muslim brotherhood | Pandaemonium

THE MONSTER THAT ISRAEL HELPED CREATE

July 17, 2014 by Kenan Malik

There is a terrible irony in Israel’s current assault on Gaza. More than 200 Palestinians have died in an onslaught supposedly aimed at weakening Hamas and degrading its capacity to fire rockets into Israel. It was Israel itself, however, that helped Hamas to power in Gaza. For more than thirty years,from the 1960s to the 1990s, successive Israeli governments viewed radical Islamism as a useful tool with which to counter the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (of which […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: afghanistan, hamas, israel, muslim brotherhood, palestine, plo, war on terror, western policy

A BROTHERHOOD INQUIRY IN BAD FAITH

April 22, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my latest column for the International New York Times is on David Cameron’s inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood. The full version I will publish on Pandaemonium next month. Imagine that an elected president is ousted by the military. That the president’s party is declared a ‘terrorist’ organization. That dozens of protesters are shot in the streets, thousands of people imprisoned and hundreds sentenced to death. How should a liberal democracy respond? Presumably, by condemning the coup, denouncing the violence […]

Categories: Britain, International • Tags: arab spring, britain, democracy, egypt, islamism, muslim brotherhood, saudi arabia, war on terror, western policy

ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION

August 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

On 29 August 1966, Sayyid Qutb, the ideological leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was hanged in Cairo’s military prison, on the orders of Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser. Qutb and the Brotherhood had, in 1952, supported Nasser when he seized power in a military coup that overthrew the monarchy. In return for his support, Nasser offered Qtub a government post, which the latter declined. The two, however, soon fell out. Nasser, who came to personify Arab secular nationalism, bloodily repressed […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: anwar sadat, arab spring, egypt, freedom struggles, hosni mubarak, islamism, liberalism, muslim brotherhood, nasser

TYRANNY IS ALWAYS TYRANNY, WHOEVER MAY BE THE TARGET

August 1, 2013 by Kenan Malik

When, on 3 July, the Egyptian army ousted President Mohammed Morsi, and took control of the nation, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as a coup but as the military acting on behalf of the people to protect the revolution. When the army imprisoned Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, censored its media and suspended the constitution, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as an authoritarian crackdown but as measures necessary to check the ambitions of the Brotherhood and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab spring, arab world, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, muslim brotherhood, tony blair, western policy

A REVOLT FOR WHOSE BENEFIT?

February 7, 2011 by Kenan Malik

How can Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak be eased out of office without causing too much turmoil, or without providing a political opportunity for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood? That’s the question with which many Western leaders are now grappling. The growing consensus seems to be that what Egypt needs is, in the words of Hillary Clinton, an ‘ordered transition’ to a post-Mubarak Egypt and that vice-president Omar Suleiman is the man to manage this. The idea of an ‘ordered transition’ that […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: cia, democracy, egypt, fareed zakaria, freedom struggles, hillary clinton, hosni mubarak, ian johnson, islamism, muslim brotherhood, nasser, protests, secularism, tony blair, usa, working class movements

LET US INDEED LEARN THE LESSONS OF HAMAS

February 2, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Barely had I written my previous post on Islamism, secularism and bad faith than Richard Cohen in the Washington Post provided a textbook example of the kind of view at which it was aimed: The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare… Majority rule is a worthwhile idea. But so, too, are respect for minorities, freedom of religion, the equality of women and adherence to treaties, such as the one with Israel, the only democracy in […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: democracy, egypt, hamas, islamism, israel, muslim brotherhood, norman geras, palestine, plo

HOW IRONIC IF FEAR OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SHOULD LEAD TO POLICIES THAT ENHANCE ITS CLAIM TO POWER

January 31, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The spread of the contagion of protest across North Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, has not just been exhilarating. It has also given the lie to one of the great myths about the Muslim world – the belief that people in Muslim countries have a different mindset to those in the West, that democracy and secularism are ‘Western’ concepts alien to the political culture of Egypt or Jordan or Yemen. What the demonstrators in Cairo and Tunis have […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International • Tags: democracy, egypt, gilles kepel, iranian revolution, islamism, muslim brotherhood, nasser, secularism

CHANGE THEY CAN’T QUITE BELIEVE IN

January 29, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The people of Egypt deserve their freedom as much as the people of Iran. Yet the American government’s attitude to the revolts in the two countries is strikingly different. In Iran, the Obama administration gave unequivocal support to the protestors and equally unequivocally condemned the government crackdown. In Egypt, it has been far more restrained in its support for the protestors and in its opposition to Mubarak’s brutal regime. But then, that brutal regime has been for decades a key […]

Categories: International • Tags: barack obama, democracy, egypt, islamism, muslim brotherhood, rendition, usa

EGYPT’S SECULAR DICTATORS & THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

January 28, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The Egyptian government is clearly attempting to portray the current revolt as the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, in an attempt to retain Western support. ‘It’s me or the Islamists’, Mubarak is in effect telling Western leaders. It’s worth reflecting, therefore, on how successive Egyptian regimes, like so many in the Arab world, have relied on Islamists to restrain popular revolt:

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International • Tags: egypt, From Fatwa to Jihad, gilles kepel, islamism, kenan malik's books, muslim brotherhood, nasser, protests, secularism