Robin Mancoll, Kyle Shideler and Mark Solberg.
Kyle Shideler didn’t come to Congregation Beth Chaverim on Monday, Dec. 9 to make the Tidewater Jewish community feel comfortable. He came to make audience members squirm, reciting broad statistics and showing images of terrorists and organizational tracts on a projector during his hour-long presentation about The Threat of the Worldwide Muslim Brotherhood.
Shideler, director of research and communications at the Endowment for Middle East Truth, spoke about the history of the Middle East terrorist organization, and its intent to wreak global havoc and destruction.
Sponsored by the Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater in partnership with Beth Chaverim, Shideler’s presentation attracted more than 80 people, despite extremely foul weather that evening.
Two audience members share their thoughts on Shideler’s discussion:
Art Rosenfeld
I came away from this powerful lecture feeling that I had just heard a Shofar sounding a strong warning of a clear and present danger to America in general and to Israel and the Jewish community in particular.
Kyle’s presentation left no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood movement is worldwide and a serious threat that cannot and must not be ignored. He explained that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a revolutionary fundamentalist movement to restore the caliphate and impose strict Sharia law in Muslim lands today and, ultimately, in the entire world. Today, the Brotherhood has active chapters in Egypt and in more than 80 countries worldwide, including the United States.
Before getting into his discussion, Mr. Shideler made it clear that he was not talking about the religion of Islam, but rather those particular members of it that felt compelled to join the Brotherhood and actively work to carry out its long-term goal of turning the entire world into one united Islamic empire or Caliphate. Kyle showed the Brotherhood’s logo, and said the words on the organization’s flag— Make Ready—is a phrase that comes from the first two words of the Qur’anic verse [8:60] that continues “Make ready for them whatever you can of force and horses of war with which to frighten Allah’s enemies and yours.”
Kyle explained that the Brotherhood’s motto is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
One can’t accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of hiding their intentions. What was so concerning, and I believe to most if not all of the audience, is not how clear the Brotherhood is in proclaiming its goal, but how hard so many in the West seem to be working to ignore or even deny their clear message.
Rabbi Michael Panitz
From a traditional Jewish perspective: “As a people, we are commanded to seek peace, but not at the price of national suicide. We learned in the history of the Maccabees that, at first, the Jewish people did not take up arms to defend themselves on the Shabbat. The result was that their enemies attacked and killed us on that day; so we reinterpreted our commitment to Sabbath rest so as to permit self-defense. Today, the vital lesson is to be forthright enough to call a friend a friend and an enemy, an enemy. Peace is like the tango: it requires two partners.”