What the Muslim Brotherhood Tells The West It Wants Versus What It Really Wants

By Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist —— Bio and Archives February 10, 2011

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

The New York Times ran an op-ed column today entitled “What the Muslim Brothers Want.” Its author is Essam El-Errian, a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whom the Times described in a prior article as the council’s “lone ‘reformist.’” This appears to be the same Muslim Brotherhood member who reportedly met with Frank Wisner, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, recently at the U.S. embassy in Cairo during Mr. Wisner’s fact-finding mission on behalf of the Obama administration.

El-Errian tries to paint a moderate portrait of the Muslim Brotherhood as a peace-loving group that

stands firmly behind the demands of the Egyptian people as a whole

Don’t be fooled. This lone ‘reformist’ is engaging in the time-honored Muslim tradition of lying about their own faith to conceal its true nature – a practice known as taqiyya. Let’s start with the claim to a history of non-violence. El-Errian asserts:

Our principles, clearly stated since the inception of the movement in 1928, affirm an unequivocal position against violence.

Hamas, a violent terrorist organization, is the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have endorsed suicide bombing as part of jihad. A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam last week that

the [Egyptian] people should be prepared for war against Israel

You see, the Muslim Brotherhood has created a vast loophole to its profession of non-violence. Going to war with a country that has been at peace with Egypt for thirty years or sanctioning suicide bombings that kill innocent women and children is not violence in their perverted world – it is the ‘resistance’ of freedom fighters. In the words of El-Errian’s boss, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Muhammad Badie: More...