Congress hearing on MB undermines its terror influence: MP

CAIRO – 15 July 2018: An Egyptian parliamentarian called on the international community to stop supporting the terrorist group of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and to promote the move of designating the MB as a terrorist group globally.

Major-General Osama Radi, member of Egypt’s House of Representatives, told Egypt Today on Friday that the U.S. Congress hearing on the MB’s global threats seemed good after describing the MB as a “global threat” to the U.S. national security, following the adoption of terrorism by the group’s affiliates.

Radi called on Congressmen to approve the designation of the MB as a terrorism group, adding that “the terrorist organization of the Brotherhood has extended to many countries and it has sought to dominate some European countries so that the MB would be able to form a global lobby.”

“The MB has become a terrorist phenomenon as the group’s members are assigned to carry out terrorist acts across the world including Vehicle-ramming and mass-murder attacks in Europe and terrorist acts in Egypt and Arab world,” Rady noted.

He praised the Congress hearing held on Thursday, deeming it a chance to uncover facts about the global organization of the MB, the matter which shall undermine its influence and effectiveness.

He wished that the Congress had a true intention to designate the MB as a terrorist group following the footsteps of Egypt which is the first to take such a step globally in 2013.
President and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), Zuhdi Jasser, stated on his testimony that “No group embodies the threat of radical Islamism more than the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and no group runs deeper into the consciousness of global Islamism, especially in our Arab Sunni communities than the Muslim Brotherhood and its global network of affiliates and progeny across the world. Unfortunately, much of the conversation about the Muslim Brotherhood has been obstructed, muffled, marginalized, deferred, or minimized by Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers or their allies.”

He gave evidence of the terrorism of Muslim Brotherhood saying that Morsi allegedly agreed to grant a presidential pardon to over 20 terrorists including childhood friends who were running Ansar Bayt-al-Maqdis, an ISIS branch in the Sinai.

Daniel Benjamin, the director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College since 2013, contradicted on his testimony the other three researchers saying that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t impose a global threat and that most of the groups that are said to be Muslim Brotherhood affiliates or franchises support democracy and abjure violence.

Recently, the State Department designated two Brotherhood-affiliates, namely HASM and Liwa al-Thawra, and Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh, as “Specifically Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT)” under an executive order.