White House mulling Terrorist Designation for Muslim Brotherhood

White House mulling Terrorist Designation for Muslim Brotherhood. (NYTimes).

President Trump’s advisers are debating an order intended to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, targeting the oldest and perhaps most influential Islamist group in the Middle East.

But the Brotherhood calls for a society governed by Islamic law, and some of its former members and offshoots — most notably Hamas, the Palestinian group whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel — have been tied to attacks. Some advisers to Mr. Trump have viewed the Brotherhood for years as a radical faction secretly infiltrating the United States to promote Shariah law. They see the order as an opportunity to finally take action against it.

Officially designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would roil American relations in the Middle East. The leaders of some American allies — like Egypt, where the military forced the Brotherhood from power in 2013, and the United Arab Emirates — have pressed Mr. Trump to do so to quash internal enemies, but the group remains a pillar of society in parts of the region.

The proposal to declare it a terrorist organization has been paired with a plan to similarly designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to current and former officials briefed on the deliberations. Leaders of the corps and its Quds Force unit have already been put on a government terrorist list, but Republicans have advocated adding the corps itself to send a message to Iran.

“The goals of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Gaffney said in a recent interview with The New York Times, are “exactly the same as the Islamic State, exactly the same as the Taliban, exactly the same as, you know, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Nusra Front, on and on, Al Shabab. It’s about Islamic supremacism. It’s about achieving the end state that is their due.”

It is unclear what form a presidential order would take. Presumably, Mr. Trump could direct Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to review whether the Brotherhood should be designated. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Tillerson grouped the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda together as “agents of radical Islam.”

In recent years, offshoots have joined the political system, including Ennahda, a party that belongs to the governing coalition in Tunisia and has eschewed extremism. Even in Turkey, a NATO ally, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood. Read the full story here.

 Related:

Flashback - Names and Identities of Muslim Brotherhood Operatives in U.S. https://t.co/DXIWTxI3Kr

— MFS - The Other News (@MFS001) January 31, 2017

Egypt Charges 20 Al-Jazeera Journalists headed by an Egyptian-Canadian, With Belonging To Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt Charges 20 Al-Jazeera Journalists headed by an Egyptian-Canadian, With Belonging To Muslim Brotherhood.(GMBR).

UK media are reporting that Egyptian prosecutors have charged 20 al-Jazeera journalists with belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, fabricating news reports and tarnishing Egypt’s reputation abroad. According to a report in the The Guardian:

January 29, 2014 Egyptian prosecutors say they have charged 20 al-Jazeera journalists, including two British citizens, with belonging to Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, fabricating news reports and tarnishing Egypt’s reputation abroad.

The journalists include the Australian ex-BBC correspondent Peter Greste and Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy, who has worked for the New York Times.

‘Investigations showed the defendants created a media network headed by an Egyptian-Canadian Muslim Brotherhood member [Fahmy] that has specialised in creating video scenes contrary to reality and aired them through Qatari al-Jazeera English to distort Egypt’s international reputation,’ the prosecution alleged.

Other charges included ‘disturbing public peace, instilling terror, harming the general interests of the country, possessing broadcast equipment without permit, possessing and disseminating images contrary to the truth’.

The identities of most of the 20 defendants were not revealed by prosecutors. It is thought that some of them could be tried in absentia, and lawyers were unclear about whether the defendants included members of al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel who were arrested in August, or just the al-Jazeera English journalists seized several months later.

Read the rest here.

The GMBDW reported in January that Egypt had summoned the Qatari Ambassador to the Egyptian foreign ministry in order to object to Qatari criticism of the crackdown on the Brotherhood as well as to Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events. We also noted at that time that the Washington Post had featured a story which looked at criticism in Egypt of Al Jazeera over its relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The GMBDW reported in September 2013 on the ongoing conflicts regarding Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events in Egypt. In July 2012, the GMBDW had reported on the resignation of the 22 members of the Al-Jazeera Egyptian bureau in protest over what they say were instructions from the management to “favor the Muslim Brotherhood.” In 2009, Egyptian authorities were reported to be in the process of revoking Al-Jazeera’s license to broadcast and that the network was planning to close its bureau office in Cairo.

Leaked US State Department cables indicate that Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and funded by the Qatari government, operates as an arm of Qatari foreign policy which has recently been strongly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and the recently deposed Mohamed Morsi. Our predecessor publication extensively covered the role of Qatar as a supporter of the Global Muslim Brotherhood and was the first to report on the strong ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas of Wadah Khanfar, the former Director-General of Al-Jazeera who resigned in 2011 after serving for eight years.

In 2009, the Jerusalem Post ran an article that explored the role of the Muslim Brotherhood at Al Jazeera

CNN: Qaradawi - A Head of Muslim Brotherhood - Speaks to 100.000s at "Victory day" in Egypt

HT :Vladtepes.