Iranian media is reporting that a leader of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has rejected agreements signed by the country’s king and the Israeli government and that leaders of the Brotherhood will not meet U.S. officials. According to a Fars News Agency report:
2013-04-21 TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior member of Jordan’s Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood) party rejected the agreements inked between King Abdullah II and the Israeli regime, and said leaders of the party will not even meet US officials.
‘Ikhwan al-Muslimun doesn’t recognize the endorsed contracts with the Zionist regime,’ Hamza Mansour, the secretary-General of Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami, a political offshoot of Jordan’s Ikhwan al-Muslimun, was quoted as saying by Sharq news website on Sunday.
US Ambassador to Amman Stewart Jones had earlier declared that if Jordan’s Ikhwan al-Muslimun remained committed to the agreements inked with Israel in the past, he would be ready meet with the party’s leaders but the Muslim Brotherhood rejected the offer.
Meantime, different Jordanian cities were the scenes of huge protest rallies on Friday to call on the government to fight the existing corruption and implement reforms in the country.
The rallies were organized by Ikhwan al-Muslimun. Pro-democracy activists have called for constitutional reform that would transfer the monarch’s authority, to appoint and dismiss governments, to the parliament.
In July 2012, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood was involved in the cancellation of a scheduled attendance by a Jordanian delegation to an educational conference being held in Israel. In June 2012, the head of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood called the arrival of the latest convoy in Gaza “a new page of the Jihad against the occupation of the Palestinian territories. In May 2012, the Jordanian Brotherhood elected a new leader, described as a “hardliner.”
Extremist statements made in the past by the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood include:
- Praising Turkey’s decision to expel the Israeli ambassador and calling on Jordan and Egypt to do the same.
- Demanding punishment for those in Jordan who may have warned Israel about the terror attacks in Eilat.
- Calling the French ban on full face veils “the beginning of a dangerous battle.”
- Suggesting that Israel might be behind a bomb attack on an Egyptian Coptic church.
- Support for Sudanese President Omar al- Bashir, accused by the International Criminal Court of genocide in Sudan.
- Support for marriage of girls at age 15.
- Participation in incitement centered on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
- Calling on Palestinians to begin a “Third Intifada.”
- Calling for martyrdom over religious sites in Israel.
- Opposing a U.N treaty on the rights of women.
- Supporting a boycott on goods produced by “enemies of Islam.”
- Calling for more suicide attacks against Israel.