When I followed Fahmi Huwaidi’s conjectures in his article published Sunday in the Egyptian newspaper Shorouk under the title “Abu Dhabi Wars”, I did not feel surprised about this huge amount of hatred and resentment the writer holds for the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi in special. I felt pity because he could not find an outlet to vent this hatred other than Emirati positions that are remarkable and appreciated by everyone regionally and internationally, because they are about maintaining the essence of the Islamic religion and defending its values and principles at a time when the Arab and Islamic world is suffering from the plight of militancy, extremism and terrorism.
I pity this desperate feeling that controls Huwaidi and his likes because this article is not the first nor the last attacking, explicitly or implicitly, the United Arab Emirates, seeking revenge or reprisal through the “blasphemous media” he used to practice throughout his career. His writings stick to the “purpose”, even if this means beating a dead horse.
“The purpose”, which Huwaidi could not hide in his hatred of the UAE is the fact that the Emirates is hostile and against the Muslim Brotherhood project in the Arab and Muslim world. The man cannot convincingly deny his role as a mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood while falsely claiming objectivity and professionalism. Huwaidi is a Brotherhood fanatic. That is not an accusation, but something he implies, sometimes overtly, in his articles, despite attempts to conceal it using the pen of professionalism for decades. For instance, in an interview with Morocco’s Tajdid newspaper on October 24, 2007, when asked about his intellectual and professional influences, he said “my father was a managing member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and I grew up in this environment which influenced me; I did not change, and it allowed me to work in journalism and move in various spaces. I found that the defense of freedom and democracy issues from an Islamic perspective ‘is an very important issue’ because many Islamist writers talk too much about strictly doctrinal matters or issues related to the da’wa, but I think that approaching critical issues such as the defense of the poor and vulnerable and the community is a premise for the Islamic project.” Answering a question about his commitment to the Muslim Brotherhood, he then added “I’ve been educated in the Muslim Brotherhood School, I consider it a means, I am committed to the Islamic project under any banner, and for this I have not been in an organizational relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, because I am convinced that the Islamic Activism has multiple doors, and sometimes exceeds the movement itself, as well as the fact that my independence allows me to criticize the movement without reprimand of conscience, or without organizational violation, and this serves the project, and the project is for me more important than the movement.”
This is the exact wording of Fahmi Huwaidi. His statement needs no comments and saves me the time to prove the affiliation of Huwaidi to the Muslim Brotherhood ideologically, and I will not say organizationally, pursuant to the apparent meaning of his statement. However, this proves the existence of enough underlying motives to launch media attacks against the UAE with or without apparent reason.
Fahmi Huwaidi represents the heavy artillery of the Muslim Brotherhood in the media, and a strategic arsenal to bomb their enemies and opponents inside and abroad, by virtue of his broad experience in the press and his legacy of media and intellectual battles. The man can exploit the gaps and switch subjects with rhetorical fluency. He uses all his skills and abilities to serve the “project” and does not get tired of talking about it as he travels to places and capitals that seem at first glance not interrelated, but it takes some insight to realize that the project is the common driving motive behind defending Taliban, Tehran, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and the likes.
