Egyptians flock to White House petition to designate Muslim Brotherhood a ‘terrorist group’

via The Washington Post

A WhiteHouse.gov petition asking President Obama to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization will far exceed the minimum number of signatures required to prompt an official response when it closes Tuesday. The catch? Many of the 174,000-plus signatures appear to come from Egyptians, not Americans.

This shouldn’t be too surprising, considering both the ease of registering for a WhiteHouse.gov account and the growing unpopularity of the Brotherhood among many Egyptians, exacerbated by a state media campaign since the military’s takeover branding the Islamist group as terrorists.

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Notably, while the WhiteHouse.gov petition platform “We the People” bills itself as a site for Americans, it doesn’t actually require that petitioners be U.S. citizens. That has made it a popular destination for foreign causes, though the Obama administration rarely takes action in response to such petitions. A petition asking the government to support Catalonia’s independence referendum, for instance, earned a terse statement on the “internal Spanish matter.” And a response to an entreaty on Palestine rehashed the administration’s support for a two-state solution negotiated by “the Israelis and the Palestinians — not us.”