American Islamists Work to Implement Shari'a in the Middle East

The following by David J. Rusin is reposted here with permission:

American Islamist Groups Shape Arab Revolutions

by David J. Rusin
FrontPage Magazine
July 31, 2012

http://www.islamist-watch.org/10690/american-islamist-groups-shape-arab-revolutions

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key players in the Middle East's new political landscape. The connections underscore that Islamists everywhere are united by a single goal: the imposition of Shari'a.