Britain to Crack Down on Muslim Brotherhood - P. David Hornik

by P. David Hornik


Britain’s The Telegraph reports that Britain is aiming to take serious measures against the Muslim Brotherhood. The situation contrasts notably with the one in the U.S., where—among much else—the Obama administration has cut back ties with the current, geopolitically moderate Egyptian government because—backed by the most massive popular protest in world history—it came to power by overthrowing a Muslim Brotherhood regime that the administration favored.


As The Telegraph describes it:

Downing Street is to order a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and a network of Islamist groups accused of fuelling extremism in Britain and across the Arab world. 
[Prime Minister] David Cameron launched an inquiry into the Brotherhood earlier this year, prompted by concerns it was stoking an Islamist ideology that had encouraged British jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), is an adviser to the inquiry and “is reported to have described [the Brotherhood] as ‘at heart a terrorist organization.’”
The Telegraph adds that:

A senior source close to the inquiry said its report—compiled but not yet published—had identified “an incredibly complex web” of up to 60 organisations in Britain, including charities, think tanks and even television channels, with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which will all now come under scrutiny. 
The inquiry, aided by the security services, has also investigated its network abroad. One expert said that the Brotherhood was now operating from three major bases—London, Istanbul and Doha, the capital of Qatar. 

That the Brotherhood operates out of Turkey and Qatar is, of course, not news to politically sentient people in the Middle East, who are well aware of the Turkey-Qatar-Brotherhood-Hamas axis.

As for what Britain plans to do about its domestic Brotherhood terror base:

The Government crackdown will stop short of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood but action is expected to include: 
Þ Investigations into charities that are effectively “fronts” for the  Brotherhood; 
Þ Inquiries into funding of the organisation and links to jihadi groups abroad; 
Þ Banning clerics linked to the group from countries such as Qatar and Turkey from coming to Britain for rallies and conferences.

In other words, the British government has come around to viewing the Brotherhood the way it is viewed in the U.S. by people who are considered Islamophobic and bigoted for raising such issues.

Politically incorrect U.S. conservatives have for years been calling attention to the role of Brotherhood-linked officials in the administration, the stealth jihad practiced by Brotherhood front organizations, the domestic Brotherhood’s ties to foreign terror, and the Obama administration’s very problematic sympathy and support for the Brotherhood.

As Andrew McCarthy, writing in 2012, described the situation back then:

•  The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. We’re helping them get elected. 
•  The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt….
•  On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured the ruling military junta to hand over power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and to the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official.

Last month on Breitbart Katie Gorka noted that: 

On June 13, 2012, five members of Congress called for an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in the Obama administration. The five members—Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)—were widely criticized for doing so, even by their own Republican leadership, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH), and Mike Rogers (R-MI).   

Meanwhile, Gorka points out, it is none other than the New York Times that has published a major exposé of foreign governments’ influence-buying at U.S. think tanks—focusing especially on Brotherhood-patron Qatar’s large donations to the Brookings Institution and other centers. The Times observed that these think tanks “push…United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities….”

Gorka also recalls the Justice Department’s “sweeping review” in 2011 of

all counter-terrorism trainers and materials used throughout federal law enforcement and every branch of the military.  Hundreds of training slides were reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers. Many trainers were forbidden from future training and material that used terms like “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” or “Islamist violence….”   

The general purge of “incorrect” terminology led famously, of course, to the administration’s dubbing the 2009 Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”

The administration’s ongoing affinity for the Brotherhood camp was well evident this summer during the Gaza War when Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Israel negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas under Turkey’s and Qatar’s auspices. Israel’s (along with Egypt’s) refusal to do so was one of the factors that led the administration to embargo all arms to Israel for days.

That Britain has come to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist, jihadist nature is encouraging news. It can be hoped that, by 2016, a U.S. administration will—unlike the present one—be able to as well.


P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Beersheva and author of the book Choosing Life in Israel.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/britain-to-crack-down-on-muslim-brotherhood/

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