Kuwaiti Intellectual: The Muslim Brotherhood Organization Should Be Put On the U.S. Terrorist List

(From MEMRI)

One important, though not foolproof, threat to a violent ideology is the rise of an "intellectual movement" speaking out against it to the very people it claims as its constituency. That's what we're now hearing. It's true: not all Arabs are in tune with Muslim fundamentalism.

The only remaining question is: where do these intellectuals come from? Ahmad al-Baghdadi is a political science professor at the University of Kuwait. In short, he does not speak as a religious man. Most professors of political science at American universities are, frankly, atheists in all but formal declaration. And so it might be in Professor Baghdadi's case. I don't know this for a fact; I've never heard of the man until MEMRI mentioned him today.

I have said many times before that fundamentalist Islam is one player in a three-cornered war, the other players being fundamentalist Christianity and, for lack of a better term, fundamentalist secularism. These three players are contending for all the nominal Christians and nominal Muslims out there, as well as those whom we might call "seekers." This piece today bears all the hallmarks of an assault against fundamentalist Islam in general, and a particular fundamentalist Muslim organization, from a secularistic point of view. And among these hallmarks is a typical coyness about one's real aims--only the most inveterate secularists ever identify themselves strongly as such. First they start by declaring certain organizations who have earned a violent reputation to be terrorists (and in this case, I will not dispute that). But after the out-and-out terrorists are gone from the scene, the second stage sets in: declaring that religious-based laws are antithetical to the life of man as a reasoning being. We have the second stage to contend with in this country. In the Arab lands you see the first stage--and are likely to continue to see only that stage until the Tribulation begins.