Much commentary in the United States has attempted to liken the current Egyptian revolution to that of Iran in 1979. Alleged experts on CNN, FOX News and other major outlets have linked the Muslim Brotherhood to anti-Americanism and terrorist activity in fomenting fear among the average American. These individuals are missing the realities on the ground.
Commentators continue to paint the Muslim Brotherhood -- Egypt's largest and most organized political force -- as a firebrand radical conservative Islamist movement with a goal of forcing religion on others and achieving world domination based in Islamic law. It is allegedly a group in favor of censorship, repression, anti-Americanism and anti-women. The group is much more complex than these assumptions argue.
Certainly the Brotherhood has some anti-American tendencies. The Brothers are vehemently anti-Israeli, and rightfully so considering Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people, but the Brotherhood is not the most anti-American group in the country.
In fact, it is the secular community of activists that is strikingly anti-American. It was not the Brotherhood that focused on the "Made in U.S.A." tear gas fired upon Egyptian protester; it was the secularists, who have become the champions in Western debate. Those "special" activists and bloggers courted by Washington over the past few years are the same ones who condemn, attack and speak out against the United States. They are vehemently anti-American, in many cases justifiably so, and have on occasion cheered the death of American soldiers.