The German Press Agency is reporting on a statement by the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood calling President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan “a hostile step against the Arab and Islamic worlds.” According to the report:
The Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan’s largest political party, on Friday criticised as a “hostile” move against the Islamic world the decision by US President Barack Obama to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. “It is a hostile step against the Arab and Islamic worlds,” Mohammad Bozour, who is in charge of the IAF Relations with Arab and Islamic countries, said in a statement.”This move also proves that Obama’s approach is not different from that of (George W) Bush,” he added. “The two men may have differed in rhetoric, but the ugly practices on the ground did not change or perhaps the US aggressiveness may have increased during Obama’s rule,” the IAF official said. Bozour regretted that the changes promised by Obama did not materialize and expected the US reinforcements in Afghanistan would “deepen Muslim hatred” against the United States. “We also regret that a Nobel Prize winner is turning himself into a warmonger,” he said.
An earlier post discussed resignations at the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, said to be the result of criticism of the IAF Secretary-General by more moderate factions in the movement.
Ishaq Farhan, identified in another post as an IAF leader, is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin and a former education minister and senator. Mr. Farhan is also listed as a director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), founded in the U.S. in 1980 by important members of the Global Muslim Brotherhood who wished to promote the “Islamization of Knowledge.” IIIT was associated with the now defunct SAAR Foundation, a network of Islamic organizations located in Northern Virginia that was raided by the Federal government in March 2002 in connection with the financing of terrorism. A report in the Washington Post from June 2007 indicated that IIIT and the SAAR Foundation were still under investigation by the Justice Department at that time.