The Muslim Brotherhood has congratulated Joe Biden for his “victory” in the 2020 presidential election, buoyed by its belief that he will bring the movement regarded widely as a terrorist organization back to power in Egypt.
Moroccan researcher Amin Al-Alawi said the Muslim Brotherhood’s “celebration of Biden reflects a nostalgia for the era of revolutions and the Democrats’ support for the Arab Spring,” wrote Jerusalem-based journalist Khaled Abu Toameh for the Gatestone Institute.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Moroccan researcher wrote, partnered with democratic administrations “in ruining the region and supporting extremism.”
“The Muslim Brotherhood believes that Biden will bring them back to power [in Egypt], especially after [President Donald] Trump’s four-year presence has aborted their ambitions.”
Toameh, a journalism fellow at the Gatestone Institute, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood is considered by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Syria to be a terrorist organization.
The UAE and Bahrain are two of the three Arab nations, along with Sudan, that made peace agreements with Israel this year under the leadership of the Trump administration.
Toameh said the “message Arabs are sending to the new U.S. administration is: Do not repeat the mistakes of former President Barack Obama, whose administration sided with then Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member.”
The Arabs, he said, also “want to remind a potentially new U.S. administration that the Islamists and their supporters are inveterate liars who care only about their own interests.”
Toameh noted that the London-based paper The Arab Weekly has documented the enthusiasm among Muslim Brotherhood activists for Biden.
The paper said: “Analysts attributed this enthusiasm to their [Muslim Brotherhood’s] wish for an encore of their experience in the era of former President Barack Obama, during which they played a remarkable role riding the wave of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. Pro-Muslim Brotherhood activists and media professionals in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and the Gulf states did not hide their prayers for a Biden victory.”
The Arab Weekly pointed out Biden’s citation of hadiths from Muhammad in his pitch to Muslim voters.
The Muslim Brotherhood published a statement on its official website in which it wrote that it “appreciates the American electoral process, which resulted in Mr. Joe Biden winning the position of the new President of the United States, a victory that proves that the American people are still able to impose their will.”
Toameh noted that the “labeled terrorist organization said, with a straight face, that it ‘wishes Mr. Biden, the American people, and the peoples of the whole world to continue to live in dignity under the principles of freedom, justice, democracy and respect for human rights.'”
The Muslim Brotherhood endorsement of Biden was scorned by a Saudi writer.
Tariq Al-Homayed wrote: “As expected, the Muslim Brotherhood organization came out of its hole and issued a statement congratulating Joe Biden and asking him to act against those they call dictatorships. … We say expected, because the Muslim Brotherhood, who used to condemn their critics as agents of the West and Zionists, have revealed their face, and they are urging America to intervene against our countries now under the pretext of democracy.”
Toameh warned that no U.S. administration “can afford to dismiss the warning bells sounded by Arabs in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to present itself as a peaceful group that seeks to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab world.”
“Islamists are desperate to return to power in Egypt, which is why they are prepared to even court the American ‘Satan’ to reach this goal,” he wrote.
