RUTHFULLY YOURS

 Following quickly after the revelation that the Obama administration had resolved to establish contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, the European Union has announced that it, too, is interested in talking with the group. Michael Mann, a spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, explained: “We are always open to dialogue with anyone who is interested in democracy.” Ashton thus becomes the latest in a long line of Western officials who have confused democracy with the practice of voting itself, and ignored the manifest fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated to ideals that all free societies should oppose.

Among those officials also are a great many at the highest levels in Washington, where wishful thinking about the Brotherhood (and other matters Islamic) not only prevails, but is the guiding force in formulating Middle East policy. After all, it was the spectacularly clueless intelligence chief James Clapper who labeled the group “largely secular,” demonstrating abject ignorance not only of the meaning of the word “Muslim” in the group’s name, but of its own stated goals and agenda, which have been consistent since it was founded.

Contrary to claims that it is a moderate organization, the Muslim Brotherhood is actually the prototypical Islamic supremacist, pro-Sharia group of the modern age. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, who decried the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 for separating “the state from religion in a country [Turkey] which was until recently the site of the Commander of the Faithful.” Al-Banna dedicated the Brotherhood to restoring the caliphate and imposing Islamic law around the world. His message began and ended with Islam:

We summon you to Islam, the teachings of Islam, the laws of Islam and the guidance of Islam, and if this smacks of “politics” in your eyes, then it is our policy. And if the one summoning you to these principles is a “politician,” then we are the most respectable of men, God be praised, in politics . . . Islam does have a policy embracing the happiness of this world. . . . We believe that Islam is an all-embracing concept which regulates every aspect of life, adjudicating on every one of its concerns and prescribing for it a solid and rigorous order.

Al-Banna wrote in 1934 that “it is a duty incumbent on every Muslim to struggle towards the aim of making every people Muslim and the whole world Islamic, so that the banner of Islam can flutter over the earth and the call of the Muezzin can resound in all the corners of the world: God is greatest [Allahu akbar]!”

Brynjar Lia, the historian of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, explained: “Quoting the Qur’anic verse ‘And fight them till sedition is no more, and the faith is God’s’ [Sura 2:193], the Muslim Brothers urged their fellow Muslims to restore the bygone greatness of Islam and to re-establish an Islamic empire. Sometimes they even called for the restoration of ‘former Islamic colonies’ in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans and the Mediterranean islands.”

And regarding America, a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum had this to say: The Muslim Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” So wrote Brotherhood operated Mohamed Akram, in “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”

And just weeks ago Dr. Kamal Al-Helbawy, former Muslim Brotherhood spokesman in the West, declared: “Our thinking and our affiliation are to the exalted Allah. Our affiliation is to Islam. The global state of Islam is our ideal…How will countries like Bahrain or Qatar defend themselves? Why shouldn’t we have a country called ‘The United States of Islam’?”

Given all that, it takes a stratospherically high degree of separation from reality to think that the Brotherhood has any interest in democracy except as a means to an end. Ashton’s spokesman Mann explained that the EU’s dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood could expand as long as “we are talking on the [creation of] a pluralistic political regime that allows people not just to elect their governments but to kick them out as well.”

A Brotherhood regime in Egypt might allow Egyptians to throw out their leaders, but it will impose Sharia restrictions on Egyptian society that will deny to women and non-Muslims basic rights, and will extinguish the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience.

So why is the Western world rushing to talk to this malignant group? Why the determination to ignore and deny what it stands for and says it will do?

If the Western world is to survive the Islamic jihad onslaught, it will only manage to do so by decisively rejecting this fantasy-based policymaking. But no sea change of that kind appears to be on the horizon.