- December 21, 2006
- 3 minutes read
Zawahri’s Statements Highlight Ideological Differences With MB
Commenting on Ayman Al-Zawahri’s message aired on Al-Jazeera TV channel today, the leader in the Muslim Brotherhood group, Dr. Essam El-Erian, said in a statement to Ikhwanweb that " The speech of Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri confirms a very important point, a clear disagreement between two ideologies in the Islamic movements:
The first ideology is a peaceful method for reform and change that the Muslim Brotherhood group adopts. The MB considers that there are many means for reform and the change and that jihad is one of these means, same like political participation or performing jihad through writing and preaching and other kinds of jihad.
As for the second ideology which is adopted by Al-Qaeda network, including Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, it is a method and a school that confines and reduces Islam to jihad only and confines and reduces jihad to fighting in the battlefield only; consequently, Al Zawahri agrees with himself and he doesn’t have the right to criticize steps or means of any other school or trend that differs totally from him.
“Dr. Al Zawahri should have carried out a review of his ideology that destroyed Afghanistan and deformed the image of Islam, and tied it to terrorism and violence” Al Erian added.
Al Erian said claiming that Hamas movement abandoned resistance is false, because Hamas is the basis of resistance and it has its options and constants while resisting and that it participated in the political process and government only to protect the resistance.
About the stance of the Muslim Brotherhood group towards the issue of initiating a dialogue with the West, Al Erian said that:” our stance in this issue is clear; we support dialogue and Islam is the religion of dialogue and our messenger- peace be upon him- held dialogues even with his bitter enemies; dialogue is a religious and doctrinal demand in all religions.
Al Erian added :” As an Islamic group, we welcome dialogue with the popular organizations and civil society institutions, but initiating a dialogue with Western governments and administrations isn’t acceptable for now, because governments talk with governments and peoples talk with peoples; when one of the parties or movements affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood assume power in any Islamic country, it won’t object at that time to holding a dialogue with Western governments.