I have been to the USA more than 30 times. In these visits I spoke at most of the top think-tanks (The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The WINEP, the Rand Organization … etc.) and many of the USA top universities (Princeton, Columbia, California Berkeley … etc.). Even in such reputable organizations I never met with people who understand the domains mentioned hereinabove. The exceptions (such as Professor Bernard Lewis) were rather few which do not negate the phenomenon that Islamism is far from being understood in your (young) country.
In Egypt, you will hear a lot of hypocrisy about how moderate the MBs have become ! This is 100% incorrect. Not only that, but it is a lie that will cost the non-Islamist Egyptian, the Middle East region, the entire world and the USA a gigantic crisis. It takes decades of hard work and profound research to come to the conclusion that while there are many moderate Muslims, there is no single moderate Islamist on the face of earth.
I know that senior positions affect the human mind and make it (in general) inclined to reject strong advice as this one, but I insist to render such an advice. I also insist to say that before the world lives with another Osama bin Laden and another Qa’eda, I strongly recommend that you arrange to get some intensive education on the true agenda of the MBs.
Do not be offended at this piece of advice. You know that you know very little about Islamism. A briefing by the American (usually “shallow”) advisers shall never help in this regard. You need to listen (for hours) to a world-class scholar of the calibre of Bernard Lewis.
Did I upset you ? Probably “YES”. But this was not the objective of this message. The aim was to try to stop the occurrence of another grave mistake such as the one committed in 1979 when the CIA and the Saudi Intelligence agreed to create the Mujahedene Movements (and troops) to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. While every true scholar was aware that the USSR was about to (naturally) collapse (I wrote and published in 1978 a book that its core message was that the USSR is about to collapse in about a decade by the effect of its inner decay).
Finally, let me assure you that the Islamists that you may meet with today in Cairo are nothing but disguised terrorists … they are (undoubtedly) anti-modernity, anti-tolerance, anti-women-rights, anti-plurality, anti-otherness, anti-freedom of speech and anti-critical mind …. they are much more atavistic than anything that you could imagine.
With my best regards,