The Roots of the American Right’s Muslim Brotherhood Panic

Reza Aslan has a good piece up at the Washington Post, in which he both demystifies the Muslim Brotherhood and exposes the hypocrisy of American conservative politicians like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum for fomenting panic about the Brotherhood's supposedly theocratic aims:

After all, in the United States it is axiomatic that Islam is inherently opposed to democracy and that Muslims are incapable of reconciling democratic and Islamic values. Never mind that the same people who scoff at the notion that religion could play no role in the emerging democracies in the Middle East are the same people who demand that religion must play a role in America's democracy. Ironically, one of the most vocal proponent of religious activism in politics is Mike Huckabee himself, who has repeatedly called Americans to "take this nation back for Christ" and who, while running for president, proudly declared that "what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards."

Joel Beinin of Stanford University, writing at Middle East Channel, also notes how the Brotherhood was late to the protests, debunking the American right's insistence that the Brotherhood is behind the protests, and therefore that toppling Mubarek would mean shari'ah law and all that:

The Muslim Brotherhood, widely acknowledged as the largest and best organized opposition force in the country, abstained from the January 25 demonstrations, but belatedly endorsed the January 28 demonstrations. Perhaps as a result of this waffling there has been almost no Islamic content to the demonstrations. The tone has mostly been nationalist and secular.

But that reality gets in the way of some good propaganda for the American right, namely that the Muslim Brotherhood is the architect of the right's imagined Islamic plot to replace the Constitution with shari'ah law.

More with many links...

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4140/the_roots_of_the_american_right%27s_muslim_brotherhood_panic/

scaremongering, lying, xenophobia and bigotry are the stock and trade ofthe right-wing in America. I have no doubt that the right-wing hate machine got in touch with Frank Luntz and found that the phrase "Muslim Brotherhood" tested very well on the "Scare-O-Meter" with test groups. Once that was determined, the emails flew across the intertubes and into the baskets of the strategic players of the right-wing hate machine. From there the rest of the posers and wannabes in right-wing media will get their marching orders and soon America will be drowning in the phrase "Muslim Brotherhood". This is actually a twofer for the righties - they get the word "Muslim" AND the word "Brotherhood". Both words evoke strong negative feelings in the minds of consumers of right-wing media.

with the history are all valuable. But one need not look beyond the words "Muslim" or "BROTHER/HOOD" to realize how fear inducing that phrase can be to the easily manipulated.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

And the usual tools at their disposal aren't really effective. The Muslim Brotherhood sounds suspicious enough; nobody had even heard of them prior to January 28, and now they're more threatening than Al Qaeda, Commies and gingivitis all rolled into one. It's about all they got right now. Give them a few days, and they'll come up with a coherent narrative. Don't rush 'em!