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Rantings of a Sandmonkey

Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Al Qaeda vs. the MB

Ohh, there are fighting words between those 2 groups if you can believe it: Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has responded to Al-Qaeda's accusations of complicity with Washington by charging that the Islamist violence advocated by Osama bin Laden's network was counterproductive. Counterproductive. Not wrong. Just..counterproductive. Please take not of that. In a video broadcast by the Al-Jazeera network on Friday, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri lambasted the Muslim Brothers for taking part in Egypt's parliamentary elections last year. Zawahiri said Egypt's largest opposition movement -- which controls a fifth of parliament since its resounding electoral success last month -- had betrayed Islam to make a political deal with the US administration. But Brotherhood spokesman Issam al-Aryan rejected the allegations and said the Egyptian-born Zawahiri was playing into US hands by joining the ranks of those opposing moderate Islamism. "Those opposing the participation in power of moderate Islamist movements are the Americans, authoritarian Arab regimes, radical secularists... and Ayman Zawahiri. Isn't that a strange alliance?" he told AFP. "It is in Al-Qaeda's interest to claim that our gains are useless because our movement does not believe in violence, but Zawahiri's stance serves neither Islam's interests nor the nation's," Aryan added. Actually Mr. Aryan, Zawahiri's stance serves the MB's interest, doesn't it? I mean, after all, it's not good for your image when the second man in Al Qaeda is an actual old member of the MB, huh? For him to go out and attack you like that, makes it seem like you two are not in the same camp at all, while, in reality, you are. I mean, both of you believe in islamism and want an islamist state in Egypt, both of you highly dislike the US, both of you consider Israel to be a cancer that has to be removed. What's the difference again Al Qaeda and the MB again? You guys don't use guns anymore? Yeah, we know, you leave that to Zawahiri and those like him. Memebers that you recruited and trained and now claim have defected. His opposition to you surely makes you look good doesn't it? If only people didn't have good memories, your act may have worked better.

5 Comments:

At 1/08/2006 01:33:00 PM, Blogger Seneferu said...

I agree, the MB probably sent Zawahri an sms asking him to produce a new home video. Cave video. lol. The thing is the affair looks kind of trasparent, I wonder what they are thinking...

 
At 1/08/2006 01:36:00 PM, Blogger Seneferu said...

It's also safe to assume that they are not thinking at all...

 
At 1/08/2006 02:56:00 PM, Blogger Kat said...

This is not new really. Zawahiri wrote two books at least excoriating the MB for their complicity in making deals with Mubarek. The Bitter Harvest and Knights Under the prophets banner (the last wrote in 2000) both attacked the MB.

His main complaints start with the MB members who turned themselves in and gave up states evidence against other violent MB members in order to secure their own release and to stave off the overt and significant persecution of the MB which nearly destroyed them back in the 80's.

It was one reason that Zawahiri left Egypt to join the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan, seeking for a more purist movement that more precisely mirrored his own ideas.

On top of that, the MB has totally strayed from the Zawahiri version of Salafi Islam which insists that the right and only laws are those handed down by Allah through the Qur'an, that man made laws and adherence is tantamount to idolatry if not polytheism (ie, the adherence and worship of man's law above or in place of God's law). Democracy, as an act of government by the people for the people as opposed to strict adherence to Allah's laws, is the ultimate example of this heresy. Thus, MB members taking part in it are in effect, heretical apostates. Though, most of the time, Zawahiri contends in his writings and various letters, that he feels the right approach to this is to convince through words, these groups to come back to the "right way" or the Salafist Islamist way and not war. He even took Zarqawi to task for attacking and subjugating other members of Sunni Islam (like the Ashari) instead of creating consensus through word and discussion. Unfortunately for Zawahiri and maybe fortunately for us, Zarqawi thinks this is too weak a response and that the Mujihadeen should follow Mohammed's later path of military conquest and forcing people to adhere to the religion instead of the original (now abrogated) concept of evangelical preaching (ie, Mohammed's early life in Medina).

Honestly, if you look at it correctly, this is the real war within Islam. Not a war between Sunni and Shia per se, but the war of puritanical Salafism demanding active warlike jihad as evinced by later Sunnah and hadith re: Mohammed's life to enforce Islam v. peaceful, evangelical Islam (which, if one were honest seeing that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today, evangelical Islam is more successful that warlike jihadism and this is why the MB says that Zawahiri and his group is wrong and harming their cause because acts of terrorism and atrocities in the name of Islam will eventually turn off the spigot of converts, eventually causing humanist enlightenment to advance and, like Christianity, Islam will soon find itself fading in certain countries).

It is a matter of human advancement, not war of civilizations however crack pots like Zawahiri and Zarqawi want to frame it. They are fighting against a tide that cannot be stopped.

 
At 1/09/2006 03:00:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The real fact is that Al Qaeda was set up by Mossad to make Islam look primitive and evil.

 
At 1/09/2006 11:49:00 AM, Blogger Kat said...

Don...that was almost funny. You need to stop hanging out at the Arab forums because you made that sound so real I had to check back to the poster's name to verify it was a joke. ;)

 

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