Tunisia's "Ennahda" Party and the Egyptian MB: Still a bunch of racist totalitarians.

[C0ckney]

i can't decide whether you are being obtuse or whehter you're just dense.

clearly 'through israeli eyes' means 'seeing the arab spring only in terms of israel'. an example of this might be writing an article on tunisa and spending half of it talking about jews and israel.

[regexcellent]

Zevico's getting at the source of how being anti-Israel is at its core all about anti-Semitism. Because all Jews are essentially Israelis, right?

[DaShi]

Zevico clearly has an agenda.

[giblets]

Zevico's got it spot on, as usual

Stuff that's dangerous to Israel is dangerous to the Middle East. If conflict breaks out again Israel isn't the only country that will suffer; in fact if Israel went to war with Egypt again (which is looking more and more likely) Egypt would suffer the most since Israel would probably roflstomp it as usual. It would be yet another needless waste of life for both sides.

In spite of decades of US meddling the middle east the region is still a violent mess. Maybe we aren't as smart as we think we are and should stop assuming we understand how foreign countries operate and stop assuming we can predict an approaching war and prevent it. If another war happens, it will be because the Egyptians want to get their asses kicked again, so be it. Any government that starts and loses a war risks being overthrown.

[giblets]

The only time Democracy appears in the Bible is when the crowd chooses to save Barabbas instead of Jesus

So without democracy Jesus wouldn't have died for everyone's saved and humanity from eternal hellfire (except the majority of humanity who doesn't believe that crap of course)?

[Zevico]

Zevico clearly has an agenda.

Everyone has an agenda. An agenda is a set of beliefs, thoughts, principles or aims. Of course I have an agenda. Well, so do you. So does everyone who thinks about politics.

[DaShi]

I have no agenda. I am a perfect being. I don't think about politics. I only think about truth.

[Zevico]

Putz.

[DaShi]

Know nothing.

[Zevico]

zevico, that is exactly the sort of mealy mouthed crap that you constantly spout.

when you say 'dangerous to the middle east' you mean 'dangerous to israel'.

You know, here's an obvious example of danger to the middle east and the West posed by Ennahda. Its leader openly supported the total invasion of the Middle East by Saddam Hussein in order to achieve an Arab-Islamic super-state. Saddam may be dead and gone but Ennahda's leader remains. Why should we believe in his supposed commitment to democracy and human rights if he's willing to support a tyrant? Now Tunisia's not exactly a military superpower, but with a political party like that at the helm, which basically accepts notions and premises as to foreign policy that are Islamist in character, regional instability and conflict between Tunisia and other nations in the Middle East is sure to follow. The same principles apply to the MB. Now, think about what that means to Western interests: (1) preserving a secure supply of oil; (2) preventing regional instability and war; (3) preventing movements willing to attack Western nations and interests from coming to power. On each count, Ennahda's leader poses a threat in so far as it: (1) supports the overthrow of oil regimes allied with the West; (2) jockeys for regional power and influence and supports Islamist movements elsewhere, (3) openly sides with movements and nations that are at war, by proxy or otherwise, with the West, such as Iran.

http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/a-u-s-visa-for-rachid-ghannouchi/

A U.S. Visa for Rachid Ghannouchi?

Martin Kramer, “A U.S. Visa for an Islamic Extremist?” Policywatch, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, no. 121, June 29, 1994.

For nearly a year, Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi has been seeking an American visa. Ghannouchi, the most prominent Islamist in the West, is the leader of Al-Nahda (The Revival), Tunisia’s major Islamist grouping. Al-Nahda is now banned in Tunisia, and Ghannouchi resides in Britain. He would like to visit the United States this summer, where he hopes to address religious and academic audiences. Until now, the U.S. government has denied him entry, because of his political views and the opposition of the Tunisian government. But Ghannouchi’s visa application is currently under active review.

Last week, Tunisia apparently indicated it would regard a U.S. decision to admit Ghannouchi as “a hostile act.” Still, there are some who believe Ghannouchi’s visit to the United States would send a positive signal to “moderate” Islamists everywhere, and provide an opening for a dialogue with them. But is Ghannouchi a “moderate”? In the past, Ghannouchi has urged violence against U.S. interests, and he continues to demand Israel’s destruction. Might an American visit send precisely the wrong signal?

Who Is Rashid Ghannouchi?

Rashid Ghannouchi was born in 1941 in the south of Tunisia. As a student in Damascus and Paris, he embraced the doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he disseminated on his return to Tunisia. His writings and activities against the government during the 1980s led to his repeated arrest. Ghannouchi chose voluntary exile in 1989. In 1992, a Tunisian court sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment, for plotting to overthrow the Tunisian government.

Ghannouchi arrived in Britain in November 1991, and requested political asylum. The Tunisian government objected, but members of the Muslim community in Britain took up Ghannouchi’s cause, and he was granted asylum in August 1993.

America: “Enemy of Islam”

Ghannouchi visited the United States in December 1989, when he attended Islamic conferences in Chicago and Kansas City. At the time, he impressed some as a “moderate” Islamist, amenable to dialogue. But this reading of Ghannouchi was completely overturned by his reaction to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Ghannouchi not only denounced King Fahd of Saudi Arabia for the “colossal crime” of inviting the U.S. to deploy forces, he also fully justified Saddam’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. Ghannouchi compared Saddam to Yusuf Ibn Tashfin, the 11th-century Almoravid ruler who forcibly unified the Muslim principalities of Spain in order to wrest them from Christian domination. According to Ghannouchi, the Muslims now faced “Crusader America,” the “enemy of Islam,” and Saddam had taken a necessary step toward unity, “joining together two Arab states out of twenty-two, praise be to God.”1 Although other Islamists criticized Saudi Arabia, none embraced Saddam as fervently as Ghannouchi.

Ghannouchi also threatened the United States. Speaking in Khartoum during the crisis, he said, “There must be no doubt that we will strike anywhere against whoever strikes Iraq … We must wage unceasing war against the Americans until they leave the land of Islam, or we will burn and destroy all their interests across the entire Islamic world… Muslim youth must be serious in their warning to the Americans that a blow to Iraq will be a license to strike American and Western interests throughout the Islamic world.” He also called for a Muslim boycott of American goods, planes and ships.2

After the war, Ghannouchi requested a U.S. visa. His request was denied. Since then, he has angled for a review of his application by praising former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian’s speech on Islam, made at Meridian House in June 1992. He also wrote to Djerejian, professing his willingness for dialogue. The U.S. is not the enemy of Islam, he now argues. It is the hapless victim of a “Jewish strategy” for “waging war against Islam.”3

Connections with Iran and Sudan

The worth of this overture to America must be weighed against two truths: Ghannouchi remains a constant ally of Iran and Sudan, and an avowed opponent of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Ghannouchi has been a supporter of the Iranian revolution ever since his first visit to the Islamic Republic in 1979. More recently, he worked to thaw relations between Sunni Islamist movements and Iran, visiting Teheran twice for this purpose in 1990. During the second of these visits, he was the most prominent Sunni Islamist at an “Islamic Conference on Palestine,” which included the leaders of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Addressing the conference, Ghannouchi said “the greatest danger to civilization, religion and world peace is the United States Administration. It is the Great Satan.”5 Ghannouchi did not hide his disappointment with Iran’s restrained reaction to the “American occupation” of the Gulf in 1990. (“Has no one succeeded Khomeini?” he asked.)5 But Ghannouchi still maintains contacts with Iran, and last October he received a Hezbollah parliamentary delegation visiting Britain.6

Ghannouchi also has many links to Sudan and its Islamist guide, Hasan al-Turabi, whom he has known and admired for fifteen years. After Ghannouchi went into exile, he visited Sudan, which provided him with a passport. (Tunisia lodged an official protest with Sudan, and Ghannouchi finally returned the passport in December 1991). Ghannouchi included Turabi among the dedicatees of his latest book, and Turabi vouches for Ghannouchi, assuring the West that Ghannouchi “can be trusted to draw up a program for Tunisia.”7

Robert Pelletreau, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, recently indicated that Washington is concerned “over Sudan’s role in supporting Islamic extremist groups in North Africa, either in its own right or as a cat’s paw for Iran.”8 Ghannouchi’s ties with both Sudan and Iran have long made him a linchpin of this “exploitation.”

Opponent of the Peace Process

Ghannouchi also has been one of the most vocal Islamist opponents of the Arab-Israeli peace process. He believes that “any organization, any voice, any state that extends a hand to the Zionist enemy warrants complete condemnation, isolation and the waging of war against it.” Ghannouchi urges Palestinians not to compromise:

I think that the approach of Palestinian Islamists must be the liberation of Palestine from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. Any part that is liberated is a gain, provided the price is not the sale of the rest of Palestine. Palestine belongs to the Muslims and must be liberated in its entirety. The truth cannot be divided.9

Ghannouchi has called the Israel-PLO accord “a Jewish-American plan encompassing the entire region, which would cleanse it of all resistance and open it to Jewish economic and cultural activity, culminating in complete Jewish hegemony from Marrakesh to Kazakhstan.”10 Since the accord, Ghannouchi has reiterated his support for Hamas, “which we believe has taken the right stand,” expressing his confidence that “the Muslim nation will get rid of the Zionist cancer.”11 Ghannouchi’s rejection of the Israel-PLO accord has been shriller than even that of most other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The Wrong Signal

Assuming a valid distinction can be made between Islamists who are “extremist” and “reformist,” Ghannouchi clearly belongs to the first category. Since his last visit to the United States, he has openly threatened U.S. interests, supported Iraq against the United States and campaigned against the Arab-Israeli peace process. Indeed, Ghannouchi in exile has personified the rejection of U.S. policies, even as he dispatches missives to the State Department. A visa for Ghannouchi would signal that the United States has become so confused by Islamist artifice that it can no longer tell friend from foe–and not just in Tunisia.

This article was written in 1994. Since then we've had the "benefit" of seeing the Sudanese Islamist regime committing wholesale genocide against Southern Sudanese. Islamists movements from Turkey to Hamas to Iran have denied the very existence of the Sudanese genocide and characterised it as a concocted Zionist/American plot. In other words, they support the commission of genocide.

[C0ckney]

Why should we believe in his supposed commitment to democracy and human rights if he's willing to support a tyrant?

let's see. from your own article.

He would like to visit the United States this summer, where he hopes to address religious and academic audiences. Until now, the U.S. government has denied him entry, because of his political views and the opposition of the Tunisian government...

notice this phrase. we can see that the US took measures to support the government of ben ali and of his predecessor bourguiba. now were those men democratically elected, or were they, to use your word, 'tyrants'?

to rephrase your question, why should muslims trust the US when they support, with both words and actions, tyrants?

[Fake Boris]

Zevico, do you remember the days following 9/11? ~60% of Americans polled said nuclear weapons should be employed against terrorists. That's how retarded people are, everywhere.

Things tend to cool down when you've got to sit down and discuss with real leaders of real countries with real armies, and when, as Gribbler said, lost war=high risk of being overthrown.

[Zevico]

Edit- placeholder

[Zevico]

Zevico, do you remember the days following 9/11? ~60% of Americans polled said nuclear weapons should be employed against terrorists. That's how retarded people are, everywhere.

First, that question clearly presumes the necessity of their use. It's no surprise that people might be inclined to use nuclear weapons if a general question were posed about the necessity of their use, in some unknown circumstance. A vague question receives a vague answer. Horror of horrors!

Things tend to cool down when you've got to sit down and discuss with real leaders of real countries with real armies, and when, as Gribbler said, lost war=high risk of being overthrown.

Ah yes, the old 'real leaders are reasonable men' fallacy. Do I need to track down the "Mr Hitler is a reasonable man but his followers are a rabble" quotes or do you want to think a little harder about how reasonable it was to risk for Hezballah in 2006?

That's right, it wasn't: even Hezballah's leader acknowledged that he hadn't realised kidnapping Israeli soldiers would cause war and that he wouldn't have done it had he known as much.

'Real leaders', when they're uneducated fanatics, and even when they're not, often make risky assumptions and act on them. That's what Hezballah did.

How secure and comfortable in its assumptions and worldview do you think the Muslim Brotherhood is compared to Hezballah, which has had a 'real leader' in a 'real country' with a 'real army', but still went to war and lost and is still in power?

[Fake Boris]

"Should nuclear weapons be employed?"

Hey you've just presumed of the necessity!!!