Syria’s al-Jolani is a Muslim Brotherhood follower. And the West has not internalized the chasm yawning in front of it.
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
According to Sir John Jenkins of University of Cambridge, a world leading expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorism, and contrary to the US State Department’s worldview: “… The key to confronting the Islamist challenge is to understand what the challenge is. There is a lot of nonsense talk about the Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to violence…. In fact, violence has been constitutive of the Brotherhood ideology since its origins….
“Central to the Brotherhood’s shared ideology are the ideas of Sayyid Qutb [who was executed in Egypt in 1966 for plotting to assassinate President Nasser], a seminal figure for all Islamist movements… the foundational text of Islamism, particularly violent Islamism…. There is an interview of Al Jazeera and Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra leader in Syria. [Al Jazeera’s interviewer] says to al-Jolani: ‘Everything you’re doing and saying is straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qutb’s handbook…. And al-Jolani replies: ‘Yes; you’re right that Qutb is essential, and we teach him in our schools….’ You have to understand this in order to understand the constitutive ideological challenge of Islamism….
“The Brotherhood’s ultimate objective is to take power and create what they construe as a true Islamic state… an idea they share with all radicalized Islamists including ISIS and other actively violent Islamist movements…. The relationship between the Brotherhood and more theatrically violent groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda is complex. They criticize each other…. But this is what Freud called the narcissism of small differences. The end-state of all these groups is the same…”
The Western battle against Islamic terrorism has been afflicted by the following shortcomings:
*The determination that Islamic terrorists could be induced – through generous gestures – to subordinate their deeply-rooted fanatical ideology to enhanced standard of living and benefits of modernity, and to embrace Western values, such as peaceful coexistence, compliance with agreements, human rights and democracy.
*The presumption that Islamic terrorists could adhere to “Money Talks,” rather than “Fanatical Ideology Walks.”
*The refusal to realize that terrorists bite the hand that feeds them.
*Taking lightly the centrality of radical/fanatical, religious ideology in the shaping of the 1,400-year-old Islamic terrorism, in general, and the Muslim Brotherhood (which was founded in 1928, and has been radicalized through Qutb’s teachings since the 1950s), in particular.
*The assumption that Islamic terrorism is driven by social, economic and political/diplomatic despair, rather than by a fanatical ideology, which mandates the subjugation/destruction of – and precluding peaceful coexistence with – “apostates” and “infidels.”
*The focus on terrorists’ violent actions – which represents tactics – rather than on the clear and present threat of the intent, which reflects the overriding ideology-driven strategy to bring the “infidel” West to submission.
*Basing counter-terrorism on defense, rather than offense; containment, rather than bringing terrorism to submission; reaction to – rather than preemption of – terrorism.
*The perception of negotiation as a means to advance reconciliation, while Islamic terrorists consider negotiation as a means to bolster their capabilities and bring the “infidel” West to submission.
*Leopards don’t change ideological spots, only tactics. Similarly, the frustrating Middle East reality cannot change its spots, and become a convenient alternate reality.
*Western awakening to the challenge of Islamic terrorism, in general, and Muslim Brotherhood, in particular, would free the vast majority of Muslims – who are not terrorists! – from the tyranny of despotic, terror regimes.
Sir John Jenkins adds: “…The basic ideology of Islamism—common to all its forms—poses [a challenge] to the international and domestic state order. [Overlooking this ideology] has given an opening to those who claim that socio-economic oppression is the root of all radicalization and that the ideological threat comes instead from Western and other attempts to combat it….
“This [Islamic] ideology is triumphalist, totalitarian and apocalyptic. It is founded in revelation, not reason…. It is a mistake to think that hard and fast lines can be drawn between violent Islamist ideologues who aim to implement Sharia and establish a caliphate through vanguardist brutality, on the one hand, and pragmatic Islamist ideologues who seek to do so through an [intellectual, political, cultural] maneuver, on the other. In doing so, policymakers risk misconstruing the positions that some in the region—including the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia since at least the 1990s—have taken against the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates [which are determined to topple all “apostate” national Muslim regimes and establish a divinely-ordained universal Muslim society, dominating the globe]….”
The ambassador’s article, while very accurate in all its details, is a little too high-brow for casual reading. There are a couple of points that highlight the real situation like:
or