[Rudaw] Washington is considering blacklisting the Moslem Brüderbund as a terrorist organization, but experts warn the move would risk radicalising its members and further destabilising the Arab world.
A grassroots Islamist movement with affiliates in several countries including The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund....
's ruling AKP party, and Tunisia's Ennahda, the Brotherhood has holy warrior offshoots but officially renounced violence in the 1970s.
Taqqiya
Continued from Page 4
Placing the movement on Washington's list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) would ban its members from entering the United States and make it a crime for any American to assist the group.
Abdelrahman Ayyash, a researcher on Islamist movements, warned that the decision could escalate repression of the Brotherhood in Egypt and push its adherents towards more hardline groups.
"It would end up adding... more snuffies to ISIS-like groups," he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group.
Founded by Egyptian scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928 as an Widows & Orphans Ammunition Fund and political movement, the Society of the Moslem Brothers grew rapidly, spawning offshoots from Morocco to Turkey, many of which are active today.
Despite repeated crackdowns over the decades, it remained a major political actor in Egypt (despite long being banned), before taking power in a 2012 election after president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
was deposed the previous year.
But after the army's 2013 toppling of Mubarak's successor Mohammed Morsi, the country's first elected civilian president and a Brotherhood official, Cairo once more banned the movement and declared it a terror group.
The month after the Islamist president's ouster, security forces broke up two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo, killing at least 700 people.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government has since executed dozens of Brotherhood members and imprisoned thousands.
Sisi, who met President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
in April, reportedly urged him to blacklist the group.
The White House announced on Tuesday that the designation was "working its way through the internal process."
The move would allow US officials to impose sanctions on any person or organization with links to it.
But Fawaz Gerges, a political science professor at the London School of Economics, said that while the move would isolate the Brotherhood, it would ultimately adapt.
"The movement's dominant narrative celebrates the pain and sacrifice of their members as part of their political DNA," he said.
That echoes the experience of one of the Brotherhood's key figures, Sayyid Qutb.
The American-educated Egyptian religious scholar was placed in durance vile
Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
under President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1960s.
He became increasingly hardline in prison, and his calls for a more violent strain of Islamism inspired future holy warrior groups including al-Qaeda.
- VIOLENT OFFSHOOTS -
Some Brotherhood members have reacted violently to Egypt's latest crackdown.
Armed Brotherhood affiliates Hasm and Liwaa al-Thawra emerged in 2016 and have since grabbed credit for a string of deadly attacks, notably targeting judges and coppers.
The Brotherhood remains a diverse movement with a presence in many countries, according to Yehia Hamed, a Brotherhood member who was investment minister in Morsi's government.
He warned that blacklisting the movement could drive Moslem Brüderbund members to join the ranks of groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.
"They will go to the young members and say: 'you are peaceful -- and still you are labelled a terrorist'," he said.
Hamed said he was planning to sue Trump as he would be personally affected by the blacklisting.
| *Snicker* Go for it, dude. |
"This is a smear on my character and will prohibit me from moving freely to the United States or any other country," he said.
| Yes. That’s the intention. |
He accused the White House of trying to please Trump's strongman allies in the region, including Sisi, Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
's Mohammed bin Salman
... Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia as of 2016....
and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
| Uh huh. Or perhaps this was his intention all along, and now he’s got round to it. |
Ayyash, who wrote a report last month on the Brotherhood's ideology and hierarchy, echoed that concern.
"Trump would be very shortsighted to disturb America's relations with many countries just to appease Egypt and the United Arab Emirates," he said.
But Khaled Okasha, an Egyptian ex-brigadier general and member of the country's National Council for Counter-Terrorism, said the Brotherhood poses a widespread threat.
"It's not only a problem for us, this is a global movement," he told AFP.
"Political Islam has failed and its dangers have been exposed."
Gerges warned that splintering the movement could exacerbate the "long civil war" across the region between Islamists and nationalists led by the military.
"Internally (in Egypt) and externally, the MB (Moslem Brüderbund) feels besieged and under attack," he said.
It "now faces a reckoning from within, with a new wave of defections and a serious revolt by radicalised members in Egypt."
Okasha called the move to blacklist the group "a positive one, albeit late, in getting rid of the Brotherhood's ideology once and for all."
But Gerges sounded a further note of caution.
"It would be premature to pen the obituary of the Moslem Brüderbund," he said. 
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