And Continuing with the Makeover of the Muslim Brotherhood
In preparation for a likely ascension to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Reuters continues with its propaganda campaign to makeover the image of the Islamist group as something other than extremist. Correspondent Jonathan Wright asserts:
Foreign governments could not even argue that the Brotherhood was a “terrorist” organization, because the movement renounced violence in the 1950s. Throughout Mubarak’s presidency, it has struggled to take part in electoral politics.
“Renounced” violence but has had no compunction about actually facilitating assassinations or inciting for violent jihad. In violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, Wright then parrots the Arab euphemism for intended genocide of the Jews:
The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly confrontational toward Israel and hence toward the United States. It has historic institutional links with the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas and shares its belief in armed struggle against Israel.
And seeks to cloak the Brotherhood’s extremism within an aura of “professional” respectability:
But unlike the Shi’ite clerics who rule Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood has an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals with modern educations — engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and so on. The core membership is middle-class or lower middle-class.
Of course, Hamas too has educated and professionally trained members — though we’re not sure the Hippocratic Oath is part of their creed.
But rights activists fault the Brotherhood for insisting that the head of state must be a Muslim man, not a woman or someone from Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.
We’re shocked to the core.
In recent years it has focused on political demands shared by most opposition groups, playing down a conservative social agenda which some Egyptians would find irksome.
A “conservative social agenda which some Egyptians would find irksome”. Sounds like the Amish, no?