About a year ago, Egypt entered an extremely difficult phase in its modern history. It faces a ferocious war. But this is not a conventional war in the sense of an identifiable foreign enemy abroad whose instruments and objectives are clear. This is a special kind of war, unfamiliar to Egypt. The enemy is not outside, on the other side of the boarder brandishing its weapons. The enemy lurks within and it conceals its intentions and hides its arms until it unleashes them stealthily and deceitfully. What Egypt and other countries in the Arab region are experiencing today is the product of a scheme to systematically overthrow Arab governments, dismantle their states and transform the region into a morass of petty states fighting against one another over sectarian, ethnic and factional divides and over water, rival interests and any other dispute, so as keep them as remote as possible from their pan-Arab identity and common bonds.
Most if not all the terrorist outlaw groups, regardless of whether they are called Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis or Agnad Misr or any other name, stem from the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, are directly connected to Al-Qaeda and use the same explosive substances that that organisation uses in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Muslim Brotherhood is linked with groups and states that perform negative roles in the world. The terrorist Brotherhood has more similarities with those groups than differences. The factors that bind and weave them together outweigh the factors that distinguish the Muslim Brotherhood from those groups.
Egypt's decision, if somewhat late, to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation and Saudi Arabia's and the UAE's decisions to follow suit were a response to the terrorist attacks and acts of violence and murder that the Brotherhood undertakes daily and that have claimed not dozens but hundreds of dead and wounded. The decisions of these governments were not taken arbitrarily or for political motives but on the basis of tangible evidence of the Brotherhood's guilt. Nevertheless, the West still remains sceptical and asks for corroborative proof on the grounds that other groups have claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks that have occurred.
In this regard, we would like to ask Western politicians and opinion pundits a number of questions. Perhaps when they answer them they will realise the extent to which the attributes of “violent” and “terrorist” have fit the Muslim Brotherhood in its 86 years of existence.
Have you read the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and learned of its involvement in acts of assassination and murder targeting Egyptian officials throughout the modern period?
Why would a breakaway group from the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organisation call itself “Brotherhood without Violence”? Is this not, in itself, an acknowledgement that the mother organisation did — and does — indeed practice violence and terrorism?
Is not the very name, the Muslim Brotherhood, discriminatory as it sets its members apart from and above the rest of society? Does it not imply that only these “brothers” are “Muslim” and that anyone who is not a member of this club is neither a “brother” nor a “Muslim”?
Did not Muslim Brotherhood leaders openly declare their responsibility for the violence and terrorism in Sinai? Did they not state that the violence would not stop until the deposed president was reinstated and that violence, killing and destruction would engulf the entire country if he were not reinstated? Did not that deposed president, himself, say in his last speech to the Egyptian people that seas of blood would flow in the streets if he were not allowed to remain in power? Did he not subsequently threaten during a session of one of his trials that the violence will continue and that his supporters will sustain their campaign to sow chaos and instability?
Have you not seen the video footage of members and supporters of that terrorist group performing paramilitary training exercises in which they are carrying light to heavy weaponry? Were these images not intended to provoke fear and terror? Were they not an explicit threat to use arms?
Has not the Hamas movement, which the West has listed as a terrorist group, acknowledged that it is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that, in turn, never concealed its close ties and relations with Hamas? Did not the deposed president help achieve a reconciliation between Hamas and Israel during his period of rule, which had never previously occurred in spite of many years of sustained efforts under the former regime?
Has no one in the West wondered why Egypt had not experienced this terrorism during the year in which Morsi was in power and why the bombings of the gas pipelines to Jordan and Israel only resumed after Morsi was deposed and why the terrorist groups in the Sinai had not surfaced until then?
Did not the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood refuse all invitations to take part in the political process and the formulation of the new political roadmap? Do they not continue to refuse and, moreover, had they not vowed not to rest until they exact revenge and execute everyone they class as a traitor?
Has no one in the West asked who stands to benefit from the instability, unrest and terrorism that Egypt suffers and from the ongoing attempts to obstruct the roadmap, especially now that it is approaching its second juncture, the presidential elections?
Has no one in the West realised the magnitude of the threat of radical Islamism and how dangerous it is to support it? Has no one there understood that it threatens the West and the entire international community?
Can you even begin to picture the daily war that Egypt faces against its army and security agencies, a war that aims to undermine and destroy the state? Would any nation in the West tolerate such a constant assault against its security and military agencies and personnel, eroding the sense of safety that they are required to provide the people? How can a security officer perform his job effectively when he expects to be targeted by a bomb or bullet from any direction at any moment?
Are not the foregoing questions sufficient at least to provoke some deeper thought on the question of treating that terrorist organisation for what it is? Nothing good has ever come from that group since its inception. It is neither patriotic, nor religious. Its members are not brothers of the Egyptian people and they are not Muslims. The writer is a political science researcher at Cairo University.
