“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
– Charter of the Muslim Brotherhood
As the so-called Arab Spring brings Islamists to power, the Obama administration is going to have to deal with its foreign policy implications. How president Obama does so is going to test his global leadership credentials (assuming that he desires such a place in the world). As Hamas is emboldened by their Egyptian political parent, The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and as Islamists battle in Syria for domination of the post-Assad environment the regional landscape in the Middle East appears to be shifting. The direction of this shift signals the emergence of a new era: Radical Islam’s central place in Arab politics.
Some have argued that the Egyptian MB is a force for moderate Islam in the region. This is a mischaracterization of the facts. To be less openly violent than al Qa’ida does not automatically place one in the category of moderation. Egyptian MB President Mohammed Morsi is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. To believe that he is committed to peace with Israel is to ignore his disdain for the Jewish State and the Jewish people. Any attempt to try to separate Morsi from his party’s previous (and current) pronouncements reflects a despicable insincerity at best and outright deception at worst.
With regard to Syria, one indisputable fact is observable throughout the entirety of the Syrian Civil War (and much of the other so-called Arab Spring uprisings): that Islam is at the center of all that will follow the toppling of the Assad regime. In support of this claim, I ask that the reader watch a random sample of videos emanating from that conflict. Count the number of times that the Battle Cry “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great[er than the enemy]) is shouted. Beyond that, witness the variety of circumstances that characterize the invocation of such an exclamation. For example, in any of the following cases you will regularly hear the above mentioned refrain: enemy inbound fire, friendly outbound fire, dead Syrian soldiers, dead Syrian civilians (children included), mass atrocity sites (on either side), while riding to battle, while returning from battle, while protesting peacefully on the streets, or randomly firing automatic weapons skyward from the streets.
It is clear that secular governments are not going to result from the Middle East’s recent uprising (read: intifada). This does not mean that democracy is impossible, but it does mean that political Islam is what is sought after. I’m not going to make the case that Islam and democracy are incongruent. Indonesia, Turkey, and India already show that to be a false claim. I am, however, going to stand by the research and personal experience of others (e.g. Daniel Pipes, Walid Phares, Nonie Darwish, Walid Shoebat, Frank Gaffney, Debbie Schlussel, M. Zuhdi Jasser, Ray Ibrahim, Wafa Sultan, Raymond Stock, Boaz Ganor, Eric Allen Bell, Dinesh D’Souza, Jamie Glazov, Steve Emerson, and David Horowitz, to name a few) who show that political Islam in the Arab world has not been a success for democracy. Consequently, this is not helpful to American interests. Nor is it helpful to pretend that Islamists are not penetrating the halls of American political power.
What does president Obama think about all of this? I don’t know, but to feign ignorance to the threat of political Islam’s presence at home and abroad is to gesture to America’s enemies (and the enemies of democracy writ large) that folks like Huma Abedin and Mohammed Morsi are not inimical to American foreign policy. Wake up and smell the Jihad Mr. President!
David Firester, Ph.D.
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