Though social media make it easier for them to push their malign messages, terrorist groups around the world still attempt a degree of political respectability by setting up supposedly harmless front organizations. The Provisional IRA, which waged a vicious campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland, had Sinn Fein which supposedly deplored violence and wanted only peace. Yet a Sinn Fein leader once famously announced after the Good Friday agreement ended decades of brutal conflict that “The Boys”, as he affectionately called them, “hadn’t gone away”. And he went on to say of his party’s participation in the political process, that Sinn Fein had an Armalite rifle in one hand and a ballot box in the other.
The political establishment, certainly in Britain, takes the view that it is better to be able to talk to the terrorists indirectly through their political mouthpieces than to run the reputational risk of face-to-face contact with the killers themselves. Moreover, anti-terror bodies clearly welcome the chance to monitor at least the tip of the terrorist iceberg and watch when the public frontmen get in touch with their hidden masters. This could explain why London has for so long tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood. But there is also a major danger here. To the mind of some British leaders, welcoming these people to meetings and conferences is a way to, as one top UK civil servant put it: “Keep in touch with moderate opinion in the Arab world and be in a position to influence it”.
The ludicrousness of this point of view is patently obvious. Nevertheless, by pretending that those who parrot the aims of ruthless terrorists are actually reasonable people, the British believe that they can square what is a very vicious circle.
President Donald Trump doesn’t do subtle. His move to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization demonstrates his impatience with the pretense this malign group has any relevance to the political debate. He may know little of the history of the Brotherhood and the way it has wheedled its way into stable Arab societies. For him the reality is obvious. Wherever the Brotherhood rears its ugly head, for instance in Egypt or in Libya, it is speaking mealy words on behalf of pitiless Islamist terrorism. All the protests of peaceful intentions are hot air. And Donald Trump knows something about hot air.
Unlike the ever-accommodating British, he sees the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the problem, not part of the solution. The US-led clampdown on this pernicious group is long overdue. It will have severe financial and organization consequences for these apologists and recruiters for terror. It may even lead to significant breakthroughs by counter-terrorist intelligence bodies.
However, it would be utterly naïve to expect that the ban will break the Brotherhood. It will merely force it underground, back into the shadows where its armed wing is already lurking. The US liberal establishment, of course, committed to oppose anything the hated Trump does, will protest that this is a clampdown on democracy and that the Muslim Brotherhood should be respected as a political organization. Interestingly, these same American liberals stayed stunningly quiet when Hamas won the Palestinian election, fair and square, in 2006 and President George W. Bush rejected the result because Hamas was a terrorist group.
