Bombings in Egypt; Inside the Muslim Brotherood
GORANI: Welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Hala Gorani.</s>CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy, and these are the stories that are making headlines right now. In Nepal, demonstrations turn to celebrations after the King Gyanendra bows to weeks of protest and agrees to reinstate parliament. However, Maoist rebels call the king's offer a sham. They are vowing to blockade Kathmandu and other locations.</s>GORANI: Also in the headlines, Iran threatens to halt cooperation with the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency if targeted with sanctions. The comment by negotiator Ali Larijani comes ahead of this week's IAEA report to the Security Council. Washington says it only demonstrates Tehran's isolation. Beijing and Moscow called for negotiations.</s>CLANCY: U.S. president George W. Bush says his country's addiction to oil is a national security concern. He's outlined a four-point plan that would tackle high gas prices, which includes holding off on deposits to the nation's strategic oil reserves.</s>GORANI: Authorities in Egypt have arrested several people in connection with Monday's triple bombing in the Red Sea resort town of Dahab that killed at least 18 people. More than 80 were wounded. The streets were jammed with tourists at the time of the blast, but most of those killed were Egyptians.</s>CLANCY: Egypt is the most populous Arab nation in the world, with almost 80 million people; moreover, it's a political, economic and social leader across the region.</s>GORANI: What happens in Egypt matters. The nearly century-old Muslim Brother, because of it was the first of its kind, provided historic inspiration for other militant organizations.</s>CLANCY: Now, there is no direct evidence the Muslim Brotherhood had any connection to these recent bombings, but understanding the deep roots of that movement does shed light on the extremism that has branched out in the Middle East.</s>GORANI: It does, and we want to share you an excerpt from a "CNN PRESENTS" documentary on that important subject. Here's our colleague Jonathan Mann.</s>JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): September 11th, 2001: 2,973 people killed. Madrid, March 2004: 191 people killed. London, July 2005: 52 people killed. Amman, Jordan, November, 2005: 57 people killed. Islamic terrorism is a scourge of our times. Governments around the world are at war against it. Promoting democracy in places like Egypt is part of President Bush's plan to defeat terrorism, yet Egypt is also inextricably linked to the rise of Islamic terrorism. In July, an attack here killed 88 people. It was in Egypt that al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al Zawahiri, began his jihad.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are Muslims who believe in their religion, in its broad meaning, as well as in ideology and practice!</s>MANN: Egypt was the birthplace of Mohammed Atta, who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center. (on camera): And it is here in Egypt, where new democracy may be emerging, that Islamic terrorism was, in a sense, born decades ago. As this country takes halting steps to democracy, it's confronting a frightening question. Could more political freedom unleash more extremism, which has deep roots in this country? (voice-over): Roots can you find in many bookstores. (on camera): Do you have any books by Sayyid Qutb?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By?</s>MANN: Sayyid Qutb?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sayyid, yes, we do.</s>MANN (voice-over): Said Qutb was one of the early thinkers of a movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important independent movement in the Arab world. The Brotherhood is illegal here, but Qutb's work continues to inspire millions of people in Egypt and around the Muslim world. They see Islam as a remedy for their country's poverty, political problems and weakness against the West. They believe that Muslims need to change themselves and their way of life if they want to change the world. The change would come from morality and piety, from devotion to Islam. Mohammed Mahdi Akef is the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. "The Muslim Brotherhood carries Islam to the people," he tells us. "We teach people that it is an all-encompassing religion which sheds light and facilitates all aspects of life." But Qutb called for more than just a religious revival in Muslim countries. "This will be followed sooner or later," he wrote, "by their conquest of world domination, an Islamic resurrection." Extremists throughout the Muslim world have taken that vision as a license to kill. A splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood killed an Egyptian prime minister in the late 1940s, and a president, Anwar Sadat, in 1981. Egyptian jails have held tens of thousands of its presumed members. But the Muslim Brotherhood today has renounced violence.</s>DR. JOHN L. ESPOSITIO, CTR. FOR MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: What a lot of people miss, though, is that the leadership of the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood increasingly distanced itself from Qutb.</s>MANN: The Brotherhood says the regime's crackdown has caught up innocent people, many of whom are still in jail. We found Nebela Abdul Nabib Hamad (ph) among several dozen devout women pleading silently for news about their husbands or sons. Nebela said her husband was taken from their home and sent to prison 12 years ago, leaving her and her daughter, then just over a month old. She said he was never charged with a crime. "He was not involved in politics," she told us. "He had done nothing wrong. It's just that he had gotten more religious." Egypt has opened up enough that they can demonstrate publicly, but they still have no answers about the faces in the photos. Officially illegal, the Brotherhood's existence is an open secret. It's no secret that the movement is widely admired by the country's people. The Brotherhood operates hospitals and other social services around the country. Though it's banned, the Brotherhood has become a mainstream political movement, with the largest opposition bloc in parliament, whose members officially sit as independents, not Muslim Brothers. Dr. Mohammed Mercy (ph) is a parliamentary leader. He and many Egyptians believe that if given a free and fair election, the Brotherhood could win. No other party is nearly as well organized. What would a Brotherhood victory bring? Islamic law.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we are, as a majority here, Muslims, want to make an Islamic state, what's wrong in that?</s>MANN: Mercy says the West need not fear an Islamic state.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are Muslim Brotherhood. We want an Islamic state, in our country, not in yours country.</s>MANN: Mohammed Akef is more specific: "The will of Allah is very simple," he tells us. When Allah prohibits marriage of gays, adultery, manslaughter, plunder and alcohol, then no earthly law has the right to allow it. "On the other hand, democracy gives people infinite freedom. People in the West have the right to drink alcohol, commit adultery, and more. No, we are not like this." Candidates make pilgrimages to the Brotherhood's headquarters to show solidarity and try to win its supporters votes. But the Mubarak regime doesn't allow the Brotherhood to run its own candidates.</s>DR. AHMEED NAZIF, PRIME MINISTER: The Egyptian constitution is very clear as to how Islam fits in our lives. We do not allow parties based on religion, whether it's Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion.</s>MANN: Government supporters say the reason is obvious.</s>DR. HOSSAM BADRAWI, PHYSICIAN, MEMBER OF THE PARLIAMENT: The fear we have is that they may use democracy to reach power, and then they ruin the bridge and nobody else can do that.</s>MANN: That fear is echoed by ordinary Egyptians We met.</s>MONA ERIAN, PHARMACIST: No, it's not good. Muslim Brotherhood are fanatic. They are the extreme of the Muslims, and they enforce their beliefs on other people.</s>MANN: But American scholar John Esposito says those fears are exaggerated. (on camera): Doesn't an Islamic state inevitably means hands will be cut off for thievery?</s>ESPOSITO: No.</s>MANN: Women will be enslaved to their husbands?</s>ESPOSITO: No.</s>MANN: The entire culture and the legal culture will move back into the Middle Ages.</s>ESPOSITO: No, I don't think so. There is absolutely nothing on the ground in Egypt in terms of a group like the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power that could lead one to believe that that would happen.</s>MANN (voice-over): But the Brothers too have some extreme ideas. Mercy and Akef, they don't believe al Qaeda hijackers carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States. And they don't believe the Twin Towers were knocked down by planes. "This is a lie created by the media," Akef told us. "Satellite news channels have broadcast, Internet Web sites have published, but we don't know who was really behind it. I believe that al Qaeda does not exist at an organizational level."</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cannot understand what happened on September 11th. This is not convincing. And an airplane or a craft just going through it like a knife in butter. I don't see that. Explain it to me. They didn't do it. They didn't do it. What's going on? There's something's fishy.</s>MANN: For now, the Brotherhood and the Mubarak regime coexist in an uneasy standoff. Mohammed Akef spent 20 years of his life behind bars. He says the government's tight control of the Brotherhood doesn't present extremism; it fuels it. "We are denied freedom to preach or teach people the correct meaning of Islam," he told us. "So this leaves room for people who are dedicated to terrorism and extremism."</s>CLANCY: That was Jonathan Mann reporting there earlier on a documentary for "CNN PRESENTS." Well, coming up next, a controversial writer speaking out.</s>GORANI: Jim, award-winning author Salman Rushdie. His book "The Satanic Verses" was banned and earned him a death decree. He joins us live on YOUR WORLD TODAY.