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Get Ready for the Muslim Brotherhood

(New York Times) Ayaan Hirsi Ali - In 1985, as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood. I believe it is highly likely but not inevitable that the Muslim Brotherhood will win the elections to be held in Egypt this coming September. What the secular groups fail to do is to come up with a message of opposition that says "yes" to Islam, but "no" to Shariah - in other words, a campaign that emphasizes a separation of religion from politics. The secular democrats' next challenge is the Brotherhood. They must persuade the Egyptian electorate why a Shariah-based government would be bad for them. Unlike the Iranians in 1979, the Egyptians have before them the example of a people who opted for Shariah - the Iranians - and have lived to regret it. The Obama administration can help the secular groups with the resources and the skills necessary to organize, campaign and to establish competing economic and civil institutions so that they can defeat the Muslim Brotherhood at the ballot box. Without effective organization, the secular, democratic forces that have swept one tyranny aside could easily succumb to another. The writer is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
2011-02-04 08:53:57
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