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Imagine, “Morsi Is a Textbook Islamic Fascist”: I Told You So, Part 3 (Democracy, Muslim Brotherhood Style, Part 3)

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ December 16, 2012Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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COMMENT: With the Egypt­ian con­sti­tu­tion hav­ing been nar­rowly approved on Sat­ur­day, 12/15/2012, we are in a posi­tion to take stock of the events of the past two years or so in this largest of the Arab countries.

We recall the tsunami of praise, Hosannas and Hal­lelu­jahs gush­ing forth from the world’s media and polit­i­cal pun­ditry. Hail­ing the “Arab Spring” as the dawn­ing of a new enlight­en­ment in that part of the world, they missed the boat–fundamentally.

We, on the other hand, were warn­ing that this phe­nom­e­non was a Nazi oper­a­tion, hav­ing been ini­ti­ated by pow­er­ful cor­po­rate forces in the sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush, it had its trig­ger with the Wik­iLeaks milieu–itself a far-right, Nazi-linked entity, as we demon­strated  in FTR’s 732 and #745. (In addi­tion to the doc­u­men­ta­tion in the orig­i­nal WikiLeaks/Arab Spring series, see the arti­cle excerpted below.)

Before delv­ing into details, an excel­lent overview of recent events in Egypt was pro­vided in an English-language blog by a cit­i­zen of that tor­tured coun­try. The con­tra­dic­tions and deadly under­cur­rents of unfold­ing events were elo­quently summed up by Mah­moud Salem in “Imag­ine.”

A num­ber of points should be con­sid­ered here (the rel­e­vant arti­cles are excerpted below):

  • Hasan Amin has char­ac­ter­ized Morsi as “a text­book Islamic Fas­cist.” Of course, the Broth­er­hood is an Islamic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, with a her­itage dat­ing back to its polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary alliance with the Axis.
  • The new con­sti­tu­tion may be used to fun­da­men­tally dis­re­gard human rights, in favor of Islamic law. It’s equiv­o­cal lan­guage even leaves the door open for the tol­er­ance of slav­ery, being prac­ticed by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood cadres in the Sudan, among other places. An ear­lier draft of this AP post con­tained the fol­low­ing pas­sage, omit­ted from the update: ” . . . Omis­sions of cer­tain arti­cles, such as bans on slav­ery or promises to adhere to inter­na­tional rights treaties, were equally wor­ry­ing to crit­ics of the new draft, who pulled out from the panel before the vote. . . .”
  • Morsi was able to ram through his draft con­sti­tu­tion by impos­ing what even The New York Times char­ac­ter­ized as “mar­tial law.” 
  • This de facto mar­tial law was made eas­ier by the fact that Morsi was the Brotherhood’s coor­di­na­tor with the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary and secu­rity forces.
  • In the event that the army can­not keep the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion down, the Islamist ter­ror­ists of Jama’a al-Islamiya (an Al Qaeda affil­i­ate) will be avail­able to assas­si­nate dis­si­dents. Sup­pos­edly opposed to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Jama’a al-Islamiya actu­ally appear to have the same rela­tion­ship to the sup­pos­edly respectable Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as the Ital­ian fas­cist Ordine Nuovo (“New Order”) had to the sup­pos­edly respectable coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Sil­vio Berlus­coni (of the P-2 Lodge) and his coali­tion part­ner “post-fascist” Gian­franco Fini of the Alleanza Nationale (suc­ces­sor to the fascisti of Mus­solini). A vet­eran of the SS-controlled Salo Repub­lic that gov­erned North­ern Italy dur­ing the clos­ing days of World War II, Ordine Nuovo chief Pino Rauti com­plained of the “post-fascists” of the MSI and the AN, “Too many double-breasted suits, not enough cud­gels.” Nonethe­less, Rauti was part of the Berlusconi/Fini gov­ern­ment that was elected in the early part of the last decade. One of the orig­i­nal share­hold­ers of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Bank al-Taqwa, Karim Alessan­dro Ghe, was also a mem­ber of Ordine Nuovo.

“Imag­ine” by Mah­moud Salem; Daily News Egypt; 12/10/2012.

EXCERPT: Imagine sit­ting at a friend’s house, watch­ing the pres­i­dent address the nation after a week long cri­sis, with his sup­port­ers just the night before open­ing fire on civil­ian pro­test­ers in Heliopo­lis in hor­ri­fy­ing clashes that spanned the whole day. Imag­ine find­ing out that he issued the ille­gal con­sti­tu­tional dec­la­ra­tion that enflamed and divided the entire coun­try, because– and I quote– one of the sus­pects in the Camel inci­dents, who was declared inno­cent by the courts, had a meet­ing with 3 other unnamed peo­ple in his office.

The pres­i­dent that has under him state secu­rity, gen­eral intel­li­gence, mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the police and the gen­eral prosecutor’s office declar­ing that he had no choice but to issue this dec­la­ra­tion because four peo­ple had a meet­ing. And then, as he swipes the page of his speech on his IPad, he instinc­tively licks his fin­ger first as if he is turn­ing a paper page. Imagine.

Imag­ine that this pres­i­dent saw that the sit­u­a­tion was so urgent, he called for a national dia­logue meet­ing with the oppo­si­tion in two days to resolve the cri­sis, one that all of his allies and none of the oppo­si­tion attend, and he walks in, talks for 5 min­utes, then leaves the dia­logue he called for imme­di­ately, telling peo­ple to talk to his VP and that he is leav­ing to guar­an­tee the “neu­tral­ity of the dialogue”.

Imag­ine that his group’s uber-intellectual, Fahmy Howeidy, shortly after also leaves because he had another impor­tant meet­ing to attend, and that this group of clowns come with a solu­tion after mid­night that isn’t a solu­tion, drafted by ex-presidential can­di­date Selim Al-Aawa, who wrote the Sudanese con­sti­tu­tion that even­tu­ally led to Sudan get­ting divided into two coun­tries. They fronted that guy. Just Imagine.

Imag­ine that the next day, you are no longer greeted with the president’s face, but with those of the Supreme Guide of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and his sec­ond man Khairat El-Shater, who both hold press con­fer­ences defend­ing the pres­i­dent in hid­ing, while the army builds walls around the Pres­i­den­tial Palace.

Imag­ine watch­ing the Supreme Guide claim­ing that all who died in the clashes are Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, despite there being dead Chris­tians in the clashes, and El-Shater talk­ing about how hard it is to get invest­ment into this coun­try and blam­ing the whole cri­sis on the Chris­tians and the Church. Imag­ine know­ing that those are the peo­ple who run the Order that is run­ning your coun­try at the moment. Imagine.

Imag­ine know­ing that your pres­i­dent, the first civil­ian demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected post-revolution pres­i­dent is a pup­pet for that group, and his pup­peteer is the sec­ond man in this order, and not even the first. Imag­ine that this group has its peo­ple, for two weeks, won­der­ing openly on TV talk shows about why the peo­ple, after a rev­o­lu­tion, can­not tol­er­ate hav­ing a tem­po­rary dic­ta­tor­ship for a few months, since they endured it under Mubarak for 30 years.

Imag­ine them being unable to com­pre­hend that because you sim­ply won an elec­tion by 1%, you can’t just do any­thing you damn please in the name of democ­racy because you are the major­ity. Imag­ine them openly stat­ing that this con­sti­tu­tion, since it sup­ports Shari’a, will have 90% sup­port in terms of votes and that the oppo­si­tion are all Chris­tians and agents and no more than 40,000 in the entire coun­try and want to repeat the con­sti­tu­tion writ­ing process to allow gay mar­riage. Imagine.Imagine that this group is still push­ing for a ref­er­en­dum over a con­sti­tu­tional draft that is cre­ated by an ille­gal Con­stituent Assem­bly that a third of its mem­bers with­drew, while an entire coun­try goes in flames over it, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of Egyp­tians in the gov­er­norates are protest­ing and clash­ing with this group’s supporters.

Imag­ine that with this ref­er­en­dum being 4 days away, and the pres­i­dency has no judges to super­vise it, doesn’t have the schools to host it, did not open the door for jour­nal­ists or observers to go in and observe the process, and gave no way for the vot­ers to find out where they are sup­posed to vote. Your country’s con­sti­tu­tion. Imagine.

Imag­ine that the sec­u­lar side is the major­ity for the first time, with peo­ple in the streets all over Egypt view­ing this as a ref­er­en­dum on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Morsy and want to vote No on both and teach them a lesson.

Imag­ine them finally ral­ly­ing behind a uni­fied oppo­si­tion front, called the National Sal­va­tion coun­cil, who just yes­ter­day issued that they will boy­cott the first ref­er­en­dum they actu­ally have a great shot of win­ning, because they think it’s an ille­git­i­mate ref­er­en­dum and we shouldn’t dig­nify it with our votes, despite it being the country’s con­sti­tu­tion and everything. . . .

“Bloody Clashes around Egypt­ian Pres­i­den­tial Palace” by Hasan Amin; CNN; 12/5/12.

EXCERPT: Haunted by Islamic Fascist

After the huge peace­ful protest yes­ter­day against Morsi, today it turned to a bloody bat­tle between the pro­test­ers and Morsi sup­port­ers (Islamists and Pro-Islamists mainly) . . . .

. . . . Islamists thugs beat the pro­test­ers who said “No” [to the] Morsi dic­ta­to­r­ial decree–exactly what hap­pened dur­ing the Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion, when Mubarak sent his thugs to attack the pro­test­ers in Tahrir Sq.

Now, Morsi is a text­book Islamic fas­cist, who elim­i­nates the oppo­si­tion or unleashes his thugs to attack them. [Ital­ics added.]

It’s remark­able that no one in the police or the army was involved in this bat­tle, it’s sus­pi­cious, the absence of secu­rity forces in this crit­i­cal area (the pres­i­den­tial palace diameter.)

The sit­u­a­tion in Egypt is get­ting uglier with time. . . .

“High­lights from Egypt’s Draft Con­sti­tu­tion”; Asso­ci­ated Press; 12/01/2012.

EXCERPT: An Islamist-dominated panel is vot­ing on Egypt’s draft con­sti­tu­tion, the country’s first char­ter after the upris­ing that top­pled Hosni Mubarak. The draft largely reflects the con­ser­v­a­tive vision of the Islamists, with arti­cles that rights activists, lib­er­als and Chris­tians fear will lead to restric­tions on the rights of women and minori­ties and civil lib­er­ties in general.

Omis­sions of cer­tain arti­cles, such as bans on slav­ery or promises to adhere to inter­na­tional rights treaties, were equally wor­ry­ing to crit­ics of the new draft, who pulled out from the panel before the vote. [This pas­sage was omit­ted from sub­se­quent ver­sions of the post.]

Here are some of the dis­puted articles:

- As in past con­sti­tu­tions, the new draft says that the “prin­ci­ples of Islamic law” will be the basis of law. Pre­vi­ously, the term “prin­ci­ples” allowed wide lee­way in inter­pret­ing Shariah. But in the draft, a sep­a­rate new arti­cle is added that seeks to define “prin­ci­ples” by point­ing to par­tic­u­lar the­o­log­i­cal doc­trines and their rules. That could give Islamists the tool for insist­ing on stricter imple­men­ta­tion of rul­ings of Shariah.

- A new arti­cle states that Egypt’s most respected Islamic insti­tu­tion, Al-Azhar, must be con­sulted on any mat­ters related to Shariah, a mea­sure crit­ics fear will lead to over­sight of leg­is­la­tion by clerics.

- An arti­cle under­lines that the state will pro­tect “the true nature of the Egypt­ian fam­ily ... and pro­mote its morals and val­ues,” phras­ing that is vague and sug­gests state con­trol over the con­tents of such arts forms as books and films.

- The draft con­tains no arti­cle specif­i­cally estab­lish­ing equal­ity between men and women because of dis­putes over the phras­ing. How­ever, it main­tains that a woman must bal­ance her duties toward fam­ily and out­side work, sug­gest­ing that she can be held account­able if her pub­lic role con­flicts with her fam­ily duties. No such arti­cle is men­tioned for men.

- An arti­cle bans insult­ing or defam­ing the prophet and mes­sen­gers, but is vague about what con­sti­tutes an insult, rais­ing con­cerns of restric­tions to free­dom of expression.

- An arti­cle seek­ing to ensure people’s dig­nity bans “insult­ing humans”, a vague phras­ing that rights activists say con­tra­dicts free­dom of expression.

- An arti­cle main­tains that the state sup­ports the arts, sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture and works to imple­ment them in a way that serves soci­ety. That has raised con­cerns that some arts deemed not in the ser­vice of soci­ety may be restricted or censored.

- An arti­cle pre­serves the right of the mil­i­tary to try civil­ians before mil­i­tary tri­bunals in cases for crimes that harm the armed forces with­out restric­tions, despite an out­cry from activists who were call­ing for the abol­ish­ing of such tri­bunals. More than 11,000 civil­ians were tried before mil­i­tary tri­bunals dur­ing the post-Mubarak tran­si­tion over­seen by the military. . . .

“Morsi Is Seen on a Path to Impos­ing Mar­tial Law in Egypt” by David D. Kirk­patrick; New York Times; 12/08/2012.

NB: Since this arti­cle was first pub­lished, the NYT changed the head­line to some­thing less noteworthy.

EXCERPT: Strug­gling to quell street protests and polit­i­cal vio­lence, Pres­i­dent Mohamed Morsi is mov­ing to impose a ver­sion of mar­tial law by call­ing on the armed forces to keep order and autho­riz­ing sol­diers to arrest civil­ians, Egypt­ian state media announced Saturday.

If Mr. Morsi goes through with the plan, it would rep­re­sent a his­toric role rever­sal. For decades, Egypt’s military-backed author­i­tar­ian pres­i­dents had used mar­tial law to hold on to power and to pun­ish Islamists like Mr. Morsi, who spent months in jail under a sim­i­lar decree.

A turn back to the mil­i­tary would also come just four months after Mr. Morsi man­aged to pry polit­i­cal power out of the hands of the country’s pow­er­ful gen­er­als, who led a tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment after the ouster of the long­time strong­man Hosni Mubarak.

The flag­ship state news­pa­per Al Ahram reported that Mr. Morsi “will soon issue a deci­sion for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the armed forces in the duties of main­tain­ing secu­rity and pro­tec­tion of vital state insti­tu­tions.” The mil­i­tary would main­tain its expanded role until the com­ple­tion of a ref­er­en­dum on a draft con­sti­tu­tion next Sat­ur­day and the elec­tion of a new Par­lia­ment expected two months after that. . . .

“Meet the Islamist Polit­i­cal Fixer Who Could Be Egypt’s Next Pres­i­dent” by Eric Trager; The New Repub­lic; 4/27/2012.

EXCERPT: . . . . First, for the final four years of Hosni Mubarak’s reign, Morsi was the pri­mary point-of-contact for State Secu­rity within the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. State Secu­rity was the repres­sive domes­tic secu­rity appa­ra­tus through which the Mubarak regime mon­i­tored and infil­trated oppo­si­tion groups, and Morsi nego­ti­ated with State Secu­rity to ensure the Brotherhood’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in var­i­ous polit­i­cal endeav­ors, such as par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. “Mohamed Morsi has very good secu­rity rela­tions,” for­mer deputy supreme guide Mohamed Habib told me dur­ing a March 2011 inter­view. “State Secu­rity likes a con­nec­tion point who has the con­fi­dence of var­i­ous Broth­ers, and [top Broth­er­hood lead­ers] pushed for him.” Indeed, Broth­er­hood lead­ers trusted Morsi because they viewed him as ide­o­log­i­cally rigid, and there­fore unlikely to con­cede too much to the regime dur­ing negotiations. . . .

“Jama’a al-Islamiya leader: Islamists, Regime May try to Assas­si­nate Lib­er­als” by Almasry Aly­oum; Copts United; 11/26/2012.

EXCERPT: . . . . Jama’a al-Islamiya senior leader Nageh Ibrahim has warned that lib­eral polit­i­cal fig­ures may be tar­geted for assas­si­na­tion dur­ing the next month.

In an inter­view with London-based Asharq al-Awsat, the senior fig­ure from the once-banned Islamist group said that the assas­si­na­tions would come as a result of the increas­ingly tense polit­i­cal atmos­phere, spec­u­lat­ing that the assas­si­na­tions would be car­ried out jointly by the rul­ing regime and Islamists.

Ibrahim also expressed sup­port for Morsy’s recent deci­sion grant­ing him­self sweep­ing pow­ers, say­ing, “Morsy had to take those deci­sions. He will never retreat.” . . .

“Bush Weighs Reach­ing Out To ‘Broth­ers’” by Eli Lake; The New York Sun;  6/20/2007.

EXCERPT: The Bush admin­is­tra­tion is qui­etly weigh­ing the prospect of reach­ing out to the party that founded mod­ern polit­i­cal Islam, the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Still in its early stages and below the radar, the cur­rent Amer­i­can delib­er­a­tions and diplo­macy with the orga­ni­za­tion, known in Ara­bic as Ikhwan, take on new sig­nif­i­cance in light of Hamas’s suc­cess­ful coup in Gaza last week. The Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is widely reported to have helped cre­ate Hamas in 1982.

Today the State Department’s Bureau of Intel­li­gence and Research will host a meet­ing with other rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity to dis­cuss open­ing more for­mal chan­nels to the broth­ers. Ear­lier this year, the National Intel­li­gence Coun­cil received a paper it had com­mis­sioned on the his­tory of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood by a scholar at the Nixon Cen­ter, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Depart­ment meet­ing today to present the case for engage­ment. On April 7, con­gres­sional lead­ers such as Rep. Steny Hoyer of Mary­land, the Demo­c­ra­tic whip, attended a recep­tion where some rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the broth­ers were present. The recep­tion was hosted at the res­i­dence in Cairo of the Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Egypt, Fran­cis Ric­cia­r­done, a deci­sion that indi­cates a change in policy.

The National Secu­rity Coun­cil and State Depart­ment already meet indi­rectly with the Syr­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood through dis­cus­sions with a new Syr­ian oppo­si­tion group cre­ated in 2006 known as the National Sal­va­tion Front. Mean­while, Iraq’s vice pres­i­dent, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a leader of Iraq’s chap­ter of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. His party, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party, has played a role in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment since it was invited to join the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil in 2003.

These devel­op­ments, in light of Hamas’s con­trol of Gaza, sug­gest that Pres­i­dent Bush — who has been care­ful to dis­tin­guish the war on ter­ror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his pre­de­ces­sors to accept the move­ment fight­ing for the merger of mosque and state in the Mid­dle East. . . .

Discussion

6 comments for “Imagine, “Morsi Is a Textbook Islamic Fascist”: I Told You So, Part 3 (Democracy, Muslim Brotherhood Style, Part 3)”

  1. Ini­tial unof­fi­cial results are in and it looks like the sup­port­ers of the Islamists’ draft con­sti­tu­tion won the first round of the ref­er­en­dum, although it was much closer than many expected (56% voted “Yes”). And if reports of vote-rigging from the oppo­si­tion are accu­rate, it was actu­ally a lot closer:

    Egypt oppo­si­tion alleges ref­er­en­dum rig­ging as Islamists claim victory

    Mus­lim Brotherhood’s polit­i­cal wing says 56% voted for draft con­sti­tu­tion but oppo­si­tion warns of vio­la­tions in first round poll
    Ian Black in Cairo
    guardian.co.uk, Sun­day 16 Decem­ber 2012 16.08 EST

    Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has claimed vic­tory in the first round of the country’s bit­terly divi­sive con­sti­tu­tional ref­er­en­dum, with oppo­si­tion forces com­plain­ing of large-scale rig­ging and vio­la­tions.

    Unof­fi­cial results from Saturday’s first round showed 56% approval to 43% rejec­tion on a low turnout of 33%, with a clear no win in Cairo, one of the 10 gov­er­norates where polling took place. The ref­er­en­dum is to be held in the country’s remain­ing 17 gov­er­norates next Sat­ur­day — where prospects for a no win are poorer.

    The fig­ures were reported by the Free­dom and Jus­tice party (FJP), the polit­i­cal wing of the Broth­er­hood, which has been accu­rate in pre­vi­ous elections.

    If, as expected, the trend is con­firmed, the ref­er­en­dum will bol­ster the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who was elected pres­i­dent on a 51% man­date last June. But no end is in sight to the country’s grave polit­i­cal crisis.

    Sit-in protests against the con­sti­tu­tion were con­tin­u­ing on Sun­day night in Cairo’s cen­tral Tahrir Square and at the pres­i­den­tial palace in Heliopo­lis, where nine peo­ple were killed last week.

    Gehad El-Haddad, a senior Broth­er­hood and FJP adviser, said: “We thank Allah and the peo­ple of Egypt for such hon­ourable prac­tice of demo­c­ra­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion and although approval [is] lower than expected, [we are] glad it’s yes.”

    The oppo­si­tion National Sal­va­tion Front (NSF) claimed 66% were against the con­tro­ver­sial draft basic law. It said it had detected “unprece­dented rig­ging,” includ­ing 750 vio­la­tions. These included unstamped bal­lot papers, the names of deceased peo­ple on lists and the absence of observers at polling sta­tions. The Egypt­ian Coali­tion for Human Rights reported the use of reli­gious slo­gans and finan­cial induce­ments for those vot­ing yes.

    Mohamed ElBa­radei, the co-ordinator of the NSF, warned Morsi in Twit­ter mes­sages: “In light of Egypt’s evi­dent, and dan­ger­ous, divi­sion, will you real­ize the neces­sity of being a pres­i­dent for all Egyp­tians? Coun­try split, fla­grant irreg­u­lar­i­ties, low turnout, dis­il­lu­sion with Islamists on the rise. Illit­er­acy remains a hurdle.”

    Many Egyp­tians, alarmed by a grow­ing bud­get deficit and the weak­ness of the pound against the US dol­lar, agree that sta­bil­ity will remain elu­sive through next month’s sec­ond anniver­sary of the out­break of the rev­o­lu­tion which over­threw Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years.

    “Even with all this rig­ging and intim­i­da­tion the Broth­er­hood could only get 56%,” Hisham Kassem, a polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, told the Guardian. “So next week will be much worse. Egypt is head­ing for disaster.”

    The ref­er­en­dum was largely peace­ful, but vio­lence erupted on Sat­ur­day night when the Cairo head­quar­ters of the lib­eral Wafd Party, part of the NSF, came under attack. The Wafd accused the Salafist preacher Hazem Abu Ismail of being involved but he denied responsibility.

    ...

    Another anom­aly in first is the fact that ini­tial reports were of unex­pect­edly high voter turnout, and yet a day later we find that there was an unusu­ally low 33% par­tic­i­pa­tion rate. That dis­crep­ancy might be con­sis­tent with the vote-rigging alle­ga­tions:

    Turnout is high as Egyp­tians vote on draft con­sti­tu­tion
    Posted: 12/16/2012 12:01:00 AM MST
    By Stephanie McCrum­men and Griff Witte
    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    CAIRO — Egyp­tians turned out in large num­bers Sat­ur­day to begin vot­ing on a con­tentious draft con­sti­tu­tion that has become a ref­er­en­dum on whether Pres­i­dent Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist back­ers are trust­wor­thy guardians of the diverse rev­o­lu­tion that ousted strong­man Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.

    Despite weeks of protests that have at times turned into bloody, rock-throwing brawls, vot­ing appeared to be largely peace­ful on the first of two Sat­ur­days the bal­lot­ing is being held.

    Morsi had empow­ered the mil­i­tary to pro­tect polling sites and arrest civil­ians if nec­es­sary. But across Cairo, sol­diers seemed more relaxed than tense as they min­gled with police, smoked cig­a­rettes or helped elderly vot­ers up stairs. Offi­cial results will not be announced until after vot­ing ends Dec. 22.

    ...

    The draft char­ter was passed by an Islamist-dominated assem­bly after many lib­eral, Chris­t­ian and more mod­er­ate mem­bers walked out, say­ing their con­cerns about women’s rights, free speech and other pro­tec­tions were being ignored. As the pre­vi­ous con­sti­tu­tion did, the draft char­ter estab­lishes Islam as the basis of leg­is­la­tion. But it also enshrines al-Azhar, the respected cen­ter of Sunni Mus­lim schol­ar­ship, as a non­bind­ing inter­preter of Islamic law, pos­si­bly shift­ing power away from the courts.

    Ana­lysts say the con­sti­tu­tion leaves some room for inter­pre­ta­tion on rights. For instance, it enshrines a right to free speech but also makes it ille­gal to insult “an indi­vid­ual per­son.” The char­ter estab­lishes equal­ity between men and women but con­tains a pro­vi­sion requir­ing the state to bal­ance women’s rights with their “oblig­a­tions to fam­ily.” Mus­lims, Chris­tians and Jews are explic­itly pro­tected but mem­bers of minor­ity reli­gions are not.

    But many wait­ing in polling lines Sat­ur­day were less wor­ried about those specifics than about the way Morsi and his Islamist sup­port­ers in the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party pushed the char­ter to a vote. On Nov. 22, Morsi issued a con­sti­tu­tional dec­la­ra­tion — since rescinded — plac­ing his actions beyond judi­cial review. Oppo­nents saw it as a power grab, and many who said they voted no on the draft char­ter cited a lack of trust in a gov­ern­ment that would behave in such a manner.

    “I feel if we say yes to this, it will be yes, yes, yes, for­ever,” said a young woman wait­ing to vote in the middle-class neigh­bor­hood of Manial. She did not want to give her name because, she said, “a lot of peo­ple are afraid of the Mus­lim Brotherhood.”

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 16, 2012, 9:29 pm

  2. The Green­shirts are back in Egypt.

    http://www.germanywatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-middle-east-nazi-party-comes-to.html

    Posted by GW | December 17, 2012, 3:29 am

  3. Islamist fas­cism and democ­racy: it’s not a good mix:

    Fear keeps Egypt’s Chris­tians away from polls
    9:02p.m. EST Decem­ber 19, 2012

    ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) — A cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion by Islamists left most Chris­tians in this south­ern Egypt­ian province too afraid to par­tic­i­pate in last week’s ref­er­en­dum on an Islamist-drafted con­sti­tu­tion they deeply oppose, res­i­dents say. The dis­en­fran­chise­ment is hik­ing Chris­tians’ wor­ries over their future under empow­ered Mus­lim conservatives.

    Around a week before the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched through the provin­cial cap­i­tal, Assiut, chant­ing that Egypt will be “Islamic, Islamic, despite the Chris­tians.” At their head rode sev­eral bearded men on horse­back with swords in scab­bards on their hips, evok­ing images of early Mus­lims con­quer­ing Chris­t­ian Egypt in the 7th Cen­tury.

    They made sure to go through mainly Chris­t­ian dis­tricts of the city, where res­i­dents, fear­ing attacks, shut­tered down their stores and stayed in their homes, wit­nesses said.

    The day of the vot­ing itself on Sat­ur­day, Chris­t­ian vot­ing was min­i­mal — as low as seven per­cent in some areas, accord­ing to church offi­cials. Some of those who did try to head to polling sta­tions in some vil­lages were pelted by stones, forc­ing them to turn back with­out cast­ing bal­lots, Chris­t­ian activists and res­i­dents told the Asso­ci­ated Press this week.

    The activists now see what hap­pened in Assiut as a barom­e­ter for what Chris­tians’ sta­tus will be under a con­sti­tu­tion that enshrines a greater role for Shariah, or Islamic law, in gov­ern­ment and daily life. Even under the sec­u­lar regime of auto­crat Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s Chris­tians com­plained of dis­crim­i­na­tion and gov­ern­ment fail­ure to pro­tect them and their rights. They fear it will be worse with the Islamists who have dom­i­nated Egypt’s polit­i­cal land­scape since Mubarak’s ouster in Feb­ru­ary 2011.

    ...

    Egypt’s main Cop­tic Ortho­dox Church and smaller ones have taken an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally assertive approach in the con­sti­tu­tional strug­gle. They with­drew their six mem­bers from the Con­stituent Assem­bly to protest Islamist dom­i­na­tion of the process and later refused to send rep­re­sen­ta­tives to a “national dia­logue” called for by Morsi.

    The new Cop­tic pope, Tawadros II, enthroned last month, pub­licly called some of the charter’s arti­cles “disastrous.”

    In response, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood — which usu­ally keeps a mod­er­ate tone toward Chris­tians — has turned toward more inflam­ma­tory rhetoric.

    Senior Broth­er­hood fig­ure Mohammed el-Beltagi in a news­pa­per inter­view this week depicted mass anti-Morsi ral­lies out­side the pres­i­den­tial palace in Cairo this month as mainly made up of Chris­tians, hint­ing at a Chris­t­ian con­spir­acy against the president.

    In a recent speech, Safwat Hegazi, a famous Islamist preacher linked to the Broth­er­hood, warned Chris­tians against join­ing forces with for­mer Mubarak regime fig­ures to top­ple Morsi.

    “I tell the church, yes, you are our broth­ers in Egypt, but there are red lines. Our red line is Morsi’s legit­i­macy. Who­ever dares splash it with water, we will splash him with blood,” he said, using an Ara­bic saying.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 19, 2012, 8:14 pm

  4. Hamas’s attempts at win­ning hearts and minds:

    Gaza Police Dole Out Head-Shavings & Beat­ings for ‘Inde­cent’ Hair
    KARIN LAUB and MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH April 7, 2013, 4:46 PM

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have started grab­bing young men with long or gel-styled spiky hair off the streets, bundling them into jeeps, mock­ing them and shav­ing their heads, two of those tar­geted and a rights group said Sunday.

    It’s the lat­est sign that the Islamic mil­i­tants are impos­ing their strict prac­tices on the population.

    Hamas has been slowly forc­ing its fun­da­men­tal­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of the reli­gion on already con­ser­v­a­tive Gaza since it over­ran the ter­ri­tory in 2007, but the new crack­down on long hair and tight or low-waist pants — in sev­eral cases accom­pa­nied by beat­ings — appears to be one of the most aggres­sive phases of the cam­paign so far.

    It began last week, and two of those tar­geted told The Asso­ci­ated Press said they were rounded up in sep­a­rate sweeps in Gaza City that included more than two dozen young men.

    House painter Ayman al-Sayed, 19, had shoulder-length hair before police grabbed him and shaved his head Thursday.

    “The only thing I want to do is leave this coun­try,” said al-Sayed, who despite his ordeal defi­antly wore styl­ish but out­lawed narrow-leg tan khakis Sun­day. “I am scared. They just take you from the street with­out rea­son. I don’t know what they are going to do next.”

    Hamas offi­cials played down the cam­paign — a stance adopted in the past that allows the group to dis­tance itself from a con­tro­ver­sial crack­down while at the same time instill­ing fear in those it targeted.

    ...

    The hair crack­down came just days after the Hamas-run par­lia­ment in Gaza passed an edu­ca­tion bill man­dat­ing sep­a­rate class­rooms for boys and girls from the age of nine.

    Gen­der sep­a­ra­tion is already widely prac­ticed in Gaza schools, as it is in the West Bank, where Hamas rival Mah­moud Abbas, the Western-backed Pales­tin­ian pres­i­dent, admin­is­ters some areas.

    Enshrin­ing such sep­a­ra­tion in law marked another step for­ward in Hamas’ cam­paign of impos­ing Islamic practice.

    Since seiz­ing Gaza from Abbas six years ago, Hamas has moved grad­u­ally in spread­ing its ultra-conservative ver­sion of Islam. It has issued rules restrict­ing women or requir­ing them to cover up in the tra­di­tional Islamic dress of long robes and head­scarves, but relented if met by protests.

    ...

    In another inci­dent, a Gaza teen, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity for fear of ret­ri­bu­tion, said he saw police beat three young men in down­town Gaza City for wear­ing tight, low-rise pants. The wit­ness said the police­men beat the three with clubs on the backs of their knees and told passers-by watch­ing the scene to move along.

    Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas fig­ure iden­ti­fied with the more prag­matic wing of the move­ment, said the police behav­ior is “absolutely wrong” and must stop. Hamas is often divided over such cam­paigns, but the prag­ma­tists have been unable to stop the more zeal­ous mem­bers.

    Hamas is also com­pet­ing with the even more fun­da­men­tal­ist Salafis, a move­ment that has gained in strength and pop­u­lar­ity in Gaza in recent years. Salafis have crit­i­cized Hamas for not imple­ment­ing Islamic law in Gaza quickly enough.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 7, 2013, 10:21 pm

  5. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100213666/the-muslim-brotherhood-wants-spain-back-can-the-christians-have-egypt-in-exchange/

    The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood wants Spain back. Can the Chris­tians have Egypt in exchange?

    By Tim Stan­ley Reli­gion Last updated: April 24th, 2013

    The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood wants this back

    The Islamic Soci­ety of North Amer­ica, an off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, has pub­lished an arti­cle that calls Andalu­sia – the hottest bit of Spain – a “par­adise” that will return when “the only vic­tor is Allah.” It reads like part trav­el­ogue and part reli­gious tract, claim­ing that Andalu­sia was a region of tol­er­ance “for 800 years” when occu­pied by Mus­lims, was then ruined by “the insan­ity fol­low­ing the Span­ish recon­quista” and, only today, has regained some of its for­mer lus­tre thanks to grow­ing inter­est in Islam in the region. Quote: “In 2006, Span­ish prime min­is­ter José Luis Rodríguez Zap­a­tero said that Spain was indebted to Islam for its great his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions.” Mr Zap­a­tero also legalised gay mar­riage, so it’s fair to pre­sume that he’s not too keen for the Caliphate to come back.

    The arti­cle actu­ally makes some very good points. Islamic Andalu­sia was a cul­tural cen­tre for west­ern Europe, did tol­er­ate the pres­ence of Jews and Chris­tians and did see a great many natives con­vert to Islam. Within Spain, that inter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory has become insti­tu­tion­alised as the coun­try has tried to make peace with its Mus­lim minor­ity and preach its own brand of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. But it’s only half the story. Accord­ing to the New York Times:

    Andalu­sian gov­er­nance was … based on a reli­gious tribal model. Chris­tians and Jews, who shared Islam’s Abra­hamic past, had the sta­tus of dhim­mis – alien minori­ties. They rose high but remained second-class cit­i­zens; one 11th-century legal text called them mem­bers of “the devil’s party.” They were sub­ject to spe­cial taxes and, often, dress codes. Vio­lence also erupted, includ­ing a mas­sacre of thou­sands of Jews in Grenada in 1066 and the forced exile of many Chris­tians in 1126.

    Of course, even this was arguably prefer­able to what fol­lowed the Span­ish recon­quista – an era char­ac­terised by vio­lent mass pogroms against the Jew­ish population.

    Nev­er­the­less, there’s some­thing both creepy and pre­sump­tu­ous about a Mus­lim writer vis­it­ing a Chris­t­ian coun­try and yearn­ing for its “return” to the fold. Creepy because, for many Islamists (the author of this trav­el­ogue not included), that return will be by com­pul­sion rather than evan­gel­i­cal out­reach and church pic­nics: Has­san al-Banna, the founder of Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, once wrote that “Andalu­sia, Sicily, the Balkans, south Italy, and the Roman sea islands were all Islamic lands that have to be restored to the home­land of Islam… it is our right to restore the Islamic Empire its glory.” Such sen­ti­ments are also pre­sump­tu­ous because they imply that cer­tain parts of the globe spir­i­tu­ally “belong” to peo­ple who “owned” them for a bit in the past. And if we’re really going to divide up the world by that logic, I’d like to make a counter offer to the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

    Can we Chris­tians have North Africa back? After all, it was once a cen­tre of Chris­t­ian civil­i­sa­tion – some of the ear­li­est Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties were found there. You want bril­liant the­olo­gians – Africa gave us St Augus­tine. You want devo­tion – Africa gave us the Desert Fathers. You want beauty – Africa gave us stun­ning iconog­ra­phy. You want learn­ing – Africa gave us the libraries and schools at Alexan­dria. So Andalu­sia for Egypt seems a fair swap. After all, those pagan pyra­mids can surely be of no use to the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

    Posted by Vanfield | April 26, 2013, 11:58 am

  6. @Vanfield–

    This might seem utterly delu­sional to some, and it may turn out to be illusory.

    How­ever, with Ger­many melt­ing down south­ern Europe for hard cur­rency, and with cen­tripetal forces push­ing Spain, among other poor nations, to frag­ment, I wouldn’t dis­miss the pos­si­bil­ity that MONEY may prove to be the dom­i­nant consideration.

    We might see Qatar or some other sim­i­lar entity pour money into Andalu­sia and/or other areas, expand­ing the Islam­o­fas­cist Euro­pean foothold already estab­lished in Bosnia and Kosovo.

    Who knows, maybe Dages­tan and Chech­nya if and when the transna­tion­als’ and Under­ground Reich’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood proxy war­riors suc­cess­fully split up Russia.

    Maybe Xin­jiang in China, with Uighur/MB ele­ments in ascension.

    Recall that, in the exhaus­tive For The Record series about the Arab Spring, we noted that pow­er­ful transna­tional cor­po­rate inter­ests, the GOP and its related ele­ment of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and, under­ly­ing and con­trol­ling it all—the Under­ground Reich–were employ­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as proxy warriors.

    The goals: Get Israel and the Jews; tar Obama with the “ter­ror­ist brush;” attack, harass and/or destroy the United States as needed; above all, dri­ving a deep wedge into the heart of the Earth Island, splitting-off the fos­sil fuel-rich areas of Rus­sia and China.

    The Boston Marathon bomb­ing is deriv­a­tive of this relationship.

    Unfor­tu­nately, nei­ther the insuf­fer­able main­stream media, the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor nor the blo­gos­phere seem to be able to wrap their minds around the fun­da­men­tal nature of the Broth­er­hood, its fas­cist nature and history,nor its cor­po­rate relationships.

    It is a rela­tion­ship not unlike that between Hitler, Mus­solini et al and the pow­er­ful cor­po­rate and finan­cial inter­ests that backed fascism.

    It is WAY beyond the “agent/provacateur designed to jus­tify a police state” sce­nario being advanced.

    WAY, WAY beyond.

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    (Glenn Beck and com­pany are doing just that; the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor and the blo­gos­phere can’t seem to fig­ure out the janus-faced nature

    Posted by Dave Emory | April 26, 2013, 12:41 pm

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