Monday, June 14, 2010

NRB Interview: Andrew McCarthy and the Threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 2


by Elise Cooper

Andrew C. McCarthy led the prosecution team in the 1995 terrorism trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik.) He was able to obtain a conviction of the Sheik and eleven others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After the September 11th attacks he supervised the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Command Post in New York City. From 1999 until his resignation in 2003, he worked as a Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Justice Department in New York. NewsRealBlog interviewed him about his latest book, The Grand Jihad, and terrorism.

Click here for Part 1 of this interview.
NewsRealBlog: What is the Muslim Brotherhood ideology that you talk about in your book The Grand Jihad?

Andrew McCarthy: It is about stomping out western influences from Islam and returning to the original generations of Islam in the 7th century.

NRB: Can you discuss how they view the world?

McCarthy: What I tried to explain in the book is that the Muslim Brotherhood is pretty sophisticated. They are not anti Zion, they are not anti the Modern World. What they are against is the corruption of Islamic principles by western reason.

NRB: Do they have a plan to succeed?

McCarthy: They are not backwards. They realized they could not beat anyone on the battlefield. They have made the battle about what the textbooks say. They want to make the battle in a court room instead of a battlefield. What they have done is to move the struggle to fields where they have a chance to win.

NRB: Did they always have the power to impose Sharia Law?

McCarthy: No. 50 to 60 years ago Muslim women didn’t have to wear the veil. People were slackers about Sharia Law. A country like Egypt could have a secular government and could still pretend to the world that the Koran was the law of Egypt. What you are seeing is that the mores of the Islamic world have changed dramatically. The profligation of Brotherhood Islamic ideology is made possible by the Saudi money.

NRB: In your book did you explain how they espouse their philosophy?

McCarthy: It is very well thought through as to why Islam has to dominate and not co-exist with other religions. Take for example the fatwa of 2004 calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq because they were an infidel army operating in a Muslim country. It doesn’t matter that we were doing good and helping Muslims to a better life. From their perspective we are replacing their values with lesser values and from their perspective that is provocative.

NRB: Is it possible to relate what is happening with the Israel-flotilla incident to your explanations in the book?

McCarthy: I talk in the book about the flying Iman. I think the flotilla incident is the international version of the flying Iman. It was obviously a premeditated attempt to provoke an Israeli response. The really sad thing is you have a terrorist organization orchestrating a premeditated event to undermine a blockade that is directed at another terrorist organization. The media writes the narrative that the villain is Israel.

NRB: Do you think the public is buying the mass media version of the incident?

McCarthy: I sense there is a lot of hesitation on people’s parts and they want to hear all the facts.

See Part 3 tomorrow.

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