Absolutists

Donald Trump has recently suggested, correctly in my view, that the Muslim Brotherhood be designated as a terrorist organization. That would be the same Muslim Brotherhood that Barack Obama argued was "moderate" as he celebrated their takeover of Egypt as part of the so-called "Arab Spring" in 2011. The Muslim Brotherhood espouses an Islamist philosophy—a world dictated by Muslim Supremacy and ruled by Sharia Law—an inflexible set of 7th century dictates that are antithetical to modern life, modern mores, and a modern interpretation of human rights.

As soon as Trump's idea was floated, left-leaning groups leaped to the defense of the Muslim Brotherhood, suggesting that any move to declare them a terrorist organization would "create problems in the Middle East" or that Trump was a puppet of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

David Harsanyi comments:

It’s hard not to laugh reading The New York Times coverage of the Trump administration’s efforts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. The three-person-bylined article kicks off by describing the group as a “storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East.”

Sounds like a global social club! Just some folks batting around ideas. The authors didn’t even have the decency to throw in a superficial adjective like “controversial” to create a veneer of balance.

Whether the Muslim Brotherhood’s many disparate groups and organizations meet the criteria of a single terror organization under U.S. law is debatable, but what isn’t debatable is that a large faction of the Muslim Brotherhood leads a Sunni movement that aims to implement sharia law under a global caliphate. Its deep network of “charitable” institutions and political parties form an infrastructure for extremist causes.

One could, if not a New York Times writer, describe its philosophy as dogmatic, illiberal, theocratic, and violent; and its “storied” history a long-term threat to secularism, Muslim reformers, liberalism, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East. These days, members of the Muslim Brotherhood advocate for child suicide bombings, political assassinations, mass murder of minorities, violent mobs—basically the entire deadly menu of jihadist activities.

Over the years, the Left has reflexively worked to avoid any conflict with or criticism of Islamists. When atrocities are committed by Muslims who are members of terror groups, the Left actively avoids any mention of Islam, often refusing to use adjectives to describe the perpetrators. They refuse to actively examine the Islamist ideology that leads to acts of terror, but have no such misgivings when White Supremacists (as opposed to Muslim Supremacists) perpetrate analogous acts of terror, examining their beliefs in minute detail and trying to lay blame for hate crimes on politicians who oppose the leftist worldview. That doesn't happen—ever—when Islamists perpetrate acts of terror.

Why is that?

Carl Philip Salzman examines the two ideologies:

Progressive leftists range from moderate progressives through social democrats to democratic socialists, to socialists and communists. All aim to perfect society, to bring it closer to perfection, by reform or by revolution. The farther left one goes, the farther from liberal democracy and the more totalitarian the governance. The historical examples of European laborites, socialists, and communists, and of Soviet, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, and Venezuelan communist regimes, provide very clear guidelines as to what to expect, which is one hundred million individuals of unfavored classes and opinions murdered in the name of the “people.” Progressive leftists all pursue the goal of advancing absolute equality of results, everyone to end up with the same level of assets, even at the expense of freedom, prosperity, democracy, and human rights. This utopian goal has been proven illusory, not least by the special benefits enjoyed by the ruling class and their enforcers ...

Islamists, in contrast to leftists, are paradigmatic traditionalists who follow religious texts from the 7th century. The Muslim idea of the perfect society is society as it was during the life of their beloved prophet Mohammed. For Muslims, perfecting our society is to reproduce in America and around the world the life of 7th-century Mecca. Their guidelines are very clear, set out in Islamic Sharia law. The Islamist approach is set out in the motto of the most powerful and pervasive Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." We do not have to speculate what this means, because we can consult the history of Islamic expansionism, imperialism, and colonialism over fourteen centuries. The contemporary version is the Islamic State, with its extraordinary expansion and brutality...

Islamists see the world divided between Muslims and infidels, and in conflict as Islamic supremacists follow their duty to bring the entire world under Allah. The left sees the world in terms of class conflict: capitalists oppressing workers; males oppressing females; whites oppressing people of color; heterosexuals oppressing LGBTs; Christians and Jews oppressing Muslims. The Islamist war against Christians, Jews, Hindus, and all infidels is ignored by progressives.

True believers within both supremacist groups—although radically different in their world view—are absolutists. And because they are absolutists, they are both dangerous.