No it is not.
The MB is not a terrorist organisation. The MB is the terrorist organisation.
You know how in some action video games you are fighting a horde of insectoid aliens and then you reach a final level in which you meet a queen insect who is the mother of all aliens. The MB is the queen mother. The MB is the Borg queen. it is the root of all evil, and the mother of all catastrophes that have infested the Islamic world since it first bubbled to the surface.
By the turn of the twentieth century, there was a rising tide of fundamentalism in the Islamic world. But it was a fundamentalism in the essential sense of the word, a return to the fundamentals, a focus on the barebones of the faith and an abandonment of all the flakes that had attached themselves to Islam over centuries. It was an enlightenment movement that came as a response to the suppressed but not entirely killed sterility of Wahabist fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia. The movement was the Protestantism of Islam, a refocus on personal relation to scripture, an abandonment of acquired liturgy, and disenfranchisement of clergymen. And it could have helped the Islamic world join the rest of the world in the social revolutions of the twentieth century.
But it was aborted.
Or perhaps it was co-opted. A guy born in a village in the Eastern Delta called Hassan El-Banna had a vision. The vision was recreating the world in the image of his village. Why? Because that's all he knew. Method: Claim that Islam is under threat of extinction and that you are its saviour. And the Muslim Brotherhood was born. A strange mix of theatre troupe, KKK-like secrecy, clandestine literature, military-like structure, and a good dose of heresy relative to Islamic orthodoxy.
But it was when the Banna-ist ideology mated with the diseased psychosis of Sayyed Qutb that the true MB materialised. Sayyed Qutb was driven almost entirely by sexual frustration born of a very unsuccessful trip to the US where his romantic advances were apparently rebuffed by a random blonde. When he came back to Egypt he formulated the first explicit ideology in the Islamic world that fostered: A deep seated hate of the West, non-Muslims, and social and personal liberties; The intent to raise generations and vanguards of ideologized undercover youth; the use of terrorism and violence to enforce the vision of the MB but only when the time is right and when the vanguard is ready.
The Qutbist/Bannaist cult is very similar in its ideology and action plan to White Supremacist organisations in the US. But the main problem is that the MB metastasised. Muslims have a problem they have to face, and by Muslims I mean the general population of peaceful Muslims in the world. It is true that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But it is also true that the majority of terrorists are Muslims. This wasn't the case in the past. Terrorism being a uniquely and distinctively Muslim trait can be traced in its origin to the MB. They were the ones who first introduced bombings of civilian targets to achieve political aims, and it happened within the lifetime of El-Banna and under his tutelage. Qutb later refined this into an art. As the MB grew it began to form offshoots and spinoffs. Some of them global, some local, and some global brands that later develop local franchises. Perhaps most critical of all was the offshoot of the Jamaa Islamiya in the seventies, which in turn spanned off a little organisation called Al-Qaeda.
Which is very convenient really. The MB can quit its earlier forays into direct terrorism and just outsource the dirty work to its offshoots. This was all well and good as long as the MB wasn't in power, and it allowed them to have perfect deniability. But as soon as they reached power the mask fell off. The terrorist offshoots were suddenly standing on the stage with the MB president, explicitly threatening physical violence against political opponents and fanning sectarian hate. Gullible liberal youth who believed the MB were on the path to reform were aghast. Veteran liberals with bloodied knuckles from the battles of the seventies and the nineties chuckled knowingly.
Perhaps among the gullible youth was president Obama. The theory that the MB are moderate and could absorb the terrorist inclinations of Islamist groups and channel them into taking power in the Middle East instead of attacking the West. Instead, the MB used said Islamists in the most flagrant and abhorrent manner, channeling their terrorism in ways that the US could not have foreseen.
In any case, the MB is a monster that Egypt gave birth to. And Egypt has decided to kill its monstrous child or die trying. Even if Obama does not approve.
The MB is not a terrorist organisation. The MB is the terrorist organisation.
You know how in some action video games you are fighting a horde of insectoid aliens and then you reach a final level in which you meet a queen insect who is the mother of all aliens. The MB is the queen mother. The MB is the Borg queen. it is the root of all evil, and the mother of all catastrophes that have infested the Islamic world since it first bubbled to the surface.
By the turn of the twentieth century, there was a rising tide of fundamentalism in the Islamic world. But it was a fundamentalism in the essential sense of the word, a return to the fundamentals, a focus on the barebones of the faith and an abandonment of all the flakes that had attached themselves to Islam over centuries. It was an enlightenment movement that came as a response to the suppressed but not entirely killed sterility of Wahabist fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia. The movement was the Protestantism of Islam, a refocus on personal relation to scripture, an abandonment of acquired liturgy, and disenfranchisement of clergymen. And it could have helped the Islamic world join the rest of the world in the social revolutions of the twentieth century.
But it was aborted.
Or perhaps it was co-opted. A guy born in a village in the Eastern Delta called Hassan El-Banna had a vision. The vision was recreating the world in the image of his village. Why? Because that's all he knew. Method: Claim that Islam is under threat of extinction and that you are its saviour. And the Muslim Brotherhood was born. A strange mix of theatre troupe, KKK-like secrecy, clandestine literature, military-like structure, and a good dose of heresy relative to Islamic orthodoxy.
But it was when the Banna-ist ideology mated with the diseased psychosis of Sayyed Qutb that the true MB materialised. Sayyed Qutb was driven almost entirely by sexual frustration born of a very unsuccessful trip to the US where his romantic advances were apparently rebuffed by a random blonde. When he came back to Egypt he formulated the first explicit ideology in the Islamic world that fostered: A deep seated hate of the West, non-Muslims, and social and personal liberties; The intent to raise generations and vanguards of ideologized undercover youth; the use of terrorism and violence to enforce the vision of the MB but only when the time is right and when the vanguard is ready.
The Qutbist/Bannaist cult is very similar in its ideology and action plan to White Supremacist organisations in the US. But the main problem is that the MB metastasised. Muslims have a problem they have to face, and by Muslims I mean the general population of peaceful Muslims in the world. It is true that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But it is also true that the majority of terrorists are Muslims. This wasn't the case in the past. Terrorism being a uniquely and distinctively Muslim trait can be traced in its origin to the MB. They were the ones who first introduced bombings of civilian targets to achieve political aims, and it happened within the lifetime of El-Banna and under his tutelage. Qutb later refined this into an art. As the MB grew it began to form offshoots and spinoffs. Some of them global, some local, and some global brands that later develop local franchises. Perhaps most critical of all was the offshoot of the Jamaa Islamiya in the seventies, which in turn spanned off a little organisation called Al-Qaeda.
Which is very convenient really. The MB can quit its earlier forays into direct terrorism and just outsource the dirty work to its offshoots. This was all well and good as long as the MB wasn't in power, and it allowed them to have perfect deniability. But as soon as they reached power the mask fell off. The terrorist offshoots were suddenly standing on the stage with the MB president, explicitly threatening physical violence against political opponents and fanning sectarian hate. Gullible liberal youth who believed the MB were on the path to reform were aghast. Veteran liberals with bloodied knuckles from the battles of the seventies and the nineties chuckled knowingly.
Perhaps among the gullible youth was president Obama. The theory that the MB are moderate and could absorb the terrorist inclinations of Islamist groups and channel them into taking power in the Middle East instead of attacking the West. Instead, the MB used said Islamists in the most flagrant and abhorrent manner, channeling their terrorism in ways that the US could not have foreseen.
In any case, the MB is a monster that Egypt gave birth to. And Egypt has decided to kill its monstrous child or die trying. Even if Obama does not approve.
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