Vincent J. Curtis
12 Jan 15
From the Wikipedia entry for the Muslim Brotherhood:
The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمين), shortened to the Muslim Brotherhood (الإخوان المسلمون al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn), is a transnational Islamist organization which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.[1][2][3][4] The motto of the Brotherhood was traditionally "Believers are but Brothers". That was expanded into a five-part slogan: "God is our objective; the Qur'an is the Constitution; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of God is our wish."[5] It began as a Pan-Islamic, religious, and social movement. The Muslim Brotherhood had an estimated two million members by the end of World War II.[6][7] Evidence of its vast influence was clear, with more than 2,000 branches all over the country and 2,000 societies for charity and social services. It ran health clinics, sports clubs, schools and other educational institutes, mosques and Islamic centres, and had a presence of 10,000 army volunteers in Palestine.[8] Its ideas had gained supporters throughout the Arab world and influenced other Islamist groups with its "model of political activism combined with Islamic charity work".[9] In 2012, it became the first democratically elected political party in Egypt, but it is considered a terrorist organization by the governments of Bahrain,[10][11] Egypt, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.[12][13][14][15] However, the Brotherhood insists it is a peaceful organization, pointing to its democratic elections, and has consistently renounced violence.[16][17] Its top leader is on record as saying that the group "condemns violence and violent acts".[18]
The Brotherhood's stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community ... and state."[19] The movement officially renounced political violence in 1949, after a period of considerable political tension which ended in the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha by a young veterinary student who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.[20][21][22]
The Muslim Brotherhood is financed by contributions from its members, who are required to allocate a portion of their income to the movement. Some of these contributions are from members who work in Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries.[23]
The Muslim Brotherhood lives in Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada. It is found in several Muslim
associations in Hamilton. One tell that
these organizations are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood by their rhetoric,
and by their characteristics of deception when appealing to western
audiences.
The dangers that the Muslim Brotherhood presents to
western civilization has been reported on by former United States prosecutor
and writer Andrew McCarthy. It was
McCarthy who first made me aware of the characteristic style of argument used
by Muslim Brotherhood organizations.
McCarthy points out that the final end of the imposition of Sharia
law throughout the world is the same for the Muslim Brotherhood as it is for
al-Qaeda and ISIS; the differences are merely ones of tactics.
According to McCarthy, ISIS is the living, breathing
embodiment of Islam, and that condemnations of terrorist acts in the west are “unIslamic”
or “do not represent Islam,” are false on their face. McCarthy is able to quote chapter and verse
from the Koran and other Islamic texts that the violence the west deplores is
absolutely in the mainstream of Islam.
Since the difference between ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is not one
of aim but of methods, anything published by the Muslim Brotherhood to defend
the Muslim community from a backlash in the west will condemn tactics but not
aim; and while the acts themselves may be condemned, the Muslim who perpetrated
them are not morally condemned as unIslamic, heretics, or the like.
In an article that appears in the Hamilton Spectator dated
10 Jan 15, a person who might as well be
a member of the Muslim Brotherhood published an article trying to protect the
Muslim community from a backlash from the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The basic technique used by the author is to
appear to separate the Muslim community from the Charlie Hebdo killers, to say
that Islam and the Muslim community is not a nest of aggressive murderers, and
to call upon the best spirit of toleration in the western community not to
visit revenge on Muslims.
In detail, the argument runs as follows: after a long
passage describing an event in the life of Mohammed, the author draws the
conclusion that what the Charlie Hebdo killers did was not what Mohammed would
have wanted. This is a clever deception. In Hadith Book 38, No. 4348 Mohammed held
that there was no punishment for murdering someone who insults him. Mohammed did not order the killing of the
person who insulted him, but neither did he punish those who killed without his
prompting. A fine distinction between
what Mohammed would want and what he would punish was drawn by the author that
would escape a western audience.
The second characteristic point of Muslim Brotherhood argumentation,
which follows from the above, is that the act of killing is condemned, but the
killers themselves are not, because they killed either to advance the cause of
Islam or to revenge their prophet.
"What the three Paris gunmen did to the Charlie Hebdo head editor
and cartoonists was, undeniably, wrong.” Nowhere, however, are the three
Muslims who killed also two policemen and later a policewoman, themselves
written of in a morally condemnatory way.
And that is because of Hadith 38:4348.
The killers are not said to be unIslamic or heretics.
Having seemingly condemned the three Muslims killers, the
author turns to the wrongful pain inflicted upon Muslims by western media
outlets that republished the cartoons which were the proximate cause of the Charlie
Hebdo massacre. The author was educated
in Canada, and he ought to realize that republishing the
insulting cartoons would be the natural reaction of westerners, a
characteristic act of defiance on their part.
He ought to be more understanding of it, as something westerners will
get over once the emotion is spent. But
he is not understanding. He criticized
those few defiant media outlets who republished the offending cartoons as
imposing a collective punishment on the Muslim community for the acts of a
few. This is a characteristic position
of the Muslim Brotherhood: to uphold the cause of the violent Muslims while
poo-pooing their methods.
Next, the author calls upon westerners to act in
characteristically western ways: to be bigger than killers. To uphold the right thing. To be morally upright in upholding principles
of respect for each other’s opinions and beliefs, which are held sacred,
regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity, or creed.
The principle of respect of others does not apply to
Islam. Under Sharia law, which is what
the Muslim Brotherhood believes in, Christians and Jews hold a third class
legal status called dhimmitude (Koran 9:29).
Second class legal status applies to Muslim women. Christians and Jews are allowed to live under
Sharia law provided they pay a tax called the jizya. A Christian or a Jew
is tolerated upon the payment of money, not because of any inherent human
right.
The author then tells this whopper: “Muslims also cherish
the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, as universal rights
of all mankind.”
That this is absolutely false is proven by the fact that
in a couple of paragraphs earlier the author condemned the republication of the Charlie
Hebdo cartoons. This whole episode began
by the publication of cartoons in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten in 2006,
and the cartoonist and that magazine were the objects of violence by Muslims in Denmark. Muslims believe in freedom
of the press and freedom of expression so long as what the press publishes and
the opinions expressed are favorable to Islam.
The world-wide campaign that the Muslim community has waged for
blasphemy laws is proof that Islam today is opposed to free speech and freedom
of expression, as those concepts are understood in the West.
One cannot let go of the utter deception where the author uses the expression "our Jewish brothers." (Note he could not bring himself to say brother and sisters.) The Islamic holy book Sahil al-Bukhari Vol 4, Book 56, Verse 791 contains the passage, "Oh Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!" Similar passages appear in Book 52 Verse 176 and 177. Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organization that runs Gaza, holds these passages are articles of faith in its charter. References to Jews being apes appear in the Koran. Thus if the author holds Jews to be his brothers, he is not speaking on behalf of the faith of Muslims, when eariler he held himself to be an expert in Islam.
The author finishes his piece by recounting, as a
statement of self-pity, all the insults suffered by Muslims in France. (The
world is angry at us for 9/11, for Osama bin Laden, for Boko Haram, for
ISIS.) Then concludes with this sinister
passage: “Does the further inflaming Muslim sensitivities in the name of our
universal freedoms make the situation better or make us a better civilization?” In short, you westerners can have your
freedoms so long as they do not offend us.
Since Muslim civilization is held to be distinctly different from
western civilization, the passage about the West being a better civilization is
entirely fatuous.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document
founded entirely upon the principles of western civilization. Not a particle of it would survive under a
regime of Sharia law.
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