Category Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

Muslim Brotherhood Calls For Violence – Jeremy Bowen Unavailable For Comment

By | | , , , , , , , ,
11 Comments

Thank goodness somebody at the US Embassy in Cairo has a pair:

It was in reply to this, as pointed out by Douglas Murray in the Spectator:

(Screengrab of the US tweet can be seen here. I’ll get to why this is necessary in a minute.)

Isn’t that sweet? One of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Arabic tweets, to which the US Embassy tweet was referring said:

Egyptians rising up in support of the Prophet in front of the American embassy

That’s the caption to the photo of a raging mob from this article on the MB’s official website, Ikwhanonline.  The article itself is a description of the incident, not really an incitement to violence or anything, but it’s revealing of the MB’s real attitude towards the violence nonetheless. I’m sure defenders of the indefensible who are media professional can explain to me how this casual description of violence jibes with their official declaration of sympathy with the US. There was no condemnation until somebody called them on it.

Any offending tweets have been deleted, of course, just like certain Beeboid tweets after they got caught. Notice that, while the MB’s social media staff seem to beavering away most days, sending out tweets practically every hour, sometimes even more often than that, there’s a huge gap of silence between 1:28pm and 11:23pm. Curious. Similarly, there’s an anomalous twelve hour gap of silence on Sept. 12 in the Twitter feed of the MB’s official website. According to Bloomberg, the MB cheekily played innocent when responding to the US Embassy.

CBS News seems to be taking the MB’s side on this one, claiming that, while the US Embassy deleted their tweet, the MB’s own tweets can still be found on their feed. This is obviously not true. But it’s pretty uncool that the US Embassy staff was forced to delete their tweets. This is the same US Embassy which tweeted an apology for the film before the attacks. What a disaster. There’s groveling dhimmitude at the highest levels of the US Government, it seems. The Leftosphere, naturally, is criticizing the US Embassy staff for being childish. I have no idea why nobody else seems to be wondering why there’s a huge gap in the MB’s twitter feed, since the US Embassy in Cairo must have been responding to something a little stronger.

However, MEMRI highlights this article from Aug. 27 by an MB member directly calling for jihad against the usual stock villains, descendents of pigs and dogs, and the US:

Praising The Traits Of The Jihad Fighter

“Fasting [during Ramadan] is one of the most powerful means to educate the human spirit for jihad. Fasting involves a spiritual effort to act in a way contrary to what is accepted, and to completely abandon desires… It also schools the Muslim in patience, resilience, endurance, and sacrifice, which are all traits of the jihad fighter…

Plus there’s a call to liberate Jerusalem. They’re not so innocent as Jeremy Bowen, award-winning BBC Middle East editor, once claimed. Bowen described the Muslim Brotherhood as being “conservative, moderate and non-violent”. Until, that is, he got caught and quickly deleted the word “moderate”. Unfortunately, though, the “non-violent” modifier is still there. This should be enough to cause his removal, but the BBC still views him as their most trusted go-to man on Middle East issues. And they expect you to trust someone who describes the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate and non-violent.

Bowen’s colleague, John Leyne, suggests that this violence could lead to better relations between the US and Egypt. No, seriously.

The filmmaker was removed from his home yesterday – voluntarily, yeah, surrounded by police – for “questioning”. Whatever his real name is, the guy is apparently on probation for a conviction for bank fraud. One requirement of his probation is that he can’t use the internet, or get someone to do something on the internet for him. That’s why the FBI had him brought in. In other words, somebody uploading that trailer to YouTube on his behalf is enough for the President of the US to have somebody investigated and brought in. The man has since been released, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the people who run US law enforcement right now.

The BBC, which spent a huge amount of energy recently trying to figure out who made this film, has for some bizarre reason censored both the news about this incident, and the news about the twitter stuff. I wonder why?

Again, I fully expect our defenders of the indefensible who are media professional to explain this all to me in detail.

BBC Censorship: Muslim Brotherhood and the Destruction of Israel Edition

By | | , , , , , , , , ,
42 Comments

The Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for President in Egypt has launched his campaign. A leading Egyptian cleric, Safwat Higazi, gave a keynote address. I give you the following highlights (translated by Memri):

Ceremony leader : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Crowds : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Ceremony leader : I am an Egyptian and proud of it.
Crowds : I am an Egyptian and proud of it.
Ceremony leader : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Crowds : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Ceremony leader : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Crowds : Mursi will liberate Gaza tomorrow.
Ceremony leader : Say: “Allah Akbar.”
Crowds : Allah Akbar.
Ceremony leader : Say: “Allah Akbar.”
Crowds : Allah Akbar.
Ceremony leader : Say: “Allah Akbar.”
Allah Akbar.
Safwat Higazi : Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca, or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem, Allah willing. Our cry shall be: “Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.” Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.
Crowds : Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.
Crowds : Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.
Safwat Higazi : Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.
Crowds : Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.
Ceremony leader : Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews.

This is completely as expected, of course. But not if you trust the BBC for your information on such matters. So far, the BBC is spending lots of time fretting about what Netanyahu will get up to next with the new changes in his government, but not a single word about this. Two weeks ago, Beeboid Yolande Knell reported this without question in her rather gentle profile of the candidate, Mohammed Mursi, portraying him as a not-so-bad Muslim Brotherhood candidate who hoped to “win over” ultra-conservative Muslims to his more even-keeled approach:

On the sensitive subject of Israel, Mr Mursi, says that he will keep the 1979 peace treaty but will not meet Israeli officials. He has promised to prioritise the Palestinian issue.

She wisely added this little disclaimer, though that’s no excuse for taking an obvious liar at his word about the peace treaty without comment.

He has said: “Egypt’s next president can’t be like his predecessor, he can’t be a follower who executes policies put to him from outside”.

Not a word about the MB’s desire to destroy Israel in Jon Leyne’s report from the other day about some local violence hurting their election chances, either.

Commentators believe the clashes have weakened Islamist groups, bolstered the popularity of the army, and strengthened the hand of the candidates from the secular side of Egyptian politics, including those with links to the former regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Yeah, maybe. But what do “commentators” believe about how well the “Kill the Jews” platform play with the Egyptian public? If Leyne continues to hang out with mostly liberal bloggers and happy youths, don’t expect the BBC to report that honestly.

It’s irrelevant whether or not one supports Israel or hates it or thinks this blog is full of “Israel Firsters” who wrongly cry that any legitimate criticism of Israel is really anti-Semitism. The BBC should quit sanitizing this stuff, and quit hiding the truth. Reporting that the MB candidate is dedicated to the destruction of Israel isn’t something to shy away from for fear of being accused of demonizing them due to influence by the Jewish Lobby.

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE…

By | |
Comments Off on FREEDOM AND JUSTICE…

I wonder did anyone else catch the interview @ 7.53am on Today with Gehad El-Haddad, senior advisor to the Muslim Brotherhood board of directors and the Freedom and Justice Party board of directors. It’s a classic insofar as El Haddad walks all over Justin Webb, continually correcting him, and there is no challenge whatsoever to the repellent attitudes of the Muslim Brotherhood. Webb squeaks at the intro that there is the…ahem…outside possibility that things may not turn out quite as expected in Egypt with “conservative Islamists” doing so well electorally but El Haddad gives sweet assurances that all will be well and, gosh, the “Freedom and Justice” Party would even support a female President. Cool. How about a Jewish one? No mention of the vicious rhetoric directed towards Israel, no mention of the violence directed towards Egyptian Christians….just banality.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN?

By | | , ,
26 Comments

Well, I think that more than few of us forecast this but because the BBC narrative insists that the “Arab Spring” was a “good” thing, our concerns were swept aside. It was all going to work out swell ;

The final results in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections confirm an overwhelming victory for Islamist parties. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the largest number of seats under Egypt’s complex electoral system. The hardline Salafist Nour party came second.

 Is this suggesting that the MB are not “hardline”? Really?  Is this the next phase in the odious contortions the Dhimmified BBC performs. First the prospect of Islamic supremacy was dismissed. Now we are being told that the MB are not hardline! What next – blowing up the Pyramids is showing cultural sensitivity!!?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Jeremy Bowen’s Bias Revealed: Muslim Brotherhood "Conservative, Moderate and Non-Violent"

By | | , , ,
22 Comments

Yesterday, As I See It posted a comment in the open thread about how Lyse Doucet gave a report on Radio 5 in which she gently sanitized the Muslim Brotherhood ( I can’t find a link to it right now, but if someone points to it I’ll add it here).  At one point, she apparently slipped up and said that Salafists are “extremists….er…..let me say strict….”  Oops, nearly tanked the Narrative there.  In any case, I was reminded of a post I saw by Jeremy Bowen back in February, where he said that the Muslim Brotherhood are “conservative, moderate and non-violent”.

WTF? I said to myself.  How can  they be both?  By definition one cannot be the other.  Any group calling for Shariah Law cannot be moderate. Yet Bowen saw no problem saying it.  However, somebody had a problem with it, as he stealth-edited it out quickly.  I failed to take a screenshot at the time, assuming News Sniffer would catch it if anything happened, but when I went back the next day, “moderate” had been removed, and News Sniffer had nothing.  So I gave up on it.

Fortunately,  I’ve just remembered the Wayback Machine.  Within a minute, I found this:

Why would he say such a thing?  Somebody pointed it out to him, and he or an astute BBC News Online sub-editor sent it down the memory hole.  Wake me up when a Beeboid says the same thing about the Tea Party movement.

If anyone still had a modicum of trust in Bowen’s reporting, it’s surely shredded to pieces now.  He’s obviously partisan, and not thinking clearly.  Defenders of the indefensible may dismiss this simply because it’s 10 months old, but I fail to see how that makes any difference.  Bowen truly believed it, and clearly meant to sanitize the Muslim Brotherhood so the license fee payers wouldn’t get too worried about them.  He’s not, so why should you be?  I’m sure his superiors at the BBC know all about what he really thinks, and simply don’t care.  Some of them may even agree with him. It’s irresponsible, not to mention delusional.  I’d say it’s impossible to trust his reporting on Egypt any longer. 

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Compare And Contrast: BBC vs. Muslim Brotherhood Edition

By | | , , , , ,
16 Comments

It’s pretty sad when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Ikhwanweb is more informative and balanced than the BBC. Compare and contrast:

Fire and graffiti attack on Palestinian mosque in Kasra

with

Settlers torch mosque in Al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah

Both pieces talk about how this was a (misguided and wrong, in my view) retaliation for the Israeli Government’s razing of some illegal Jewish settlements in the area.

The BBC reports that the Hebrew graffiti threatens further attacks, while Ikhwanweb just says the settlers left racist graffiti. It looks like it’s supposed to say something like “Mohammed go away”, but my Hebrew’s a bit rusty and this may be vernacular. There’s apparently other graffiti not shown in either report, so there isn’t enough information to draw a proper conclusion about who is more accurate.

I should mention here that the Jerusalem Post reports something not mentioned by either the BBC or Ikhwanweb: the mosque was not in use, and there were no holy books inside. Unhelpful context, that.

Ikhwanweb, whose sympathies are not in question and who do not claim impartiality, report Palestinian eyewitness accounts that IDF forces abetted the arson crime, while the BBC instead reports rumors of the IDF training settlers to fight Palestinians. The openly anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood reports eyewitness accounts (whether one beileves them or not, at least they’re trying), while the allegedly impartial BBC instead makes an inflammatory statement. There is some training going on, in fact, and the BBC uses this to plant the idea in the reader’s mind that the Israeli Government is actually responsible for this and future violence. Even though the training is for defensive purposes.

The BBC report closes with the required (yes, BBC, it’s required, and I challenge anyone to prove that it isn’t, and no whining about proving a negative: this is included nearly verbatim in every report about settlements) boilerplate copied and pasted from the style guide:

There are some 500,000 Jewish Settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Settlements are regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Meanwhile, the more informative and balanced Ikhwanweb closes with this:

Since the incident, more and more Palestinians have criticized the Palestinian Authority which rules the West Bank, accusing security services of not fulfilling the ”duty of protecting the mosques”.

One Palestinian man Mohammed Abdurrahman condemned the West Bank security services for the inability to protect the mosques at a time when the services have effectively persecuted Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank.

No mention of this at all by the BBC. They’re too busy stoking up anger against Israel. And there’s no obligatory moaning about the number of Jewish settlements or legal judgments about them from Ikhwanweb.

One is tempted to say that the Muslim Brotherhood is more interested in accuracy and balance about the Israel/Palestinian conflict than the BBC is. Once again it seems that the Corporation’s editorial policy and innate bias cause them to demonize Israel at every opportunity, although the BBC disputes this.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

NAUGHTIE AND THE BROTHERHOOD….

By | |
22 Comments

As we know, the BBC narrative is that the Arab Spring is a “good thing” and the Muslim Brotherhood are a kindly and progressive group….as a Biased BBC reader observes;

“Heard this this morning on ‘Today’…Muslim Brotherhood moderate, democratic, nothing to worry about…..Jim Naughtie not ask difficult questions nor dig too deep…. Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, announced this week that it is forming an alliance with one of the country’s oldest liberal groups, the Wafd Party, a union that could prove to be a powerful force in the September election. Dr Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, a senior figure in the Brotherhood who has declared himself a presidential candidate, gives his view of what an Egyptian parliament could look like. “The democratic process will go on.” 

‘Consensus between the parties and lead to balance…not just between MB and Wafd but between 12 parties’ the MB rep. told us….Naughtie does not mention who the other groups are. 

Naughtie asks ‘Will extreme Islam prosper’…..answer…’Nothing shall happen…except progressive democracy and justice….moderate and tolerant.’ Naughtie…’Copts have nothing to fear then?’ ‘No, I myself defend them….Christians have same rights as Muslims.’


“Well that’s OK then…..except I later read this rather different picture …….“and then this.Oh, and this.“
Why is it is almost AS IF the BBC is wilfully sanitising the Brotherhood, surely not?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC And The Thoroughly "Moderate" Muslim Brotherhood

By | | , , ,
15 Comments

I’m sure everyone here will remember the BBC’s official position during the Egyptian democracy protests, before Mubarak (to his eternal credit, in my view) stepped down, which was that the Muslim Brotherhood is, in fact, “moderate”. Frank Gardener was on air several times saying that the group was “moderate”, and Jeremy Bowen even wrote online that the group was both “conservative” and “moderate”, until he got caught and stealth-edited out the “moderate” bit. (I saw the original myself, and made a comment here at the time, but unfortunately did not take a screen shot.)

A reminder of the BBC’s Narrative on the Muslim Brotherhood:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood launches ‘Islamic Facebook’

Egypt’s opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has launched its own Facebook-style social networking site.

A senior member of the banned Islamist group says the aim is to spread awareness of moderate Islamic values.

Website takes on Muslim Brotherhood critics

Exposing hatred

Through the Ikhwanophobia website, the Brotherhood’s sympathisers aggressively attempt to refute criticisms of the group and to show the world what they consider to be “the true face of moderate Islamists”.

Competing Muslim Brotherhood visions for Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood is vying to become an official party in post-Mubarak Egypt. The conservative Islamist views of some of the group’s members scare many in Egypt and the West, but, as Tim Whewell has been finding out, many members, particularly young activists, are much more moderate.

With all this in mind, it’s no surprise that the BBC is not mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood or fundamentalist Islam or their influence on the military in things which detract from the Narrative. I didn’t notice the MB complaining about the following incident. I thought they were advocates of freedom and democracy. Or does the BBC consider this kind of thing to be “moderate”, too?

Egyptian women protesters forced to take ‘virginity tests’

A leading rights group says the Egyptian army arrested, tortured and forced women to take “virginity tests” during protests earlier this month.

Notice that, while the Egyptian Army has been known during the Mubarak regime to crack down on anti-Government agitators, this is entirely different. The BBC, naturally, is placing blame exclusively on the army, and pointing out problems in the past to spin it away, nothing to do with the new changes in attitude. Granted, the sub-editor is essentially copying and pasting from Amnesty’s own website, but that’s no excuse. It’s not Amnesty’s job to inform people about the larger context, but it is – in theory – the BBC’s.

This happened after Mubarak stepped down, not before. It’s a different type of crackdown entirely. Making sure that protesters are virgins is not the same thing as cracking down on protests. This didn’t happen during the anti-Mubarak protests, but only after Egypt’s top brass asked a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to rewrite the country’s laws on personal freedom. Or does the BBC think this is “moderate” behavior as well?

Hey, BBC:

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Party Political Broadcast…

By | |
39 Comments

…on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A major party political broadcast on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood has appeared on the BBC website.
The BBC are committed followers of the Brotherhood, but any indecisives reading this effusive promo should have their lingering doubts swept clean away.

“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood promotes moderate path.” says the BBC, so it must be so.
“The Muslim Brotherhood runs hospitals, schools, banks, community centres, and facilities for the disabled in cities and towns all over the country.” the BBC’s Tarik Kafala gushes. There follows a lengthy endorsement that no hard-hearted cynic could fail to fall for, except those of us who fail to fall for it.

“The Farouk Hospital is clean and it works, its corridors bustling with poor and middle class Egyptians.
It is a noticeably Islamic institution; framed Koranic verses hang on the walls; the many women there, patients and employees, wear colourful headscarves and conservative clothes.”

Wow. Spread the good news!
Funny how some political outfits can’t shake off their antisemitic histories, but with one fell swoop the Brotherhood can reinvent itself as benevolent, organised and good natured.

“With its conservative Islamist agenda and its historical links to radical and sometimes violent groups, it is feared and mistrusted in the West and to some extent in Egypt.”

But please don’t let that put you off.

“The worry about us in the West is the result of bias and double standards,” Dr Arian says.”
“the hospital is “non-political and non-profit making, and we offer our medical services without consideration to gender, race or religion”.
Such hospitals are the cutting edge of the Muslim Brotherhood’s much-vaunted social services.”

As well as being misunderstood, the poor Brotherhood is also hard done by.

“The Brotherhood, still banned in Egypt, is beginning its campaign to be recognised as a formal political party. It is assumed to be Egypt’s best organised and most popular opposition movement.”

They said all that about Hamas before they murdered most of the opposition. But they were democratically elected, which is just what we in the West are keen to encourage.
The Christians were a bit worried, says the article, near the end, but they’re hoping for the best.
So, VOTE VOTE VOTE Muslim Brotherhood.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD "LARGELY SECULAR"

By | | , ,
49 Comments

Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper today told the House Intelligence Committee that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular“. I don’t think even the Brotherhood’s cheerleaders at the BBC have gone so far as to say anything that stupid. It’s causing waves in the American media and blogosphere, and yet the BBC’s account of proceedings fails to mention it.

UPDATE FEB 11. The administration has “clarified” Clapper’s remarks. Nothing from the BBC.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.