UPDATE: The full text of the referenced Dallas Morning News item, courtesy of Rich Noyes at the Media Research Center, is here (posted for fair use and discussion purposes).
While looking for something else, I accidentally stumbled across a 2007 item in my blog's archives that makes the current soft media treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood even more outrageous than it already appears.
In September of that year, the Dallas Morning News, covering the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding trial, directly described what had been learned about the Muslim Brotherhood and its goals -- not in Egypt, but the in U.S. (link is to excerpt at my blog; DMN article is no longer available at Dallas.com or in the ProQuest library database):
Muslim Brotherhood’s papers detail plan to seize U.S.
Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists’ ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover.
A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.
Fortunately, the indispensable Sweetness & Light excerpted further (bold is mine):
The documents – introduced in recent weeks as part of the prosecution’s case in the trial of the now defunct Holy Land Foundation and five of its organizers – lay out the Brotherhood’s plans in chillingly stark terms.
A 1991 strategy paper for the Brotherhood, often referred to as the Ikhwan in Arabic, found in the Virginia home of an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, describes the group’s U.S. goals, referred to as a "civilization-jihadist process."
"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions," it states. This process requires a "mastery of the art of ‘coalitions,' the art of 'absorption' and the principles of 'cooperation.'"
"Coalitions," "absorption," and "cooperation" are clearly not intended to be sincere exercises based on goodwill.
Now that the Obama administration has agreed that the Muslim Brotherhood deserves a role in Egypt's new government, I suspect you won't be seeing much mention of this, if any, in the establishment press. A January 31 item at the Associated Press pictured here describes the group as a "deeply conservative Islamist organization." Yeah, except for the "Islamist" part, almost like Tea Partiers, or something. Zheesh.
In a non-fawning media environment, someone would ask the questions Eileen Toplansky at American Thinker, who also exhaustively recounted the Brotherhood's history and intentions, framed on Monday:
It is now time to test Obama's moral compass. He needs to be directly asked if he believes the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to the United States. If he affirms that it is, then he needs to be forcefully questioned as to why he has not taken more concerted steps to thwart their growth in the United States.
If, on the other hand, the 44th president states that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a threat, then it is quite clear where his true allegiance rests. American vulnerability would be publicly exposed putting us at grave risk.
If Obama cannot or will not answer this simple question, then his neutral stance also speaks volumes and will embolden the terrorism of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is the Rubicon moment for this man. It is the wake-up call for the rest of us.
Unfortunately, it's only a wake-up call if someone sounds an alarm that will be widely heard. The lack of even the most rudimentary media vigilance, combined with an inexplicable reluctance on the part of Obama's political opponents to speak out forcefully on matters such as these, would seem to ensure that any alarms raised will either be muted or only known to the few who are relatively engaged.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
