Ofer Neiman #StopArmingIsrael 🍉🇺🇦 🇹🇼

We don't have to like or agree with the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology but that's different than saying it's a terrorist organization. It's not. Here's a brief primer I wrote the other week: I've been reticent to jump into the moral panic about @AbdulElSayed's supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But I'll say a few things that should be obvious but apparently aren't, as someone who studied the Brotherhood for years and wrote several books about them. First of all, so what if Abdul's mom was involved with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s? What does that have to do with Abdul? You shouldn't be judged for something your parents did or didn't do before you were even born. That's plainly guilt by association. As for the Egyptian Brotherhood itself, it hasn't been involved in political violence since the 1940s/50s and even those incidents can't really be described as terrorism, since they didn't target innocent civilians for political gain. In the decades since, the Brotherhood has repeatedly renounced violence and committed themselves to pursuing their aims through the democratic process. It's little accident that Al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote an entire book condemning the Brotherhood as lackeys and disbelievers, precisely because they had agreed to abide by the rules of the democratic game. Of course, it's totally fine to dislike the Brotherhood and what they stand for. They advocate for the application of Islamic law in politics and for a larger role for Islam in public life more broadly. In short, they're illiberal and we as Americans probably wouldn't want to live under their rule. But I don't see how one could describe them as an "extremist" organization. Their views on Islam — as ample polling makes clear — are fairly mainstream by Egyptian standards. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to judge the Brotherhood according to liberal, American standards. Before the Trump administration, successive U.S. administrations engaged directly with Muslim Brotherhood officials and maintained open lines of communication with their leaders, which made sense. They were the largest mass movement and opposition group in Egypt and it would have been foolish to ignore them from the standpoint of U.S. national interests. Even if you hate the Brotherhood, it should also be possible to hold the view that their members and supporters shouldn't be repressed or killed and should have the right to participate in politics and contest democratic elections. Democracy, at its core, is about the right to make the wrong choice. In many ways, MAGA as a movement is more radical than the Brotherhood was in Egypt both before and during the Arab Spring. At the very least, MAGA — like the Brotherhood — is illiberal. And the Republican Party under Trump has a dubious relationship with democracy. After all, a significant number of Republicans, including Trump himself, didn't respect democratic outcomes in 2020 and sought to overturn a legitimate election. The GOP's attempt to demonize the Brotherhood and paint with the guilt-by-association brush is just another way to vilify peaceful law-abiding American Muslims by portraying them as having foreign ties and dual loyalties. It should be rejected as such. The idea that Abdul is some secret Muslim Brotherhood member is absurd on its face. I wish the Republican Party would make up its mind about people like Abdul and Zohran, both of whom take the Democratic Party's line on LGBTQ rights and even trans athletes participation in women's sports. Sure, their faith is important to them and it influences them — but Republicans should welcome the fact that there are prominent Muslim politicians who are normalizing talking about one's faith in public life, especially after criticizing the Democratic Party for being inhospitable to people of faith.

With all due respect Jamie, there's no evidence that Abdul is an "Islamist." An Islamist, by definition, is someone who participates in politics with the goal of applying Islamic law in public life or otherwise elevating the role of Islam to a central role in legislation. There's no evidence Abdul wants to do that. If anything, he fully adopts the Democratic Party's line on LGBTQ rights and even seems more than fine with trans athletes participating in women's sports. If anything, the criticism of Abdul would be that he doesn't more fully reflect Islam's traditional teachings on gender and doesn't really sound socially conservative notes on public policy issues more broadly.

There's a reason relatively few people still use the phrase "moderate Muslims." It implies that Muslims generally aren't moderate. You rarely see people use the term "moderate Jews" or "moderate Christians" in this same way. It creates a dichotomy between the "good" ones and everyone else. And it puts the onus on Muslims to constantly prove they're moderate, often according to standards that other people pose for them.