Nothing Like Hiding in Plain Sight

It’s remarkable, really, how up-front would-be totalitarians are about their goals.  Whatever can be said about its indigestibility as writing, Hitler was utterly frank in Mein Kampf about precisely what he intended to do.  He then went out and did it.  The Russian communists spelled out the terror they intended to unleash, and then did so.  And the Muslim Brotherhood, the outfit which occasions Dear Leader such “relief” that they’re finally in charge in Egypt, is equally forthcoming about where they’re headed.

From an article in yesterday’s The International, we read, “The MB is both a political and social movement that advocates moving away from secularism and toward a political and civil society that is organized by the principles outlined in the Qur’an, including the implementation of Shariah law.

“Louay M. Safi wrote an article for The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences in which he describes Shariah law as, ‘a comprehensive system encompassing the whole field of human experiences. It is not simply a legal system, but rather a composite system of law and morality.’

“Shariah law regulates and guides all aspects of life from politics and economics to personal issues of marriage, family, diet and hygiene and is meant to provide a guide for all things concerning morality.”

Got that?  It’s a “comprehensive system encompassing the whole field of human experiences.”  And “political and civil society” is to be “organized” according to its principles.  There’s a name for that, folks — totalitarianism.  I believe it was Solzhenitsyn who observed that in the Soviet Union even sleep became politicized.  Under Shariah, “all aspects of life from politics and economics to personal issues of marriage, family, diet and hygiene” are to be “regulated” by whatever someone else determines to be the law, based upon precepts articulated for a desert society of robber-shepherds 1,400 years ago.  Sandra Flake seems to believe that a third party refusing to pay for her birth control is just the World’s Most Intolerable Oppression of her and her lady parts; I’m sure she’d do so much better under Shariah.

We’re supposed to be reassured, though:  “Whilst emerging as a political force in the Islamic world, the Muslim Brotherhood has also actively engaged in a number of public works and charity projects. They have run banks, schools, hospitals, social clubs and facilities for the disabled, while at the same time adhering to principles of transparency and accountability.”  Repeat after me, chillerns:  Autobahnen; Kraft durch Freude; Winterhilfe; Bund deutscher Mädel, Hitlerjugend.  Shirer has an entire chapter on the nazification of everyday German life in the 1930s.  The Soviets likewise “engaged in a number of public works projects,” like the Baltic-White Sea Canal, a.k.a. Belomor, which cost only several hundred thousand lives, and no one could run banks, schools, hospitals, and social clubs quite like the NKVD.  Why, they even had an entire sub-system within Gulag for children, including children born in the camps.  Isn’t that heart-warming?

We’re also comforted to find out that the Brotherhood is committed to attaining power through the trappings of democratic processes.  We are not encouraged to recall that Hitler was the lawfully appointed and serving Reichskanzler, and the Ermächtigungsgesetz — the Enabling Act — which handed over more or less unbridled power to him, was a lawfully enacted statute, permitted by their constitution.  How’d that work out, again?

This is the outfit whose ascendancy our current administration applauds.  This is the outfit one of whose leading families has now placed a member — a family member who was actively engaged in the Brotherhood’s American propaganda arm — at the right hand of the Secretary of State.

But don’t worry, ladies.  This election is about how them Rethuglicans is a-comin’ after your lady parts.