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Why should this worry us? The received wisdom among many academics and analysts in Britain and America is that the original Egyptian Brotherhood has evolved into a set of diffuse alliances among Muslim communities around the world sharing only a loosely linked ideology. "There is no reason to fear it as a menacing global web," says Professor Nathan J. Brown of George Washington University. 

Really? Not according to Steven Merley. He scours the web and other sources for prime source facts and publishes them in a daily intelligence digest called "Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch". 

The Brotherhood movement may not operate as a rigidly disciplined, centralised Stalinist organisation like the Comintern in the Soviet era. But Merley says its global network clearly does have a structure which operates in semi-secrecy.

In Europe, the Brotherhood has established 19 organisations dealing with theology, education, political lobbying, organising conferences, publishing newsletters, and sponsoring youth events. Their umbrella organisation is the Federation of Islamic Organisations Europe (FIOE), created in 1989. Little is known about its sources of funding.

The FIOE has close links to Egypt. Its secretary general, Ayman Aly, recently moved to Cairo to become one of President Morsi's advisers. Belgian FIOE executive Bassem Hatahet has also been appointed to the Brotherhood-dominated opposition to Assad in exile, the Syrian National Council, backed by Barack Obama and David Cameron. 

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Christopher C.
July 2nd, 2013
4:07 AM
"Let me be clear: followers of the Brotherhood in Britain are not advocating violent jihad here. They condemned the beheading in May of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Muslims on a London street in broad daylight. Their organisations have civic-sounding names; they emphasise human rights, respect for democracy and integration." There is a good Islamic word for those public pronouncements. It is taqqiya - religiously-sanctioned misrepresentation (to say it most politely). But "ordinary" Muslims - are they representative of Islam? Here's a suggestion - what if Hassan al-Banna and others like him are the leaders of an Islamic Reformation. The original Reformation, after all, followed Gutenberg, and the much greater availability of the Bible. Luther and thousands of other Christians went to the source and made their own judgements about the Bible's meanings. So, is there a parallel between post-Gutenberg Europe and the Middle East of the early 20th C.? I suggest that Hassan al-Banna and those of his ilk were, for perhaps the first time, a critical mass for the study of the Koran and the adhadith. And they took the exhortations of both seriously. The language is plain. And it is aggressive. It demands the imposition (not the free acceptance) of sharia. In other words, it demands of Muslims that they be total in their acceptance of Islam, and to ensure that everybody else submit as well (after all, that is what Islam means - submission). The point? "Ordinary" Muslims, in the sense that such persons present no threat to post-Judeo Christians, do not really exist. Those who do not wish to compel others to follow Islam are not really Muslims. The West is in very great trouble that even writers such as Mr Ware can part-recognise the danger, but not travel the last, few necessary steps to describe what we are really faced with.

truthseeker
July 1st, 2013
12:07 PM
The article says the Muslim Brotherhood has made Islam political instead of only religious. In fact, Islam makes no distinction between the political and the religious, as sharia law demonstrates. There is no Islamism, there is only Islam.

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