Saudi journalist Mshari Al-Zaydi, who has spent his career covering Islamic fundamentalist movements, penned an op-ed in Asharq Al-Awsat where he wrote “the Muslim Brotherhood will never change” when it comes to promoting radical Islam.
Al-Zaydi writes, “There is currently a global trend towards reconsidering the definition of the Brotherhood out of the sense that its very existence, ideology and activities represent a major source of harmful political activities and extremism.”
He mentions the ongoing investigations into the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) that are being conducted by the French and British governments, which seek to determine the threat posed by the group. Al-Zaydi explains that Egypt and the UAE are ahead of the curve when they “regard the Brotherhood as an illegal and illegitimate group.”
The author continues, explaining that the ideologies of MB founder Hassan Al-Banna and its predominant theorist, Sayyid Qutb, started a movement that would result in the creation of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
He writes: “Without people like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan Al-Banna, and books like Milestones, and The Messages of Da’wa, or concepts like Al-Hakimiyyah (divine rule) and Ustaziatul Alam (mastership of the world,) there would have been no Islamist terrorism today. There would be no terrorist chiefs like Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi or Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. There would be no Khalid Islambouli, who assassinated President Sadat. There would be no jihadist ideologues like Abdullah Azzam, Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani.”
Al-Zaydi explains that his aforementioned who’s who of terrorists all “initially drew their ideology from the Brotherhood source.”
“The Brotherhood served as a social and educational incubator for even more dangerous views and ideologies. Even the Brotherhood’s own views represent a destructive and misleading web of deception, the group forces its own worldview on its followers, ensuring that they view everything from just one narrow perspective,” concluded Al-Zaydi.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna shortly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The terror outfit has never amended its goal of seeking worldwide domination in the form of a Sunni Islamic Caliphate. al-Banna said of the MB’s goals, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood reads, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”