Foreign Confidential ™
Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- Formerly China Confidential -- For America and Israel and Their Friends
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Obama's Alliance With the Muslim Brotherhood
By Ted Belman
Barry Rubin recently wrote The Revolutionary Movement’s Big Split in which he expected the Sunnis, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood to to coalesce in opposition to Shiites lead by Iran. The MB is gaining control over Egypt, Hamas and soon Syria and Jordan.
I wrote to him suggesting that Obama was actively involved with promoting the Brotherhood as a strategy in transforming the Middle East and containing Iran. I have yet to hear from him.
My speculation was recently fuelled by reading Herb London’s U.S. Betrays Syria’s Opposition.
In an effort to understand and placate Syrian opposition groups, Secretary Clinton invited them to a meeting in Washington. Most of those invited, however, have links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Missing from the invitations are Kurdish leaders, Sunni liberals, Assyrians and Christian spokesmen. According to various reports the State Department made a deal with Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood representatives either to share power with Assad to stabilize the government, or replace him if this effort fails.One organization, the Syrian Democracy Council (SDC), an opposition group composed of diverse ethnic and religious organizations, including Alawis, Aramaic Christians, Druze and Assyrians was conspicuously — and no coincidentally — omitted from the invitation list.
In preparation for this new strategy, last year Obama appointed Rashad Hussein, White House official as Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference. He has a history of participation in events connected with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as well as support for Brotherhood causes, once having called prosecution of the U.S. leader of a Palestinian terrorist organization one of many “politically motivated persecutions.”
Bat Ye’or said,
“The OIC is one of the largest intergovernmental organizations in the world. It encompasses 56 Muslim states plus the Palestinian Authority. Spread over four continents, it claims to speak in the name of the ummah (the universal Muslim community), which numbers about 1.3 billion. The OIC’s mission is to unite all Muslims worldwide by rooting them in the Koran and the Sunnah — the core of traditional Islamic civilization and values. It aims at strengthening solidarity and cooperation among all its members, in order to protect the interests of Muslims everywhere and to galvanize the ummah into a unified body.”
When President Obama spoke to the Muslim world in Cairo last June, a large portion of his guests were leaders and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The speech was designed to please them more than supporting the reformist movement in Egypt and across the Muslim world.The Obama administration has hired the first White House Muslim advisor, Dalia Mogahed, who helped with writing Obama’s speech. Mogahed is herself an Islamic ideologue who supports Islamic Sharia and denies any connection between radical Islam and terrorism. Mogahed, who was born in Egypt, has also been a firm defender of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Both of these US groups are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
To my mind, the alliance between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood is the cornerstone of Obama’s New Middle East policy.
Ted Belman is a retired lawyer and editor of IsraPundit. He emigrated from Canada two years ago and now resides in Jerusalem Israel. His essay originally appeared in IsraPundit and is republished with permission.
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