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Morocco is the image of stability in the Middle East; far from free but far from crazy:

Reality check, people. Muslim Brotherhood ain't with those bomber wackos.

The Muslim Brotherhood is distastefully conservative. However, I doubt that a more liberal/secularist government would be as effective as the Brotherhood in stabilizing Hamas and other hardline Muslim groups that threaten the peace in their region. It's not that I like them. I just see them as being better for the region for right now.

Although they are far from ideal, the Brotherhood has a fairly good chance of improving the stability and general well-being of the Middle East, and they deserve our support. At the moment, they are the best hope for their country and their people.

Reality Check, actually Muslim Brotherhood FOUNDED some of those suicide bomber groups.

The Muslim Brotherhood is worth watching, they certainly are dangerous and they have a history of being engaged with serious nutcases but you need to put forward some affirmative evidence if you want to claim something as specific as this.

Actually, he's not far off. The Muslim Brotherhood has essentially the same ideals, on a certain level, as groups like Hamas. Many such groups were originally connected very strongly with them. However, the reason that these groups broke with the Muslim Brotherhood originally was that the Muslim Brotherhood had become entrenched, conservative, and largely disinterested in violent jihad. Speaking more charitably, I think they're a bunch of religious good-boys who love their mommies, and it would surprise me if they actually endorsed violent terrorist tactics.

And this combination is the central reason that I think they're better equipped than most, including the secular/liberal parties, to keep those Hamas jackheads under control. They're not likely to take as hard a line against Hamas as perhaps they should, but a secular/liberal government appearing so close to home would tend to radicalize the hardline Muslims.

Anyone who thinks the hardliners would simply tip their hats and go nicely tap-dancing off-stage after losing a round of elections to a bunch of Western-minded yankephiles is crazy: they would just lose all faith in legitimate democracy, and their tactics would turn entirely to violence and other strong-arm tactics. Muslim conservatives need a stable, legitimate outlet, and the Brotherhood is it.

The Brotherhood and the secular/liberal chaps might not be perfect allies, but get this straight: without them in coalition, the Salafis would be running the show.

I think Inuyasha is on the right track, the Muslim Brotherhood is a pretty terrible entity.

U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Charity Announces $1 Million For Haitian Relief
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Islamic Relief USA has announced a $1 million aid shipment for Haitian earthquake relief. According to an announcement posted on the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) web site:

Islamic Relief USA, America’s largest Muslim relief organization, announced today that it will immediately fly a $1 million shipment of aid to those impacted by yesterday’s earthquake in Haiti. That relief aid will be sent in coordination with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those wishing to donate to Islamic Relief USA’s “Haiti Emergency” appeal may visit www.IslamicReliefUSA.org or call (888) 479-4968. Checks payable to “Islamic Relief USA” may be mailed to: Islamic Relief USA, P.O. Box 5640, Buena Park, CA, 90622…Islamic Relief USA, based in Alexandria, Va., is a non-profit 501(c)(3) humanitarian agency with offices also in California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas. As an international relief and development organization, Islamic Relief strives to alleviate the poverty and suffering of the world’s poorest people. Since its establishment, Islamic Relief has expanded greatly with permanent locations in more than 35 countries worldwide. For the sixth consecutive year, Islamic Relief USA has been awarded four stars by Charity Navigator, the largest charity evaluator in the country. This prestigious award puts Islamic Relief among the top 2.25 percent of charities in the nation.

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a member along with CAIR of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, has announced that it is also working with Islamic Relief USA for Haitian aid.

Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) is headquartered in the U.K. where one it’s trustees listed in U.K. charity records is Ibrahim El-Zayat, a leader in both the European and the German Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. El-Zayat is also a Trustee of the U.K. branch of Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief Worldwide is also listed as a company in the U.K where records indicate that Dr. Ahmed Al-Rawi, the former head of the Federation of islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) and President of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is a director. Both FIOE and the MAB are part of the U.K. and European Muslim Brotherhood. Another director of the company Islamic Relief Worldwide is Issam Al-Bashir who, as previous posts have discussed, is a former Minister of Religious Affairs in the Sudan and who has held numerous positions associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood. In a number of European countries, the local branch of Islamic Relief is also tied to the local Muslim Brotherhood organization.

Another previous post discussed the relationship between Islamic Relief USA and the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, an Islamic charter school with strong connections to the Muslim American Society (MAS). The MAS was established in 1993 by leaders of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and a Hudson Institute report has discussed the relationship of the MAS to both the Egyptian and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

http://globalmbreport.org/?p=1864

In general its early writers are the forerunners of the ideas that moved Al-Qaeda.

Remember that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the present leader of Al-Qaeda started out in the Brotherhood and dedicated his life to fulfilling the work of one of its most prominent early writers Sayyid Qutb. Where the Brotherhood ends and the more violent jihad begins is almost impossible to determine. I only took issue with Inuyasha's comment because it was horribly imprecise.

SALAFISM: BETWEEN PIETISM AND JIHAD
Although some authors have linked Salafism to organizations such as Takfir wa-Hijra, which emerged in the 1980s as manifestations of Islamist radicalism and called for a jihad against the establishment, the general consensus is that, prior to the 1990s, Salafism was primarily a pietist and apolitical movement that did not pose a threat to the different Arab regimes. This explains the broad support received from Saudi Arabia and even the use that some regimes made of Salafi conservatism to counter more political Islamist movements. The Salafi method advocates changing society by modifying individual behavior. To correct society and restore it to the true path individuals must be persuaded to return to Islam. Change has to be effected through education (tarbiya) and the science of the hadiths. On the political level, Salafis acknowledge only God’s sovereignty; they reject the concept of nation-state and stress the importance of the umma or supranational political religious community. Still, Salafis do not see themselves as revolutionaries, but rather as guardians of the faith.

The 1990s saw the emergence of a clear split between reformist or academic Salafism (Salafiyya al-ilmiyyah) and fighting or “jihadi” Salafism (Salafiyya al-Jihadiyyah). The origin of the split was the Gulf War. Saudi Arabia responded to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by inviting U.S. troops onto its soil. This decision ended the fragile internal balance in the country while also helping radicalize the most important sect of Saudi Islamism (al-Ahwa al-Islamiyya), whose most prominent representatives, Salman al-Awda and Safar al-Hawali, targeted not only liberal intellectuals or the religious establishment in their sermons, but also the State and its institutions.[9]

Some Salafi scholars, until then engrossed in apolitical pietism, turned radical. The fight against the non-believers (kafir) became a religious obligation and the main leitmotiv of this sect. The concept of takfir (declaring someone to be non-believer) became the major source of conflict among Salafis, causing a rift in the movement throughout the Arab world.

Reformist Salafis consider that all applications of takfir require a clear and proven violation. Muslim leaders, they argue, cannot be declared to be non-believers, because there is no clear evidence proving that they have ceased to be Muslims. Consequently, a jihad against Arab regimes is not permitted. The most radical Salafis base their interpretation of jihad on the writings of Ibn Taymiyya[10] and, like him, they consider that actions by governments that are contrary to Islamic law can be considered proof in order to declare them non-believers. The takfir thus became an instrument that could be used to oppose any regime whatsoever through armed struggle.

The main advocate of this new approach was 'Isam al-Barqawi, better known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian who—during his stay in Afghanistan in 1984—published a book entitled The Creed of Abraham (Millat Ibrahim) in which he outlined the doctrine of jihad based on the Wahhabi tradition. Radical Salafism merged with ultra-intransigent Wahhabism. In 1991 al-Maqdisi, who had links with the most radical circles of Saudi Islamism, published a book called Proof of the Infidelity of the Saudi State, which was distributed widely in the Arabian Peninsula. In 1992, he left Peshawar for Jordan, where he headed the Salafi organization Bay'at al-Imam until he was detained by the Jordanian authorities in 1996 and accused of plotting to kill the negotiators of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. His work influenced the principal ideologists of fighting Salafism in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s.[11]

In tandem with the evolution of Salafism, jihadi ideology gradually gained ground in Afghanistan and eventually merged with Salafism. Its chief proponent was Abdallah Azzam, who in 1984, founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), an office for recruiting Arabs to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Azzam was to have a decisive influence on Usama bin Ladin. In his work, The Main Obligation of Muslims is to Defend the Land of Islam, Azzam writes that jihad is a moral obligation for all Muslims, the sixth pillar of the faith. Using an epic and mystic language, he sets out a vision of the world based on strict Salafism and on calls to martyrdom, stressing the permanent state of humiliation suffered by the umma, as a result of the actions of “crusaders and Zionists.” His work was to have a decisive influence on the jihadi radicalism of the 1990s.[12]

http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2006/iss ... no3a1.html

The last thing hard core Islamists need is legitimacy.

I am not sure if it is as clear cut as that, if you have a good breakdown of the parliament, I am interested to read it. The fact that we now face a hobson's choice between bad and bad does not really make me feel any better about the Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood has a pretty good history of radicalizing people on its own, now with political legitimacy and most likely a de facto veto on the parliament, things are not going to improve.

They're actually pretty nice, really, or they mean to be, anyway.

The fact is, they are viewed in largely Christian countries as more radical than they actually are because they speak highly of Islam. They say "Islam is the way," and "Islam is the solution," and I don't see them as any worse than obnoxious holy rollers.

You are a Christian, 91. Even though you are not yourself a rabidly fundamentalist Christian, you are not capable of seeing how much alike the fundamentalists of different religions are. You have a blindspot for just how raving batshit insane Christian fundamentalists sound to an outside observer, no matter how much you may protest that you don't agree with their extremism.

Because they show evidence that they mean well, I think some time in the seat of power might actually do them some good.

I think that, once they've realized that the reality of power is a lot different from the prospect of it, they'll extract their heads somewhat from their butts.

Al-Qaeda was Reagan's baby. Although the Muslim Brotherhood's thinkers produced an ideology of self-pity and general anti-Western nastiness, that was THEIR sin. Turning it into a pretext for truly vile behavior was bred from a combination of circumstance, Ronald Reagan, and the ill intentions of evil men.

Hmm...nope. The folks behind al-Qaeda won the second largest majority in the late elections.

The Brotherhood is at worst a nuisance, and they tend to vacuum up people who might have otherwise become ultra-radical.

What a distasteful load of hyperbole. slums 'waste fertile Nile farmland'? How is that different from capitalist building anywhere, from the Thames in England to the Willamette in Oregon? Is a red brick tenement less valuable than a strip mall?

Hard to find a point in all that froth.

When studying the brotherhood, rose colored glasses never fit.

There is a massive difference between a fundamentalist that sits at home being what he is and someone like Sayyid Qutb.

Qutbism is basically the beginning of the modern Islamism present in just about all of the world's Sunni terrorists. Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood's place in the rise of this movement (it was founded in 1928) and a good deal of Egypts terrorists got their start in the organization where they were radicalized further.

They don't want that sort of power, the Brotherhood in Egypt is more concerned with having a political veto than they are with taking up political responsibility.

Not really. In case you haven't noticed, you aren't living in an economically poor country that has been ruled for the past forty-some years by a dictator who is backed and supported by members of a large, dominant religion with whom your religion has a historical emnity. You know very well that there is a militant wing to your religion: do you really think their sentiments would for long remain in the minority under like circumstances?

So it is really not registering with you that there is a Salafist movement there that is likely to get a much stronger hold on the Egyptian government before the runoff votes are done being counted? Are you aware that the Salafis are much more likely than the Brotherhood to win votes in the rural precicts that are the most likely to be represented in the runoffs?

You are very wrong here.

I am a realist,

I don't disagree with these sentiments, but I do think it is premature to begin singing the praises of the Muslim Brotherhood.