The Associated Press has reported further details on a recent campaign rally for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate that featured calls for an Islamic Caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem. According to the AP report, the rally is part of what is called a “sharp turn rightward” for the Egyptian Brotherhood:
May. 18, 2012 At a campaign rally for the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for president, a hardline cleric and TV preacher sang Mohammed Morsi’s praises before thousands massed in the stadium of an industrial city in Egypt’s Nile Delta. ‘We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate coming true at the hands of Mohammed Morsi,’ the cleric, Safwat Hegazy, blared from his podium. ‘The capital of the Caliphate and the United Arab States is Jerusalem, God willing,’ he added, as thousands cheered and waved the Brotherhood’s green flag, chanting, ‘The people want to implement God’s law.’ On the campaign trail for the presidential election, now only nine days away, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken a sharp turn rightward, becoming bolder in saying it wants to bring a state where religion and Islamic law play a major role‚ and insisting that it has the right to rule. As a result, it has moved away from the more moderate face that it promoted since even before the fall of Hosni Mubarak 15 months ago. During campaigning for parliament elections late last year, the Brotherhood insisted that implementing Islamic law was not its immediate priority, instead speaking vaguely of an ‘Islamic background’ to government. It also sought to assuage fears that it seeks to take over the country by promising to work with other, liberal factions. Finally ‘unveiled’ Critics and former Brotherhood members say the greater assertiveness represents the 82-year-old group’s true face, brought by hard-liners who over the past decades have squeezed out moderates and taken control of its leadership. Those hard-liners, the former members say, are more confrontational, more determined to impose Islamic strictures and less likely to share power with others. Former members believe that the group’s turn comes out of frustration that the political power they have long dreamed of is slipping away from them. The Brotherhood emerged from the parliament elections as the biggest party in the legislature, a victory it touted as proof of its right to push through its agenda.
Read the rest here.
A post from last week report that at the rally al-Hijazi said that the “the dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Muhammad Mursi and his brothers, his supporters, and his political party” and called for “millions of martyrs” to march on Jerusalem.
A post from April discussed a 2011 lecture given by Khairat Al-Shater, the former Brotherhood Presidential candidate, which reveals the true aim of the Nahda (Renaissance) project to be the full “Islamization” of Egypt as part of a step towards the eventual realization of the Islamic Caliphate.
GMBDW takes issue that these events represent a “sharp turn rightward” for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as we have been posting for many years on the backgrounds, views, and action of not only the Egyptian Brotherhood but the Global Muslim Brotherhood as well. The views expressed at the rally discussed above are perfectly consistent with those posts as opposed to the limited timeframe and analytical framework employed by AP and most of the other major new organizations as well.