The So-Called Two-Faced Brotherhood

The So-Called Two-Faced Brotherhood

In Jack Shenker’s article “Muslim Brotherhood at a crossroads” that was published Saturday 18th of April on the Guardian he was analyzing the current and near-future situation of the Muslim Brotherhood after the MB’s Chairman’s latest announcement of stepping down after his term ends this year.
 
Akef, 81, has held the top post since 2004, but told reporters: “I do not intend to renew my nomination after my term ends in January.” Akef’s announcement is not a new one in fact he said this statement in many occasions before but it seems that this media frenzies around the announcement is due to lack of topics to be covered by the press. Therefore, for more than 3 weeks now the announcement is still a source of big debate between Muslim Brotherhood members and non members of the brotherhood.
 
Shenker’s article received a lot of comments from the readers some tried to show how Muslim Brotherhood are just two faced showing one message to the Arabic speaking audience while giving a totally different message to the English speaking audience.
 
There was one commentator trying to draw this conclusion by comparing the layout of the Arabic and the English websites of the Muslim Brotherhood, as it is obvious as the sun the brotherhood’s English website is in no way a mirror for the Arabic one and it is not intended to deliver the same content because simply it is directed for totally different target audience, to make it simpler Muslims and Arab speaking target audience would need a different method or approach than the non-Muslim English speaking target audience.
 
The question here would be why English speaking audience would be interested or would be able to understand the message presented to Arabic speaking audience? It would need a life time experiment in the Middle East or to be a Muslim to understand the context in which some words are used, so it’s not a matter of mere translation accuracy, sometimes the message needs more than just language skills it needs an understanding of history of the region and knowledge of the current affairs.
 
So the same old claim that many English speaking writers, analysts and commentators use to tarnish the Muslim Brotherhood with, which is the different message presented to two different target audience, is the only logical method message should be presented for two different target audiences.