Muslim Brotherhood Not Violent? Think Again

A similar bombing, presumably by the same Muslim Brotherhood group, of a bus of Vietnamese tourists in December 2018 (Photo: MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)

For those who claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is a non-violent organization and shouldn’t be designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., just ask the South African tourists whose bus was just bombed by a Brotherhood organization near the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt.

The New York Times, as well as other mainstream media outlets, came to the defense of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the news that the Trump Administration was planning to designate the group as a terrorist organization.

Clarion Project has documented the decades of violent activities by the Brotherhood, both inside and outside Egypt (where the group originated) and in America, where a Brotherhood-linked group was convicted in the largest terror-financing case in U.S. history.

In this latest incident, a roadside bomb hit a tourist bus earlier this week in Giza, wounding at least 17 people.

Egyptian officials confirmed that the attack was carried out by one of the cells of the Hasm movement, a self-avowed armed faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“It was the same cell that carried out a similar attack last December against a bus of Vietnamese tourists also visiting Giza,” said expert Maher Fargali, an Egyptian researcher of political Islam, speaking to Clarion Project. “This cell is getting their orders from top Muslim Brotherhood leaders who reside in Turkey.”

In that attack, four people were killed and 12 others injured.

“According to the national security sector in Egypt, officials of the armed Muslim Brotherhood that call the shots from outside of Egypt gave the instructions to the Hasm movement to carry out a series of attacks in the upcoming weeks to create a state of chaos in the country,” Clarion Project Arab Affairs Analyst and Shillman Fellow Ran Meir said.

In response to the latest attack, Egyptian security officers killed seven members of the group when they raided their hideout in the city of the Sixth of October in the Giza province. Another five were killed when police stormed their residences in a suburb of Cairo.

The Interior ministry reported that explosive devices, weapons and ammunition were found on the premises.

Yet, despite the historical and recent use of violence by the Brotherhood, the New York Times managed to write a breathtakingly disingenuous article (omitting fact after fact), claiming that the Brotherhood is a “missionary” group that has eschewed violence for decades.