Rick: Egyptian Brotherhood same as Osama

Rick Santorum said today that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is “as dangerous to western civilization and the future of our country” as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

Members of the Egyptian opposition group are not violent jihadists, Santorum told a New Hampshire talk radio station. “But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t for all of the things that violent jihadists are for,” he said.


While Republican responses to the crisis in Egypt have been girded by the fear that a less U.S.-friendly government could emerge if President Hosni Mubarak's collapses, Santorum took that fear a step forward, likening the group to terrorists.

That’s a stance even stronger than U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's, who has been sounding the alarm about the role of radical Islam in a future Egyptian government.

“Let's be clear what the stakes are for the United States," Bolton told Fox News recently. "We have an authoritarian regime in power that has been our ally. We don't know at this point what the real alternatives are."

Though the Muslim Brotherhood began as an Islamic organization opposed to imperial British rule and once advocating imposing Shari’a law, it has stepped into mainstream Egyptian society and once held about 20 percent of the seats in parliament.

Santorum, who wedged the radio interview in between appearances in the Granite State, said the Egyptian crisis was a failure for the Obama administration.

“What’s going on in Egypt is not a good thing,” he said. “It’s a failure on the part of this administration to not get out ahead of this and to understand this.”

This article tagged under: 2012

Rick Santorum