.... "The Islamist presence has for decades justified the West's acceptance of the worst dictatorships in the Arab world. And it was these very regimes that demonized their Islamist opponents ...."
Well, let's see. Which were the worst dictatorships in the Arab world that demonized their Islamist opponents? Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt; Algeria's military junta; Syria and Iraqi Ba'thist regimes? None of them were Western-backed.
What countries were Western-backed? Saudi Arabia, which gave refuge to Islamists including many members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; Jordan, whose government often worked with Islamists; Lebanon, where Islamists could operate freely. [American Thinker] Read more
Whither the Muslim Brotherhood? Even as the mass demonstrations began in Tunisia, who would have thought that Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime would have collapsed so quickly? Who could have predicted that Egypt would soon witness such unprecedented popular protest? A barrier has fallen. Nothing will be the same again. It is quite likely that other countries will follow the lead of Egypt, given its central and symbolic significance. But what will be the role of the Islamists after the collapse of the dictatorships?
The Islamist presence has for decades justified the West’s acceptance of the worst dictatorships in the Arab world. And it was these very regimes that demonized their Islamist opponents, particularly Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which historically represents that country’s first well-organized mass movement with the political influence to match. [The New York Times] Read more
Grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder whitewashes Muslim Brotherhood in New York Times The French journalist Caroline Fourest has published a book-length study of Tariq Ramadan's sly duplicity, Brother Tariq.
Fourest concludes that this much-lionized putative Muslim Martin Luther is actually anything but a reformer: in reality, Ramadan is "remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage" toward the imposition of Islamic law in the West. [Jihad Watch] Read more
