LA Times: Jihad-Supporting Egyptian Candidate a 'Pragmatist'

The Los Angeles Times has labeled Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh a “dynamic pragmatist,” even as they acknowledge that he is a top Islamist. Their glowing profile of Fotouh is clearly meant to back the Obama administration’s contention that there is a “legitimate Islamism.” The Times describes Fotouh’s politics as a “blend of pragmatism and progressive Islam … praised by ultraconservative Salafis and backed by liberals even as it threatens the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance.”

But, as Breitbart News reported last week:

[Fotouh] co-founded the Al-Nahda party, which sees Islam as central to Egypt. Supported by Salafi Islamists, Gama’a Islamiyya, the Islamist group Wasat, and Google executive Wael Ghonim, he said in 2004: “Like all members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and around the world, I personally hope to have a chance to bear arms to confront the U.S. occupation in Iraq … This is a matter of religion, not of politics. When a Muslim land is occupied, jihad becomes an individual duty.”

Welcome to the new post-war on terror world, in which Fotouh is considered a moderate, and backed by a western press overjoyed that while “he was not well versed in economics … this deficiency is overshadowed by his demands for social justice.”