Muslim Heretics Conference

Crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood

By Ibrahim El Houdaiby, Conflicts Forum, February 25, 2008

Those who believe that the ongoing crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood by the Egyptian regime will cause a major setback for the country’s largest and most powerful civil opposition group are definitely mistaken. Brotherhood members are an integral living part of the Egyptian society who can never be marginalized. In fact, the only possible outcome for such crackdowns is increasing the group’s popularity and radicalizing political Islam.

It has been 15 months now since security forces arrested a large number of Brotherhood members, including Deputy Chairman Khayrat El Shater, a handful of top leaders and 140 university students on the dawn of December 14th, 2006. Arrests were largely portrayed as a response to massive students’ demonstrations, but later charges on money laundry and leading and financing an outlawed organization were added. All charges were dropped three times by civilian courts, which found them to be “fabricated, groundless and politically motivated, with no substantial evidence whatsoever.” The court ordered the immediate release of the detainees; students were released a few weeks later, while senior members and leaders were rearrested from inside the court room, and were sentenced to a military tribunal, the verdict of which is expected on Tuesday.

It is clear the regime is trying to impede the Brotherhood after the group’s manifest success in the 2005 parliamentary elections, when it secured 20% of the parliament’s seats although competing on only one third of them. The crackdown was part of the regime’s attempt to silence its opposition to secure a smooth transfer of power from the 80-year-old President Mubarak to his younger son Gamal.

The regime’s objectives of impeding the Brotherhood to secure the inheritance of the presidency came in line with US foreign policy, which shifted towards a policy of pursuing “stability” rather than democracy, after the ascent of several Islamic groups in the region between 2005 and 2006.

This crackdown also included the imprisonment of the members of parliament, Ayman Nour for five years and Talaat El Sadat for one year. It also included prison sentences for four independent newspapers’ editors.

As the 69-session-tribunal in complete absence of rights, observers and activists is about to reach a verdict, it is about time to assess its impact. Today, more Egyptians are becoming aware of the unjust measures taken by the regime against the Brotherhood, and more are expressing sympathy and solidarity with the group. Hundreds of intellectuals and politicians representing all different colors of the political spectrum have signed petitions against the unjustifiable transfer of civilians to a military tribunal, more people continue to join the group, and student union and syndicate elections illustrate the vividness and strong presence of the group.

Arrests have failed to silence the Brotherhood and have only caused more friction in its relations with the regime. Fifteen months after the arrests, 25 Brotherhood students of Al Azhar University were arrested, and the same scenes of thugs entering Ain Shams University campus to prevent MB student supporters from voting in the SU elections occurred again.

This should be enough to prove that crackdowns will not cause a major setback to the Brotherhood as desired, but will only facilitate the presidency’s inheritance. With their failure to impede the Brotherhood, the regime will find no way to justify the suppressive measures it uses against the MB. Therefore, it is keen to reflect a distorted image of what’s really taking place.

It insists on convincing local and international Brotherhood adversaries that the crackdown is undermining the Brotherhood’s popularity. Several measures have been taken to confirm this assumption; security forces harshly interfered in the Parliament’s Upper House elections and manipulated the results, not allowing a single Brotherhood member to win, while independent TV channels were pressured to as not to cover the elections. State-owned newspapers spoke about how the Brotherhood’s popularity started eroding after their manifest success in the parliamentary elections in 2005, while in reality it was the reverse of a democratic process and the direct intervention of state elements that prevented Brotherhood members from securing some seats in the Upper House. Finally, Khaled Salam, IkhwanWeb co-Editor in Chief was arrested.

The regime also propagated the idea that it has drained the Brotherhood’s financial resources when it froze the assets of its leading businessmen. This was also untrue, as the frozen assets were private property of their owners and had nothing to do with the group. To stress this image, state security banned the Brotherhood’s annual Iftar (Ramadan gala dinner), which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds; and again state-owned newspapers claimed that the reason for cancellation of the event was the Brotherhood’s inability to finance it.

The Muslim Brotherhood has survived harsher crackdowns without compromising on its moderate stances and gradual, peaceful orientation. Yet these crackdowns have had a negative impact on the Islamist movement at large as more people became convinced that peaceful reform is unfruitful. Under Nasser’s regime, it was only Islamists who were harassed and persecuted, and this gave birth to some radical Islamist groups that continue to threaten global peace and stability till today, including al Jihad and al Qaeda. With the harsh surroundings facing the Brotherhood at the time, it found it impossible to convince those radicals of the correctness of its moderate orientation and gradual, peaceful approach.

Today, the Mubarak regime’s crackdowns are not limited to Islamists. In fact, his regime and security forces target every voice of opposition in all different ways. Besides putting political opponents and independent journalists behind bars, intellectuals are marginalized and their articles are banned in mainstream state-owned newspapers, and even cultural events organized by opposition activists are sometimes banned. Over the past year, Egypt has witnessed a larger number of workers’ riots and torture scandals than in has witnessed in decades.

With all that, it can only be expected that more opposition activists, whether Islamists or non-Islamists, will lose faith in peaceful democratic reform. For them, the regime has shut down all possible alternatives for such reform, leaving coups, revolution and violence as the only alternatives of bringing life to the political scene. Of course the Brotherhood disagrees with this view, which could lead to catastrophic results, but with the harsh crackdowns, it – as well as other pro-democracy groups - has a hard time convincing people of the fruitfulness of peaceful democratic reforms.

Conflicts Forum » Crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood

By HAVIV RETTIG

“Islam and the Koran have been politicized” by extremists and “there’s a lack of capacity in the Muslim community [in Britain ]” to hear liberal, tolerant Muslims, Maqsood Ahmed, senior adviser on Muslim communities at the British Department for Communities and Local Government, told the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism on Sunday.

A photo provided by police shows the letters “SS” (standing for Schutzstaffel, the security and paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party) smeared on a gravestone at a Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa, Poland [illustrative photo].
Photo: AP [file]

The inability to hear the voices of tolerant Islam “isn’t someone else’s problem. It’s a problem of the Muslim community,” Ahmed, one of Britain ’s most senior interfaith officials, told the gathering at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

It is important not to let radicals use the accusation of “Islamophobia” to hide their prejudice, Ahmed continued, but it was also important “to look at how interfaith can prevent Islamophobia.”

One of the initiators of a London conference of imams and rabbis in 2006, Ahmed noted that “in Britain, there is a need for mutual partnership between the Jewish and Muslim communities, and this could be facilitated by the infrastructure established by the majority religion, the Church of England.”

The forum, which is meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday and Monday, focused on anti-Semitism worldwide, but added a specific focus on rampant anti-Semitic messages in Arab and Muslim media and religious institutions, including blood libels and references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The forum hosted 280 participants, including ministers and parliamentarians from 45 countries.

It also saw the announcement of the launch of a new international coalition of governments and NGOs intended to combat anti-Semitism and a new scholarly organization intended to advance the study of the “oldest hatred.”

The International Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (ICCA) was announced Sunday evening by Canadian MP Irwin Cotler and British MP John Mann. The organization will fill what many anti-racism activists see as a gap in international efforts to coordinate the many organizations and government initiatives worldwide dealing with anti-Semitism to bring “a critical mass of inquiry and advocacy” to the issue worldwide, according to Cotler.

“We’re witnessing a new, global, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism without parallel or precedent since World War II,” said Cotler of the initiative. “It is not only essential to sound the alarm, but it’s time to act.”

The ICCA will deal with two forms of anti-Semitism, Cotler told The Jerusalem Post. The “most benign form” is the escalation of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe and elsewhere, Holocaust denial, the singling out of Israel and boycotts of Jews and Israeli nationals. Anti-Semitism’s “lethal form,” he continued, “is state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, with its epicenter in Ahmadinejad’s Iran and including terrorist movements which have genocide as their objective, anti-Semitism as their ideology and terrorism as their instrument.”

“We must now concern ourselves specifically with anti-Semitic terrorism, in which Jews are targeted as Jews,” Cotler added.

In announcing the new initiative with Cotler, Mann called for the Global Forum to be held in London next year.

Of combating anti-Semitism, Mann said: “The question for everyone here and for elected politicians is this: ‘If not me, then who? If not now, then when?’ The question is not ‘what would I have done?’ The question is ‘what will I do?’”

The first step for the new group will be to set up a “steering committee” composed of parliamentarians, scholars and NGO heads who will establish task forces on a host of anti-Semitism-related issues. These include anti-Semitism in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the parallels between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, boycotts that single out Israel, anti-Semitism at the UN, and best practices - such as legislation or activism initiatives - that can be copied from one country to others.

Also Sunday, Dr. Charles Small, director of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, announced the formation of a scholarly association meant to unite and help scholars and institutions that study anti-Semitism.

No such organization currently existed for the study of anti-Semitism, said Small, while just four academic institutes worldwide focused on the phenomenon.

The new International Association for the Study of Anti-Semitism will represent scholars “regardless of their school of thought, scientific approaches, academic discipline, or ideological opinion,” according to a Yale University press release. As with other scholarly organizations, it will organize conferences and oversee publication of research in the field.

According to Small, it is “imperative to engage in education during these times when some national leaders and social movements call openly for the destruction of Israel and its people in the most heinous manner, while other leaders and scholars in other parts of the world do not want to fathom this rapidly changing reality. It is the responsibility of scholars to understand and assess the current state of anti-Semitism” and “the destructive forces it unleashes, which affect [not only Jews, but] many [others as well]. This we know from history.”

The organization’s Interim Executive Committee will initially be composed of directors of the four anti-Semitism study institutes operating today: Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University , Dina Porat of Tel Aviv University and Small at Yale.

UK official: Koran has been politicized (The Jerusalem Post)

Stephen Fitzpatrick in Denpasar, Bali | February 26, 2008

THE 2002 Bali bombings were not terrorist acts but “ordinary crimes” and the three men awaiting execution for the atrocity should have their convictions quashed “and their good names rehabilitated”, lawyers argued yesterday.

However, Fahmi Bachmid, from the Muslim Defenders’ Team, conceded that his clients could still then be convicted under an amended brief and, presumably, executed.

Appearing in Denpasar District Court for Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Ali Ghufron (alias Mukhlas) and Imam Samudra, Mr Bachmid presented an extraordinary second appeal against the men’s death sentences.

A previous appeal, in December 2006, was thrown out by Indonesia’s Supreme Court.

The chief judge in one of three panels sitting yesterday, Ida Bagus Putu Madeg, allowed the matter to proceed and conceded afterwards there was technically no limit to the number of appeals that could be lodged.

The defence will rely on a 2004 decision in Indonesia’s Constitutional Court that only “extraordinary crimes” — which include terrorism — can be tried under retrospectively enacted legislation.

The anti-terrorism law under which the men were convicted was passed after the October 2002 attacks that left 202 people, including 88 Australians, dead.

Prosecutors want the trio to be tried under the crimes act, with any conviction still carrying the death sentence. Judges baulked yesterday at a request to send the matter to Java, where the three men are being held, saying they would hand down a decision on that matter on Thursday.

Prosecutors in the stifling courtroom were outraged at proceedings, describing terrorismas “something that is extremely cruel”.

Analysts including terrorism commentator Sidney Jones say the men’s death sentences will almost certainly be carried out, even though the Government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono fears a Muslim backlash once the fatal shots are fired.

Bali bombings ‘not acts of terrorism’ (The Australian)