-By Warner Todd Huston
Does Obama’s Latest Appointee Support the Jihadist Muslim Brotherhood?
I will begin this right at the top by saying that I don’t care a whit if the appointment of any American official brings hope to Egyptians. After all, an American official should be concerned with America’s interests not Egypt’s. Not that I am saying that American officials or appointments should necessarily have as a chief criteria for appointment an interest in the denigration of any foreign land, but that what’s good for America should be any new official’s chief concern.
However, apparently the L.A. Times thinks that it is germane to U.S. interests that Egyptians are “rejoicing” that President Obama has appointed a female American Muslim to his administration. In, “Muslim woman’s appointment as Obama advisor draws cautious optimism” from April 22, Noha El-Hennawy is reporting from Cairo that Egyptians are happy with Obama’s purported outreach to Muslims.
Obama has appointed Dalia Mogahed to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Mogahed is a senior analyst and executive director for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She is hailed by the left-wing media as a “moderate” voice on relations between the U.S. and Islam.
The Times quotes Mogahed’s views on the change that she wants to see in U.S./Muslim relations:
“My work focuses on studying Muslims, the way they think and their views,” Mogahed was quoted as saying on the website of the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite news channel. “Then I should tell the president about their problems and needs, especially that lately Muslims have been perceived as a source of problems and as incapable of taking part in solving international problems and that they should work on themselves. Now we want to say that Muslims are capable of providing solutions.”
Unfortunately, this is all meaningless rhetoric because no such “solutions” have been forthcoming from any corner of Islam despite Mogahed’s airy claims that they are.
But, there is reason to understand why Arabs might look upon Mogahed’s appointment as a boon to their cause. Mogahed is part of an organization that is a supporter of engagement with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose stated purpose is to destroy the west. The Muslim Brotherhood sees its mission as, “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.”
Mogahed, along with John Esposito, cooked the results of a Gallup survey of Muslims to increase the number of “moderates.”
Mogahed was also a member of U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project, which called for engagement with Muslim Brotherhood.
No wonder Muslims are excited over the appointment.
But, even with her obvious sympathies with foreign causes, some Muslims are saying it isn’t good enough.
“I wish your loyalty was to your Islam first, Egypt second and your Arabism third and then to anything else,” wrote a reader identifying himself as the Tiger of Arabs. “I am afraid that they might make a fool out of you and use you as a cover for policies that don’t serve Egypt and the Arab and Muslim world.”
If this isn’t proof that there are no helpful “solutions” from the Muslim world, what is?
What this appointment shows is that Obama’s appeasement to this nation’s enemies goes on unabated. This appointment also seems to fit in with a long record of appointments Obama has made of people with radical, anti-American ties.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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