Washington still soft to Muslim Brotherhood

The US has added four top Islamic militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan to its list of 'global terrorists' but is that enough in current war on Islamist terror?

In a significant development, the United States State department has now added four top Islamic militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan to its list of 'global terrorists'.

Observers say the US announcement follows the decision of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to end its ceasefire with the government in Islamabad and resume targeting the security forces across the country. As such this may help, partially at least, Islamabad in combating a resurgence of TTP-generated violence in Pakistan. The militant leaders, designed as "global terrorists" belong to the Pakistani Taliban and an al-Qaida branch in South Asia. Both militant groups operate from Afghanistan. They have hideouts in Pakistan's mountainous north-west and elsewhere as well.

The State Department's decision, however, offers little hope in terms of fighting the current global war on Islamist terror. One of the root causes of Islamist terror across the world is the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been a key ideological source of terror against the cherished values of modern civilization. By its very nature, it poses a threat to the United States and its values. al-Qaeda and most of the other leading terrorist groups have been connected with it. But the United States is still soft to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Muslim Brotherhood propagandist Bahgat Saber is based in New York City. He calls for jihad both in the United States and abroad. He often streams live videos from Times Square. He incites terrorism against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In a March 2020 video, he urged his followers to engage in bio-terrorism in the US and Egypt. In another video the same year, he pressed them to search the internet for manuals on how to manufacture explosives.

Ahmed Andel Basit Mohamed, one of Saber's associates in New York, was sentenced to death in Egypt for his role in deadly terrorist attacks there. Basit has admitted his involvement in jihadist riots in Cairo in 2013 that led to the deaths of 210 people and the wounding of 296 others.

Akram Kassab, New York City-based Muslim Brotherhood theologian and member of the Muslim Brotherhood's International Union of Muslim Scholars, delivers sermons at the Muslim American Society Youth Center in Brooklyn. In a fatwa in May 2015, he said that it was a "religious duty, a necessity, and revolutionary dream" to "get rid" of judges and officials who support the Egyptian government. After Kassab's fatwa, Egypt's leading prosecutor Hisham Barakat was assassinated .

Given the lack of appropriate response by its intelligence and security agencies to the activities of such notorious Muslim Brotherhood elements in the very land of the United States, it is immensely clear that Washington is hardly serious about combating Islamist terror.

(Jagdish N. Singh is a senior journalist based in New Delhi. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York)

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