OnIslam.net

CAIRO – Following the ouster of authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Tunisia, the United States is scrambled to draft a strategy to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, The Washington Times reported on Thursday, April 14.

“The federal government does not have a comprehensive or consistent strategy for dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups in America,” Rep. Sue Wilkins Myrick, the chairwoman of the House panel overseeing counterintelligence and terrorism, told a House hearing.

“Nor does it have a strategy for dealing with the Brotherhood in Egypt or the greater Middle East.”

Established in 1928 in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is a group working to promote Islamic values among people. It has affiliates in several countries.

For years, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned and its leaders were repressed by governments in countries as Egypt and Tunisia.

But the group is now expected to play a major political role in those countries after popular uprisings that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia.

This has sent off alarm bells in the United States and its chief ally Israel, fearing the Muslim Brotherhood might end up in power through the ballot.

The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly hostile to Israel and the United States's policy in the Middle East.

It has historic links with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and shares its belief in armed struggle against Israel.

Professionals

US officials are worried that the Muslim Brotherhood is spreading its influence to the United States.

“There are no buildings on K Street with ‘Muslim Brotherhood‘ in the lobby directory,” Myrick said.

“Instead, the group spreads its influence through a large number of affiliated organizations throughout the country.

“This allows the Muslim Brotherhood to muddy the water when it comes to foreign funding and influence and to hide behind groups that have plausible deniability of their involvement with the Brotherhood when necessary,” she said.

Investigations into a Muslim charity known as the Holy Land Foundation say that US-based groups sought to spread the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood to the US.

To help draft a policy on the group, the US House is scheduled to hold a series of hearings on the Muslim Brotherhood this year.

“The Brotherhood is not, as some suggest, simply an Egyptian version of the March of Dimes - that is, a social welfare organization whose goals are fundamentally humanitarian,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“On the contrary, the Brotherhood is a profoundly political organization that seeks to reorder Egyptian and broader Muslim society in an Islamist fashion.”

The Brotherhood has an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals with modern educations -- engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and teachers.