Lauren Frayer
AOL News
2/8/2011
Queen Noor, the American-born wife of Jordan’s late king, is defending Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood against critics like Newt Gingrich who accuse the group of wanting to kill Americans.
Noor told CNN late Monday that she believes the Muslim Brotherhood is “one of the many groups throughout the region that have points of view that need to come to the table, need to be part of the dialogue and the governance-building process.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s largest opposition group, which was banned under President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Founded in the 1920s, the Brotherhood is considered the Middle East’s oldest Islamic political movement, with offshoots in several countries. The Egyptian branch is considered moderate, nonviolent and conservative — but not extremist. It was dropped from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist groups in the 1970s and has renounced violence.
Noor’s comments are in line with what U.S. officials are pushing for in Egypt: that once-banned opposition groups should finally get a say in Egypt’s future. The country’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, has held talks over the past week with representatives of opposition groups, including the Brotherhood.
Gingrich, the former House speaker and a possible Republican presidential contender, criticized the Obama administration on Monday, calling U.S. diplomats “amateurish” in their handling of Egypt’s political crisis. He told CNN he thinks it’s “fundamentally wrong” to negotiate with the Brotherhood…
The article, with video, continues at AOL News.
Related: Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt. H/T Glenn Beck
…many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the singularly nonideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“I like the Brotherhood most, and they like me,” said Sally Moore, a 32-year-old psychiatrist, a Coptic Christian and an avowed leftist and feminist of mixed Irish-Egyptian roots. “They always have a hidden agenda, we know, and you never know when power comes how they will behave. But they are very good with organizing, they are calling for a civil state just like everyone else, so let them have a political party just like everyone else — they will not win more than 10 percent, I think.”
Many in the circle, in fact, met during their university days. Islam Lotfi, a lawyer who is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, said his group used to enlist others from the tiny leftist parties to stand with them in calling for civil liberties, to make their cause seem more universal. Many are now allies in the revolt, including Zyad el-Elaimy, a 30-year-old lawyer who was then the leader of a communist group…
Also at the NYT, Jordan: New Cabinet Sworn In
Update: Obama administration ignored clear warnings on Egypt
Caught totally unprepared forEgypt’s uprising, the Obama administration has offered a series of excuses. It was, officials claim, quietly supporting reform all along. The CIA never warned that Egypt might blow up. No one could have anticipated what has happened in Cairo since Jan. 25.
The claim on reform is easily dismissed. Anyone who has been following Egypt for the past two years knows the administration’s record of coddling President Hosni Mubarak, cutting funds for Egyptian democracy programs and eschewing criticism of the regime’s repression.
But another part of the record also needs clearing up: The White House was warned, publicly and repeatedly, that Egypt was approaching a turning point and that the status quo was untenable – not by an intelligence agency but by a bipartisan group of Washington-based experts who pleaded, in vain, for a change of policy…
H/T neo-neocon,
And the view from Britain’s Melanie Phillips, The American debacle in Egypt.
