Another Quote from Al-Banna (The Liberal Anti-fascist)

DVZ
CAMERA/Snapshots
19 February '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/02/another_quote_from_albanna_the.html

At a certain point, it becomes nearly impossible to give Tariq Ramadan the benefit of the doubt. His recent description of his grandfather and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, as an anti-colonialist and an anti-fascist is so demonstrably false that one has to wonder just how stupid Ramadan thinks Westerners are.

Does he think we have no translations of his grandfather's writings? Does he think we have no libraries where we can get our hands on these translations? Does he not know that when he makes outragous claims about Hassan al-Banna's alleged enmity toward colonialism and fascism that these claims will be checked by people who will actually, you know, read what al-Banna has written?

At the risk of boring our readers, Snapshots is providing yet another gem from the writings of Hassan al-Banna as translated by Charles Wendell, mentioned previously. In this passage, al-Banna expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In an essay titled "To What Do We Summon Mankind?" al-Banna invokes Hitler to demonstrate the power of "patience, steadfastness, wisdom, and persistence" to bring weak political movements with "feeble resources" to the "pinnacle of success and fortune their leaders were hoping for." After listing the success of a few Muslim leaders to demonstrate this truth, al Banna writes:

And who would have believed that that German workingman, Hitler, would ever attain such influence and as successful realization of his aims as he has?

In his analysis of this quote in Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman writes accurately "Hitler was the only non-Muslim name in al-Banna's list of exemplary models."

In other venues, Frere Tariq has argued that he should not be held accountable for his grandfather's writings, despite his tendency to lay claim to al-Banna's legacy before sympathetic audiences. (This tendency is well documented by Caroline Fourest, in her text Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan.)

The issue is not whether or not Ramadan should be blamed for his grandfather's writings. The question is why Frere Tariq offered such a distorted and whitewashed view of his the Muslim Brotherhood's founder? Ramadan was the one who brought al-Banna into the discussion in his New York Times article about the organization. Instead of distancing himself from the more troubling statements offered by his grandfather, he whitewashed them altogether.

Why would someone committed to pluralism, dialogue and honest discussion behave in such a way?

See related article: Tariq Ramadan, Your Grandfather Was a Colonialist

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A P.S. on the Gaza Flotilla Issue

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 June '10

A lot of people are criticizing Israel for not handling the operation to stop the Gaza flotilla properly by not being properly prepared, messing up the attack, etc. But there is an important point being missed here.

Israel's error was precisely to assume what the foreign media, governments, and its critics generally are still claiming: Oh, this is just a bunch of peaceful humanitarians so they certainly won't attack us and have weapons.

In other words, Israel's critics can take no comfort from the mess-up because they still believe in the very same idea that led to the clash in the first place.

Also remember that on five ships where Israel used precisely the same methods there was zero violence. That tells something important, too: the sixth ship was loaded with the organizers and they were determined to have violence. That was a large part of the purpose of the whole operation.

Indeed, here is a statement made over the Hamas television station, al-Aqsa, May 30, the day before the confrontation:

"The [Gaza] flotilla commander said yesterday: 'We will not allow the Zionists to get near us and we will use resistance against them.'How will they wage resistance? They will resist with their fingernails. They are people who seek Martyrdom for Allah, as much as they want to reach Gaza, but the first [Martyrdom] is more desirable."

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The Non-Violent Murder of Jews

A Non-violent Gaza Flotilla Activist

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
01 June '10

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Al Bukhari, quoted in the Hamas Charter

Let there be no mistake about it. This is about genocide. This is what it has always been about generations back, when Hamas forefather, Hassan al Banna was writing fan letters to Hitler.

This in a single paragraph is Hamas. This is what it stands for. And this is what anyone who talks about "the People of Gaza" really supports. The "People of Gaza" is a euphemism for Hamas which won the last PA election and rules with popular support in Gaza. Israel responded to this takeover by a genocidal terrorist group by closing its border with Gaza. Hamas cynically responded by lying and claiming to be out of power and starving. That allowed their supporters to try and pass off their pro-Hamas agenda as a humanitarian agenda.

But real humanitarians don't sympathize with only one side in a conflict where civilians on both sides are dying. Real humanitarians don't bring guns and knives on a humanitarian mission. And real humanitarians don't chant calls for the murder of Jews calling themselves "The Army of Mohammed". That's what the pack of racist Islamist killers hiding behind their Western useful idiots did. And the Western useful idiots conducting a propaganda mission on behalf of a terrorist organization are no better than the murderers who exploited them.

The Hamas charter begins with a quote from Hassan al Banna calling for the destruction of Israel. Hassan al Banna was an ally of Hitler whose movement distributed Arabic translations of Mein Kampf to its followers. Al Banna's organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, played a key role in creating Hamas and Al Queda. The guiding idea of Hamas, like every other arm of the Brotherhood, is to impose a totalitarian Islamic state by force. The Gaza Flotilla was as cynical an expedition as if a bunch of Nazi supporters had gotten in a boat to bring supplies to Berlin in 1944.

The Hamas supporters on board the Gaza flotilla called themselves the Freedom Flotilla. A brilliantly Orwellian name, considering that they were headed to support an organization that had eliminated what little freedom there had been in Gaza. Hamas had banned music, outlawing the piano, the flute and the violin because they weren't in the Koran. It banned mixed sex music festivals and jeans. It imposed a curfew on public gatherings It banned male hairdressers and women riding on motorcycles. Its morality police have carried out brutal murders of women they decided were immoral. The lack of freedom in Gaza had one common denominator. Hamas. And the Anti-Freedom Flotilla were there to give Hamas a propaganda victory.

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