One government’s poison…
From http://www.gulf-times.com/region/216/details/393668/saudi-arrests-9-professors-over-links-to-brotherhood
Saudi Arabia has arrested nine university professors for their alleged links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, media reported yesterday.
Investigators found the professors, two Saudis and the rest from neighbouring countries, had been involved with “foreign organisations” based on “voice recordings and e-mails” linked to them, Okaz daily reported.
It identified the organisation as the Muslim Brotherhood, designated by the interior ministry in March as a “terror” group.
The investigation should be completed by mid-June, said the daily which is close to the government.
If convicted, the group could be jailed for 10-15 years, after which the foreigners would be deported, it added.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have cracked down on Islamists accused of links to the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.
Riyadh had hailed the Egyptian military’s ouster of Mohamed Mursi, the Islamist president who hails from the Brotherhood. It has also pledged billions of dollars to the army-installed government in Cairo.
But in the past Saudi Arabia gave refuge to many Brotherhood members who suffered repression in the 1960s under the regime of Egypt’s first modern military ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Traditionally, members of the group were active in academic institutions in the kingdom.
On Sunday, Saudi Education Minister Khaled al-Faisal was quoted by media as saying that this was the reason behind the “spread of extremist ideology” in the kingdom.
“We offered them our children and they took them hostage… The society left the stage for them, including schools,” he said.
…is another governments’s ally.
From 2011/2012 http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/178219/reftab/73/t/US-warms-to-Brotherhood/Default.aspx
… “It’s clear that they (the Brotherhood) are now the only game in town,” and US officials must talk to them, said Marina Ottaway, who heads the Middle East program in Washington for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Even before the elections began, the United States knew it had to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized political movement in an Egypt which is no longer dominated by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said before the polls that the United States had pursued “limited contacts” with the Brotherhood as Washington was “re-engaging in” a six-year-old policy in light of Egypt’s political changes.
Ottaway said president George W. Bush’s administration stopped talking about its Freedom Agenda of democracy promotion after candidates backed by the Brotherhood gained 20 percent of parliamentary seats in the 2005 election.
The administration, she told AFP, “essentially bought Mubarak’s line” that the Brotherhood and its links to Islamist militants were a threat to Egypt’s and the region’s stability, even though it had renounced violence decades ago…
“The US essentially backed Mubarak in its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ottaway said. US officials also turned down invitations by her think-tank to attend post-2005 meetings with Arab Islamist groups, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
“For the US now to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood is a big step, it’s a step that’s long overdue, but it’s a step that the United States has resisted,” she added. “It’s a huge change and they’re doing it out of necessity.”
Analyst Nathan Brown said the Brotherhood has also “given just enough in terms of reassuring signals to slightly raise the comfort level with them in the US” and justify contacts.
Brown, a George Washington University professor, said the Brotherhood also recognizes the reality that the United States remains an important diplomatic player it has to work with.
But Brown noted “there’s no question at all that the Muslim Brotherhood is just a socially and politically very conservative organization” that raises concerns about the place of women and Egypt’s Christian minority.
And there remains “a big foreign policy concern” about the Brotherhood’s attitude to the peace treaty with Israel.
“On that score, the Brotherhood has kind of given reassuring signals but at this point they’re fairly general,” he said, adding: “The Brotherhood, as an organization, is close to Hamas (in Gaza) and hostile to Israel.”…
From http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/white-house-memo-blaming-video-was-sent-to-muslim-brotherhood-operative/
The ‘smoking gun’ email that reveals who instructed Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attack on a video also exposes a recipient named Mehdi K. Alhassani. Alhassani was the leader of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), a Muslim Brotherhood front group and attended the sister mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) mosque attended by the Boston Marathon bombers.
It is a mystery how Alhassani slipped through the cracks to become a Special Assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff, National Security Council Staff, and Executive Office of the President. It is unknown why a few hours before the Benghazi attack, Alhassani met in the White House with Samir Mayekar, a George Soros ‘fellow’ for an unscheduled visit…
Interesting comments there. Especially the one at the bottom.
