“Islam is Democracy!”

What Is the Muslim Brotherhood?
ICC Note:
“Since the launch of Arab Spring, Obama’s administration has been supportive of the Arabs’ call for freedom and democracy. Such a graceful stance, nonetheless, has been hindered by the administration’s apparent tolerance of the succession of Islamists into power at the expense of emerging Arab democracies,” the Stonegate Institute reports.
By Mudar Zahran
2/27/2012 United States (Stonegate Institute) – Since the launch of Arab Spring, Obama’s administration has been supportive of the Arabs’ call for freedom and democracy. Such a graceful stance, nonetheless, has been hindered by the administration’s apparent tolerance of the succession of Islamists into power at the expense of emerging Arab democracies.
Apparently President Obama sees a point in accepting, and even welcoming, the arrival of Muslim Brotherhood members into power. Such a position will possibly soon prove a fatal one — and an example of the Islamists outwitting the US through the ballot box as they have failed to do through bombs and explosives.
President Obama’s original view of the Arab Spring was somewhat logical: if the Arabs wanted a change towards democracy, there was no point in stopping them or supporting the ailing regimes against which they were protesting.
Obama was not alone in his support; Senator John McCain shared the same view. In his speech before the World Economic Forum in Jordan, he said: “For decades, we in the United States were fed the belief that the so-called Arab Street was hostile to our interests and ideals. But now we are seeing that the opposite is true: The Arab Street wants political freedom, economic opportunity, equal justice and rights, and the chance to change their countries and their governments – not through suicide and murder, but peacefully, through politics.”
In theory, the Obama administration’s concept of supporting the Arab people’s desire for peaceful change toward democracy is valid. The consequences that have emerged, however, have been alarming. The Islamists, and particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, have dominated the parliamentary seats in Tunisia; the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Salafis have dominated 72 percent of the parliamentary seats in Egypt; and the King of Morocco’s well-intentioned reforms have brought an Islamist government into power.
Some might argue that the Islamists’ domination of emerging Arab democracies is not Obama’s fault, but rather the free will of the Arabs who chose to vote for the Islamists. The problem is that there is evidence that the Administration has gone beyond tolerating the Arab people’s support for Islamists.
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The Obama administration would do well to reconsider its tolerance toward the Muslim Brotherhood. The administration should start building up and supporting genuinely democratic alternative secular Arab opposition movements, not the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Islam is Democracy!” one [www.JCPA.org; Jonathan Halevi]. The US should also be developing long-term contingency plans to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood’s new-found political power. If not, a future US administration will have to pay for Obama’s connection to the Brotherhood — a radical group that believes in transforming the world to Islam by infiltrating democratic institutions rather than by terrorism — as it keeps moving closer, country by country, to achieving its ultimate goal of reestablishing a Muslim Empire.
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