The Brotherhood seeking the help of the Americans

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt these days is like Mubarak during the final days of his regime, as we find the most prominent Brotherhood leaders now only coming out to speak to western, particularly US, media. The most prominent Brotherhood figure who is pursuing this policy is Khairat al-Shater, who most recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and prior to this the Washington Post. This is precisely what former president Mubarak did, as well as his vice president General Omar Suleiman; they would both speak to US television media in order to reach the decision-makers there and convince the US administration to grant the Mubarak regime enough time to find a way to crush the revolution. However today, we find Khairat al-Shater doing the same thing, but this time in order to convince the US administration and American decision-makers to pressure the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF] to surrender power to Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi. This is despite the fact that at the time of wiring, the official Egyptian presidential election results had yet to be announced. Khairat al-Shater also dropped a bomb in his interview with the Wall Street Journal when he talked about the presence of an agreement to share power between the “military” and the “Brotherhood”, adding that the military had failed to live up to its promises. Such talk demonstrates to Egyptian political forces, the extent of their naiveté in trusting the promises of the Brotherhood. However we must also point out here that it is not a crime for the Brotherhood to reach an agreement with the military, for politics is ruled by interests, agreements and concessions; there is no black of white. This is something that the Brotherhood is well aware of, and it has actively pursued this policy since the ouster of the Mubarak regime. This is also something that I have pointed out on a number of occasions, namely that whilst the Brotherhood have been playing the game of politics, they have also been manipulating other political forces in order to reach power in Egypt. However the fault for this lies with the other political forces in Egypt, not the Brotherhood, as they have wasted time and opportunities and allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to easily manipulate them, in the same way that they have manipulated Egyptian public opinion over the past decades. The Brotherhood did this in order to demonize Egyptian rulers and stigmatize them as agents of the west, particularly America; whilst now we see the Muslim Brotherhood resortingto America to help them reach the seat of power in Egypt over SCAF! Over the past three decades, since the signing of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood have attacked former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, may he rest in peace, in the strongest manner, whilst they have also penned literature slandering this agreement. They also viewed Mubarak as the personal guardian of this agreement that they believe betrayed the Islamic ummah. However – and this is one of the ironies of fate – we now see former US president Jimmy Carter, the supporter of the Egyptian – Israeli peace agreement, monitoring the Egyptian presidential election and being responsible for deciding whether this was an impartial election or not. A famous verse of poetry by Arab poet Al-Muanabbi applies to this situation, namely “you are the source of a quarrel, so how can you alone be its judge?” Some might say, this is the definition of political pragmatism, or that nobody can rule Egypt without excellent relations with Washington, and this is true. However what about the Brotherhood’s literature, over the past 80 years, claiming that the West is weaving a “Zionist-American” conspiracy in order to break up the Arab and Islamic world? What about its literature, over the past 30 years, depicting the ruling regime in Egypt as being treasonous for its acceptance of the Egyptian – Israeli peace agreement, whilst today the Brotherhood are resorting to Washington to help them take power? What about the Muslim Brotherhood intellect which is contaminated with false slogans? What about other countless examples? Unfortunately, nobody cares! --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.