Gingrich: Muslim Brotherhood ‘Mortal Enemy’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood to help resolve the Egyptian crisis is “fundamentally wrong,” as the radical Islamic group is “a mortal enemy of our civilization.”

“I am very concerned that Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton apparently said that we wanted to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Gingrich said in an interview broadcast Monday with CNN’s John King. “I think this is absolute, total misreading of history. The Muslim Brotherhood is a mortal enemy of our civilization, they say so openly, their slogan says so openly, their way is Jihad, their method is death.

“For us to encourage in any way the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood is fundamentally wrong, and I think that what we want to do is walk a narrow line,” Gingrich continued. “We don’t want to betray somebody [Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak] who has been with us 30 years as an ally – we do recognize his time may well have gone – [but] we want to treat him with dignity, because he stood by us in very tough times.

“We want to help the Egyptian people achieve self government, but we want to isolate and minimize the risk of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “This administration I think does not have a clue about these realities.”