I’m a great admirer of Imam Mohammed Tawhidi. The sort of Islam that he promotes which an Islam that is a personal spiritual path and not a political one, doesn’t bother me one bit. His Islam is no more a threat to either Muslim or non-Muslim societies than the Aga Khan’s Ismailis are which is to say is not much.

However some of the Islamic currents that Imam Tawhidi chooses to criticise, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood, are a threat. The Brotherhood is an entity that has fomented riots, destabilised nations, has followers who have committed extreme acts of violence and whose ideology is linked to attacks such as 9/11 and the Brotherhood have been doing this for nearly a century.

In sensible Muslim countries such as United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as non-Muslim nations such as Russia there have been few qualms about seeing and treating the Brotherhood as what they are which is a terrorist organisation. Sadly this recognition of the nature of the threat to peace and stability that the Brotherhood poses is not to be found in some other nations. Organisations that are said to be Brotherhood front groups such as Committee on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) operate in the United States relatively freely and the Brotherhood is not banned in the UK or Canada. This is a situation that Imam Tawhidi and myself find extremely disagreeable. If Muslim majority countries can recognise the danger to their nations from the extremists of the Brotherhood then why cannot Western societies do the same.

Imam Tawhidi starts his article with a potted history of the Brotherhood, how they disguise themselves as moderates or democrats but have a long history of assassinations, bombings, and being part of the destabilisation of nations across the Islamic world. He described them as a group that has a long pattern of conduct and said: ‘ It is a pattern. A deliberate, consistent, generational pattern of political violence dressed up as religious obligation.’ Muslim majority nations that don’t want to be turned into violent wastelands know this about the Brotherhood so they ban the Brotherhood for the sake of peace and stability. Western nations should do the same.

The Brotherhood is bad for everyone including the average Muslim on the street. Imam Tawhidi said that the Brotherhood had created front groups in the West and these front groups are passing themselves off as the ‘authentic’ voice of the Muslims in these Western lands.

Imam Tawhidi said:

“Brotherhood-affiliated organisations have been welcomed into government consultations, funded by taxpayers, given platforms at universities and treated as the authentic voice of Muslim communities.

They are the community that needs to be protected from this organisation, not lectured by Western liberals about the Brotherhood’s supposed legitimacy.”

Spot on. Yes there are problems in some Muslim communities in the West but it’s quite possible that many of these problems might be much less in both severity and frequency if Western politicians had had nothing to do with either the Brotherhood or their front groups. They are the ones pushing extreme and violent politics dressed up as religion. For Western governments to allow the Brotherhood to push itself as the ‘authentic’ voice of Islam inevitably sidelines heterodox Muslims, secular and secular-ish Muslims, questioning and ex-Muslims and those Muslims who are broadly cultural Muslim and the equivalent of the twice a year Jew, the Jew who only goes to synagogue on Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur. None of these types of Muslims are being represented by the Brotherhood but too many Western governments act as if they do.

The Brotherhood have never made things better for the average Muslim nor non-Muslim. It’s time that Western nations recognise that. Ban the Brotherhood, ban their front groups, stop the funding, get a grip on the academics inviting Brotherhood affiliated speakers to colleges, stop listening to Western liberal activists who’ve been hoodwinked by the Brotherhood. Imam Tawhidi is dead right in his piece when he says ‘The Brotherhood deserve to be in prison not in Parliament’. He’s correct about the Brotherhood being the cause of many problems and that it’s time they were properly tackled. If the United Arab Emirates can ban the Brotherhood then so can London, Washington and Ottawa.

Link

Imam Tawhidi’s piece in the newspaper Aletihad

https://en.aletihad.ae/news/uae/4675663/the-brotherhood-belongs-in-prison–not-parliament