Continue reading How to Make the `Bad Guys’ into `Good Guys’ By Pretending They’re Moderate Guys
By Barry Rubin
There are two types of revolutionary Islamists in the Middle East today: the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Salafists.” Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood is in fact a salafist group, in the sense that it wants to use Islam as it can be most strictly and repressively interpreted and create a dictatorship based on a radical interpretation of Sharia law.
And that is the first important point to understand. The difference between Brotherhood and “Salafists” is purely tactical. The Brotherhood has learned how to maneuver politically, an advance similar to what Lenin instituted for the Marxists of his day. You can’t just declare a revolution and change everything overnight.
No, the Communists argued a century ago and the Brotherhood advocates now, instead the road to victory is to create a disciplined movement, build a mass base, construct front groups, create (temporary) alliances that split your opponents, and march step by step to total power. .Just as Lenin planned to get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them, the Brotherhood plots to get the infidels to do.
So far the Brotherhood has been pretty successful.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley), and The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas MediaTechnorati Tag: Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists and Middle East.
No comments:
Post a Comment