The Muslim Brothers and the subversion of the West

The slow undermining of western values by the MB and its associates must be contained.

By NEVILLE TELLER
Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo 370 (photo credit: Mohamed Abd el-Ghany/Reuters)
Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo 370
(photo credit: Mohamed Abd el-Ghany/Reuters)
Who could have predicted that a little-reported civil disturbance in Tunisia just before Christmas 2010 would have produced results as cataclysmic as those we have been living through?  The ousting of Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 set the spark to the tinder box and then, like an uncontrollable forest fire, popular action spread with extraordinary speed across the Middle East and North Africa.
The so-called “Arab Spring” has demonstrated that the causes of popular disaffection among the Arab masses run deep and, incidentally, that the Israeli-Palestinian problem is largely irrelevant to them. They are concerned to free themselves from the shackles of repression, human rights abuses, state censorship, and the other trammels of the dictatorships or absolute monarchies under which most of them exist.
Yet out of all this turmoil in the Arab world, one clear winner is emerging − the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). In both the parliamentary and the presidential elections held in Egypt following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak the MB won decisive victories, and President Mohammed Morsi became the first Islamist head-of-state of an Arab country. He was not in office long before he moved decisively to emasculate the body that had effectively ruled Egypt and was seeking to retain a degree of power – the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The Brotherhood’s grip on the reins of power in Egypt is now tight.
Other Middle Eastern rulers may well be considering their own situations in relation to the MB, because it isn’t just in Egypt that the group operates. It spans the Middle East and even includes contingents in Libya and Tunisia. It is active in Jordan; Hamas in Gaza is an MB organisation; MB has the support of Islamist Turkey; in Syria the MB-funded Tawhid Brigade is actively combating Bashar al Assad’s military forces in Aleppo. Qatar and its world-wide media empire, Al-Jazeera, are firm supporters.
Nor do the MB’s activities and influence end in the Middle East. Political author Lorenzo Vidino has demonstrated how since the early 1960s, MB members and sympathisers have “moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organised network of mosques, charities and Islamic organisations”. The organization also has active branches in the United States.
Why should this steady expansion of influence and activity by the MB concern the Western world?
The answer lies in the basic aims and purposes of the Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Sunni-Muslim Hassan al-Banna.  Al-Banna declared quite simply: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” As a start, he wrote that the Islamic flag must be raised again in the territories once ruled by Islam. “Thus Andalusia (Spain), Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the islands of the Mediterranean…must return to the embrace of Islam.”
Seeking to bring about this Islamic aspiration through political means, the MB’s motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. And death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our ambitions.”
And the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood are boundless. They are to create situations within states which allow Sharia law to be imposed, and then to work towards   expanding and uniting them. World domination, in short. In striving towards this objective the organisation has demonstrated ruthlessness as well as patience, supported terrorism as well as democratic political action.
Vidino points out that the MB’s success in Europe would not have been possible “had European élites been more vigilant … and understood the motivations of those financing and building these Islamist organizations.”   He believes that Europeans have come to fear the accusation of racism. Quoting Professor Bassam Tibi, a Syrian working in Germany, he writes:  “Radicals in sheep's clothing have learned that they can silence almost everybody with the accusation of xenophobia. Any criticism of MB-linked organizations is followed by outcries of racism and anti-Muslim persecution.”
And so the Western world seems to be sleep-walking towards, if not positively embracing, the elimination of its own cherished freedoms and way of life. Politicians and opinion-formers seem not to care that the MB is infiltrating democratic Western countries and piggy-backing on the Arab Spring to increase its power and influence in the Middle East.
One organization that does seem to realize the danger of the MB and that has devised a strategy aimed at countering the slow creep of Islamism, is the "Friends of Israel Initiative" (FII), founded by former president of Spain, José María Aznar. The body was formed in 2010 with the purpose of ending the delegitimization of Israel on the world stage, primarily because its distinguished members believe Israel to be an integral part of the West, and as such they conclude that the weaker Israel is the weaker the entire West will be perceived to be.
“Judeo-Christian values form the roots of our civilization,” said José Maria Aznar at the launch of the FII in the United States. “Delegitimising Israel undermines our identity … Defending Israel today means strengthening the West.”
Their message needs to be heeded. Israel is the exposed vanguard of the West. The lackluster support of Israel by the Western world must be halted, if the slow undermining of our values by the MB and its associates is be contained and reversed.
The writer is the author of “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” (2011) and blogs at “A Mid-East Journal” (www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com)