U. Denver's Nader Hashemi Shills for Muslim Brotherhood's 'Muslim Democracy'

Nader Hashemi

What happens when a reporter simply asks an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood about the organization's past? An angry retort is what awaited Andrew Harrod when he approached Nader Hashemi, a Middle East studies specialist at the U. of Denver. Writing for Campus Watch, Harrod recounts the encounter along with the rest of Hashemi's defenses of Islamist radicalism today at FrontPage Magazine:

"I can't have a serious conversation with you about the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and violence because" this author's question "is driven by a certain ideological agenda," declared University of Denver Middle East studies professor Nader Hashemi. His dismissal typified the ideological blindness towards the MB of a March 17 presentation by the Islamist-aligned Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) before about thirty-five at Washington, DC's National Press Club.

Hashemi concurred with his fellow panelists that enactment of the recently introduced Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act will "pour oil on the raging fires that are consuming" the Middle East. Despite the act's extensive catalogue of MB violent support for Islamic supremacy in numerous affiliates across the Middle East, he echoed the panel in rejecting an American terrorist designation for the MB's founding Egyptian branch. He contrasted a supposedly moderate MB with extremist groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and (Greater) Syria (ISIS) and warned that when "moderate forms of political Islam are crushed and denied a public voice, radical Islam thrives."

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