Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged brotherhood

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Support From Islamists for Liberal Upends Race in Egypt - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ral-to-oppose-brotherhood.html

Egypt politics Islam

shared by Javier E on 29 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • The main missionary and political groups of the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, threw their support behind Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a dissident former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood known for his tolerant and inclusive view of Islamic law.
  • The endorsement goes a long way toward making Mr. Aboul Fotouh the front-runner in a campaign that could shape the ultimate outcome of the revolt that ousted the former strongman, Hosni Mubarak.
  • Mr. Aboul Fotouh’s liberal understanding of Islamic law on matters of individual freedom and economic equality had already made him the preferred candidate of many Egyptian liberals.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Known for their strict focus on Islamic law, the Salafis often talk of reviving medieval Islamic corporal punishments, restricting women’s dress and the sale of alcohol, and cracking down on heretical culture.
  • Salafi leaders described their decision in part as a reaction against the presidential candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, the powerful and established Islamist group that now dominates Parliament. Though more moderate than the Salafis, the Brotherhood also favors the fashioning of an explicitly Islamic democracy in Egypt, and on social and cultural issues the group is closer to the Salafis than Mr. Aboul Fotouh is.
  • a spokesman for the Salafi group, acknowledged a big difference with Mr. Aboul Fotouh over his understanding of a verse of the Koran declaring, “There is no compulsion in religion,” which he interprets to mean that the state should not compel people to follow religious rules. But such compulsion “in reality is not possible now” in any case, Mr. Shahat said.
  • Leading Salafis hinted in recent days that they did not expect quick fulfillment of their goals for a state governed by Islamic law. Instead , they wanted a president who could deal with Egypt’s pressing needs while allowing them freedom to preach and advocate.
  • the Salafi endorsement also appeared to provide an unexpected validation for Mr. Aboul Fotouh’s argument that mixing preaching and politics would be “disastrous” for both Islam and Egypt,
  • Although the Salafis are more conservative on many cultural issues, they also typically disapprove of the Muslim Brotherhood’s emphasis on internal obedience and orthodoxy.
  • Mr. Aboul Fotouh has explained that his candidacy and his expulsion from the Brotherhood are part of a larger dispute over whether in a democratic Egypt the Brotherhood should control its own political party, or instead go back to its roots in preaching and charity while its members apply their own values to political life.
  • he has alluded to threats to the credibility of religious leaders in the unseemly day-to-day of political life, ranging from the appearance of compromises in the interest of power to more vivid embarrassments
  • The overlap between what’s partisan politics and what’s missionary is disastrous for the religious mission and a disaster for the party as well,” Mr. Aboul Fotouh said of the Brotherhood in the El Rahma interview. “They will see in the future the result of this threat, which is a threat to the homeland and to religion.
  • Mr. Aboul Fotouh also speaks fluently in the language of Salafis. He has talked at greater length and in greater detail about what Islamic law demands than the other Islamist candidates, including those of the Muslim Brotherhood, who fear alarming moderates. Among other things, he often argues that the first priorities in advancing Islamic law should be individual freedom and social justice.
  • he argued that Egyptian Muslims were not waiting for a president to teach them to follow their faith. They wanted a president to develop their agriculture and industry, as he said Islamic law also required.
  • Mr. Aboul Fotouh, who spent more than six years in jail for his Brotherhood leadership, brought to the competition for the Salafi vote a special authenticity. Many Salafi leaders came out of the Islamist student movement that Mr. Aboul Fotouh led in the 1970s, before he and some others from the student group joined and revitalized the Brotherhood.
julia rhodes

Britain Orders Inquiry Into Muslim Brotherhood - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-into-muslim-brotherhood.html

britain orders inquiry muslim history politics

shared by julia rhodes on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered an inquiry into the activities in Britain of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most prominent Islamic organizations, to determine in part whether it is using London as a base for planning extremist attacks following the military crackdown in Egypt, officials and media reports said on Tuesday.
  • “Given the concerns now being expressed about the group and its alleged links to violent extremism, it’s absolutely right and prudent that we get a better handle of what the Brotherhood stands for, how they intend to achieve their aims and what that means for Britain,”
  • Word of the inquiry first emerged in The Times of London, which said leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood met in London last year to plan their response to Mr. Morsi’s overthrow.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The issue of foreign extremists using London as a base is particularly sensitive here. In the days surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence agencies of some other European countries derisively labeled the British capital Londonistan — a reference to the ease with which Islamic militants were able to operate there.
  • Since Mr. Morsi was overthrown, jihadists operating mostly in the northern Sinai have carried out hundreds of bombings, assassinations and at least one attack using a rocket-propelled grenade.
  • The British inquiry followed behind-the-scenes pressure from Egypt and Saudi Arabia for Britain to outlaw the organization — but an official said the aim of the inquiry was “not about establishing evidence to proscribe” the group. Mr. Morsi, along with hundreds of his followers, is facing trial in Egypt on an array of charges.Last month, when Saudi Arabia branded the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, the group’s response came in a statement from its London office, which said it was surprised and distressed by the Saudi decree.
jongardner04

Eric Trager and Marina Shalabi | In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's New Leaders Turn Re... - 0 views

www.foreignaffairs.com/...slim-brotherhood-gets-facelift

shared by jongardner04 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Amr Farrag is a prominent Muslim Brotherhood youth cadre. The 28-year-old Cairene is a widely followed exponent of the organization’s ideology on social media and manages the popular pro-Brotherhood news portal Rassd. But these days, he no longer operates in Cairo. On July 5, 2013—two days after the Egyptian military responded to mass protests by removing Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi—the organization’s leaders urged Farrag to relocate to Istanbul, so that he could evade the Egyptian government’s anti-Brotherhood crackdown and reestablish the organization’s media operations in exile. Meanwhile, as many more Muslim Brothers fled to Turkey during the chaotic weeks that followed Morsi’s ouster, the Brotherhood formed a committee in Istanbul to resettle them, hoping to preserve the organization until it could return to power in Egypt, which it promised its members would happen very soon.
Maria Delzi

Egypt Detains Journalists It Says Aired 'False News' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...zeera-english-journalists.html

shared by Maria Delzi on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Egyptian authorities detained a team of journalists working for the Al Jazeera English news channel on Sunday, including an Australian correspondent and the channel’s Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief, accusing them of broadcasting illegally and meeting with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that the Egyptian government classified a terrorist organization last week.
  • The arrests appeared intended to further isolate the Brotherhood by deterring journalists from interviewing its members or reporting on its continuing protests.
  • The ministry accused the journalists of broadcasting “false news” to the Qatar-based channel and possessing materials that promoted “incitement,” including information about campus strikes by students who supported the Brotherhood — another topic widely covered in the press.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The government has said it would follow that plan, citing it as evidence of its commitment to democracy.
  • Al Jazeera said the detained journalists included the bureau chief, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, who had worked for CNN and contributed to The New York Times, and Peter Greste, an Australian correspondent for Al Jazeera who won a Peabody Award last year while working for the BBC in Somalia. A cameraman, Mohamed Fawzy, and another producer, Baher Mohamed, were also detained, the network said.
  • Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation in New York, said the government “seized on the moment and the grotesque nature of the attack” to accomplish several goals. While hard-liners in the security services seek to eradicate the Brotherhood, the terrorist designation gives other officials a “rhetorical” tool to stir interest in the coming elections, Mr. Hanna said. It also gives them a firmer legal basis to detain protesters and further suppress dissent ahead of the vote, he said.
  • On Sunday, a car bomb explosion outside a military intelligence building north of Cairo wounded at least five people, the third such bombing in less than a week.
julia rhodes

3 Gulf Countries Pull Ambassadors From Qatar Over Its Support of Islamists - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ll-ambassadors-from-qatar.html

history politics gulf countries pull qatar support

shared by julia rhodes on 06 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Tensions between Qatar and neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies broke out Wednesday when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from the country over its support of the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Islamists around the region.
  • The concerted effort to isolate Qatar, a tiny, petroleum-rich peninsula, was an extraordinary rebuke of its strategy of aligning with moderate Islamists in the hope of extending its influence amid the Arab Spring revolts.But in recent months Islamists’ gains have been rolled back, with the military takeover in Egypt, the governing party shaken in Turkey, chaos in Libya and military gains by the government in Syria.
  • The Saudi monarchs, in particular, have grumbled for years as tiny Qatar has swaggered around like a heavyweight. It used its huge wealth and Al Jazeera, which it owns, as instruments of regional power. It negotiated a peace deal in Lebanon, supported Palestinian militants in Gaza, shipped weapons to rebels in Libya and Syria, and gave refuge to exiled leaders of Egypt’s Brotherhood — all while certain its own security was assured by the presence of a major American military base.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • All four gulf countries actively back the Syrian rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, and all see Shiite Iran as a regional rival. But now the split with Qatar makes it harder for the West to work with them as a group on common concerns like Iran or Syria.
  • . The internal tensions make it harder for Washington to reassure the nervous governments in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that American negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program will not undermine gulf security.
  • In its own statement, Qatar expressed “surprise and regret” and denied that the rift had anything to do with “security and stability.”
  • “The whole issue is really about Sisi,” he said. “These countries are supporting a coup d’état” and “they want Qatar to support such a policy” but “we will never support another regime that kills its own people.”
  • Qatar, on the other hand, was Egypt’s most important donor when the Brotherhood was in power. Doha, along with London and Istanbul, has become a hub for Brotherhood leaders in exile.
  • The United Arab Emirates state news media reported last month that its government had summoned Qatar’s ambassador to express “extreme resentment” at a declaration on Al Jazeera by Sheik Qaradawi that the Emirates “has always been opposed to Islamic rule.”
jongardner04

Egypt Arrests 2 Muslim Brotherhood Leaders, Amid Divisions - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...m-brotherhood-leaders-31461205

shared by jongardner04 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • arrested two senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders, officials said Tuesday, increasing pressure on the Islamist group at a time when its ranks are divided over whether to pursue a course of direct violent confrontation with the government in response to a nearly 2-year-old heavy crackdown.
Javier E

This group believes Islam threatens America: 'It's a spiritual battle of good and evil.... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html

islam fanaticism anti-Muslim culture politics

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • “They should be hauled out of Congress and taken to Guantánamo!” a military veteran said of the few dozen elected officials — including Hillary Clinton and the only two Muslim members of Congress — identified in the film as having connections to terrorists. “Can’t we get a law passed so we can go in and get these people the hell out of our government?”
  • White and the filmmaker, Trevor Loudon, assured the group that there is “a new sheriff in town.”
  • Trump’s election has presented a “God-given opportunity,” Loudon said. “The fate of the Western world” now depends on how they use it.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “We have four years — the most important four years of our lives — to redouble the efforts,” he said. “If we blow it, our kids live in slavery. If we succeed, we can have a new golden age, not just in America, but all over the world.”
  • White urged the group to start by calling, writing and visiting their lawmakers. He said he needed volunteers to “begin to do some deep research” into a list of about 400 addresses that he had compiled of mosques and Muslim-affiliated “entities” to begin to “connect the dots.”
  • At the next meeting, he added, a visiting speaker would talk to them about “how to push back against building mosques in your communities.”
  • White, a devout Christian, believes that sharia, the guiding laws and principles of Islam, are the embodiment of that evil; that the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic movement that is a force in Middle Eastern politics, is working to spread sharia throughout America; and that CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, the majority of American mosques, and a host of other Muslim leaders and organizations are outgrowths of the Brotherhood on U.S. soil. The Trump administration has been considering adding the Brotherhood to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations; ACT considers that a top priority.
  • White hopes that Trump’s travel ban will prevail and that other Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will be added. He wants mosques and American Muslim groups to denounce sharia or be disbanded, and he wants the government to bar people who associate with those groups from public office.
  • The night before White visited the Capitol in Austin, a gunman who expressed support for nationalist and right-wing causes killed six people and wounded 19 others in an attack on a Quebec City mosque. The day before, a fire destroyed a mosque that had previously been burglarized and vandalized in Victoria, Tex. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Florida handed a 30-year sentence to a man who set a small-town mosque on fire because he saw the teachings of Islam as a threat.
jongardner04

Internal conflict: Is Muslim Brotherhood falling apart? | Mid-East | Saudi Gazette - 0 views

www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm

muslim brotherhood

shared by jongardner04 on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • When Muslim Brotherhood Secretary General Mahmoud Hussein issues a statement, then party spokesman Mohamed Montasser issues another to refute it, it is obvious that there are internal conflicts. Hussein’s statement, which was overlooked by the Brotherhood’s media outlets, said he was still secretary general and that Deputy Supreme Guide Mahmoud Ezzat is acting supreme guide.
Javier E

Saudi Arabia Promises to Aid Egypt's Regime - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ows-to-back-egypts-rulers.html

mideast politics egypt saudi turkey

shared by Javier E on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia, which itself is a close ally of Washington, has not only undermined Western efforts to press for compromise, but has also revealed diminished United States influence across the Arab world.
  • The Saudis, though, are not alone in this. Two other United States allies, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, have also supported the Egyptian military and sought to push back against Western entreaties
  • There is a strong rivalry between Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies of the Egyptian military, on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey, on the other, both of which are big supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Qatar has often outspent even the Saudis in pursuit of its foreign policy goals, and has put much of its money into Arab Spring causes like battling governments in Libya and Syria.
  • The Saudis, on the other hand, have championed shoring up the established order, which in Egypt is represented by the generals.
  • Ordinary Egyptians have long had something of a love-hate relationship with Saudi Arabia. Some 1.5 million to 2 million Egyptian guest workers are employed there, but many come back soured by the experience.
  • Now, however, on the issue of financial aid, at least among the sizable anti-Muslim Brotherhood camp, there is plenty of applause for the Saudi stance. “I would lick the floor rather than take that aid from America,”
Javier E

Young Israelis: A Turn to the Right? by Eyal Press | NYRBlog | The New York Review of B... - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...young-israelis-turn-right

israel palestine youth attitudes survey research democracy rights

shared by Javier E on 26 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • E-mail addthis_pub = 'nybooks'; addthis_logo = 'http://www.nybooks.com/images/logo-150.gif'; addthis_logo_background = 'ffffff'; addthis_logo_color = '666666'; addthis_brand = 'NYRB'; addthis_options = 'favorites, facebook, twitter, tumblr, reddit, digg, stumbleupon, delicious, google, more'; Share Print Comments (function() { var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0], rdb = document.createElement('script'); rdb.type = 'text/javascript'; rdb.async = true; rdb.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.readability.com/embed.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(rdb, s); })(); Young Israelis: A Turn to the Right? Eyal Press Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Children at the local school in the village of Ghajar, on Israeli-Lebanese border, which was recaptured during the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, November 10, 2010 Shortly after the democratic uprising began in Egypt, a group of young Israelis led by freelance journalist Dimi Reider launched Kav Hutz (“Outside Line”), a Hebrew-language blog devoted to covering the events across the border. Unable to enter Egypt on short notice with his Israeli passport—a predicament all Israeli correspondents faced—Reider chronicled the insurrection by posting minute-by-minute updates culled from an array of online sources on the ground: Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Egyptian bloggers. The tone of Reider’s blog was reportorial, but hardly detached. “Good luck,” he wrote on the eve of the huge “Day of Departure” rally in Tahrir Square—a sentiment rarely voiced in Israel’s mainstream media, which stressed the danger of a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood if the protesters prevailed. By the time Egyptians had succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, Kav Hutz was getting up to 12,000 visitors a day and had been singled out in Haaretz for leaving the rest of the Israeli press “in the dust.” As the story suggests, Egypt’s uprising managed to inspire not only countless young Arabs but also some young Israelis. A contributor to +972, an Israel-based online magazine that features commentary and reporting by mostly young progressives—it is named after the area code shared by Israel and the Palestinian territories—Reider was deeply moved by the courage of the protesters in Cairo and dismayed by the patronizing reaction of many Israelis. “The line the establishment took was that it’s all very nice but they’re going to end up like Iran,” he recalls. “I didn’t take that line because I bothered to read stuff by Egyptians and it quickly became apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood was just one player. It also felt distasteful to me to judge the extraordinary risks Egyptians were taking solely by our profit—by how it would affect Israeli security and the policy of a government I don’t support anyway.” For observers troubled by Israel’s alarming recent shift to the right, the emergence of Internet-savvy liberal voices like Reider’s may seem heartening. But while such bloggers appear more capable of reaching a younger demographic than Haaretz—the venerable leftist newspaper whose aging readership seems likely to shrink in the years to come—it’s not clear how many of their contemporaries are listening to them. One reason is apathy. Increasingly cynical about politics and the prospects of peace, not a few young Israelis I’ve met in recent years have told me they’ve stopped following the news. When they go online, it’s to chat with friends, not to check out sites like +972. There are also growing numbers of young Israelis who simply don’t share Reider’s views. Against the 12,000 readers of Kav Hutz were countless others who didn’t question the alarmist tone of their country’s mass-circulation tabloids when the revolt in Egypt began, as NPR discovered when it aired a segment on what Israeli youth thought of the uprising. “For us it is better to have Mubarak,” one young Israeli said. “I kind of feel sad for President Mubarak,” said another. “For the last two or three years, we’ve been seeing a very consistent trend of younger Israelis becoming increasingly right-wing,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst who also contributes to +972, told me. Last year, Scheindlin carried out a survey on behalf of the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative that showed eroding support for democratic values among Israeli youth, at least insofar as the rights of non-Jews go. One question in the survey asked whether there should be “Equal access to state resources, equal opportunities [for] all citizens.” Among Jewish respondents between the ages of 16-29, a mere 43 percent agreed.
  • In October, a poll conducted by New Wave Research asked, “If Palestinians and Israelis reach an agreement… and the Israeli government brings the agreement to a referendum, would you vote for or against?” Among voters over 55, 61 percent—nearly two out of three—said they would support a deal. Among those younger than 35, it was the opposite: only one in three (37 percent) would vote in favor of an agreement.
  • One reason tolerance may be less widespread among young Israelis is that they rarely interact with Palestinians or Arab-Israelis. “You don’t see Palestinians on the streets of Israel,”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The fact that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip chose in 2006 to elect Hamas, whose Charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and foresees Israel’s eventual destruction, hasn’t helped matters. Neither has the collapse of the peace process. Israelis in their late teens and twenties barely remember the hope that greeted the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. They do have strong memories of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), when a wave of suicide bombings “managed to obliterate any trust the Israelis had in a political settlement,” as the public opinion analysts Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki observe in their recent study of the violence’s impact. That was followed by Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which the Israeli right warned would make the country vulnerable and which indeed brought a barrage of Qassam missiles to the border town of Sderot; and the Israeli war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, in which more than one hundred Israeli soldiers—many of them young—were killed and hundreds more wounded.
  • the popular tabloids and Israel’s leaders converged around the theme of blaming the unraveling of the peace process on Palestinian intransigence.
  • “Older people remember the years when people actually liked Israel. They’re more likely to view criticism from the outside as a possibly legitimate critique of Israel’s policies. Young people are basically being told, over and over again, that criticism of Israel is de-legitimization of Israel, because they’re anti-Semites.”
  • For years Israelis have complained, not without reason, that textbooks used in Palestinian schools have failed to recognize Israel’s existence or to inculcate open-minded attitudes toward Jews among Arab youth
  • To judge by the petition signed by 472 high school teachers and sent to the Ministry of Education in December, however, some civics instructors are having trouble instilling the values of peace and tolerance in Israeli children. The subject of the petition was the growing prevalence of bigotry among students
  • What the instructor has been hearing from his pupils is, of course, something young Israelis have been hearing more and more from their leaders
  • A striking irony apparent in the survey commissioned by the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative is that young Arabs, who are often portrayed in the Israeli press as implacably hostile to the country’s ideals, support principles such as “mutual respect between all sectors” in higher proportions than their Jewish counterparts (84 versus 75 percent). Significantly more (58 versus 25 percent) also “strongly agree” with Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which states: “All citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, will participate in the life of the state, based on the principle of full, equal citizenship, and appropriate representation in all state institutions.” The country’s founders hoped this language would serve as a set of guiding principles for the state.
  • it does seem ironic that in the Jewish State, which insists on defining itself as the Jewish democratic state and the only democracy in the Middle East, the Arabs are our most democratic citizens.”
Javier E

The End of Pluralism - Shadi Hamid - The Atlantic - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...374875

mideast intervention rationale

shared by Javier E on 24 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • From Libya to Palestine to parts of the Egyptian Sinai, armed—and increasingly hard-line—Islamist groups are making significant inroads. This is the Arab world’s Salafi-Jihadi moment.
  • In Libya and Syria, even non-Salafi groups like the Brotherhood are adapting to the new world of anti-politics, allying themselves with local armed groups or working to form their own militias.
  • This is one of the great tragedies of the past few years—that a movement meant to demonstrate that peaceful protest could work ultimately demonstrated the opposite.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • emphasizing the religious aspects of violence can easily devolve into cultural essentialism: the belief that “ancient hatreds” drive modern conflicts. It’s a view most commonly associated with Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts
  • “Here men have been doomed to hate,” he writes. The word “doomed” suggests the kind of resigned pessimism that, two decades later, characterizes Washington hand-wringing in response to the manifest failures of the Arab Spring. According to this view, we can never hope to understand the Middle East, with all of its sectarian complexity and sheer religious passion
  • this is what makes Egypt’s conflict so frightening: It is not between sects but within one sect. In Syria or Lebanon, the lines are clear for those who insist on seeing them: Sunnis are Sunnis and Shiites are Shiites. In Egypt, however, it’s never entirely clear who is “Islamist” and who is “secular,” to say nothing of the many shades in between. Because their numbers can’t be defined, each side claims the vast majority of Egyptians as their own. The conflict, then, isn’t between fixed identities but rather fluid ideas of what the state is and what it should be.
  • The word “Islamists,” or Islamiyoun in Arabic, did not exist centuries ago, not because Muslims didn’t believe that Islamic law should play a central role in politics, but because it went without saying.
  • slamism, as a distinctive construct, only made sense in opposition to something else—and that something else was secularism, which grew in influence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Islam was no longer just a way of being; in the face of Western dominance, it became a political theology of authenticity and resistance and a spiritual alternative to liberal-secular democracy.
  • The default to inaction in the face of a complex region we cannot hope to understand, and when our “vital” interests do not seem to be engaged, is one response. Implicit here, and explicit in Bacevich’s account, is the notion that military action is distinctly unsuited for conflicts in which primeval divides predominate, and that America’s reliance on the use of force has only made matters worse.
jongardner04

Egypt: Hamas linked to killing of prosecutor Hisham Barakat - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35740260

egypt hamas

shared by jongardner04 on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Egypt has accused Palestinian Islamist group Hamas of involvement in the killing of Egypt's public prosecutor.
  • Hisham Barakat died in hospital after a bomb attack on his car in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis in March 2015.
  • The plot was "carried out on the orders of the Muslim Brotherhood in close coordination with Hamas", Egypt's interior minister said on Sunday.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Hamas has accused Egypt of collaborating with Israel to try to further isolate Gaza amid tension over Egypt's closures of the Rafah border crossing and its destruction of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.
  • "This plot was carried out on the orders of the Muslim Brotherhood... in close coordination with Hamas, which played a very important role in the assassination of the chief prosecutor from start to finish," Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar told reporters.
Javier E

For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...in-politics-and-governing.html

mideast islam politics egypt democracy

shared by Javier E on 05 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • From Benghazi to Abu Dhabi, Islamists are drawing lessons from Mr. Morsi’s ouster that could shape political Islam for a generation. For some, it demonstrated the futility of democracy in a world dominated by Western powers and their client states. But others, acknowledging that the coup accompanied a broad popular backlash, also faulted the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood for reaching too fast for so many levers of power.
  • The Brotherhood’s fall is the greatest in an array of setbacks that have halted the once seemingly unstoppable march of political Islam. As they have moved from opposition to establishment after the Arab spring revolts, Islamist parties in Turkey, Tunisia and now Egypt have all been caught up in crises over the secular practicalities of governing like power sharing, urban planning, public security or even keeping the lights on.
horowitzza

There Never Was a Two-State Solution; It's Time to Move On | Jewish & Israel News Algem... - 0 views

www.algemeiner.com/...e-solution-its-time-to-move-on

israel solution onestate

shared by horowitzza on 24 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The answer to the question of how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been to partition “Palestine” into two states. This assumes, however, that the parties only have a dispute over land; but that has never been the case. The conflict has always had political, religious, historical, geographical and psychological dimensions. The international community’s unwillingness to accept this reality has led to the continued fantasy that a two-state solution is possible.
  • The Palestinians have never been prepared to share any part of the land they claim as their own.
  • Jews have no place in the Islamic world — except as second-class citizens (dhimmis) under Muslim rule
  • ...45 more annotations...
  • it is time acknowledge that the two-state idea, as presently conceived, is dead.
  • Today, there is little enthusiasm for territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Even those who believe that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank do not believe that it can be done so long as there is no evidence the Palestinians are interested in peace.
  • For some time, I believed that the Palestinian people wanted peace but were denied the opportunity by their leaders. But decades of incitement and educational brainwashing regarding the evils of Jews and Israel have had an impact, and now poll after poll has found opposition to peace among Palestinians
  • radical Muslims will not rest until the descendants of apes and pigs are driven from holy Islamic soil
  • the same week John Kerry was extolling the virtues of the two-state solution and skewering Israel for allegedly creating obstacles to peace through settlement construction, the ruling Fatah party celebrated the 20 most outstanding terrorist operations of all time
  • Why Kerry or anyone else would expect Israelis to make concessions to people who commemorate the murder of Jews is a psychiatric rather than a political question.
  • One problem is that the Palestinians will continue their delegitimization campaign aimed at turning Israel into a pariah, and convincing the international community to dismantle the Jewish State.
  • Another concern with the status quo is that Palestinian terrorism fueled by hopelessness, incitement and radical Islam.
  • Put simply, the majority of Palestinians have no interest in peace with Israel under any circumstances. This view is reinforced daily by their leaders’ pronouncements, the incessant terror and incitement, and an education system that teaches intolerance, denies the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and extols the virtue of martyrdom.
  • Even when Israel agreed to Obama’s demand for a 10-month settlement freeze and the Palestinians responded by refusing to negotiate, Obama did not change his view. I’m not sure whether to call that naiveté or just stupidity
  • Today’s Palestinians are no more interested in compromise than their predecessors. As the poll data above indicates, the only acceptable solution is to have one state called Palestine that encompasses the West Bank, Gaza and what is currently known as Israel.
  • A wholesale change in attitudes and leadership will have to occur if there is to be any prospect of negotiating a peace agreement. Even then, it is difficult to imagine a reversal of the Islamization of the conflict — and there can be no compromise with jihadists.
  • Despite the ease with which it is possible to prove that settlements are not the obstacle to peace (e.g., did the Arabs agree to peace during the 19 years Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza and not a single Jewish settlement existed?), President Obama never figured this out; but he is not alone. The obsession with settlements will not go away.
  • For the last eight years, the Palestinians have refused to negotiate altogether, and their position has not changed in 80 years
  • , his failure to learn anything in eight years was apparent in his last minute UN tantrum
  • the incoming Trump officials seem to understand reality and are prepared to act accordingly by rejecting the specious notion that settlements, rather than Palestinian implacability, are the obstacle to peace.
  • Israel has evacuated approximately 94% of the territory it captured in 1967, which, it could be argued, has already satisfied UN Security Council Resolution 242’s expectation that Israel withdraw from territory
  • Most people, including all Arab leaders, ignore that resolution 242 also required that the Arab states guarantee the peace and security of Israel in exchange for withdrawal
  • ank and 100% of Gaza, and this did not bring peace; it brought more terror and should have forever buried the myth that if Israel cedes land, it will receive peace in return
  • If a Palestinian Zionist emerges tomorrow, it will still be risky for Israel to make a deal because 5, 10, or 20 years down the road, a radical Islamist or other hostile leader may emerge.
  • Advocates of the two-state solution on the Israeli side talk about a demilitarized Palestinian state, but this is not acceptable to the Palestinians because it would be a significant limitation on their sovereignty. This is another reason why the “solution” is flawed.
  • While the international community insists the settlements are an obstacle to peace, they actually can serve as a catalyst for peace.
  • to defeat the Palestinians Israel would have to apply the Powell Doctrine, which says that “every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy…and ending the conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate.”
  • Israel would have to be prepared to kill every terrorist with little regard for collateral damage; the Air Force would have to bomb refugee camps and other targets that would result in thousands of casualties rather than hundreds.
  • The United States did not flinch from killing tens of thousands of Iraqis to defeat Saddam Hussein and is unapologetic when bystanders are killed in drone strikes (never mind examples such as the Allied bombing of Dresden or the US use of the atomic bomb). Israel would have to be equally callous to “defeat” the Palestinians.
  • Israel has been unwilling to follow Powell’s guidance because the public would see the action as disproportionate and immoral, the international community would condemn Israel and the United States would force Israel to cease military operations before total victory out of moral indignation and fear of Arab/Muslim reaction.
  • Israel has learned the hard way in battles with the Palestinians and Hezbollah that it does not have the same freedom as a superpower to use decisive force, and therefore cannot militarily defeat the Palestinians.
  • The reason that none of these men annexed the West Bank is well known: Israel cannot remain a democratic, Jewish state if it assimilates 2.7 million Palestinians
  • Meanwhile, the Jewish birthrate has increased, Aliyah will accelerate as global antisemitism worsens and the Palestinians will not become a majority in Greater Israel
  • Hamas is also allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, and this would strengthen the Islamist threat to the government, which would not be in Israel’s interest.
  • “The Palestinians now realize,” Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij said in 1991, “that time is now on the side of Israel, which can build settlements and create facts, and that the only way out of this dilemma is face-to-face negotiations.”
  • The Palestinians continued to talk until President Obama took office, and gave them the false impression that he would force Israel to stop building settlements without their having to make any concessions in return
  • Obama’s refusal to veto the latest Security Council Resolution calling settlements illegal and labeling Judaism’s holiest places in Jerusalem “occupied territory” kept Abbas’ strategy in play, but the election of Donald Trump should derail this approach for at least the next four years.
  • the Palestinians will not accept any compromise that involves coexisting with a Jewish state
  • The current leadership will remain obstinate and continue to seek international help in destroying Israel.
  • President Trump can make an important contribution to disabusing the Palestinians of the idea that Israel can be forced to capitulate to their demands by fulfilling the promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy.
  • This would send a clear message that the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the city and will never have a capital in Eastern Jerusalem.
  • To further hammer home the point that Jerusalem will not be divided, Israel should complete the long-delayed E1 project to connect Ma’ale Adumim with the capital.
  • The aim of this step would be to force the world to accept the reality that Israel will never relinquish these areas, and to increase pressure on the Palestinians to negotiate.
  • If the Palestinians refuse to talk or recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland, Israel should formally annex the Jordan Valley
  • The world may blame Israel for the growth of settlements, but the real culprits are Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
  • Settlements have grown because of Palestinian rejectionism — and the situation will only get worse for them.
  • Ironically, the Palestinians could have two states instead of the one foreseen by proponents of the two-state solution. In the unlikely event of Palestinian reconciliation, a corridor could be created between Gaza and the West Bank as envisioned in the Clinton parameters.
  • Unless Palestinians radically change their attitudes, they will reject any proposal that requires coexisting with Israel. This will leave them with a shrunken Palestinian state with limited power and the possibility for a larger state permanently closed off.
  • It may be difficult to accomplish in the next four years, but Israel’s best chance of achieving this “solution” is to take advantage of having a friend in the White House.
Javier E

The Arab Withering - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-arab-withering.html

arab mideast crisis

shared by Javier E on 12 May 16 - No Cached
  • Five years on, Tahrir has the quality of a dream. Read Worth’s remarkable new book, “A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS,” and weep. The chasm between the civic spirit of the square and the brutal theocracy of the Islamic State reveals the extent of the failure.
  • Everywhere outside Tunisia, sect, tribe and the Mukhabarat (secret police) prove stronger than the aspiration for institutions capable of mediating differences and bringing the elusive “karama,” or dignity, that, as Worth notes, was the “rallying cry of all the uprisings.”
  • Who should be blamed for this epic failure
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Or was it Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for burying the Syrian uprising in rivers of blood? Or Saudi money cynically deployed against every agent of liberalizing transformation? Or a wavering Obama administration that, as in Iran in 2009, and Syria since 2011, has wrapped itself in righteous caution as the winds of change coursed through the Middle East? Or the feckless West that intervened in Libya only to abandon it? Or, simply, the impossibility of delivering more liberal, representative societies to a region where political Islam invokes not the power of the people but the all-pervasive authority of God?
  • The Muslim Brotherhood for reneging on its promise not to contest Egypt’s first post-uprising presidential election? The Egyptian army and corrupt “deep state” for never giving the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi (“the country’s first democratically elected president in six thousand years of history”) the means to govern? Morsi himself for his foolish power grabs, inept rigidity and inability to realize that he had to demonstrate he was everyone’s president, not merely the Brotherhood’s? Egyptian liberals for so quickly abandoning the idea of democracy to side with the military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his bloody coup that the United States never called by its name?
  • Leadership counts; Tunisia found a leader in Rached Ghannouchi, an Islamist whose long exile in Britain taught him the life-saving wisdom of democratic give and take. Elsewhere in the Arab world, there has been nothing resembling leadership.
Javier E

How Populism Stumbles - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...how-populism-stumbles.html

populism weakness crisis trump government authoritarian

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • why the weekend frenzy, the screaming headlines, the surge of protest? Because of several features inherent to populism, which tend to undermine its attempts to govern no matter the on-paper popularity of its ideas.
  • First, populism finds its voice by pushing against the boundaries of acceptable opinion. But in the process it often embraces bigotries and extremisms that in turn color the reception of its policies.
  • Second, having campaigned against elites and experts and all their pomps and works, populists imagine that their zeal can carry all before it, that proceduralism and institutional knowledge are for losers and toadies
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The great fear among Trump-fearers is that he will deal with this elite opposition by effectively crushing it — purging the deep state, taming the media, remaking the judiciary as his pawn, and routing or co-opting the Democrats. This is the scenario where a surging populism, its progress balked through normal channels, turns authoritarian and dictatorial, ending in the sort of American Putinism that David Frum describes darkly in the latest issue of The Atlantic.
  • finally, because populism thrives on its willingness to shatter norms, it tends to treat this chaos and blowback as a kind of vindication — a sign that it’s on the right track, that its boldness is meeting inevitable resistance from the failed orthodoxies of the past, and so on through a self-comforting litany. That makes it hard for populists to course correct
  • Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, the ascent of populism also creates an unusual level of solidarity among elites, who feel moved to resist
  • But nothing about Trumpian populism to date suggests that it has either the political skill or the popularity required to grind its opposition down.
  • In which case, instead of Putin, the more relevant case study might be former President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood leader whose brief tenure was defined both by chronic self-sabotage and by the active resistance of the Egyptian bureaucracy and intelligentsia, which rendered governance effectively impossible.
  • what we’ve watched unfold with refugee policy suggests that chaos and incompetence are much more likely to define this administration than any kind of ruthless strength.
julia rhodes

Jihadist Return Is Said to Drive Attacks in Egypt - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...to-drive-attacks-in-egypt.html

history politics crisis policy egypt attacks rebel

shared by julia rhodes on 06 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In just the last two weeks, Islamist militants have detonated a car bomb at the gates of the capital’s security headquarters, gunned down a senior Interior Ministry official in broad daylight and shot down a military helicopter over Sinai with a portable surface-to-air missile.
  • Egyptians returning from jihad abroad to join a campaign of terrorism against the military-backed government.
  • But until last summer, when the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi and began a bloody crackdown on his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt remained largely insulated from the Islamist violence that flared up around it.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Egypt is again an open front for jihad,” said Brian Fishman, a researcher in counterterrorism at the New America Foundation in Washington. “The world is being turned on its head, and, for the United States, the ability to rely on Egypt as a stabilizing force in the region — rather than a source of problems — is really being challenged.
  • Back then, militants who insisted on armed struggle — including Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian-born Al Qaeda leader — eventually gave up on the utility of armed struggle at home, refocusing on attacking Egypt’s Western sponsorsBut the ouster of Mr. Morsi appears to have changed that calculus.
  • Now a growing number of experienced Egyptian jihadists are heeding that call, often under the banner of Sinai-based militant groups such as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, according to United States and Egyptian officials involved in counterterrorism. At least two Egyptians who returned from fighting in Syria have already killed themselves as suicide bombers, according to biographies released by the group.
  • The Arab Spring revolt that initially carried Islamists to power through democratic elections in Egypt also brought a sectarian civil war to Syria, helped reignite similar fighting in Iraq, led to the near-collapse of the Libyan state and the looting of its arms depots, and opened a broad zone of permeable borders across North Africa that jihadists can traffic with ease.
  • Egyptian and American analysts initially believed the missile was one of the many basic, Russian-made models loose in Libya after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
grayton downing

Kerry Says Syrian Opposition Still Undecided on Peace Conference Next Month - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...erate-opposition-in-syria.html

kerry peace conference crisis us

shared by grayton downing on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia has wanted the United States to do more to train and arm rebel fighters. And the Saudi leadership was hoping that President Obama would order a cruise missile attack on the Syrian military in response to what Western and Arab powers said was the Syrian government’s Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
  • We know that the Saudis were obviously disappointed that the strike did not take place,” said Mr. Kerry, referring to the cruise missile attack
  • Saudi Arabia has also been worried that the Obama administration may be too eager to seek a compromise with Iran over its nuclear program and was unhappy that Washington did not take a stronger stance against the Muslim Brotherhood when President Mohamed Morsi governed Egypt.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Saudi Arabia was among the 11 nations that issued the communiqué on Tuesday, and Mr. Kerry insisted that the Saudis and Americans were now “on the same page” regarding Syria.
  • Setting a precise date for Geneva peace talks has been a recurrent problem. The United States, Russia and the United Nations initially first sought to organize one months ago
julia rhodes

Converging Interests May Lead to Cooperation Between Israel and Gulf States - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...en-israel-and-gulf-states.html

interests cooperation gulf israel states nytimes history politics crisis policy

shared by julia rhodes on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Looking for a potential bright spot in the roiling upheaval of the Middle East, American and Israeli officials meeting in Jerusalem on Monday held out the hope of growing security cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gul
  • “The U.S. and the regional allies cannot find a solution to Syria, stabilize Egypt and halt the Iranian threat without the other,” Mr. al-Otaiba said. “There is simply no way around working together to resolve these issues.”
  • “World jihadists are not fighting only against Israel,” said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, adding that it would behoove neighboring states to look for ways to combat common enemies.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Most notably, Arab states have long insisted on the resolution of the Palestinians’ dispute with Israel before any wider peace initiative could be taken up.
  • That idea, basically unthinkable a few years ago, could be more plausible now because of widespread worry over Iran’s nuclear program, coupled with chaos in Syria and turmoil in Egypt. Even though Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries have long viewed Israel as the Arab world’s biggest adversary, the rise of threats they all share in common is creating a new urgency to find common ground, the officials said.
  • For instance, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates share comparable views on the rise and fall of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They all were far more comfortable with the government of President Hosni Mubarak, and were dismayed at what they viewed as an abandonment of Mr. Mubarak by the United States in the face of the initial Tahrir Square uprising.
  • The Egyptian-Israeli “peace treaty and its architecture is part of the overarching strategy of the ruling elite in Egypt,” a senior Israeli military official said on Monday, though he noted that the treaty is still not popular with much of the Egyptian public, the military government is “committed to that for many good reasons.”
  • Another thing potentially bringing Israel and Gulf states together is their intensifying criticism of American foreign policy.
sgardner35

Hosni Mubarak Sentenced to Life Term by Egyptian Court - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arak-life-sentence-prison.html

shared by sgardner35 on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to life in prison as an accomplice in the killing of unarmed demonstrators during the protests that ended his nearly 30-year rule.
  • They denounced the verdict as a sham because the court also acquitted many officials more directly responsible for the police who killed the demonstrators, and a broad range of lawyers and political leaders said Mr. Mubarak’s conviction was doomed to reversal on appeal.
  • Mr. Mubarak, 84, was an “accessory to murder” because he failed to stop the killing, a rationale that lawyers said would not meet the usual requirements for a murder conviction under Egyptian or international law.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • “It is all an act. It is a show,” said Alaa Hamam, 38, a Cairo University employee joining a protest in Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of the uprising. “It is a provocation.”
  • Against an opaque backdrop of military rule, in which the generals, prosecutors and judges were all appointed by Mr. Mubarak, the degree of judicial independence is impossible to know. Demonstrators slammed the decision as a ruse designed to placate them without holding anyone accountable for the violence or corruption of the old government.
  • In the parking lot outside the makeshift courthouse in a police academy, some initially celebrated the verdict. “I am so happy — this is the greatest happiness I have ever felt,” said Rada Mohamed Mabrouk, a 60-year-old retiree. “The martyrs are all of our children.”
  • He called Mr. Mubarak’s tenure “30 years of intense darkness — black, black, black, the blackness of a chilly winter night.”
  • As Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, Mr. Shafik presided over the cabinet when the police failed to protect unarmed protesters in Tahrir Square from a deadly assault by a mob of Mubarak supporters known as the “battle of the camels.”
  • “The verdict means that the head of the regime and the minister of interior are the only ones who have fallen, but the rest of the entire regime remains,” the Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist group, said in a statement.” It added, “The Egyptian people have to sense the great danger that threatens their revolution and their hopes, and wastes the blood of the martyrs and the sacrifices of their children.”
  • Both sons stood in front of their father to try to shield him from the cameras. Alaa Mubarak appeared to recite verses from the Koran as the verdict was read. And after the ruling, both sons had tears in their eyes. They remain in jail while they face charges in an unrelated stock-manipulation case announced last week.
  • The judge dismissed the corruption charges against Mr. Mubarak and his sons on the grounds that a statute of limitations had expired since the three Mubaraks were said to have received the vacation homes. Prosecutors had evidently hoped to date the crime from the subsequent favors Mr. Mubarak did for Mr. Salem. It was unclear why the judge had not raised the statute of limitations issue earlier.
1 - 20 of 37 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page