Epstein Secrets

ood as being the root cause of the politicization of Islam in Saudi Arabia. And with the Arab Spring and the victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia and, of course, in Egypt, the Saudis started thinking that this notion of an electoral Islamism is something that is a threat to them in the long t

in the Arab world stood against Saudi Arabia and with Saddam Hussein against the U.S. military intervention. The Saudis have been suspicious of the Brothers since then, and with the upsurge in political activity in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War, lots of Saudi leaders blamed the Brotherhood as be

discredited for having collaborated with the Mubarak regime — dozens of organisations have been legalised or are in the process of being so. As in Tunisia, it is hard to know how much influence each of these parties has. There are many organisations with liberal, secular leanings, such as the social

president Abu Ela Madi) are EFTA_R1_02032796 EFTA02691179 18 former Brotherhood members. (Al-Wasat has less conservative social views than the Brothers and include Copts among its leaders.) Apart from the remains of the dissolved National Democratic Party and the parties authorised under Mubarak —

ragua are simply power-hungry, Islamists are illiberal by ideological design. Even the most moderate among them, Rachid Ghannouchi, the founder of Tunisia's Nanda party, has written, according to Mr. Hamid, that Islamic governance "is the dividing line between faith and disbelief." I don't think this

ounding political phenomenon, and Mr. Hamid is acute on the paradoxes they present. He points out, for example, that repression and jail, which the Brothers have endured intermittently since Hassan al-Banna founded the group in 1928, actually made them more EFTA00684072 moderate and not more radical,

d now covers a wide spectrum; and its sensible end has fast been evolving from a radical, violent strain into a modern, outward-looking variant. In Tunisia a party close to the Brothers won power and has started well. In Morocco a similar party has served in coalition, albeit under the king's writ. Eve

ristians, about 10% of the population, are understandably anxious—not least because, to get elected, Mr Morsi will need the support not just of the Brothers but also of the Salafists, a far more worrying band of Islamists who hark back to the puritanism of the Prophet Muhammad's era and who have amassed