NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast itself.

“Hero­ism breaks its heart, and ide­al­ism its back, on the intran­si­gence of
the cred­u­lous and the mediocre, manip­u­lat­ed by the cyn­i­cal and the cor­rupt.”

Christo­pher Hitchens

Does THIS look like democ­ra­cy to you?

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: The pop­u­lar can­dy named  “Turk­ish Taffy” is a sug­ary con­fec­tion. So, too, is the con­tention advanced in the Amer­i­can pop­u­lar media that the Turk­ish Islamism of Mr. Erdo­gan’s AK Par­ty is mod­er­ate. We are told that Erdo­gan and com­pa­ny would serve as an appro­pri­ate role mod­el for the new­ly emer­gent Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. This claim is to be seen as arti­fi­cial­ly sweet­ened and, ulti­mate­ly, bad for your health.

That con­tention of mod­er­a­tion should be tak­en with a grain of salt.

After recap­ping con­nec­tions between the milieu of the AK Par­ty and the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al, the broad­cast fur­ther con­trasts the claims of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mod­er­a­tion advanced in The New York Times by Tariq Ramadan and Essi­am el-Erri­an with state­ments made by the Broth­er­hood’s founder (and Ramadan’s grand­fa­ther) Has­san al-Ban­na.

As not­ed in the past, Egypt is devoid of civ­il soci­ety as such, and Christo­pher Hitchens notes the dim prospects for that unfor­tu­nate soci­ety.

Much of the pro­gram takes pause to sam­ple analy­sis of the results of the recent Egypt­ian elec­toral ref­er­en­dum. Fore­cast by the Finan­cial Times as indica­tive of a deal between the Egypt­ian army, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the NDP (for­mer­ly of Hos­ni Mubarak). Indeed, AFP, The Wall Street Jour­nal and The New York Times saw the ref­er­en­dum as a vic­to­ry for the Islamists and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

As dis­cussed in past pro­grams in the series, it appears the the Broth­er­hood, with its cor­po­ratist, free-mar­ket, pro-pri­va­ti­za­tion eco­nom­ic agen­da is viewed with favor by the transna­tion­als. Hence the assis­tance by ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence for the Pig­gy-Back Coup.

Turn­ing to oth­er upris­ings gen­er­at­ed by the “Pig­gy-Back Coup[s]”, the pro­gram notes that the dis­plac­ing of some of the West­’s auto­crats may well pro­mote al-Qae­da inter­ests in Yemen and  Libya, where the rebels resist­ing Khadaffy have al-Qae­da links.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s alliance with the axis in World War II; review of the Broth­er­hood’s con­nec­tions to the GOP, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist; review of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s desire to obtain nuclear weapons (all the more sig­nif­i­cant in light of the Ikhwan’s appar­ent alliance with the Egypt­ian Army); indi­ca­tions that al-Qae­da may be on the brink of attack­ing with a ‘dirty bomb,’ or even a nuke.

1. An arti­cle in the Finan­cial Times dis­cussed a ref­er­en­dum, seen as ben­e­fi­cial to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood pol­i­tics in Egypt.

. . . Some ana­lysts and polit­i­cal activists said the Supreme Mil­i­tary Coun­cil, whih is rul­ing the coun­try dur­ing a short­tran­si­tion, may have decid­ed that an alliance of con­ser­v­a­tive forces presents a bet­ter option for the future than that offered by the young sec­u­lar groups.

“There are signs the mil­i­tary may have decid­ed to bet on the Broth­er­hood as the biggest  orga­nized force on the street,” said Hos­sam Tam­mam, an ana­lyst who spe­cial­izes in Islamist groups.

“The oth­ers [small par­ties and sec­u­lar groups] may be seen by the army as rep­re­sent­ing an unwant­ed and rad­i­cal tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy.”

Sha­di al-Gbaza­li Harb, a mem­ber of the coali­tion of youth groups that led the protests, said he had “strong sus­pi­cions that such a mind­set might exist. . .

. . . The Broth­er­hood is the only polit­i­cal group to have been rep­re­sent­ed on the pan­el of legal experts hand­picked by the mil­i­tary that draft­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al changes.

A range of oppo­si­tion and legal experts has crit­i­cized those amend­ments as an attempt to “patch up” Mr. Mubarak’s con­sti­tu­tion in ways that could threat­en democ­ra­cy and lead to a botched tran­si­tion.

“There has to be a com­plete­ly new con­sti­tu­tion,” Mr. Harb said. ” We need a con­sti­tu­tent assem­bly to draft a new con­sti­tu­tion and we need a longer tran­si­tion with par­lia­men­tary elec­tions after a year.”

The pro­posed changes meet some long-stand­ing demands of the oppo­si­tion such as lim­it­ing pres­i­den­tial terms to four years renew­able only once (Mr. Mubarak ruled for 30 years) and lift­ing restric­tions that in effect barred inde­pen­dent pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

But a new arti­cle requires par­lia­ment to elect a com­mit­tee of 100 mem­bers to draft a new con­sti­tu­tion.

It means, crit­ics say, that forg­ing Egyp­t’s polit­i­cal sys­tem will be in the hands of the Broth­er­hood and NDP.

Tahani el-Gebali, a senior judge in the con­sti­tu­tion­al court, describe the arti­cle as “cat­a­stroph­ic” and said it threat­ened the “rev­o­lu­tion and the future Egyp­tians.”

“Con­sti­tu­tion­al Changes Set to Pro­pel Broth­er­hood to Pow­er” by Heba Saleh; Finan­cial Times; 3/18/2011; p. 7.

2. Imme­di­ate analy­sis relayed by Agence France Press con­firms the above pro­jec­tion con­cern­ing the ref­er­en­dum.

Egyp­t’s first exer­cise in democ­ra­cy in decades was hailed as a suc­cess on Mon­day, but the result of a key ref­er­en­dum has raised fears in some quar­ters that Islamists will hijack loom­ing elec­tions.

Egyp­tians on Sat­ur­day vot­ed 77% in favour of pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments intend­ed to guide the Arab world’s most pop­u­lous nation through new pres­i­den­tial and par­lia­men­tary elec­tions with­in six months.

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood threw its huge influ­ence and grass­roots organ­i­sa­tion behind a “yes” vote, although youth groups that spear­head­ed the protests that forced Hos­ni Mubarak to resign last month had called for a “no” vote.

They argued the timetable set by the mil­i­tary was too tight for them to organ­ise at grass­roots lev­el, that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood would ben­e­fit and that the changes to the Mubarak-era con­sti­tu­tion were too lim­it­ed.

In an edi­to­r­i­al, the mass-cir­cu­la­tion dai­ly Al-Ahram said the ref­er­en­dum was a “win for democ­ra­cy,” a view echoed by the state-owned Al-Gomhouria which said: “Every­body has won in this ref­er­en­dum, whether they vot­ed yes or no.”

The Coali­tion of the Rev­o­lu­tion’s Youth urged sup­port­ers not to feel defeat­ed after the result, and called on every­one to respect the result of the “his­toric demo­c­ra­t­ic process” and quick­ly begin work on the next phase.

“We are now on the doorstep of a new era, in which Egyp­tians will shape their state for decades to come... we must work to car­ry on ful­fill­ing the ambi­tions of the rev­o­lu­tion,” the group said on its Face­book page.

But oth­ers felt more threat­ened by the result.

“The ref­er­en­dum, while it was free of fraud, was not free of ‘influ­ence’, espe­cial­ly by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the reli­gious trend in gen­er­al,” wrote Suleiman Gou­da in the inde­pen­dent dai­ly Al-Mas­ry Al-Youm. . . .

“Fears Egypt Vote to Ben­e­fit Islamists” by Jailan Zayan [AFP];  France 24; 3/21/2011.

3. Analy­sis by the con­ser­v­a­tive Wall Street Jour­nal rein­forced analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the AFP sto­ry above.

Egyp­tians’ embrace of a set of pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in this week­end’s ref­er­en­dum is the clear­est sign yet that lead­er­ship of the coun­try’s rev­o­lu­tion may be pass­ing from youth­ful activists to Islamist reli­gious lead­ers, accord­ing to ana­lysts.

More than 70 per­cent of Egyp­tians vote yes to con­sti­tu­tion­al reforms in first free ref­er­en­dum in 30 years. Video and image cour­tesy of Reuters.

Elec­toral offi­cials said 77% of Egyp­tians vot­ed to accept a set of pro­posed amend­ments to Egyp­t’s con­sti­tu­tion that will, among oth­er changes, lim­it the pres­i­den­cy to two four-year terms and ease restric­tions on inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion, accord­ing to results announced Sun­day.

The pro­posed changes were opposed by protest lead­ers and by pres­i­den­tial front-run­ners Mohammed El Baradei and Amr Mous­sa. Both men urged Egyp­tians to reject the amend­ments, writ­ten by lawyers and judges nom­i­nat­ed by Egyp­t’s mil­i­tary. Protest lead­ers and oppo­si­tion politi­cians instead pushed for an entire­ly new con­sti­tu­tion that would lim­it expan­sive pres­i­den­tial pow­ers.

The results from Sat­ur­day’s ref­er­en­dum sig­nal a shift in Egyp­t’s con­tin­u­ing rev­o­lu­tion: The protest lead­ers, once cel­e­brat­ed as heroes and mar­tyrs, are no longer the lead­ing voice in Egyp­t’s tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy.

In their place are pop­u­lar reli­gious lead­ers, whose strong back­ing of the amend­ments held sway. These lead­ers see approval of the amend­ments as an avenue to polit­i­cal pow­er and a means of pre­serv­ing the coun­try’s Islam­ic iden­ti­ty. With their influ­ence in what appeared to be Egyp­t’s first free and fair elec­tion, these polit­i­cal play­mak­ers show how they are posi­tioned to help define Egyp­t’s demo­c­ra­t­ic future.

The pow­er­ful Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a once-ille­gal Islamist polit­i­cal group, was joined in sup­port­ing the amend­ments by lead­ers of the Salafi Islamist movement—which fol­lows the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive brand of Islam wide­ly prac­ticed in Sau­di Arabia—and resid­ual ele­ments of the for­mer rul­ing Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, or NDP.

Oppo­nents of the amend­ments, which includ­ed many in the youth move­ment, said the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood allied with the NDP as part of a cyn­i­cal pow­er grab: The approval of the amend­ments has set the stage for par­lia­men­tary elec­tions this sum­mer, for which only the Broth­er­hood and the NDP have the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures to com­pete. . . .

. . . “This is a night­mare for intel­lec­tu­al Egyp­tians,” said Nabil Abdel Fat­tah, a polit­i­cal ana­lyst for the Al Ahram Cen­ter for Polit­i­cal and Strate­gic Stud­ies, a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed think tank based in Cairo.

“All the youth accept­ed the results of the ref­er­en­dum as a form of democ­ra­cy. But at the same time, they felt very deceived by the dan­ger­ous role the reli­gious groups played against them,” Mr. Abdel Fat­tah said. “They felt that their rev­o­lu­tion is being abort­ed and there is a huge, huge threat to the uni­ty of the coun­try from using reli­gious cam­paigns.”

Egyp­t’s Cop­tic Ortho­dox Church—whose adher­ents account for about 10% of the coun­try’s 80 mil­lion people—came out against the amend­ments, which they said amount­ed to an Islamist pow­er-play.

The youth-led cam­paign against the amend­ments revealed the lim­its of the protest lead­ers’ mass appeal among Egyp­t’s large­ly impov­er­ished, under-edu­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion.

“Egypt Vote Shows Islamist Influ­ence” by Matt Bradley; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 3/22/2011.

4. It would appear that the ear­ly elec­toral results are, indeed, an out­growth of an appar­ent alliance between the Broth­er­hood and [per­haps] the Egypt­ian army.

. . . In post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Egypt, where hope and con­fu­sion col­lide in the dai­ly strug­gle to build a new nation, reli­gion has emerged as a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal force, fol­low­ing an upris­ing that was based on sec­u­lar ideals. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the fore­front, trans­formed into a tac­it part­ner with the mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment that many fear will thwart fun­da­men­tal changes.

It is also clear that the young, edu­cat­ed sec­u­lar activists who ini­tial­ly pro­pelled the non­ide­o­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion are no longer the dri­ving polit­i­cal force — at least not at the moment.

As the best orga­nized and most exten­sive oppo­si­tion move­ment in Egypt, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood was expect­ed to have an edge in the con­test for influ­ence. But what sur­pris­es many is its link to a mil­i­tary that vil­i­fied it.

“There is evi­dence the Broth­er­hood struck some kind of a deal with the mil­i­tary ear­ly on,” said Eli­jah Zarwan, a senior ana­lyst with the Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group. “It makes sense if you are the mil­i­tary — you want sta­bil­i­ty and peo­ple off the street. The Broth­er­hood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 peo­ple off the street.”

There is a bat­tle con­sum­ing Egypt about the direc­tion of its rev­o­lu­tion, and the mil­i­tary coun­cil that is now run­ning the coun­try is send­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry sig­nals. On Wednes­day, the coun­cil endorsed a plan to out­law demon­stra­tions and sit-ins. Then, a few hours lat­er, the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor announced that the for­mer inte­ri­or min­is­ter and oth­er secu­ri­ty offi­cials would be charged in the killings of hun­dreds dur­ing the protests.

Egyp­tians are search­ing for signs of clar­i­ty in such dec­la­ra­tions, hop­ing to dis­cern the direc­tion of a state led by a secre­tive mil­i­tary coun­cil brought to pow­er by a rev­o­lu­tion based on demands for democ­ra­cy, rule of law and an end to cor­rup­tion.

“We are all wor­ried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er, reflect­ing the opin­ions of the sec­u­lar minor­i­ty. “The young peo­ple have no con­trol of the rev­o­lu­tion any­more. It was evi­dent in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of beard­ed peo­ple tak­ing charge. The youth are gone.” . . .

“Islamist Force Is Ris­ing Force in a New Egypt” by Michael Slack­man; The New York Times; 3/24/2011.

5. Christo­pher Hitchens opined about the prospects for the rev­o­lu­tion in Egypt.

. . . . Nei­ther in exile nor in the coun­try itself is there any­body who even faint­ly resem­bles a gen­uine oppo­si­tion leader. With the par­tial excep­tion of the obses­sive­ly cit­ed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the ves­ti­gial polit­i­cal par­ties are ema­ci­at­ed hulks. The strongest sin­gle force in the state and the society—the army—is a bloat­ed insti­tu­tion heav­i­ly invest­ed in the sta­tus quo. As was once said of Prus­sia, Egypt is not a coun­try that has an army, but an army that has a coun­try. More depress­ing still, even if there exist­ed a com­pe­tent alter­na­tive gov­ern­ment, it is near impos­si­ble to imag­ine what its pro­gram might be. The pop­u­la­tion of Egypt con­tains mil­lions of poor­ly edu­cat­ed grad­u­ates who can­not find use­ful employ­ment, and tens of mil­lions of labor­ers and peas­ants whose life is a sub­sis­tence one. I shall nev­er for­get, on my first vis­it to Cairo, see­ing “the City of the Dead”: that large pop­u­la­tion of the home­less and indi­gent which lives among the graves in one of the city’s sprawl­ing ceme­ter­ies. For cen­turies, Egypt’s rulers have been able to depend on the sheer crush­ing weight of tor­por and iner­tia to main­tain “sta­bil­i­ty.” I am writ­ing this in the first week of Feb­ru­ary, and I won’t be sur­prised if the machine—with or with­out Mubarak—is able to rely again on this dead hand while the exem­plary courage and ini­tia­tive of the cit­i­zens of Tahrir Square slow­ly ebb away. . . .

“What I Don’t See at the Rev­o­lu­tion” by Christo­pher Hitchens; Van­i­ty Fair; April/2011.

6. The broad­cast reviews the “mod­er­ate” nature of the Turk­ish regime, dis­cussed in FTR #737. In addi­tion, the pro­gram fur­ther high­lights the dis­in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Tariq Ramadan and Essi­am el-Erian in The New York Times.

7. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the Libyan con­flict, the pro­gram notes that NATO fight­ers are help­ing forces aligned with al-Qae­da.

In an inter­view with the Ital­ian news­pa­per Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasi­di admit­ted that he had recruit­ed “around 25” men from the Der­na area in east­ern Libya to fight against coali­tion troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are “today are on the front lines in Adjabiya”.

Mr al-Hasi­di insist­ed his fight­ers “are patri­ots and good Mus­lims, not ter­ror­ists,” but added that the “mem­bers of al-Qae­da are also good Mus­lims and are fight­ing against the invad­er”.

His rev­e­la­tions came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad’s pres­i­dent, said al-Qae­da had man­aged to pil­lage mil­i­tary arse­nals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, “includ­ing sur­face-to-air mis­siles, which were then smug­gled into their sanc­tu­ar­ies”.

Mr al-Hasi­di admit­ted he had ear­li­er fought against “the for­eign inva­sion” in Afghanistan, before being “cap­tured in 2002 in Pesh­war, in Pak­istan”. He was lat­er hand­ed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008. . . .

“Libyan Rebel Com­man­der Admits His Fight­ers Have al-Qae­da Links” by Praveen Swa­mi, Nick Squires and Dun­can Gard­ham; The Tele­graph [UK]; 3/25/2011.

8. More on the Libyan fighter/al Qae­da link:

Amer­i­ca is now at war to pro­tect a Libyan province that’s been an epi­cen­ter of anti-Amer­i­can jihad.

In recent years, at mosques through­out east­ern Libya, rad­i­cal imams have been “urg­ing wor­ship­pers to sup­port jihad in Iraq and else­where,” accord­ing to Wik­iLeaked cables. More trou­bling: The city of Der­na, east of Beng­hazi, was a “well­spring” of sui­cide bombers that tar­get­ed U.S. troops in Iraq.

By impos­ing a no-fly zone over East­ern Libya, the U.S. and its coali­tion part­ners have effec­tive­ly embraced the break­away repub­lic of Cyre­naica. As you can see on the map above, Libya is a mashup of three his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tinct provinces. As recent­ly as the 1940s, Cyre­naica was an inde­pen­dent emi­rate, with its cap­i­tal in Beng­hazi.

The emni­ty between Cyre­naica and Tripoli­ta­nia runs deep. The Emir of Cyre­naica awk­ward­ly cob­bled togeth­er mod­ern Libya and ruled as its monarch. This is the same king that Qaddafi deposed in his coup of 1969. And the Qaddafi regime has seen the for­mer king’s home­land as a threat ever since, as this Wik­ileaked cable from our Tripoli embassy explains:

East­ern Libya had suf­fered ... from a lack of invest­ment and gov­ern­ment resources, part of a cam­paign by the al-Qad­hafi regime to keep the area poor and, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, less like­ly to devel­op as a viable alter­na­tive locus of pow­er to Tripoli.

Anoth­er cable reports that the dis­re­spect is mutu­al:

Res­i­dents of east­ern Libya ... view the al-Qad­hafa clan [Qaddafi’s tribe] as une­d­u­cat­ed, uncouth inter­lop­ers from an incon­se­quen­tial part of the coun­try who have “stolen” the right to rule in Libya.

That’s the back­ground. Flash for­ward to 2008: A West Point analy­sis of a cache of al Qae­da records dis­cov­ered that near­ly 20 per­cent of for­eign fight­ers in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capi­ta basis Libya near­ly dou­bled Sau­di Ara­bia as the top source of for­eign fight­ers.

The word “fight­er” here is mis­lead­ing. For the most part, Libyans did­n’t go to Iraq to fight; they went to blow them­selves up — along with Amer­i­can G.I.‘s. (Among those whose “work” was detailed in the al Qae­da records, 85 per­cent of the Libyans were list­ed as sui­cide bombers.) Over­whelm­ing­ly, these mil­i­tants came “from cities in North-East Libya, an area long known for Jihadi-linked mil­i­tan­cy.” [UPDATE: West Point’s Com­bat­ting Ter­ror­ism Cen­ter refused to com­ment on its own report.]

A Wik­iLeaked cable from 2008 explained that Cyre­naicans were wag­ing jihad against U.S. troops as “a last act of defi­ance against the Qad­hafi regime.” After the U.S. nor­mal­ized rela­tions with Qaddaf­fi in 2006, Cyre­na­cians believed they no longer had any shot at top­pling him:

Many east­ern­ers feared the U.S. would not allow Qad­hafi’s regime to fall and there­fore viewed direct con­fronta­tion with the GOL [Gov­ern­ment of Libya] in the near-term as a fool’s errand.... Fight­ing against U.S. and coali­tion forces in Iraq rep­re­sent­ed a way for frus­trat­ed young rad­i­cals to strike a blow against both Qad­hafi and against his per­ceived Amer­i­can back­ers.

The epi­cen­ter of Libyan jihadism is the city of Der­na — the home­town of more than half of Libya’s for­eign fight­ers, accord­ing the West Point analy­sis. The city of 80,000 has a his­to­ry of vio­lent resis­tance to occu­py­ing pow­ers — includ­ing Amer­i­cans, who cap­tured the city in the First Bar­bary War.

A sur­pris­ing­ly read­able cable titled “Die Hard in Der­na” makes clear that the city “takes great pride” in hav­ing sent so many of its sons to kill Amer­i­can sol­diers in Iraq, quot­ing one res­i­dent as say­ing: “It’s jihad — it’s our duty, and you’re talk­ing about peo­ple who don’t have much else to be proud of.”

“U.S. Bombs Libya, Helps . . . Jihadists?!”; Rolling Stone; 3/21/2011.

9. In Yemen, the pass­ing of the old order may weak­en U.S. counter-ter­ror­ism capa­bil­i­ties.

Coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions in Yemen have ground to a halt, allow­ing al-Qaida’s dead­liest branch out­side of Pak­istan to oper­ate more freely inside the coun­try and to increase plot­ting for pos­si­ble attacks against Europe and the Unit­ed States, U.S. diplo­mats, intel­li­gence ana­lysts and coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials say.

In the polit­i­cal tumult sur­round­ing Yemen’s embat­tled pres­i­dent, Ali Abdul­lah Saleh, many Yemeni troops have aban­doned their posts or have been sum­moned to the cap­i­tal, Sanaa, to help sup­port the tot­ter­ing gov­ern­ment, the offi­cials said. Al-Qai­da in the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la, the group’s affil­i­ate, has stepped in to fill this pow­er vac­u­um, and Yemeni secu­ri­ty forces have come under increased attacks in recent weeks. . . .

“Unrest in Yemen Is Seen as an Open­ing to a Branch of al-Qai­da” by Eric Schmitt [New York Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 4/4/2011.

10. An inter­view with Has­san al-Ban­na gives the lie to the Broth­er­hood’s claims.

The Moor­shid spoke with a pious look on his face, his head
bent slight­ly to the right, hands fold­ed meek­ly in his lap. I
dis­liked him instant­ly and thor­ough­ly. He was the most loath­some
man I had yet met in Cairo. Gamal sat next to us and
faith­ful­ly inter­pret­ed.
“The Koran should be Egyp­t’s con­sti­tu­tion, for there is no
law high­er than Koran­ic law,” the Moor­shid began. “We seek
to ful­fill the lofty, human mes­sage of Islam which has brought
hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment to mankind in cen­turies past. Ours
is the high­est ide­al, the holi­est cause and the purest way.

Those who crit­i­cize us have fed from the tables of Europe.
They want to live as Europe has taught them-to dance, to
drink, to rev­el, to mix the sex­es open­ly and in pub­lic.”
I asked his views on estab­lish­ing the Caliphate, the com­plete
merg­er of Church and State-the Moslem equiv­a­lent of
reli­gious total­i­tar­i­an­ism, as in Spain.
“We want an Ara­bi­an Unit­ed States with a Caliphate at its
head and every Arab state sub­scrib­ing whole­heart­ed­ly to the
laws of the Koran. We must return to the Koran, which
preach­es the good life, which for­bids us to take bribes, to
cheat, to kill one’s broth­er. The laws of the Koran are suit­able
for all men at all times to the end of the world. This is the day
and this is the time when the world needs Islam most.”
I could not help mak­ing a men­tal note that the word
“Chris­t­ian” has been sim­i­lar­ly used and with sim­i­lar fanati­cism
among West­ern expo­nents of author­i­tar­i­an­ism.
“We are not eager to have a par­lia­ment of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives
of the peo­ple,” the Supreme Guide con­tin­ued, “or a
cab­i­net of min­is­ters, unless such rep­re­sen­ta­tives and min­is­ters
are Koran­ic Moslems. If we do not find them, then we must
our­selves serve as the par­lia­ment. Allah and the reli­gious coun­cils
will lim­it our author­i­ty so that no one has to fear dic­ta­tor­ship.
We aim to smash mod­ernism in gov­ern­ment and soci­ety.
In Pales­tine our first duty as Moslems is to crush Zion­ism,
which is Jew­ish mod­ernism. It is our patri­ot­ic duty. The Koran
com­mands it.”
He was silent, and then nod­ded, to indi­cate the inter­view
was over. And with this Gamal and I took leave of Ikhwan’s
Moor­shid and Egyp­t’s Rasputin.
“What do you think of our Moor­shid?” Gamal asked.
“He is a holy man,” I said.

Cairo to Dam­as­cus by John Roy Carl­son; Alfred A. Knopf & Com­pany [HC]; Copy­right 1951 by John Roy Carl­son; pp. 91–92.

11. In con­junc­tion with the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s stat­ed desire to obtain nuclear weapons, the advent of a WMD 9/11 looms large.

Al Qae­da is attempt­ing to stock­pile ‘dirty’ radioac­tive explo­sives that could be used to tar­get British troops or for a larg­er urban attack, it has emerged. New diplo­mat­ic doc­u­ments released by Wik­iLeaks show that U.S. intel­li­gence per­son­nel have been informed of ter­ror­ist attempts to acquire dan­ger­ous amounts of ura­ni­um and plu­to­ni­um.

The cables warn of a large traf­fick­ing oper­a­tion of chem­i­cal weapons mate­r­i­al and threats of a ‘nuclear 9/11’ unless the West inter­venes swiftly.Security chiefs briefed a Nato meet­ing in Jan­u­ary 2009 that Al Qae­da was plan­ning a pro­gramme of ‘dirty radioac­tive impro­vised explo­sive devices (IEDs)’.

The IEDs could be used against coali­tion forces in Afghanistan but would also con­t­a­m­i­nate the sur­round­ing land with nuclear waste for years to come.

In a sep­a­rate devel­op­ment, the cables quot­ed in the Tele­graph reveal that the FBI is track­ing down a team of Qatari men sus­pect­ed of pro­vid­ing assis­tance to the 9/11 bombers. U.S. offi­cials were warned by an Indi­an nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er that ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions now ‘have the tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence to man­u­fac­ture an explo­sive device beyond a mere dirty bomb’.British offi­cials have also expressed fears of covert weapons devel­op­ment in Pak­istan.

A leaked doc­u­ment regard­ing offi­cial defence dis­cus­sions in 2009 high­light­ed ‘deep con­cerns’ that a rogue sci­en­tist could ‘grad­u­al­ly smug­gle enough mate­r­i­al’ out of the Pak­istani nuclear pro­gramme to con­struct a weapon.
Doc­u­ments sent to Wash­ing­ton from for­eign U.S. embassies also reveal the growth of nuclear smug­gling rings, with radioac­tive mate­ri­als traf­ficked across Europe, Africa and the Mid­dle East.

The cables viewed by the Tele­graph explain how cus­toms guards deploy spe­cial­ly-designed radi­a­tion alarms to try and ham­per attempts to smug­gle volatile mate­ri­als.

Bor­der offi­cials found weapons-grade nuclear sub­stances con­cealed on a freight train cross­ing the Kazkah­stan-Rus­sia bor­der while a ‘small-time’ black mar­ket deal­er in Lis­bon attempt­ed to sell radioac­tive plates stolen from Cher­nobyl.

“World ‘on Brink of Nuclear 9/11’ as Al Qae­da Plans Large ‘Dirty Bomb’ “; Mail Online; 2/11/2011.