The Middle East Monitor reports that James Watt, the British Ambassador to Egypt, took great pleasure in meeting in Cairo with Mohammed Badi, the Supreme Guide of the Muslm Brotherhood. For his part, Badi reportedly “thanked the ambassador for his visit and praised his condemnation of all forms of violence,” stressing that “the Muslim Brotherhood denounces violence.”

Sigh … It was just a few months ago, as I recount in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, that Badi was calling for violent jihad for the purpose of destroying Israel:

“Every Muslim,” he declared, “will be asked about the Zionists’ usurpation of al-Aqsa Mosque. Why did he not seek to recover it, and wage jihad in [Allah’s] way? Did he not care about the fatwa of the ulema [scholars] of the Muslims: ‘Jihad of self and money to recover al Aqsa is a duty on every Muslim’?” He exhorted “all Muslim rulers” to make “the Palestinian cause a pivotal issue,” and predicted new “freedom flotillas” would break the “murdering Zionist criminals.”

These remarks were no aberration. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report related in November that Badi reminded Muslims that “jihad is obligatory” in response to President Mohamed Morsi’s indication that Egypt’s new Islamist government, at least for now, will continue to abide by the terms of the 1979 Camp David peace pact with Israel. Alluding to Israel, Badi explained at the time that “the enemy knows nothing but the language of force.”

Moreover, as Spring Fever elaborates:

In October 2010, just before the “Arab Spring” dominos started falling in Tunis, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badi, [gave] a speech calling for violent jihad against the United States. Specifically, Badi admonished that Muslims must remember “Allah’s commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and lives, so that Allah’s word will reign supreme and the infidels’ word will be inferior.” Applying this injunction, Badi exclaimed that jihad, or “resistance,” “is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny.” On went the invective: The United States had been wounded by jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan; thus, Badi gleefully surmised, America “is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.”

As frequently noted here, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch is the terrorist organization Hamas, the promotion of whose jihad against Israel is a top Brotherhood priority — such that the Brotherhood is vigorously campaigning (with alarming success) to have Western governments accept Hamas as a “political movement” engaged in “resistance,” rather than a jihadist movement engaged in terrorism. Even if you buy that nonsense, the Brotherhood quite obviously does not reject violence, regardless of how its leaders pretend to “denounce” it.

It is well-known that the Brotherhood lies about its intentions and methods — indeed, that it believes strategic lying is both scripturally endorsed and a key to the advancement of Islamic supremacism. What is not clear is why the West is so anxious to be deceived.