Submitted by Jeff Nixon, Mar 17, 2007 01:35

With all due respect to the writer of the article, I believe his article lacks a lot of objectivity.
The article main axis is to link Al-Jazeera to Ikwhan (Muslim Brotherhood = MB) and hence conclude that they are evil, bad and the horn of terrorists.
The article automatically assume that every one agrees on the axiom that the Ikhwan is a terrorist organization and therefore if it can prove its link to Ikhwan, it proved its goal.
I personally wrote a response on Yousef Ibrahim's article on March 12 talking about Ikhwan based on my experience and research. I believe I have made the point that Ikhwan today, and in the worst case since 53 years, have totally renounced to violence.
The article makes some references to Al-sharq Al-awsat articles. I presume they must have crossed a recent article written by Manal Lutfi (http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=8286) it is 6 parts articles, 4 of which have been published so far.
In the article, Lutfi is trying to investigate the relationship between the US and Ikhwan. The article states that there has been communication on different levels with Ikhwan in different Arab Countries. The strongest is with their political parties in Kuwait and Morocco. They also seem to have met with some Ikhwan MP's in Egypt saying that if the Egyptian Government is dealing with them, the US can not be more radical.
The only relationship to violence one can really make is their clear support to Hamas and to the Resistance/Insurgents in Iraq.
In regards to Hamas, it seems that this is not the Ikhwan position. It is rather a wide spread position among the majority of the public as well as the political spectrum in Egypt as well as all the Arab world.
They all see Israel as the occupier and they look at the Israeli activities especially in the occupied territories as "aggression" and therefore if not support, at least tolerate Hamas position in "Resisting the Occupier".
They respond to the allegation that they do not recognize Israel right to exist that Israel does not recognize "Palestine" right to exist neither.
One can assume with some degree of confidence that this is more of a tactical position. There is rumors that Ikhwan may accept a "One state solution" in which Palestinians and Jews would live in one country under one government democratically elected. From an Israeli point of view this may not be an acceptable solution since Palestinians may come to a point where they would form the government and therefore Israelis would be governed by Palestinians which Israelis would reject totally.
Even if this is not the case, it seems that there may be room for some sorts of negotiations.
In the case of Iraq, it seems to me that even Americans themselves today believe that it was not a justifiable war. So, for Ikhwan to believe the same thing as the majority of the Americans would not be an extreme position. Of course Ikhwan go one extra step of justifying "resisting the occupier", which could be argued under the previous presumption.

The second part of the article structure is the assumption the Al-Jazeera is the media facade of Ikhwan. There are many observations that would wreck such an assumption:
- Al-jazeera call Israel "Israel", Ikhwan call Israel "The Zionist State" so as not to recognize is as a state.
- Al-jazeera meets regularly with Israeli officials up to the top of the government. Ikhwan so far has never done so and refuse any talks at least under the current circumstances.
- Al-jazeera was branded by Saddam regime as pro-America right before Baghdad falls. Those who usually attack Ikhwan say they had some sort of "strong relation" with Saddam regime (The article above from Al-sharq Al-awsat states that they met with Saddam after occupying Kuwait to try to persuade him to leave Kuwait.
- Al-jazeera have the majority of its female journalist appearing without Islamic woman head cover. It is known that Ikhwan are so strict about such thing.
- Al-jazeera aired several series by people known to be political and ideological opponents to Ikhwan such as Haikal. He is a very well know prominent journalist who used to be the Editor in chief of Al-Ahram the largest and oldest newspaper in the whole Arab world. He is a well known leftist who used to be Pro-USSR and socialism and one can argue communism as well. He had a show airing on Al-jazeera where he harshly attacked Ikhwan and brand them will the worst any one can accuse them of. It even angered Ikhwan themselves for not being giving him the microphone unopposed (the series was called after him "with Haikal".
- Al-jazeera aired several series where they hosted some well know Ikhwan and where they basically asked them and one can say cornered them with questions that their most daring opponents may not ask them. In one case the guest was a 80 or older and some people just said it was too harsh on some one with such a poor health.
- Al-jazeera have shows where they talk about fashion, some controversial forms of art that one can presume would readily be opposed by Ikhwan.

May be the only one thing both Al-jazeera and Ikhwan really have in common is that both of them could be considered reformist: one in and through the field of Media and the other through politics and other social activities they reach out to people with.

For reference, for readers to judge themselves on Al-jazeera, their English website is:
http://english.aljazeera.net/English

From all the above, I believe the article 1 conclusion and 1 axiom can proven wrong.

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