Matt Duss has a good piece about The Roots Of ‘Sharia’ Hysteria, pointing out this interesting article at Foreign Policy about the Muslim Brotherhood, which concludes:

At a global level, the Brotherhood is no Mafia. Nor is it a rigid and disciplined Stalinist-style Comintern. It most closely resembles today’s Socialist International: a tame framework for a group of loosely linked, ideologically similar movements that recognize each other, swap stories and experiences in occasional meetings, and happily subscribe to a formally international ideology without giving it much priority. There is every reason to be interested in the Brotherhood’s myriad (and surprisingly diverse) country branches, but there is no reason to fear it as a menacing global web.

Duss comments:

Are there Muslim missionaries in the U.S. right now who want to get Americans to adopt Islam? Yes, just as there are Christian missionaries in Indonesia who want to get Indonesians to worship Jesus. Christianity and Islam are both evangelizing religions. Spreading the faith is part of the program.

Are there also radical Muslims in America right now trying to find ways to turn the U.S. into a religious state? Most likely, yes, and we should be on guard against it. It’s worth noting, however, that the Christian Right has failed at this for decades, in a country where over 75% of people identify as Christian. So good luck with that, radical Muslims.

To put it plainly, the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood is making “real progress…in insinuating shariah into the very heartland of America through stealthy means,” as the Team B II report claims, is preposterous. And, probably needless to say, it’s utterly unsupported by any real evidence.

That’s exactly right. Being informed about the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, and being aware of the radicals who would like to spread hard-line sharia by any means necessary, is a good idea. After all, this is the strain of Islamic extremism that was behind the 9/11 attacks, and it’s the strain we’re currently at war with in Afghanistan.

Lately, I’ve seen some bloggers suggest that I’m being a hypocrite for mocking Newt Gingrich’s call for legislation to prevent a sharia takeover of the US legal system, because I’ve posted numerous articles at LGF in the past about sharia law, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the various ideologies of radical Islamic groups.

Nope, not hypocritical. You won’t find any articles by me suggesting that we need legislation to outlaw sharia, or to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood or any other Islamic group — because I don’t believe that, and I’ve never believed that.

But I do believe that knowledge is power. And my goal in posting articles about radical Islam has always been to share knowledge of these issues, not to fuel the kind of craziness we see coming from Newt Gingrich and countless right wing demagogues and bloggers — who are calling for idiotic, bigoted, totally unnecessary legislation to stop a fanciful imminent takeover of America by their latest minority boogeyman.