egypt?  Christians in Syria tremble.  Weazel Zippers says: "Expect an Alawite/Christian bloodbath once the Sunni rebels overrun the Assad regime."   

Elizabeth Kendal, Christian researcher of worldwide persecution of Christians, says the media has given an entirely false story regarding Syria.   She reports:

SYRIA: CHRISTIANS' PLIGHT LOST UNDER MOUNTAIN OF PROPAGANDA

Without a doubt, the greatest lie being told about the Syrian conflict is that it is being waged by President Assad against 'the Syrian people'. This is pure propaganda. In December 2011, just three months into the crisis, the Qatar Foundation conducted a major poll inside Syria to assess the level of support for Assad. (This was before al-Qaeda and other international Salafi jihadists started flooding in, making the crisis worse.) As an advocate of regime change in Syria, Qatar was embarrassed by the results and so buried them. When eventually leaked, the results revealed that 55 percent of Syrians supported President Assad and 68 percent of Syrians disapproved of Arab League sanctions. This makes perfect sense, considering that religious minorities make up 25 percent of Syria's population (Christians are 10 percent) and at least one-third of all Sunni Muslims would be nominal or secular urbanites who likewise do not want to live in an Islamic State. So the main division in Syria is not between Assad and the rest, but between Sunni fundamentalists (including foreign Salafi jihadists) and the rest, i.e. the majority of Syrians.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI - "WILL MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SUCCEED WHERE OSAMA BIN LADEN FAILED?"

On issues related to Islam and jihad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is always important reading.  In her latest essay, she explains the "gradualist" strategy the Muslim Brotherhood is employing in Egypt and elsewhere.  She also describes what a country controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood looks like.   A few excerpts:

[...] Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces. Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. . .

Make no mistake: The Brotherhood are working to realize the vision summarized in their motto: "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Qur'an is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

A series of concrete goals derived from this motto used to be available on their website, though this is (perhaps not surprisingly) unavailable at the present time. Fortunately, some of the contents have been republished at http://mideastweb.org.. . .

JOEL ROSENBERG - ELBARADEI A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Joel Rosenberg, author of the 2009 book, Inside The Revolution has this to say about Mohamed ElBaradei:

Last week, few Westerners knew the name Mohamed ElBaradei. Today, this calm, genteel-sounding, Nobel laureate has suddenly emerged as the face of the protest movement in Egypt. But who is he really, and is he a force for genuine, positive change? The New York Times reported this morning that U.S. officials are trying to assess this very question.

At first glance, ElBaradei’s credentials suggest he could be a leader the West could support. Born to a middle-class family in Cairo in 1942, ElBaradei was largely educated in the West. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cairo, he went on to earn an advanced degree in Switzerland and later a Ph.D. in international law from New York University. He is fluent in English, French, and German, aside from his native Arabic. He lived in the U.S. for some fifteen years, and more recently has resided in Vienna. He has served in various capacities for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, as a United Nations diplomat, and as a speaker and lecturer in the U.S. and Europe.

However, the closer one looks at ElBaradei’s career and public statements, the more troubling the image becomes. Indeed, three clues tell us the answer is “no,” ElBaradei is not someone we can trust, and certainly not someone we want running Egypt. To the contrary, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and we must not let him gain power.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND THE EGYPTIAN UPRISING

Andy McCarthy, author of  The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America, and a man I respect for his knowledge of things Islamic, writes in a National Review Online article :

To this day, the Brotherhood’s motto remains, “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!”

Still, our see-no-Islamic-evil foreign-policy establishment blathers on about the Brotherhood’s purported renunciation of violence — and never you mind that, with or without violence, its commitment is, as Qaradawi puts it, to “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.”

McCarthy's article represents an important counter-balance to writers such as Bruce Riedel ("Don't fear Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood"), which McCarthy calls "the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt."   Read McCarthy to get the full scoop.

- George Weigle writes cogently, "Egypt's Coptic Christians Deserve a Word from President Obama."  Weigle says: