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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/whos-afraid-of-the-muslim-brotherhood/article622082/

Doug Saunders

Who's afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?
DOUG SAUNDERS

The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Feb. 05 2011, 5:00 AM EST

Last updated Saturday, Feb. 05 2011, 11:50 PM EST

It was not until the fourth day of Egypt's mass protests, long after the then-peaceful crowds had swelled into the hundreds of thousands, that the Brothers marched into Cairo's Tahrir Square. They kept to themselves, taking over an otherwise empty corner. You could distinguish them, those in the square told me, by their propensity toward beards and head scarves, and by their chants of " Allahu Akbar."

Here was the physical manifestation of the threat we'd been warned about for decades by defenders of Arab authoritarianism, the mother of all Islamic fundamentalist parties literally "stepping in to fill the vacuum" as a Western-supported dictatorship crumbled.

The Muslim Brotherhood, surprisingly sluggish and inarticulate, had finally moved, and here they were. Not exactly a formidable bunch, but soon that vacuum in the pavement would become a vacuum in the presidential palace, wouldn't it?

Or so we were told. The threat of the long-outlawed Brotherhood, the great-grandfather of every jihadist and Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Middle East, is the key reason why the United States and most European countries have continued to support Hosni Mubarak and his kind for decades. It's the reason, according to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's spokesman, why Canada rather shockingly continued to support Mr. Mubarak this week. Mr. Mubarak himself continues to warn that, after his demise, a deluge of Islamist "chaos" will follow, somehow worse than the chaos he'd unleashed.