Archive for February, 2010

ISLAM, DEMOCRACY & THE USA

پایه و اساس کوردوبا

In spite of it being both a perennial anda complex debate, Arches Quarterly reexamines from theological and practicalgrounds, the important debate about the relationship and compatibility between Islam and Democracy, as echoed in Barack Obama’s agenda of hope and change. Whilst many celebrate Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office as a national catharsis for the US, othersremain less optimistic of a shift in ideologyand approach in the international arena.While much of the tension and distrust between the Muslim world and the USA canbe attributed to the approach of promotingdemocracy, typically favoring dictatorshipsand puppet regimes that pay lip-service todemocratic values and human rights, the aftershockof 9/11 has truly cemented the misgivingsfurther through America’s position onpolitical Islam. It has created a wall of negativityas found by worldpublicopinion.org,according to which 67% of Egyptians believethat globally America is playing a “mainlynegative” role.America’s response has thus been apt. Byelecting Obama, many around the world arepinning their hopes for developing a less belligerent,but fairer foreign policy towards theMuslim world. Th e test for Obama, as we discuss,is how America and her allies promote democracy. Will it be facilitating or imposing?علاوه بر این, can it importantly be an honestbroker in prolonged zones of conflicts?

MB goes Rural

حسام Tammam

The May 2008 elections of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau show that the grouphas undergone a major transformation. The Muslim Brotherhood used to be an urban group inits membership and style of management. Now its cultural patterns and loyalties are taking ona rural garb. As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood is losing the clarity of direction and methodit once had.Over the past few years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been infused with rural elements. Itstone is becoming more and more patriarchal, and its members are showing their superiors thekind of deference associated with countryside traditions. You hear them referring to their topofficials as the “uncle hajj “, “the big hajj “, “our blessed one”, “the blessed man of ourcircle”, “the crown on our heads”, etc. Occasionally, they even kiss the hands and heads of thetop leaders. Not long ago, a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian kissed the hand of thesupreme guide in public.These patterns of behaviour are new to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that emerged andoperated mostly in an urban context. The new ways of speech and behaviour, which I willrefer to as the “ruralisation” of the Muslim Brotherhood, have affected every aspect of thegroup’s internal operations. In its recent elections, the Muslim Brotherhood maintained a tightlid of secrecy, offered the public contradictory information, and generally seemed to beoperating with little regard for established procedure.The Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council elections emphasised ritual over order. The mainconcern of the Brotherhood, throughout the recent elections, seemed to be with maintainingan aura of respect for the leadership and getting the rank-and- file to offer unquestioningloyalty to top officials.A system of secondary loyalties has emerged inside the Muslim Brotherhood, in nearindependence from all considerations of institutional work. Entire geographical areas, indeedentire governorates, are now viewed as political fiefdoms pertaining to one MuslimBrotherhood leader or another. Muslim Brotherhood members would refer to a certain city orgovernorate as being the turf of certain individuals.Duplicity, another trait of rural communities, is also rampant. Feigned allegiance is common,with members saying one thing in private and another in public. As is the custom in thecountryside, deference to authority is often coupled with resistance to change. As a result,you’d see members pretending to listen to their Muslim Brotherhood superiors while payinglittle or no attention to what they say. Many of the new ideas put forward by MuslimBrotherhood leaders have been ignored, or at least diluted and then discarded.When a Brotherhood member comes up with a new idea, the Muslim Brotherhood leadershipreacts as if that member spoke out of order. Self- criticism is increasingly being frowned uponand the dominant thinking within the Brotherhood is becoming traditionalist andunquestioning.The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in recruiting teachers and professors. But most ofthe new recruits are rural in their culture and understanding of public life. Despite theirscholarly pedigree, many of the academics that have joined the Brotherhood are parochial intheir understanding of the world. The Muslim Brotherhood has nearly 3,000 universityprofessors in its ranks, and few or any of those are endowed with the habit of critical thinking.They may be academics, but they are no visionaries.In the recent Muslim Brotherhood elections, five members of the group’s Shura Council wonseats in the Guidance Bureau. Most of those were either from rural areas or people with apronounced rural lifestyle. Four were from the countryside, including Saadeddin El-Husseinifrom Sharqiya, Mohamed Hamed from Mahala Al-Kobra, Saadeddin El-Katatni from Minya.Only one was from a metropolitan centre: Osama Nasr from Alexandria.Over the past decade or so, most of the newcomers to the Guidance Bureau were from thecountryside: Mahmoud Hussein from Assiut, Sabri Arafa El-Komi from Daqahliya, andMohamed Mursi from Sharqiya. Rural governorates, such as Assiut, Minya, Daqahliya andSharqiya, are now in control of much of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially middle-rankingposts, while Cairo and Alexandria have seen their status gradually erode. The Brotherhoodleadership is encouraging the trend, for rural people are less prone to challenging theirleaders.There was a time when the Muslim Brotherhood appealed mainly to an urban audience. Butsince the late 1980s things have changed. Due to the long-running confrontation with theregime, the Muslim Brotherhood has found it harder to recruit urban supporters. Also, the lackof innovation in Muslim Brotherhood ways has turned off many city dwellers. Instead ofjoining the Muslim Brotherhood, the young and disgruntled, as well as those seeking spiritualsalvation, have joined the Salafi current or become followers of the country’s new breed ofwell- spoken televangelists. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has mostly abandonedreligious propagation in favour of politics may have accelerated this trend.What the Muslim Brotherhood has to offer is something that city dwellers don’t really need.The Muslim Brotherhood offers an alternative family, a cloning of the village communitywith its personalised support system. This is something that appeals best to new arrivals fromthe countryside, to people who miss the stability and comfort of a traditional community.The attraction of countryside people to the Muslim Brotherhood over the past two decadescoincided with the disintegration of the extended family and the weakening of communal ties.Moreover, the Westernisation of city life may have pushed many people with a ruralbackground into seeking a moral and social refuge in the Muslim Brotherhood.In universities, the Muslim Brotherhood attracts newcomers to the cities rather than originalcity dwellers. It is more successful in recruitment among students in Al-Azhar University thanin other universities, and more successful in rural governorates than in Cairo and Alexandria.Following the 1952 Revolution, Egypt as a whole underwent a wave of ruralisation. But eventhen, the Muslim Brotherhood focussed its recruitment on people with an urban lifestyle. Fiftyyears ago, the Muslim Brotherhood recruited mostly among the sons of governmentemployees, teachers, and generally the white-collared class. Egypt’s countryside was notwelcoming to the Muslim Brotherhood or its outlook. Now, the Muslim Brotherhood hasgone so conventional that it is gaining ground in the countryside.The Muslim Brotherhood can run effective campaigns and even win elections in many areasin Egypt’s countryside. Yet, it is my belief that the countryside is affecting the MuslimBrotherhood more than the Muslim Brotherhood is affecting it.In Hassan El-Banna’s time, Muslim Brotherhood leaders were mostly urban in their ways:Hassan El-Hodeibi, Omar El-Telmesani, Hassan Ashmawi, Mounir Dallah, Abdel-QaderHelmi and Farid Abdel Khaleq. Even in the countryside, top Muslim Brotherhood memberswere known for their urban lifestyle: Mohamed Hamed Abul- Naser and Abbas Al-Sisi, forexample.By contrast, the new breed of Muslim Brotherhood leaders is rural in its ways. This goes evenfor Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood leaders including Mohamed Mursi, Saad El-Katatni,Saad Al-Husseini and Sabri Arafa El-Komi. And the Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide,مهدی عاکف, is more rural in his leadership style than his predecessor, مأمون آل Hodeibi.

Political Islam Gaining Ground

مایکل. طولانی

characteristics of the democratic order. Their newly-discovered acceptance of elections andparliamentary processes results not least from a gradual democratisation of the formerlyauthoritarian regimes these groups had fought by terrorist means even in their home countries.The prime example of this development is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which started out as acharitable social movement and has now become the most powerful political opposition force inEgypt.Founded in the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest Islamic organisation of the Arabworld today. Following the ideas of its founder Al-Banna, it intended to return to a state of ‘trueIslam’, i.e. to return to the way of life of the early Islamic congregation at the time of theProphet, and to establish a community of social justice. This vision was increasingly viewed as acounterweight to the Western social model that was marked by secularisation, moral decay, andgreed. During World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood even founded a secret military arm, whoseactivities, با این حال, were uncovered, leading to the execution of Mr Al-Banna by Egypt’s secretpolice

In the Shadow of the Brothers

Omayma عبد اللطیف

In September 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt released its fi rst politicalparty platform draft. Among the heavily criticized clauses was one that deniedwomen (and Copts) the right to be head of state. “Duties and responsibilities assumed by the head of state, such as army commanding, are in contradictionwith the socially acceptable roles for women,” the draft stated. In previousBrotherhood documents there was no specifi c mention of the position of headof state; rather, they declared that women were allowed to occupy all postsexcept for al-imama al-kubra, the position of caliph, which is the equivalentof a head of state in modern times. Many were surprised that despite severalprogressive moves the Brotherhood had made in previous years to empowerwomen, it ruled out women’s right to the country’s top position.Although the platform was only a fi rst draft, the Muslim Brotherhood’s banon women in Egypt’s top offi ce revived old, but serious, questions regardingthe Islamist movement’s stand on the place and role of the “Sisters” inside themovement. The Brotherhood earlier had taken an advanced position concerningwomen, as refl ected in its naming of women candidates for parliamentaryand municipal elections in 2000, 2005, و 2007, as well as the growingnumbers of women involved in Brotherhood political activities, such as streetprotests and elections. Although the platform recognizes women as key politicalactors, it was considered a retreat from the movement’s advanced positionin some earlier electoral platforms.

Palestine Question and Islamic Movement

اعظم تمیمی

The top leadership of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood (برادر) in the Gaza Strip heldan emergency meeting on the evening of Wednesday 9 دسامبر 1987 to deliberate what todo a day after the Palestinian uprising (انتفاضه) erupted. The eruption was ignited by the coldbloodedmurder of several Palestinian laborers at the hands of an Israeli army trailer driver. Theseven men, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, دکتر. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, یکی Shihadah, Abd Al-FattahDukhan, Muhammad Shamah, Ibrahim Al-Yazuri and Isa Al-Nashar, took the historic decision totransform the Ikhwan organization in Palestine into a resistance movement that was called Harakatal-Muqawamah Al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Resistance Movement) known from then on by theacronym HAMAS.Although the decision was triggered by the unplanned simultaneous popular uprising, SheikhYassin and his comrades had been preparing for that eventuality for many years. They had for toolong been detached from the earlier history of the movement when it was best known for puttingup the most credible resistance to the Zionists who founded the Jewish state on land taken from thePalestinians by force in 1948.Intended to be a comprehensive reform movement, the Ikhwan was originally Egyptian buthas since its inception grown into a global network. The mother organization was founded byHassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) in the Egyptian town of Al-Ismailiyah in 1928 where he taught at aprimary school not far from the headquarters of the British occupation troops’ garrison. Combiningelements of spirituality acquired from his association with the Hasafiyah Sufi order with thepristine monotheistic teachings of Islam learned inside the Salafi school of Muhammad RashidRida (1865-1935) – a disciple and close associate of Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), Al-Banna’sproject had a great popular appeal. Soon after its birth, the Ikhwan movement grew rapidly withinEgypt and beyond it. Inside Egypt, it had four branches in 1929, 15 که در 1932, 300 by 1938 and morethan 2000 که در 1948. By 1945, it had half a million active members in Egypt alone. Between 1946 and1948, Ikhwan branches were opened in Palestine, Sudan, Iraq and Syria.

The Brotherhood’s Dilemma

مارک لینچ

The question of the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) realattitudes toward democracy has rarely been of moreintense interest to American foreign policy. Despiterecent electoral setbacks for the Islamic Action Frontin Jordan and the Moroccan Party of Justice andDemocracy, Islamist electoral success (the Brotherhoodin Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, the AKP in Turkey) hasthrown into sharp relief the dilemma posed for theUnited States by promoting democracy: Free electionsin today’s Arab world are likely to produce Islamistvictors.

The Egyptian government and many Egyptian skeptics alike accuse the MB of lying about its democratic commitments and working within the system in order to overthrow it. Inevitably, the specter is raised of an organization that would, in effect, subscribe to the position “One man, one vote, one time”—and which, if given the opportunity, would impose a despotic religious law over an unwilling population. If this alarming picture were shown to be accurate, then many Americans would back away from promoting democracy—as the United States has, indeed, done over the last year and a half .

The Draft Party Platform of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

In the late summer 2007, amid great anticipation from Egypt’s ruling elite and opposition movements, the Muslim Brotherhood distributed the first draft of a party platform to a group of intellectuals and analysts. The platform was not to serve as a document for an existing political party or even one about to be founded: the Brotherhood remains without legal recognition in Egypt and Egypt’s rulers and the laws they have enacted make the prospect of legal recognition for a Brotherhood-founded party seem distant. But the Brotherhood’s leadership clearly wished to signal what sort of party they would found if allowed to do so.

With the circulation of the draft document, the movement opened its doors to discussion and even contentious debate about the main ideas of the platform, the likely course of the Brotherhood’s political role, and the future of its relationship with other political forces in the country.1 In this paper, we seek to answer four questions concerning the Brotherhood’s

party platform:

The Muslim Brotherhood in Pursuit of Legal Existence and Intellectual Development in Egypt

Manar Hassan

In the wake of the devastating earthquake that trembled the congested capital of Egyptand its neighboring cities in October of 1992, the Private Voluntary Organizations – dominatedby Islamists – managed to considerably lead the relief efforts within hours, leaving theincumbent regime afflicted with its bureaucratic inefficiencies. The government’s ownlimitations in providing the type of crucial operative services at time of mayhem is a mereexample of its declining credibility among the masses. علاوه بر این, its response to this publicembarrassment was even more austere – passing a decree to ban any direct relief efforts by thePVOs therefore forcing all aid to materialize through the government only. But withgovernmental impediments still looming, the regime struggled to meet the needs of the victimsin time which led to riots and posed as a mere reminder of the incessant exasperation thatEgyptians have faced in their recent history. Hence, it became apparent that Mubarak’sattempts to salvage his image in order to corroborate his grip on power had by and largealienated vital forces within Egypt’s civil society.The civil society has, therefore, been a crucial source through which oppositionists –predominantly the Muslim Brotherhood – derive the power of popular appeal. Being one of thelargest and most influential oppositionist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood cuts acrossestranged social structures such as the modern working class, the urban poor, the young, and thenew middle class, which form a support base. Some of the most prominent Brotherhoodmembers themselves pertain to the new middle class and therefore network through al-niqabatal-mihaniyyah (Professional Associations). One example is Dr. Ahmad el-Malt, who was theformer Deputy Supreme Guide to the Brotherhood and also President of the Doctors’ syndicateprior to his death

The Muslim Brotherhood in Belgium

استیو Merley,
تحلیلگر ارشد

The Global Muslim Brotherhood has been present in Europe since 1960 when SaidRamadan, the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, founded a mosque in Munich.1 Since that time,Brotherhood organizations have been established in almost all of the EU countries, as well asnon-EU countries such as Russia and Turkey. Despite operating under other names, some ofthe organizations in the larger countries are recognized as part of the global MuslimBrotherhood. For example, the Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (UOIF) isgenerally regarded as part of the Muslim Brotherhood in France. The network is alsobecoming known in some of the smaller countries such as the Netherlands, where a recentNEFA Foundation report detailed the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country.2Neighboring Belgium has also become an important center for the Muslim Brotherhood inEurope. A 2002 report by the Intelligence Committee of the Belgian Parliament explainedhow the Brotherhood operates in Belgium:“The State Security Service has been following the activities of the InternationalMuslim Brotherhood in Belgium since 1982. The International MuslimBrotherhood has had a clandestine structure for nearly 20 years. The identityof the members is secret; they operate in the greatest discretion. They seek tospread their ideology within the Islamic community of Belgium and they aimin particular at the young people of the second and third generation ofimmigrants. In Belgium as in other European countries, they try to take controlof the religious, اجتماعی, and sports associations and establish themselves asprivileged interlocutors of the national authorities in order to manage Islamicaffairs. The Muslim Brotherhood assumes that the national authorities will bepressed more and more to select Muslim leaders for such management and,in this context, they try to insert within the representative bodies, individualsinfluenced by their ideology.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and the concept of Democracy

رضوان زیاده

The relation between the Syrian state and Islam, as represented in its governmental or non governmental establishments or through the discourses of the people who believe in the role of religion in people’s lives, goes back to a period previous to Syria political independence in 1946.1 Since then, the religious institutions existed in Syria have developed and been affected by the nature of their relation with the different government establishments according to the political party in power.Since it came to rule in 1963, the Ba’ath Party has adopted a secular stance, though not necessarily opposed to religion, and when President Hafiz al Assad came to power in 1970, he aimed to incorporate the religious movement to a great extent, because he believed that by doing so he could gain the trust of the Sunni population, who make up the majority in Syria. بدین ترتیب, he extended his hand to the religious scholars, and took every opportunity to show his respect for them and his concern for their causes, and gave several highranking Islamic figures seats in the People’s Assembly appointed in 1971, including the Mufti of the Republic, Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, and the Mufti of Aleppo, Sheikh Mohammed Al Hakim2. Assad was generally striving for widening the ground for his rule, so he restructured the political framework on new foundations, which differed from the original structure when the Ba’ath party had come to power in 1963.

ابتکار اخوان المسلمین به عنوان یک برنامه اصلاحات

در ماه مارس 3, 2004, آقای. مهدی عاکف, رهبر و راهنمای اخوان المسلمین راه اندازی طرح اخوان برای شرکت در اصلاحات دموکراتیک موعود, ارائه اخوان به عنوان یک جناح سیاسی که بداند خود را صالح به شرکت. اخوان المسلمین خود را ارائه – به طور طبیعی – در بهترین نور ممکن, که حق همه است. و در ماه مه 8, 2004, دکتر. عصام آریایی, چهره برجسته اخوان همچنین با توجه به حضور خود شناخته شده در ایستگاه ماهواره ای مصر محلی, رویای تلویزیون, گفت که این ابتکار جامع است, برنامه کامل برای به زودی تبدیل اخوان به یک party.Democracy سیاسی, در مفهوم لیبرال آن, معنی حکومت مردم, وضع قوانین برای خود با توجه به شرایط خود. این کار نه تنها به معنای انتخابات. از همه مهمتر, و به ذخیره کردن پایه برای انتخابات, دموکراسی یک نظام کثرت گرایانه که شهروندان را تضمین است’ آزادی های عمومی و خصوصی, بخصوص آزادی بیان و عقیده. همچنین حقوق بشر خود را تضمین می کند, به ویژه آزادی مذهب. این آزادی مطلق هستند, بدون هیچ گونه محدودیت یا نظارت. نظام دموکراتیک اجازه می دهد تا تغییر مسالمت آمیز قدرت در جامعه است و در تفکیک قوا بر اساس. قوه قضائیه, بخصوص, باید کاملا مستقل باشد. دموکراسی اتخاذ اقتصاد بازار آزاد است که بر روی رقابت مبتنی بر, و تشویق می کند که ابتکارات فردی. دموکراسی در کانال های dialgoue و درک مسالمت آمیز در میان شهروندان بر اساس. در برخورد با درگیری های محلی و بین المللی, آنها جلوگیری از گزینه نظامی را به عنوان آنجا که ممکن است. همراه با کسانی که به دموکراسی اعتقاد, آن مواجه ذهنیت تروریسم و ​​دگماتیسم بنیادگرا خشونت. دموکراسی علیه اندیشههای مطلق که ادعا می کنند خود حقیقت مطلق, و دفاع از اصول نسبیتی و کثرت گرا. با انجام این کار, آنها را فراهم همه ادیان حق به آن فعال باشد با خیال راحت, به جز نظرات است که با هدف مصادره آزادی یا خود را در احزاب دیگر با توسل به زور یا خشونت تحمیل. بنابراین دموکراسی با دین آزاد از انحصار یک تفسیر یا یک خلاصه sect.In نگران, دموکراسی یک گروه از اقدامات قانونی و حقوقی برای جامعه ای که بشر پس از سابقه ای طولانی در درگیری رسیده به اصلاح مقامات که در آن شخصیت های مذهبی بتوانند اراده خود را تحمیل نمی باشد. مقامات مذهبی از theauthorities از دولت جدا و منفصل شدند, برای تضمین بی طرفی دولت نسبت به همه ادیان. این چیزی است که اجازه می دهد تا برای آزادی دین و عقیده, و آزادی عبادت برای همه در آزادی کامل و برابری. این به جلوگیری از جنگ به نام دین, که منجر به امنیت کشور و شهروندان آن.

بسیج اسلامی

زیاد مانسون

این مقاله به بررسی ظهور و رشد اخوان المسلمین در مصر از دهه 1930 تا 1950 می پردازد.. با ترسیم و ارزیابی تجربی توضیحات ممکن برای رشد سازمان بر اساس (1) نظریه های اسلام سیاسی و (2) مفهوم ساختار فرصت سیاسی در نظریه جنبش اجتماعی. گسترش این رویکردها بر اساس داده های اسناد سازمانی و طبقه بندی شده ایالات متحده پیشنهاد شده است.. وزارت امور خارجه از این دوره. بسیج موفق اخوان المسلمین به دلیل پیوند پیام اسلامی آن با ساختار سازمانی آن امکان پذیر شد., فعالیت ها, و استراتژی ها و زندگی روزمره مصری ها. این تحلیل نشان می‌دهد که ایده‌ها به روش‌هایی بیشتر از آنچه که مفهوم چارچوب‌بندی اجازه می‌دهد در جنبش‌های اجتماعی ادغام می‌شوند. همچنین درک ما را از اینکه چگونه سازمان‌ها می‌توانند در محیط‌های به شدت سرکوب‌گر پدید آیند را گسترش می‌دهد..

The Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. Network

Zeyno باران

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe

لورنزو Vidino

Since its founding in 1928, اخوان المسلمین (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

While the Brotherhood’s radical ideas have shaped the beliefs of generations of Islamists, over the past two decades, it has lost some of its power and appeal in the Middle East, crushed by harsh repression from local regimes and snubbed by the younger generations of Islamists who often prefer more radical organizations.

But the Middle East is only one part of the Muslim world. Europe has become an incubator for Islamist thought and political development. Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations. Unlike the larger Islamic community, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ultimate goal may not be simply “to help Muslims be the best citizens they can be,” but rather to extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States.[2]

Four decades of teaching and cultivation have paid off. The student refugees who migrated from the Middle East forty years ago and their descendants now lead organizations that represent the local Muslim communities in their engagement with Europe’s political elite. Funded by generous contributors from the Persian Gulf, they preside over a centralized network that spans nearly every European country.

These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood’s radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, هلندی, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community.

But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity. The case is particularly visible in Germany, which retains a place of key importance in Europe, not only because of its location at the heart of Europe, but also because it played host to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood immigrants and is host to the best-organized Brotherhood presence. The German government’s reaction is also instructive if only to show the dangers of accepting Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric at face value, without looking at the broader scope of its activities.

Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic-Fascism

DALE C. Eikmeier

The recently published National Military Strategic Plan for the War onTerrorism (NMSP-WOT) is to be commended for identifying “ideology”as al Qaeda’s center of gravity.1 The identification of an ideology as thecenter of gravity rather than an individual or group is a significant shift froma“capture and kill” philosophy to a strategy focused on defeating the rootcause of Islamic terrorism. Accordingly, the plan’s principal focus is on attackingand countering an ideology that fuels Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately,the NMSP-WOT fails to identify the ideology or suggest ways tocounter it. The plan merely describes the ideology as “extremist.” This descriptioncontributes little to the public’s understanding of the threat or to thecapabilities of the strategist who ultimately must attack and defeat it. The intentof this article is to identify the ideology of the Islamic terrorists and recommendhow to successfully counter it.Sun Tzuwisely said, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundredbattles you will never be in peril.”2 Our success in theWar on Terrorismdepends on knowingwho the enemy is and understanding his ideology.While characterizing and labeling an enemymay serve such a purpose, it is only usefulif the labels are clearly defined and understood. Otherwise, overly broadcharacterizations obscure our ability to truly “know the enemy,” they diffuseefforts, and place potential allies and neutrals in the enemy’s camp. Unfortunately,theWar on Terrorism’s use of labels contributes a great deal to themisunderstandingsassociated with the latter. The fact is, five years after 9/11 theNMSP-WOT provides little specific guidance, other than labeling the enemyas extremist.3 This inability to focus on the specific threat and its supportingphilosophy reflects our own rigid adherence to political correctness and is beingexploited bymilitant Islamists portraying these overly broad descriptionsas a war against Islam.As David F. Forte states “Wemust not fail . . . to distinguishbetween the homicidal revolutionaries like bin Laden and mainstreamMuslim believers.