.... There is a great irony to this Western fretting over the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood will elbow aside more rational, secularist forces and take control in Egypt.
Because at various times in recent decades, the Brotherhood was exploited to precisely those ends - the quashing of secular political movements - by the very Western institutions and their Arab allies who now worry that it will come to power.
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood went on to become the most influential political Islamist group in the world. Its offshoots include Hamas in the Palestinian territories and many of the Islamic factions that emerged from the Afghan-Soviet War of 1979 to 1989, which the Brotherhood played a key role in. [Spiked] Read more [via National Secular Society]
