Matt Treacy writing @ Brocaire Books last month took the Irish Left to task for its perceived dalliance with Islamism.
It was perhaps unfortunate that a protest in support of Ibrahim Halawa ought to have coincided with the Islamist mass murder in Barcelona. It was also interesting that the RTE report on the protest for its 6 o’clock TV news was amended by 9 o’clock to omit the earlier reference to the Taoiseach’s call for Halawa’s release.
Exactly why a gay man like Varadkar should support a member of what one journalist has described as “Muslim Brotherhood aristocracy” is another matter. Halawa’s close friend and political ally Al Qaradawi has variously supported the lashing, imprisonment and worse of gays.
Al Qaradawi is the President of the European Council for Fatwa and Research which we Irish, who the Islamists must view in the same way as Lord Sauron regarded the innocent Hobbits of the Shire, host at Halawa’s mosque in Clonskeagh. Halawa senior is the Secretary General of this august body which among other attributes promotes the anti Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as history. Al Qaradawi is banned from the Egypt, the US, Britain, France and elsewhere and was refused entry to Ireland in 2011.
The views of the ECFR, and its Muslim Brotherhood progenitor, on gays are not its sole claim to medievalism. It shares with Hamas, which is in effect the Palestinian manifestation of MB, a burning hatred of Jews, and support for the eradication of Israel and Jews. Qaradawi has claimed that Allah has always punished the Jews and that the “… last punishment was carried out by Hitler.” MB supported the granting of asylum in Egypt to the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Nazi collaborator al Husseini, pictured above with their good friend, the national socialist Adolf.
It was perhaps unfortunate that a protest in support of Ibrahim Halawa ought to have coincided with the Islamist mass murder in Barcelona. It was also interesting that the RTE report on the protest for its 6 o’clock TV news was amended by 9 o’clock to omit the earlier reference to the Taoiseach’s call for Halawa’s release.
Exactly why a gay man like Varadkar should support a member of what one journalist has described as “Muslim Brotherhood aristocracy” is another matter. Halawa’s close friend and political ally Al Qaradawi has variously supported the lashing, imprisonment and worse of gays.
Al Qaradawi is the President of the European Council for Fatwa and Research which we Irish, who the Islamists must view in the same way as Lord Sauron regarded the innocent Hobbits of the Shire, host at Halawa’s mosque in Clonskeagh. Halawa senior is the Secretary General of this august body which among other attributes promotes the anti Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as history. Al Qaradawi is banned from the Egypt, the US, Britain, France and elsewhere and was refused entry to Ireland in 2011.
The views of the ECFR, and its Muslim Brotherhood progenitor, on gays are not its sole claim to medievalism. It shares with Hamas, which is in effect the Palestinian manifestation of MB, a burning hatred of Jews, and support for the eradication of Israel and Jews. Qaradawi has claimed that Allah has always punished the Jews and that the “… last punishment was carried out by Hitler.” MB supported the granting of asylum in Egypt to the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Nazi collaborator al Husseini, pictured above with their good friend, the national socialist Adolf.
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While not directly associated with IS and Al Qaeda. the Brotherhood shares many if not most of its ideological positions, although it feigns support for democracy as part of its efforts to insinuate itself into western states. It’s actual aim, as outlined by one of its leaders, is “… a kind of grand jihad … eliminating and destroying the western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” It would appear to have strange allies in that mission, although the ultra left shares the same contempt for western tradition and democracy.
Bin Laden’s successor as leader of Al Qaeda. and the person alleged to have been a key organizer of 9/11 and other atrocities, is the Egyptian born Ayman al Zawahiri, who is a former member of MB.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas certainly make strange bedfellows for the feminist left. Qaradawi has said that women who have been raped are only “absolved from guilt” if they have shown “some form of good conduct.” He defends wife beating as a “method of last resort,” presumably if all the other forms of abuse have failed.
Prior to their coming to power in 2012 the MB representatives in parliament opposed a proposal to grant equal citizenship to non Muslims and to women. Following Morsi’s election as President they refused to ratify the UN declaration on violence against women, and attempted to legalise Female Genital Mutilation. When that met with popular resistance, they encouraged the establishment of illegal clinics where the barbaric practise could be carried out. Following their overthrow a doctor from one of the Islamist clinics was prosecuted over the death of a 13 year old girl who had been subjected to the atrocity.
As opposition to MB grew in 2013 it embarked on a vicious campaign against Coptic Christians, the left which had been the target of anti trade union legislation, women teachers and doctors and anyone else deemed to be harám. Following the popular coup, MB escalated its violence, murdering hundreds and burning churches and non Islamic public facilities.
It was in the midst, and in support of. all this that the Halawa siblings became minor celebrities in Cairo. Although allegedly caught up in events as innocent holiday makers, it is clear that they were invited to speak at mass MB rallies as representatives of their father who is well known in Egypt as an ally of Qaradawi. Up until their arrest their Facebook pages made no secret of their allegiance to MB and support for Hamas.
While his naïve supporters are fond of trotting out the cliché that if Halawa was named Murphy or was not “brown” that the government would do more for him, thus implying that any sceptics are automatically “racist,” Ibrahim himself several times described himself as an Egyptian living in Ireland. Which is his prerogative. I doubt that Seán MacStiofáin or Shane MacGowan considered or consider themselves to be anything other than Irish despite their place of birth.
Given its reactionary views it is all the more strange that Varadkar and most of the Irish left should be so vocally in support of someone associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is entirely bizarre that self proclaimed “anti fascists” and feminists become almost hysterical if anyone questions their advocacy of someone who is an adherent of a movement and ideology that has more in common with Nazism than any semblance of western leftism in its prelapsarian manifestation and embrace of post modern “identity politics,” let alone western democracy.
Indeed it ought to be posed to Halawa’s leftist supporters whether they would be similarly worked up over say an Irish born Polish fascist who returned to the land of his antecedents to take part in a coup. One doubts it somehow.
The means by which the Egyptian Republic resist Islamic barbarism may not be to the taste of citizens of a western democracy, but they are hardly obliged to treat MB with kid gloves, let alone facilitate their revival.
In the aftermath of yet another Islamist assault on western civilization perhaps some people might reconsider their support for the ideological siblings of IS.
Or perhaps some believe that the price of Ireland being thus far immune from Islamic terror is worth the cost of allowing this country to be one of the European centres of jihadist logistics, finance and propaganda. Even that no doubt has its limits.
➽Matt Treacy’s latest book, A Tunnel to the Moon, will be launched in September and is available to buy through the following sites:
With such a lack of diversity on institutions like Ros na Rún, its a wonder how Ireland has escaped thus far.
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