Reuters: Muslim Brotherhood is "spiritual guide" for Hamas

Reuters reports that officials of the Obama administration have met with members of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.  If true, this would be a break with long-standing US policy to shun contacts with the Brotherhood, although there was an announcement in June that such contacts would now be permitted.  With no hint of irony, Bureau Chief Edmund Blair writes:

The contacts may unsettle Israel and its U.S. backers. The Brotherhood renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt years ago. But groups like Hamas, which have not disavowed violence, look to the Brotherhood as a spiritual guide.

Blair is prevaricating here.  Per its own founding doctrine, the Brotherhood is an Islamic jihad group, committed to waging warfare to liberate what it considers Islamic lands and to rid the world of secular laws and governance.

And Hamas does not see the Brotherhood simply as a "spiritual guide'; Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nice try though, Edmund.