{"id":2496,"date":"2011-07-31T16:25:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T16:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=2496"},"modified":"2013-03-20T16:27:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T16:27:31","slug":"muslim-brotherhoods-method-impose-islam-step-by-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslim-brotherhoods-method-impose-islam-step-by-step\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslim Brotherhood’s Method: “Impose Islam…Step by Step”"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n

Hudson New York<\/em><\/p>\n

Things are looking good for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamist groups. Despite the organization’s\u00a0hegemonic aspirations<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 which include “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization \u2026 so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions” \u2014 the Obama administration recently announced that it “welcomes dialogue” with the Brotherhood; so did the European Union. And under Egypt’s military regime, the Islamist organization just “became a\u00a0legal political party<\/a>\u00a0for the first time since President Gamal Abdel Nasser banned it more than half-a-century ago.”<\/p>\n

Why Nasser banned the Brotherhood, indeed, tried to decimate it, is instructive, and offers an important lesson in \u2014 and about \u2014 time.<\/p>\n

Machiavellian from the start, Nasser collaborated closely with the Brotherhood; many Egyptians still insist he was originally a member. Soon after usurping Egypt’s leadership via the 1952 Revolution, the alliance soured, culminating with an assassination attempt on Nasser’s life by a Brotherhood member.<\/p>\n

Nasser’s response was swift and decisive: he dissolved the Brotherhood, burned down its headquarters, arrested some 15,000 members, and executed some \u2014 most famously Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual father of al Qaeda \u2014 while leaving others to rot in prison. Many of the remaining members, aware that Nasser meant business, fled Egypt.<\/p>\n

Why such a dramatic response? Why not simply punish the failed assassin and his accomplices? Nasser, a pious Muslim, was most likely intimately, if not instinctively, aware of what the Brotherhood was \u2014 and still is \u2014 all about; he was aware that it is impossible for Muslim organization’s committed to theocratic rule to negotiate or share power, much less be trustworthy allies.<\/p>\n

In short, Nasser was aware that, once the opportunity presented itself, the Brotherhood would do everything in its power to take over: unlike secular parties concerned with the temporal, it has a divine mandate \u2014 a totalitarian vision \u2014 to subdue society to Sharia.<\/p>\n

Some people even maintain that Nasser himself staged the assassination attempt as a pretext to eliminate the Brotherhood \u2014 an interpretation that only further supports the theory that Nasser knew he had to dismantle the Islamists, and was willing to play dirty to do so.<\/p>\n

Nasser’s approach, then, is the\u00a0realpolitick<\/em>\u00a0approach of one who knows that you must suppress those who would certainly suppress you \u2014 once circumstance permits; it is the long-term approach that takes the big picture into account (unlike many Western politicians looking for a quick fix for the duration of their term).<\/p>\n

For its part, the Brotherhood learned the great virtues of patience and perseverance; learned to play the game on the enemy’s terms \u2014 whether by rejecting violence, going to the\u00a0kafir<\/em>\u00a0[infidel unbeliever] ballot box, our adopting the “pluralistic” language of the West (which Brotherhood affiliates in the West, such as CAIR, have perfected to an art). Indeed, a new document on implementing Sharia appearing on the Brotherhood’s website\u00a0argues<\/a>\u00a0that “Gradual action does not impose Islam at once, but rather step by step.”<\/p>\n

Accordingly, consider how the mere passage of time has empowered the Brotherhood: over the decades, Egyptian society has become more Islamist, that is, more sympathetic to the Brotherhood \u2014 thanks in no small part to the organization’s grassroots efforts; moreover, both in Egypt and abroad, many truly believe that the organization has reformed, which would be worthy of note if the facts corresponded. They don’t. Many people also believed that Khomeini would bring democracy to Iran. He didn’t.<\/p>\n

The passage of time in the West has also helped the Brotherhood: Western politics have descended into idealism and fantasy \u2014 culminating today with Washington reaching out to Islamists. Would they have reached out to the Nazis?<\/p>\n

The Muslim Brotherhood is a great testimony to the power of time and patience. From being crushed and disbanded half a century ago, it is now legal and poised to take over Egypt.<\/p>\n

Yet, the fact is, when all is said and done, the Brotherhood wants the same thing all Islamists, Salafists, and Jihadists want: the enforcement of Allah’s draconian, anti-infidel laws to govern the earth. They’re just smarter \u2014 more patient \u2014 than their impulsive, violent counterparts in the West.<\/p>\n

Hence the great lesson of Nasser: when dealing with an existential, permanent enemy, sometimes the only response is the most decisive, the ugliest \u2014 even when your enemy is weak. If he becomes stronger, it becomes that much more costly to counter him. Consider how much easier it would have been to stop Hitler, say,\u00a0before<\/em>\u00a0he crossed the Rhine \u2014 but how many voices were there then insisting he was just a tin-pot dictator who would never be a serious threat to anyone?<\/p>\n

Yet the West continues to play the same talking game, the same waiting game \u2014 for example, with North Korea and Iran \u2014 granting one’s adversary precisely what he most needs to be in a position to attack you: time.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York Things are looking good for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamist groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[140,227],"tags":[161,664,1035,519,1017,1043,545,1056],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Eg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1290,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/lessons-on-the-long-road-to-hijab\/","url_meta":{"origin":2496,"position":0},"title":"Lessons on the Long Road to Hijab","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch A\u00a0caricature, which first appeared on CagleCartoons.com, has been making the rounds on the Arabic blogosphere, and points to how democratic elections are serving to Islamize Egypt: average women enter the ballot box \u2014 \"overseen\" by the Muslim Brotherhood \u2014 only to emerge thoroughly veiled, thoroughly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3827,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/egypts-identity-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":2496,"position":1},"title":"Egypt’s Identity Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media With Egypt's \"July Revolution\" of 1952, for the first time in millennia, Egyptians were able to boast that a native-born Egyptian, Gamal Abdel Nasser, would govern their nation: Ever since the overthrow of its last native pharaoh nearly 2,500 years ago, Egypt had been ruled\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6351,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/murbaraks-muslim-brotherhood-prophecy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2496,"position":2},"title":"Murbarak’s Muslim Brotherhood Prophecy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0Gatestone Institute In a\u00a0video of Hosni Mubarak\u00a0when he was still Egypt\u2019s president, the strategies of which he accuses the Muslim Brotherhood have come to pass.\u00a0 What follows are Mubarak\u2019s words from a conference in Egypt (date unknown; author\u2019s translation): So they [Brotherhood and affiliates] took advantage of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":675,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-evils-of-the-muslim-brotherhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":2496,"position":3},"title":"The Evils of the Muslim Brotherhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Investigative Project on Terrorism Egypt's longtime banned Muslim Brotherhood \u2014 the parent organization of nearly every subsequent Islamist movement, including al Qaeda \u2014 has just won the nation's presidency, in the name of its candidate, Muhammad Morsi. 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Consider the issue of the hijab, the female \u201cveil\u201d \u2014 the proliferation of which, according to\u00a0one former Islamist\u00a0and associate of al Qaeda's Ayman Zawahiri,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":745,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/egypts-presidential-elections-whats-at-stake\/","url_meta":{"origin":2496,"position":5},"title":"Egypt’s Presidential Elections: What’s at Stake","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine Egypt's long awaited and much anticipated presidential elections \u2014 the first of their kind to take place in the nation's 7,000 year history \u2014 are here. 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