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Arabs warn Biden: Do not return to Obama era of embracing Islamists
November 19, 2020
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, Sept. 24, 2012. (AP/Jason DeCrow)The message they are sending to Biden and the Democrats: We do not want to go back to the bad old days when the U.S. administration aligned itself with Islamist terrorist groups.
By Khaled Abu Toameh, The Gatestone Institute
In a clear message directed to a possible US administration under Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have warned against supporting the Muslim Brotherhood organization. They state that it gives birth “to extremist terrorist groups who wreak havoc on the country and the people.”
On November 10, Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars, the kingdom’s highest Islamic religious body, issued a warning amid growing fear in some Arab countries that a Biden administration may return to former President Barack Obama’s policy of empowering and appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi warning was immediately endorsed by Egypt’s senior Islamic religious institute, Dar al-Ifta, and prominent Egyptian writers and political analysts.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has congratulated Biden on his disputed victory in the U.S. presidential election, is hoping that if and when he becomes president, he will not classify the organization as a terrorist group.
The Council of Senior Scholars, in a strongly worded statement, said that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group and “does not represent the true values of Islam.”
The Council described the Brotherhood as a “deviant group that undermines coexistence within nations, stirs up sedition, violence and terrorism and pursues its partisan goals in an attempt to seize more power for itself under the cover of religion. The history of the organization of one of evil, strife, extremism and terrorism.”
The Council said that the history of the Muslim Brotherhood reveals the full scale of the evil for which it is responsible and that it has inspired the formation of many extremist and terrorist groups that are responsible for atrocities all around the world.
The Council called on the public to be wary of the Muslim Brotherhood and its activities, and urged them not to join it, support it or become involved with its activities.
In 2014, Saudi Arabia blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Three years later, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt issued a joint statement in which they listed as terrorists 59 individuals, including prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures, and 12 charities of various nationalities.
The London-based Arab Weekly newspaper noted this month:
“Followers of Saudi affairs did not rule out that the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars was a response to the Muslim Brotherhood’s exaggerated enthusiasm over Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and its probable negative impact on Saudi-American relations.
“These observers pointed out that, behind the Council’s statement, there is a Saudi message saying that the Brotherhood’s rush to welcome and embrace Biden and its attempts to win his sympathy while inciting against important countries in the region will not change Saudi Arabia’s steadfast position of considering the group a terrorist organisation and a real incubator for all militant groups.”
Abdullatif Al-Sheikh, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, responding to the Council’s statement, said that he has “warned against the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization for more than 20 years.” He said that his warning came out of concern for “our religion, our country, our citizens, and all Muslims.”
Al-Sheikh’s statement is also seen by Arabs as a warning to Biden after the Muslim Brotherhood congratulated him on his “victory.”
Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, an Islamic advisory, judicial and governmental body that offers Muslims religious guidance and advice through the issuing of fatwas (Islamic rulings) on various issues, expressed full support for the Saudi Council of Senior Scholar’s statement against the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Egyptian group, also in a message seemingly directed to Biden, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood “always seeks to divide societies and spread chaos and incite citizens to riot and engage in violence.”
“The statement of the [Saudi] Council of Senior Scholars came after a long and careful study of the methodology and thinking of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization, which views non-Muslims as infidels… We call on various religious bodies, institutions and councils in the countries of the Islamic world to criminalize and prohibit the terrorist Brotherhood and to disavow it. The group’s extremism and violence are an inherent feature of its ideology, and there is no point in reforming or changing it.”
Arab political analysts and experts in Islamic fundamentalist movements said they considered the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia as “a new blow to the terrorist group” and that it exposes the group’s “tricks to attract young people to its deviant discourse.”
The analysts and experts added that the world has realized that the existence of this terrorist organization represents a real threat to the identity and stability of states, stressing that the Muslim Brotherhood group does not represent the approach of Islam.
Saudi political analyst Dr. Ahmed al-Rukban said that the Council of Senior Scholars is the legislative body in the Kingdom and is considered reliable on the issues of the Arab and Islamic nation with regard to domestic and foreign policy.
Al-Rukban warned that the Muslim Brotherhood and its followers have always used Islam “to penetrate many sectors and agencies in Saudi Arabia and other countries.” The Muslim Brotherhood, he added, is financially supported by Turkey.
Mounir Adeeb, a researcher on Islamic extremist movements and international terrorism, said that the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars reveals the truth of the Muslim Brotherhood. He praised the Council for its “bold, brave and clear” description of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Saudi writer Mohammed Al-Saaed revealed that after the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed in Saudi Arabia in 2014, “the terrorist group secretly tried to sneak back through the window.”
The Brotherhood activists sought to “jump on the technocratic jobs that began to spread in the wake of the great development in the kingdom and to infiltrate and attack society whenever the opportunity arises,” he commented.
Noting that the Muslim Brotherhood carried out several terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006, Al-Saaed wrote: “The terrorist organization has become a despicable and treacherous organization.”
Will Biden continue in Obama’s footsteps?
Egyptian Islamic scholar Saad Eddin Al-Hilali expressed concern that Biden, if elected, will continue in the footsteps of Obama and endorse the Islamists. Al-Hilali called on Egyptians to be wary of the Islamists, “who were previously supported by Obama and will now be supported by Biden.”
Biden, he said, “will complete Obama’s march, but I want to remind the Egyptians that Egypt rejected political Islam [by removing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, from power]. Now, Egypt stands firmly on its feet and is saying no to trafficking in religion.”
Egyptian media personality Mustafa Al-Faqi also expressed concern over the possibility that a Biden administration would embrace the Muslim Brotherhood. “Biden endorsed the approach of Obama, who wanted to spread Islamism in the region,” Al-Faqi said. “Obama saw the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the national opposition. This is nonsense.”
The Saudis and Egyptians are hardly the only Arabs who are worried about a renewed alliance between a Democrat-led administration and the Islamists.
Several Arab political analysts and columnists, particularly in the Gulf, have voiced similar sentiments. The message they are sending to Biden and the Democrats is: We do not want to go back to the bad old days when the U.S. administration aligned itself with Islamist terrorist groups.
These Arabs are determined to prevent the Islamists from returning to power in Egypt or raising their heads in other Arab countries. It remains to be seen if the future U.S. administration will cooperate in this effort.
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Aussie man who hatched ‘amateurish’ plan to exterminate ‘lefties’ & Muslims given 12-year jail term
20 Nov, 2020 13:34
An Australian court has sentenced a far-right man, who hatched “rather amateurish” plans to attack Melbourne anarchists and Muslims, to a lengthy jail term. The judge said he was being punished for contemplating violence.
Phillip Galea, 36, is to spend almost five more years in solitary confinement before he can petition for parole. Last year a jury found him guilty of plotting terrorist attacks and inciting others to commit violent acts by writing a manual he called the ‘Patriot’s Cookbook’.
Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth on Friday acknowledged that
Galea’s plot was “rather amateurish” and highly unlikely to succeed. But she said it was “illogical and implausible” that he was preparing “fake” attacks to expose a police informant inside right-wing groups to which he belonged, which was his line of defense during the trial. She said he didn’t show any remorse and continued advocating violence while in custody.
“Although you regard yourself as a patriot who holds mainstream views, it's clear the jury found otherwise,” the judge said.
You're not being punished for holding radical right-wing views… you're being punished for the violent means you contemplated.
Hollingworth also noted that it was “somewhat ironic” that Galea’s work heavily plagiarized ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’, a notorious 1971 revolutionary manual, considering who he was targeting with his plot. Galea wanted to attack the Melbourne Anarchist Club as well as the Victorian Trades Hall to “eliminate leaders of the left.” He continued working on the document while awaiting trial in jail, but during the proceedings he claimed that it was meant to be a Monty Python-esque satire.
Galea is a forklift operator by trade and was a member of right-wing groups Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew. He was reported by his own mates in August 2016. During the trial witnesses said he talked about “mass extermination of the left,” whom he accused of promoting “Islamization of Australia,” and expressed a desire to “create a Muslim-free country.”
Investigators discovered that he had researched bomb-making, firearms and ballistic armor and had 362.1 grams of mercury in his possession – presumably to be used for poisoning his targets. Galea claimed he procured the toxic metal for a science project.
The man himself believes he was a victim of a far-reaching conspiracy involving his own lawyers. After he was sentenced he held up a sign which read: “I did not receive a fair trial.”
When he was free, the terrorism-plotter didn’t appear to have any close relationships, had issues with alcohol abuse as well as multiple drug-induced psychotic episodes, the court was told. After his arrest he remained in “effective” solitary confinement, which will be added to his years served.
The article doesn't explain why he was in solitary confinement, but perhaps authorities were concerned that he would attempt to convert fellow prisoners to his point of view.
New Zealand serves justice with life sentence for mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant
Clockwise from left: Al-Noor mosque shooting survivor Taj Mohammed Kamran reacts as he leaves the High Court after the last day of the sentencing hearing for Brenton Tarrant. // Survivors of the twin mosque shootings react as they arrive at Christchurch High Court. // Members of the public gather in front of the High Court to support relatives of victims killed in the 2019 twin mosque shootings. (AFP)
Updated 28 August 2020
DAVID COHEN, Arab News
CHRISTCHURCH: New Zealanders are hoping that the life sentence given to Brenton Tarrant — the mass killer who murdered 51 people during an anti-Muslim shooting spree last year — will bring an end to one of the darkest periods in the country’s recent history.
Tarrant, 29, was sentenced on Thursday to life imprisonment without parole.
The judge, Justice Cameron Mander, told the gunman he had been motivated by a “base hatred of people perceived to be different from yourself.”
He called Tarrant’s actions “inhuman,” saying the killer “showed no mercy.”
Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant attends his first day in court in Christchurch on August 24, 2020. (AFP)
The whole-of-life sanction, for killings that took place during Friday prayers last March at a mosque and nearby religious center, was a first for the South Pacific nation, which carried out its last execution in 1961 before abolishing the death penalty in the late 1980s.
Christchurch is an unlikely setting for a hate crime of such scale. In December 1850, four ships carrying British laborers and farmers “of reputable morals” arrived at New Zealand’s second-largest city, to establish what they cheerfully supposed to be a “better” class of Anglican-style life — decorous, devout and, as an old cliche used to have it, more English than England.
But there were always others in the cultural mix, too, not least the indigenous Maori tribesmen who staked out a claim to the land centuries earlier. More recently, and from the early 2000s in particular, Christchurch has been a destination of choice for eligible refugees, including many from the Middle East.
However, the Garden City also played host to Tarrant, a diminutive white supremacist who journeyed more than 2,000 miles from his native Australia to violently purge New Zealand of what he deemed to be “outsiders” — Muslim migrants, specifically.
Tarrant pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of engaging in an act of terrorism that he livestreamed on Facebook. These terrorist acts, unprecedented in the country’s criminal history, were carried out against Friday worshippers over a period of around 40 minutes at Christchurch’s Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Center.
A general view of the Al-Noor Mosque ahead of the last day of the sentencing hearing for Brenton Tarrant, the gunman who massacred 51 people during last year's twin mosque attacks, in Christchurch on August 27, 2020. (AFP)
There is more on this story at Arab News.
