Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood by Patrick Poole
"The victory of Democrats in the recent elections has launched a silly season in Washington DC, where absurd ideas that would have been scoffed at this time last year now float on the Potomac breeze like so many cherry blossoms filling the Beltway air with their fragrance.
No better example could be offered for this phenomenon than the recent flurry of articles from foreign policy “realists” urging the Bush Administration to shift its policy and begin to dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is headquartered in Egypt but has affiliates in more than 70 countries, including the US. This position is best represented in an article in the current issue (March/April 2007) of Foreign Affairs by Robert Leiken and Stephen Brooke of the Nixon Center, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”. They summarize their argument thus:
Even as Western commentators condemn the Muslim Brotherhood for its Islamism, radicals in the Middle East condemn it for rejecting jihad and embracing democracy. Such relative moderation offers Washington a notable opportunity for engagement -- as long as policymakers recognize the considerable variation between the group's different branches and tendencies.
Admittedly, this is hardly the first time that so-called “progressives” have tried to shift the post-9/11 sentiment in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. A September 2004 article in the Washington Post, “In Search of Friends Among Foes”, described the last major attempt at a policy shift led by State Department diplocrats while noting the Brotherhood’s public relations problems of being tied to extremist activity in the Middle East and the United States."
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