What does Sarah Palin have in common with the Muslim Brotherhood? The answer to that question is, of course, absolutely nothing. But don’t tell myriad pundits and academics that. Cheap analogies between the Tea Party and al-Qaeda, Sarah Palin and the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Taliban and the Christian Right have become a bit too commonplace for comfort among those who are supposed to inform public debate or provide expertise. Politicization, intolerance for opposing views, and false moral equivalence each suggest a profound ignorance of what groups like the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood stand for.
Here are just a few examples:
- MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “So the Muslim Brotherhood has a parallel role here with the Tea Party?”
- John Esposito, Georgetown University: “The political Salafis believe that they have a true vision of Islam and that their version of religion is the one that they practice and the one that other people should practice too in their personal lives. Moreover, they are working to implement this vision in society as a whole… What you see in Christianity is that you have some very conservative Christians, you see them in the U.S. for example, many of them very conservative in their personal lives, and then there is the Christian Right in the U.S. that is involved in politics, another kind of Christianity that tries to impose its own will on other people.”
- Princeton University’s Gregory D. Johnsen: “comparing [Tawakkol] Karman to [hardline Islamist Abdul Majid al-] Zindani is something akin to making Colin Powell responsible for what Sarah Palin says.”
- Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins: “The fundamentalist Christian Right is America’s Taliban.”
- University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole: “The mainstream Republican Party’s view on many social issues thus resembles that of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the Muslim Brotherhood and related parties in the Muslim world far more than it does the ‘conservative’ parties of Scandinavia and continental Europe.”
- And, Juan Cole, again: “Is Sarah Palin America’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The two differ in many key respects, of course, but it is remarkable how similar they are. There are uncanny parallels in their biographies, their domestic politics and the way they present themselves — even in their rocky relationships with party elders.”
- Cher: “We talk about how radical Muslims take away the Rights of their woman, but HOW CAN WE LET These RW [right wing American] Misogynistic Cretins take away.”
- Occasional Nation contributor David Lindorff: “But John Walker Lindh… is not the real American Taliban. That title surely belongs to our new Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.”
- Filmmaker Michael Moore: Appearing on “Real Time” with Bill Maher on Friday, film producer Michael Moore said that we should consider people such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin “our Taliban” because “their level of bigotry is so un-American.”
- Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos founder: “In their tactics and on the issues, our homegrown American Taliban are almost indistinguishable from the Afghan Taliban.”
- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: “We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security … comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.”
Since the Arab Spring, Muslim Brotherhood activists have called for the eradication of national borders to form a global Islamic state and in recent weeks, a Muslim Brotherhood rally in Egypt called for armed insurrection should the election not go their way. The Brotherhood’s website is rife with anti-Semitism. Other examples are here. The United States and, more broadly, the West, will be paying the price for the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise in Egypt, and we have already paid the price for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Arguing, in effect, that such groups have parallels on the American political spectrum is both dishonest, destructive, and bolsters an illusion that such groups hold pragmatic politics above intolerant ideology.
I dare say the real threat to America is everyone of those intolerant opinions mentioned in the Commentary, not the Christian Right.
Until you have liberals telling Conservative women that they HAVE to take birth control, or that they MUST receive an abortion, your argument is laughable. Conservatives are telling us that we must be Christian (which as a Jewish woman seriously offends me) in order to be a good governor, and that their perception of creation and life must be taught to my children in schools. When I start imposing my religion on others through legislation, you can call me intolerant. Until then, can it.
In exposing the rising hysteria of a growing portion of elite American leftist opinion, Rubin should also pointed out how it is also increasingly inchoate. At the same time that it is making wild analogies between American conservatives and the anti-democratic, misogynist, anti-Semitic and fascist Muslim Brotherhood, it attempts to convince its audience that the Brotherhood is really just a collection of moderates or even "progressives" searching for a genuine Arabic democratic third-way. But if American conservatives are really like the Brotherhood, why aren't these leftists propagandists also informing us that the conservatives too are just moderate, patriotic Americans trying to deepen American democracy?
In what way are "moderate patriotic Americans" trying to purge opposition party supporters from voter rolls, legislating religious opinion in the form of BC and abortion rules, somehow attempts to "deepen American democracy" ??? Sounds more like trying to create a third Reich, except this time with a great love for my people – as long as they're in their own country far, far away from their own land.
Ludicrous analogies from the left wing radicals are signs that they are losing the support of the American people.
Unelected officials took over Washington and the media after the coup and cover up. Most of the comments online are financed with your tax dollars. Big brother is trying to create the perception of public opinion while burying the truth. They think you can't handle the truth. Fact of the matter is we have no democracy, president, and freedom of press is an illusion. n nOur next election is shaping up to be as big of a sham as the last. Do you know why Sarah Palin's bus tour was really canceled? Do you know why she stayed 30 miles away from the second debate and chose the death of Steve Jobs to announce that she's not running? Know what leaked out? Sarah Palin and Cain aren't in the race for the same reason, the truth leaked out. n nSearch PalinsDirtyLittleSecret for the biggest cover up in world history before it disappears forever.
At your request I went to PalinsDirtyLittleSecret and read as much of the junk as I could stand. n nThe person who wrote this pile of gibberish reminds me of pathetic John Nash in the movie “A Brilliant Mind,” whose conspiratorial analyses got hopelessly intertwined with his psychosis. Anyone seduced by the proffered “a code or coincidence” nonsense should seek psychiatric help, and that is not intended as an ad hominem attack. I mean it.; John Nash needed it too. n nPS, Sarah Palin was at one time years ago a sportscaster; I do not recall her claiming to be a news anchor; but this piece is such a jumble of manipulated facts and fancy, who cares. She also did not say that she could see Russia from her house, but again who care.
The ironic problem with your analysis is that, as you and other conservatives like to so exasperatedly point out, many liberals don’t actually think the Muslim Brotherhood, on the whole, supports the use of violence to establish an Islamic Caliphate. They may be wrong about that. But given that they don’t believe it, their comparison of right-wing figures in the U.S. to the Brotherhood is instead intended to draw parallels between what they see as two conservative, anti-progressive forces that what to insert religion into public life. It’s still a fairly base rhetorical trick, and to the extent they extend the analogy to the Taliban or even al-Qaeda, it certainly becomes fairly mendacious. But given that they reject your analysis of the Brotherhood, their critique of conservatives can’t be intended to imply that they are prone to violence, anti-Semitic, or want to establish a theocracy (as opposed to imposing religious norms in public space).
When, on the other hand, conservatives draw parallels between liberals and Islamists (see Robert Spencer, Dinesh D’Souza, countless others), they do so while firmly believing the problematic aspects of the Brotherhood you refer to constitute the group’s core identity. And this is the central element of their critique of liberals: that they are fascistic, ruthless radicals bent on undermining Western civilization.
So which is really more destructive of public discourse and civility? And when can we expect to hear your criticism of your own team?
Liberal/Marxists are just another group of Marxists who always search out an "ENEMY" to try to get the General Public to focus on – generally by FALSELY accusing the target group of being PRECISELY WHAT the Liberal Marxist group really is. n nTrouble is that America isn't quite dumbed down enough for that garbage. And the extreme tactics of late are waking a few of the sleeping boiling frogs out of their stupor, more than putting others to sleep.
Also, at least one of the examples listed above doesn’t really work. When Gregory Johnsen says that Powell:Palin :: Karman:Zindani, he’s not arguing that Palin and Zindani are equivalent in some absolute sense, rather he’s arguing that their positioning is the same within their respective parties (i.e. Powell and Karman represent a moderate middle whereas Palin and Zindani represent a populist extreme). There’s certainly a bit of partisan sniping going on: I’m guessing Johnsen would be unlikely to use Clinton:Kucinich, even though that analogy would make the same point, because he’s playing on his presumed audience’s dislike of Sarah Palin. That’s not particularly laudatory, but neither is it calling Sarah Palin a terrorist sympathizer (which Zindani is).
The funny thing is that the American left has open the door to the MB for an alliance against the right and the center/independent.
Exactly, except that it is far from funny. n nThis is a bit like the Left trying to excuse Hamas’s terrorism by calling Israelis Nazis. Why should anyone pay any attention to the Left’s appeal to conscience, when they are so lacking themselves?
I'm continually amazed and perplexed that Commentary bloggers devote an inordinate amount of space on the usual suspects. Cole, Moulitsas, Moore, Kristof? What would Mr. Rubin expect of them? And quoting the airhead Cher on a substantive issue? Is that a joke?
Great list! But let us not forget that for e.g. Georgetown's Esposito (here quoted talking about Salafists) MB "spiritual guide" Qaradawi (of Hitler-was-a tool-of-Allah-fame) is a moderate, reformer, etc…..