Yesterday Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the Muslim Brotherhood as “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.” This caused the predicted right-wing freakout, and Clapper walked back his comments later through a spokesperson:
Jamie Smith, director of the office of public affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence later said in a statement to ABC News: “To clarify Director Clapper’s point - in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak’s rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation – he is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization.”
How much the Muslim Brotherhood has eschewed violence and decried al Qaeda is subject to debate. Critics of the group point to its ties with Hamas, a terrorist organization according to the US State Department, for instance.
Hamas did indeed start as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, but as I wrote in my piece, the MB in Cairo doesn't have "operational control" over its sister groups, one of which includes elected representatives in Israel. In the Egyptian context, the Muslim Brotherhood hasn't been violent for decades, and has been willing to work in coalition with secular entities. That doesn't mean their ultimate vision of a society governed under a strict interpretation of Islamic law is one we should embrace, but it's not actually Americans' role to decide who governs Egypt in the event that the country transitions to a democracy. In the meantime, they've declared their support for "more democratic political order with free elections, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law under civil law," and there's no way to know how sincere they are until there's an opportunity to prove it.
Moreover, as I wrote yesterday, almost half of the Egyptian public retains a favorable view of Hamas, along with an overwhelmingly negative view of al-Qaeda. In the American political context, we don't draw much of distinction between the two groups, but Egyptians do. So it's not really very revealing to say Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are linked--Hamas is more popular in Egypt than the Tea Party is here. You're not going to get around that kind of popular opinion by isolating the Muslim Brotherhood as the source of the problem. Ultimately those views are more political than religious, and likely can only be changed through a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
More important was what Clapper said about how the events in Egypt might affect the larger ideological terrain:
"There (is) potentially a great opportunity here to come up with a counter-narrative to al Qaeda and its franchises and what it is espousing," Described the events unfolding in Egypt as a "truly a tectonic event."
That counternarrative is, quite simply, that freedom for Muslims can be achieved through peaceful, democratic means rather than violence. As I wrote yesterday, that's an argument we should want the Muslim Brotherhood to win, despite all their problematic, illiberal elements. As Jeffrey Goldberg writes, "peaceful change is what Osama bin Laden dreads."
