In an opinion piece by its Editorial Board, the Washington Post has labeled as “despicable propaganda, spread by Saudi trolls and some U.S. conservatives” the efforts of all those who dared to suggest that Jamal Khashoggi, currently the subject of massive global attention, may not have been the exemplar of democracy as posited by the Post below:

In the columns he published in The Post before his disappearance, Mr. Khashoggi offered a consistent message: Saudi Arabia desperately needed the liberalizing reforms being promised by Mohammed bin Salman, but they could not be combined with repression. “Replacing old tactics of intolerance with new ways of repression is not the answer,” he wrote in April . He frequently aimed his commentaries at the crown prince, whom he was hoping to influence for the better. He wanted the regime’s governing program to succeed, and he argued that would be more likely if liberal advocates were free to speak. By “encouraging public debate and discussion by relaxing his grip on the country’s media, as well as releasing those jailed for expressing their views, [Mohammed bin Salman] would prove that he is indeed a true reformer,” Mr. Khashoggi wrote. His columns belie the despicable propaganda, spread by Saudi trolls and some U.S. conservatives, that Mr. Khashoggi was himself an Islamist extremist. Though he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth, believing it was the best vehicle for reform in the Arab world, he later came to the conviction that “democracy and freedom were the Arabs’ best hope of purging the corruption and misrule he despised,” as The Post’s David Ignatius put it.

Jamal Khashoggi is feared dead and according to the mainstream media … it's Trump's fault? What they AREN'T reporting is that this man wasn't just a journalist for the Washington Post. He was a radical activist with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood!@MillerStream w/ more: pic.twitter.com/OdijzmGPTk — CRTV (@CRTV) October 17, 2018

Khashoggi admitted being banned from writing in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat for defending the Muslim Brotherhood which Riyadh has blacklisted as a terrorist organization.

The hypocritical farce of media outrage over Jamal Khashoggi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and former pal of Osama bin Laden , is easily exposed every time you look at the media’s treatment of Iran.

Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch In this piece, The Washington Post is continuing its long-standing pattern of shoddy and irresponsible reporting when it comes to the Global Muslim Brotherhood. As we posted yesterday:

The GMBDW reported earlier this week on Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi, the subject of massive global attention related to his seeming disappearance following a visit to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. As that post concluded, the evidence offered strongly suggests that Jamal Khashoggi was not only a long-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood and close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood but was, in fact, actively supporting Brotherhood-related projects as recently as April of this year. The post also raised the question of how such an individual came to be associated with the Washington Post and noted that this was by no means the only example of the Washington Post showing astonishingly bad judgment with respect to the Global Muslim Brotherhood.

That post provide numerous examples of where the Post either failed to report accurately on the Brotherhood or even more shockingly, in one instance provided a forum for Global Muslim Brotherhood leaders to speak out and to actually interact with their readers.

In its latest screed, the Post exhibits a complete failure to understand the nature of the extremism represented by the Brotherhood, posing among other things a false dichotomy between “democracy and freedom”, at least the version espoused by much of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, and extremism.

while described as a “democracy advocacy group” in reality DAWN was in fact a stalking horse for the inclusion of Sunni Political Islam in Middle Eastern governments, presumably including Saudi Arabia. As for Jamal Khashoggi himself, the GMBDW reported earlier that he, together with Azzam Tamimi , a UK activist for Hamas and a leader in the UK Muslim Brotherhood, had been involved in setting up “pro-democracy” projects since 1992 including as recently as January when Khashoggi registered his newest organization in Delaware known as DAWN. As we also noted,

He is known to have been drawn to the Muslim Brotherhood’s policies seeking to erase the remnants of Western colonialism from the Arab world. It was this shared vision that brought him closer to a young Saudi called Osama bin Laden, who went on to found Al-Qaeda.

National security expert Patrick Poole writes: I didn’t realize until yesterday that Jamal Khashoggi was the author of this notorious 1988 Arab News article of him tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam. He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding an RPG with jihadists (below).

Another self-described Islamic Democracy group is the US-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) where Khashoggi gave the keynote address in April 2018. CSID, founded as a cooperative effort among the US Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department and Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito , has long advocated for the inclusion of Islamists in Middle Eastern governments.

We also reported in that same post that Khashoggi instructed his fiancée to contact former Turkish MP and AK Party leader Yasin Aktay in case he failed to come out of the Saudi consulate.

Aktay is known to be a close advisor to Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Turkish President Erdogan and the AK Party is an Islamist party close to the Global Muslim Brotherhood. A report authored by the GMBDW editor documents the attendance by Aktay at a September 2013 meeting of the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign (GAAC) where Aktay was identified as one of three deputies of a new organization registered in Istanbul and known as the “Global Coordinator To Support Rights And Freedoms.”

The new organization was slated to have a board of ten other organizations including:

Alkarama Foundation (founded by US designated terrorist, Al Qaeda supporter, and GAAC President Abd al-Rahman bin ‘Umayr al-Nu’aymi)

Cordoba Foundation (headed by UK Muslim Brotherhood leader Anas Altikriti)

The report by the GMBDW editor describes the GAAC as follows:

While claiming to be a “non-governmental, independent, peaceful, educational campaign of volunteers”, the GLOBAL ANTI-AGGRESSION CAMPAIGN (GAAC) is in reality a Salafi-led international umbrella organization that brings under its wings Salafi , Salafi-Jihadi, Global MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD and HAMAS leaders. The GAAC views the US as a key enemy of Islam and the purpose of the GAAC is to fight the US and its allies – a fight which has included close cooperation with the violent insurgency directed against Iraqi and Coalition forces in Iraq.

At least seven leading GAAC figures and/or their organizations have been designated as terrorists by the United States, the EU, and/or the United Nations for their support of AL-QAEDA and related groups – with some of these leaders known to have been close to OSAMA BIN LADEN himself. Those so designated have included both the GAAC President and an organization controlled by the GAAC Executive Director. Arabic media reports also identify at least three GAAC figures as funders of the so-called ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND THE LEVANT (ISIS).

As the GAAC report concludes: By its participation in the GAAC, the Global MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD appears to have set aside its theological differences with the Salafists and the Salafi/Jihadis in order to join together in a fight against the US and its allies. is should call into question the entire history of Western efforts to engage with the Global MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD – in a misguided attempt to find a reliable Islamic partner to help combat the very same groups with which the BROTHERHOOD has been cooperating.

So, we can see from the above that the concept of “Islamic Democracy” as advocated by Jamal Khashoggi essentially amounts to supporting electoral victories by Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Turkish AK Party, whose leaders engage in a variety of illiberal practices such as severely suppressing the freedom of the press interference in the electoral process, and use of public funds for private gain and egregious nepotism.

In addition, Khashoggi was not only close to Turkish President Erdogan but also to AK Party leader Yasin Aktay who only five years ago joined in a coalition with the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign (GAAC), an organization that included at least seven designated terrorists, supported the violent Iraqi insurgency against the US, and which views the US and its allies as its key enemies.

None of the above is meant either as an exhaustive account of the Islamic extremism as represented by Jamal Khashoggi and his close associates nor as support for any form of violence that may or may not have been committed against him by any party.

We do however, strenuously object to efforts by the Washington Post to do what they accuse others of doing which is to smear those of us who try to do the job that US journalists by and large are failing to do. For the record, the GMBDW is neither a Saudi Troll nor a US conservative. As our readers can see for themselves we not only have critiqued Saudi Arabia in the past, but also harshly criticized both the Republican and Democrats with respect to their recent positions on the Global Muslim Brotherhood.

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