partha wrote:Pakistan Calls for Morsi's release
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday called for the immediate release of deposed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi and urged the restoration of democratic institutions in Egypt.[
I was surprised by the earlier Pakistan stance of supporting Morsi's ouster. Probably, Pakistan was playing some game with the US to gain some benefits. Now that, it has fallen into place with the US line, we can guess that some deal has been struck (Diamar-Basha, trade preferences, access to more IMF funds, US leaning on India, a nuclear deal - take your pick). Anyway, Pakistan and Muslim Brotherhood go a long way back and with a closet jihadi Islamist as the incumbent PM, the latest reversal of stand is not surprising.
In c. 1948, the expelled Muslim Brotherhood leader from Egypt, Said Ramadan (d. 1995), came to Pakistan where he was received warmly. Ramadan was no ordinary man. He was one of the instruments of the CIA in its anti-communist operations. In c. 1953 he met US Pres. Eisnhower in the White House. He was part of a group of Islamist leaders from the Middle East who somehow 'happened' to be in the US at the same time. Later, this group met at Princeton to formulate a 'Renaissance Movement within Islam itself". One can clearly see that the US policy of using 'political Islam' gos a long way back. Not for nothing, all Islamist jihadists of today have come from Muslim Brotherhood, whether in Pakistan or Egypt itself (Islamic Jihad to which Zawahiri belonged. The relationship between Islamic Jihad and MB is like that between LeT and Jamaat-ud-Dawah, JuD in Pakistan. There are other similar groups in Egypt) or Al Qaeda itself (the mentor of Osama bin laden was Abdullah Azzam, an MB member. He also mentored LeT's Hafiz Saeed and the two ran together 'Maktab al Khidmat' in Peshawar to cater to 'Arab Afghan mujahideen') or Hizb-ut-Tahrir (whose parent organization was Islamic Liberation Party in Palestine/Jordan). MB was also said to have mentored Ayatollah Khomeini. Certainly, Said Ramadan had a deep personal relationship with the Ayatollah. Of course, MB was the hand maiden of the US and British interests in weakening Col. Nasser in Egypt. It is also no wonder that 9/11 had connections with Germany because Said Ramadan was given asylum in West Germany after MB was banned following assassination attempts on Nasser. The US, now in a grand alliance with the King of Saudi Arabia, allowed the fleeing MB fellows to settle down in that country.
Said Ramadan, who was also the son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Mohammed al Banna, stayed in Pakistan for a year. It was Said Ramadan who helped Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi to set up the radical IJT student wing of his Jama’at-e-Islami. He also helped the convening of the Motamar (Motamar Al- Alam Al-Islami) conference in Karachi in c. 1951. The Motamar, or World Muslim Congress, was the only pan-Islamist world body. In c. 1962, Said Ramadan set up the Muslim World League to spread wahhabism.
In 1960, a diplomatic row erupted between Egypt and Pakistan upon the visit of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood ideologue visiting the Jama’at-e-Islami’s headquarters in Lahore on a mission to integrate extremism into mainstream national politics. By early 80s, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood activist of Palestenian origin and the mentor of Osama Bin Laden from his Jeddah days, had established his presence in Peshawar. Initially, Azzam was appointed a lecturer at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, which is today a hot-bed for jihadi terror. Mullah Krekar (Faraj Ahmed Najmuddin), the Iraqi Kurd linked with Al-Qaeda was also Sheikh Azzam’s student in Pakistan.
The links between Pakistan and the MB are therefore deep and flourishing.