On Monday, the Military led Egyptian government used an Egyptian court in its fight against the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The court outlawed the Brotherhood in its entirety and vowed to confiscate any and all Brotherhood assets it could find. The basis for this ruling was that the MB was a “harm to National Security and Disruption of Public Safety and Harmony.” When the MB financial network is fully exposed in Egypt, we have to wonder what effect it will have on organizations like CAIR and ISNA, here in the United States. As we see from an article in the Daily Caller, CAIR goes to great pains to keep their financial dealings secretive. The question we must ask in all things related to the civil war in Egypt is this…what difference will it make?
Unfortunately, I don’t see it making any difference. Why? The folks at the top of the MB are rarely, if ever, touched. For instance, the ‘spiritual leader’ of the MB who was jailed last month is simply a figurehead. The real MB leadership is an international group of individuals whose names and faces haven’t been made public since the early 1980’s. The leadership went international after President Sadat threw, then MB leader, Omar Telmesani in jail. Coincidentally, Sadat’s death came shortly thereafter.
Here’s a fitting analogy of why we’ll never see the MB leadership nabbed in a political or military shakedown…
I’ll use football as an example. A football team has 11 men on the field at one time. Let’s assume that these 11 men represent the current crop of MB ‘activists/terrorists’ who are operating throughout Egypt and causing particular problems in the Sinai. Now, let’s assume that all 11 men are killed in action, in other words, or, to represent our analogy, all the men on the football field are injured and have to come out of the game. What does a football coach do? He sends in another group of players to take their place. A key difference is that the MB roster is far ‘deeper’ than any football team; the MB can keep replacing those 11 men for a long, long time. This football analogy still doesn’t explain why we don’t see the real MB leadership being arrested. Well, just like in the football game, the coaches don’t ever take the field; they simply send in new players and send in calls from the sidelines. If you see what is believed to be a MB leader being jailed, you’re looking at a player…not a coach.
So, after all the pomp and circumstance that undoubtedly accompanied such a monumental ruling (one that’s been attempted by more than one other Egyptian ruler, without success), what we’re really talking about is putting more lipstick on a pig.