The Evils of the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi (C) speaks during a press conference in Cairo on Monday, June 18. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed victory in Egypt's first presidential election since Hosni Mubarak was ousted more than a year ago. Photo: EPA/AHMED KHALED.

Egypt’s longtime banned Muslim Brotherhood—the parent organization of nearly every subsequent Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda—has just won the nation’s presidency, in the name of its candidate, Muhammad Morsi. That apathy reigns in the international community, when once such news would have been deemed devastating, is due to the successful efforts of Muslim apologists and subversive agents in the West who portray the Brotherhood as “moderate Islamists”—irrespective that such a formulation is oxymoronic, since to be “Islamist,” to be a supporter of draconian Sharia, is by definition to be immoderate.

Obama administration officials naturally took it a step further, portraying the Brotherhood as “largely secular” and “pluralistic.”

Back in the real world, evidence that the Brotherhood is just another hostile Islamist group bent on achieving world domination through any means possible is overwhelming. Here are just three examples that recently surfaced, all missed by the Western media, and all exposing the Brotherhood as hostile to “infidels” (non-Muslims) in general, hostile to the Christians in their midst (the Copts) in particular, and on record calling on Muslims to lie and cheat during elections to empower Sharia:

Anti-Infidel: At a major conference supporting Muhammad Morsi—standing on a platform with a big picture of Morsi smiling behind him and with any number of leading Brotherhood figures, including Khairat el-Shater, sitting alongside—a sheikh went on a harangue, quoting Koran 9:12, a jihadi favorite, to portray all those Egyptians who do not vote for Morsi—the other half of Egypt, the secularists and Copts who voted for Shafiq—as “resisters of the Sharia of Allah,” and “infidel leaders” whom true Muslims must “fight” and subjugate.

The video of this sheikh was shown on the talk show of Egyptian commentator Hala Sarhan, who proceeded to exclaim “This is unbelievable! How is this talk related to the campaign of Morsi?!” A guest on her show correctly elaborated: “Note his [the sheikh's] use of the word ‘fight’—’fight the infidel leaders’ [Koran 9:12]; this is open incitement to commit violence against anyone who disagrees with them…. How can such a radical sheikh speak such words, even as [Brotherhood leaders like] Khairat el-Shater just sit there?” Nor did the Brotherhood denounce or distance itself from this sheikh’s calls to jihad and takfir.

Anti-Christian: It is precisely because of these sporadic outbursts of anti-infidel rhetoric that it is not farfetched to believe that Morsi himself, as some maintain, earlier boasted that he would “achieve the Islamic conquest (fath) of Egypt for the second time, and make all Christians convert to Islam, or else pay the jizya.”

Speaking of the minority Christian Copts of Egypt, in an article titled “The Muslim Brotherhood Asks Why Christians Fear Them?!” secularist writer Khaled Montasser, examining the Brotherhood’s own official documents and fatwas, shows exactly why. According to Montasser, in issue #56 of the Brotherhood journal The Call (al-da’wa), published in December 1980, prominent Brotherhood figure Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah al-Khatib decreed several anti-Christian measures, including the destruction of churches and the prevention of burying unclean Christian “infidels” anywhere near Muslim graves. Once again, this view was never retracted by the Brotherhood. As Montasser concludes, “After such fatwas, Dr. Morsi and his Brotherhood colleagues can ask and wonder—”Why are the Copts afraid?!”

Lying, Stealing, and Cheating to Victory: In a recent article titled “The Islamist Group’s Hidden Intentions,” appearing in Watani, author Youssef Sidhom exposes a document “which carries the logos of both the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party.” Written by Khairat el-Shater, the Deputy to the Supreme Guide, and addressed “to all the Brotherhood branches in the governorates,” the memo calls on Muslims to cheat, block votes, and “resort to any method that can change the vote” to ensure that Morsi wins, which, of course, he just did—amidst many accusations of electoral fraud. El-Shater concluded his memo by saying, “You must understand, brothers, that our interest lies wherever there is the Sharia of Allah, and this can only be by preserving the [MB] group and preserving Islam.”

In short, the Muslim Brotherhood has not changed; only Western opinion of it has. As it was since its founding in 1928, the group is committed to empowering and spreading Sharia law—a law that preaches hate for non-Muslim “infidels,” especially Islam’s historic nemesis, Christianity, and allows anything, from lying to cheating, to make Islam supreme. Now that the Brotherhood has finally achieved power, the world can prepare to see such aspects on a grand scale.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.