Debunking Muslim Brotherhood Myths

In an article today at The American Thinker, "The US and the Muslim Brotherhood", I take aim at one of the cardinal myths invoked by the Brotherhood's Western apologists in defense of their claims of a "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood. Here's a quick summary:

In the current debate on the Muslim Brotherhood, the group's Western apologists claim that the jihadist ideology of their leading thinker, Sayyid Qutb, was discarded in the late 1960s and 1970s with the publication of Hassan al-Hudaybi's "Preachers, Not Judges". But recent scholarship demonstrates Hudaybi didn't write the book, promote it, or even agree with it.

That's right. The main piece of evidence used the Muslim Brotherhood's defenders (the Nixon Center, James Traub's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, etc.) is fabricated whole-cloth.

Perhaps the top scholar on this subject is Barbara Zollner, Director of Islamic Studies at Birbeck College, University of London. Not only is the book the topic of her PhD dissertation, but she has a volume on the subject, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology, which is due to be published by Rutledge early next year.

At a conference held at Georgetown University in March on the theme of "Islamist Politics: Contemporary Trajectories in the Arab World," Zollner delivered a brief synopsis of her extensive research on the subject, "Du'at la Qudat: Notes on the Authorship, Purpose, and Relevance of a Text Purporting a Moderate Theology". During her lecture (available in audio here) she challenged the popular myth still advanced by the Muslim Brotherhood's Western apologists:

There are a number of writers who argue that Du'at la Qudat, when it was published in the 1970s, to be exact in 1977, that it is an evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood's turn away from radical thinking, and that it evidences a shift of the Muslim Brotherhood's stance towards a centrist Islamist ideology...What I want to say today are two things. Overall my argument that Preachers, Not Judges was not written by Hassan al-Hudaybi, and secondly, it is not written as a response to Sayyid Qutb.

Utilizing my recent research on the topic, journalist and terrorism finance expert Doug Farah blogged yesterday on "The Amazing Deception in the Muslim Brotherhood's Charm Offensive". In the comments section of Farah's post, however, appeared Ibrahim El Houdaiby, the great-granson of Hassan al-Hudaybi, invoking family folklore to rebut the overwhelming consensus of scholars on this subject, but not providing any substantive evidence in support of his claims. The strange thing is that since the revelations first appeared in 1995 about the true origins of "Preachers, Not Judges", and the testimony of others inside and outside the Brotherhood, this new information (that Hudaybi had no role in the creation of the book) has gone unchallenged until now.

This raises a lot of questions in the ongoing debate over the Muslim Brotherhood. Here's my conclusion:

These evidences raise some important questions in the current debate in the West over the Muslim Brotherhood: is it the case that the journalists and Beltway wonks appealing to Preachers, Not Judges as proof of a "reformed" Brotherhood are simply ignorant of most of the scholarship over the past decade on this topic, or have they determined to bury this evidence with their silence in the hope that it will be ignored? If the former, we have cause to question their credibility as self-appointed experts on the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, and we also have to acknowledge their gullibility in accepting unquestioned the propaganda put out by the group; if the latter, their pretended objectivity is little more than the component of the official duplicity that characterizes the Muslim Brotherhood's long-standing operational methodology. Only they can tell us which it is.

I'm not holding my breath for a response.

Does the Nixon Center Have Anything Better To Do?

UPDATE (05/03/07): For more, see my article in today's edition of FrontPage Magazine, "Nixon Center's Plumbers Unit". If you're visiting from the link in that article, be sure to read this post from earlier this week.

Earlier this week I observed that someone from the Nixon Center had paid me a visit to download virtually all of the blog posts here at Existential Space. Well, this afternoon we had several different people from the Nixon Center riffling through my blog archives (opposition research interns?), this time downloading even more blog entries - apparently the ones they missed earlier in the week:

I notice that they all were visiting at the same time and are coming through Google searches targeting my name. Yet even more evidence that they're attempting to dig up dirt to attack me with rather than face the prospect of having to respond to the massive amount of evidence I cited against their preposterous "Moderate Muslim Brotherhood" thesis.

A note to the folks at the Nixon Center:

First, do you guys have anything better to do, like lobbying to get al-Qaeda taken off the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list?

Secondly, if you're so eager to find my skeletons, just email me! I'll be glad to tell you where they are! But that doesn't change the fact that your rehabilitation of the Muslim Brotherhood is factually bankrupt.

Nixon Center's Plumber's Unit?

I noted with great interest when looking at my blog stats this evening that someone from the Nixon Center showed up today to download most of my blog posts here at Existential Space (they downloaded ~120 of my 145 posts):


You might recall that over the past few weeks I've been having a bit of a debate with Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center following the publication of their article in the last issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood", where they claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned virtually every single terrorist organization in the world, had "rejected jihad" and "embraced democracy".

Startled by those outrageous claims, I responded at FrontPage with a critique, "Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood", (blogged on it here) where I remarked:

As the worldwide jihad has grown in intensity in recent years, the Brotherhood’s supporters in the US are trying to capitalize on the upward trend of Islamic radicalization to paint the organization as “moderate” on this shifting scale. This is precisely the methodology employed by Leiken and Brooke, who attempt the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables of the Muslim Brotherhood’s long involvement in terrorist activity through misrepresentation and outright fabrication.

A few weeks later, Leiken and Brooke attempted to respond to my critique, "A Response to Patrick Poole's 'Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood'", engaging in a shameless attempt at doublespeak by claiming that there was some kind of distinction to be made between the Brotherhood's support for terrorism in the name of "defensive jihad" against innocent Israeli civilians and American troops serving in the Middle East and the "global jihad" against "Jews and Crusaders" proclaimed by al-Qaeda.

The Muslim Brotherhood so enthusiatically welcomes Leiken and Brooke's reponse to me that they reprinted it on their English-language website.

What they didn't expect, however, was less than a week later I would begin a devastating 3-part rejoinder to their demogoguery, "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 1" [Part 2] [Part 3] (see my blog entry, "A Rejoinder to the Muslim Brotherhood Lackeys")

Once again, Leiken and Brooke rely on evasion, duplicity and outright lies (I’ll discuss one glaring example of this latter tactic in relation to statements they made regarding the Brotherhood’s Jordanian affiliate) – methods not dissimilar to those used by the Muslim Brotherhood itself – to avoid answering the hard questions posed not just by myself, but by analysts from all across the political spectrum, about the organization’s deep and long-time connections to terrorism, their supposed disavowal of violence, and the genuineness of their claims to be favorably inclined towards democratic activity.

Since that time, I've been receiving regular visits from the Nixon Center to this blog, but they either haven't found the courage or the time to respond.

So what do I make of their new-found interest in my writings? It seems rather than respond to the substance of my arguments (my rejoinder came out to a full 54 pages and cited 50+ scholarly papers, government reports and journalistic works contradicting their claims) they are planning a full-frontal ad hominem attack - the last refuge of scoundrels left without any substance to their arguments.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the Nixon Center intern that they are probably forcing to go through all of these blog posts searching for something they can twist out of context and attack me with. but I hope they don't forget to include in their literature review some of my previous work (most of which I link to in the sidebar), such as my translation of Sixteenth Century Reformation-era political works, my previous public policy reports, the articles I've done for other publications (WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, etc.), or my worldview essay series for Christianity & Society.

Who knows? While they are already on ideological lockdown on the issue of the Muslim Brotherhood, they might nonetheless (or at least the Nixon Center intern) might learn a few things.

UPDATE (05/02/07): Welcome again to everyone joining us today from the Nixon Center!

A Rejoinder to the Muslim Brotherhood Lackeys

Over at FrontPage Magazine today is Part 1 of my rejoinder to Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center, "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood" [Part 2] [Part 3]. This is in response to their attack last week, "A Response to Patrick Poole's 'Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood'".

There are four areas I address in this segment of my rejoinder:

1) The distinction they attempt to draw between terrorism committed for the sake of "defensive jihad" and "global jihad". According to Leiken and Brooke, the former justifies terrorism against Israel and the US in Iraq by groups like HAMAS and Iraqi insurgents, while the "war against Zionists and Crusaders" is being waged by al-Qaeda, etc. They are forced to make this meaningless distinction because the Muslim Brotherhood enthusiastically endorses and supports HAMAS, and Brotherhood clerics have issued fatwas permitting attacks against US soldiers. I argue this is a distinction without a difference, as the Brotherhood has not abandoned violence, which directly contradicts their claim of a "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood.

2) They claim that in the late 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood rejected the jihadist doctrine of Sayyid Qutb, and adopted more peaceful, non-violent ideology. They point to Hasan al-Hudaybi's book, Preachers, Not Judges, as proof of this shift. But as I document, not only did Hudaybi pen that volume while he was in prison, when he first heard of Qutb's book, Signposts, he believed that it represented the "future of our organization". I also note that Hudaybi's book, which Leiken and Brooke claim is the key piece of evidence in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological shift and critical for understanding the organization's strategy today, has not been reprinted in Egypt for almost 30 years, and has not been reprinted anywhere since 1985, while Qutb's Signposts is perhaps the best-selling Arabic-language book of the past half-century.

3) The pair equate their interpretation of "defensive jihad" with the Christian doctrine of "just war", though the latter has never permitted terrorism against innocents. In the end, whether it is "defensive jihad" or "global jihad", it is all terrorism and violence; and since the Brotherhood preaches both, there is little room to pronounce them "moderate".

4) In their original Foreign Affairs article, and in their response last week, Leiken and Brooke make much ado about alleged differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. They point to a statement last year where Ayman al-Zawahiri denounced the Muslim Brotherhood for participating in Egypt's parliamentary elections, where they won 20 percent of the seats. But we find that Zawahiri's position is unique amongst al-Qaeda, and the two organizations actually drew closer last summer during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. And al-Qaeda actively operates in the Palestinian Authority with the full knowledge and support of HAMAS, the Brotherhood's Palestinian affiliate and terrorist organization. Thus, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are much closer than they would like us to believe.

Thanks to Doug Farah and Alyssa Lappen for their respective posts at Counterterrorism Blog ("The Islamist Charm Offensive") and The American Thinker ("The Fount of Modern Terror").

UPDATE: "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 2" is now online. Here's my summary statement:

"Today I turn my attention to several national affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East – the Palestinian terrorist organization HAMAS, the pro-HAMAS Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) in Kuwait, and the genocidal National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Sudan. The activity of these respective Brotherhood affiliates, and their ties to the main Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt, severely undercuts Leiken and Brooke’s assertion of a “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood."

UPDATE #2: "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 3 (Conclusion)" is now up. Here's a summary:

1) The very un-moderate statements of the so-called “moderates” they identify within the Muslim Brotherhood;

2) I take note that many of the reformists within the Brotherhood, many of whom served in the organization’s leadership, left a long time ago (1996) to form the Al-Wasat (“Center”) Party, frustrated by the radicalization and ideological lockdown within the Brotherhood;

3) I respond to their accusation that US foreign policy is responsible for Islamic radicalization in the Middle East;

4) I document my previous claim that the Brotherhood has engaged in vote rigging and rampant financial fraud in their administration of the professional syndicates in Egypt, as well as observing that the sole piece of evidence they cited in their response on this point was subject to some suspicious editing on their part;

5) I directly challenge their claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been implicated in the violent and fatal attacks against the Coptic community in Egypt by citing a report published by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in addition to reports issued by the Coptic community and articles in the Egyptian press;

6) I revisit the events surrounding the military demonstration by Muslim Brotherhood youth cadres at Al-Azhar University this past December, which prompted the current government crackdown on the organization, as evidence that
the intentions of the Brotherhood are not entirely peaceful;

7) I observe that their characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in France, the UOIF, as a “moderate” organization is directly contradicted by recent studies published by their own organization, the Nixon Center, and that most careful researchers have concluded that France’s policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood has been a catastrophic failure and fueled Islamic radicalization – the same policy Leiken and Brooke demand the U.S. implement.

On the basis on the extensive evidence I have provided throughout this report, I conclude that when it comes to anything challenging the carefully manicured image of the Muslim Brotherhood crafted by Leiken and Brooke, they resort to the old maxim: see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil. Other contradicting evidence is steadfastly ignored. In the event that fails, their policy has been: attack the critic. This is hardly the way to determine US foreign policy, but admittedly this is how business is conducted in the think tanks and policy shops of the Beltway intelligentsia.