Is Egypt's New President the Real Deal?

Egypt's new president to pick woman, Christian VPs

Cairo (CNN) -- Egypt's first ever democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, will make history in another way: by appointing a woman as vice president, his policy adviser told CNN.

He will also choose another vice president who is Christian, Ahmed Deif said.

The news came as the man Morsi beat for the presidency, Ahmed Shafik, left Egypt on a trip to Abu Dhabi, and as Cairo's administrative court overturned a rule that allowed the military to arrest people without a warrant.

"For the first time in Egyptian history -- not just modern but in all Egyptian history -- a woman will take that position," Deif told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday, referring to one of the vice presidency slots. "And it's not just a vice president who will represent a certain agenda and sect, but a vice president who is powerful and empowered, and will be taking care of critical advising within the presidential Cabinet."

Although Morsi has previously argued for banning women from the presidency, he said before the election that as president he would stand for women's rights.

"The role of women in Egyptian society is clear," Morsi told Amanpour through a translator weeks before the runoff election. "Women's rights are equal to men. Women have complete rights, just like men. There shouldn't be any kind of distinction between Egyptians except that is based on the constitution and the law."

The Islamist figure, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, also promised to ensure rights of minorities.

Egypt "definitely" will not be an "Islamic Republic," Deif said Monday. [...]

Is it just window dressing, or will it be substantial? Only time will tell.

I don't expect miracles, and all politics has a certain amount of posturing. But I would really like to believe that it's true, for real, and that Egypt can solve it's difficulties. I've posted in the past about the Muslim Brotherhood's history, and it wasn't nice. Yet I've been told, and have read, that the modern Muslim Brotherhood is different; that they have evolved into something better.

I really hope that's true. We shall see. Actions speak louder than words.


Also see:

Omar Sharif and other Arabs in a changing world
     

Egyptian change, and ignoring the inconvenient

Well at least most of the MSM has been:

Krauthammer Tells Inconvenient Truth About Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood Media are Ignoring

[...] CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Everything said about Egypt - the educated population, the proud history, the long civilization - all of it applies to Iran in 1979 as well, and it ended up hijacked by the Islamists. That’s the threat in Egypt today. The Brotherhood wants the institution of Sharia law. On its website it says that no Christian or woman can be the president of Egypt.

This is not the Salvation Army as described by our director of National Intelligence who ought to be canned for the testimony he gave the other day about how benign and secular an organization it is. It wants the institution of Sharia law. Our job is to strengthen the democrats, of which there are many in Egypt but who need help, organization and assistance so they can challenge the Brotherhood and create a democracy that is actually going to live and not be one man, one vote, one time.

Rather than share this real threat with their readers, listeners, and viewers, America's Obama-loving media have castigated those that have as being right-wing extremists and fear mongers.

But the job of a journalist should be to explore all possibilities of a developing situation rather than just those they either hope will happen for the good of the society or wish for in order to assist a president they support.

For the most part, the coverage of this crisis since the moment it began a little over two weeks ago has been deplorable. From blaming it on former President George W. Bush to tying the unrest to global warming, what we've witnessed from our press has been laughable.

But on the deadly serious side was their almost universal misrepresentation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the real risk of Egypt becoming a radical Islamic theocracy.

However small that risk might be - and there are many that believe it to be extremely possible - the media's responsibility was to constantly explore it. [...]

The media gave up exploring possibilities a long time ago. They seem more interested in trying to make the news than reporting it.

I'd like to say that Egypt isn't Iran, and that this isn't the 1970's. That even though there are many similarities with Iran's Islamic revolution, there are differences too, and that those differences may win out in the end.

No doubt the outcome will not be exactly the same. But how much will it be the same? Or not? And is there anything we can do to help the process along, in a positive way? To help the Egyptians create a multi-party democracy, instead of a theocratic dictatorship? And will the Obama administration do it? Or just sit on their hands like Jimmy Carter did with Iran, and let whatever would happen, happen?

We shall see.
     

Islamists to gain ground in Middle East politics

At least that's the way it looks to be unfolding:

As Tunisians Cheer Egypt, Islamist Leader Returns

Now it's being predicted that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood will also rise to power in Egypt, and replace the current Dictatorship of Mubarak.

Years ago, I posted about the Nazi roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the actual, strong, historical connections. It begs the question: how much are they still like that, today? Or can we say, "That was then, this is now?"

There are people who claim that the Muslim Brotherhood is more moderate. It has defenders like Omar Sharif, who see it as a force for good. Can it be? Will it be? Is it possible?

In the late 70's, the Islamists in Iran claimed to be moderate, but we saw what happened when they got power. I think it's that kind of drastic change that Hillary Clinton wants to avoid, while at the same time recognizing that change IS coming:

Clinton: U.S. not taking sides in Egypt

[...] Clinton waffled Sunday on the political upheaval in Egypt, praising and decrying the process in a Fox News interview.

Clinton's diplomatic skills were tested in the interview when pressed about the uprising that has killed more than 50 people in Egypt, where the 30-year autocratic rule of Mubarak is being challenged.

She also hinted the United States sees an end to Mubarak's reign.

"We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void, that there's not a void, that there be a well thought-out plan that will bring about a democratic, participatory government," Clinton said.

Despite the "transition" reference, Clinton said there was confidence in Washington about Mubarak's governance. [...]

I'm sure the White House is hedging it's bets, because they are uncertain about who's going to come out on top. We have just a little influence, but no control, over that. I think that the "orderly transition" that she spoke of is going to be their main focus. It sounds like the best plan. Helping to avoid that "void".

The U.S. is often accused by Leftists of tolerating dictators. But if we over-throw a dictator, like we did in Iraq, we are accused of meddling in foreign affairs where we don't belong. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

The fact is, we often have to deal with governments we would rather not deal with, because we have no control and little influence over their internal affairs.

In another interview I read, Clinton said that the Egyptian people are going to choose who their leadership is. I suspect she's right, and we will just have to deal with it.

And if the Muslim Brotherhood is "it", well, lets hope that Omar Sharif's optimism regarding them is at least somewhat justified.
     

Stop the "Cordoba Initiative" at the WTC site

Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble
Meet the Ground Zero Mosque imam’s Muslim Brotherhood friends.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is the imam behind the “Cordoba Initiative” that is spearheading plans to build a $100 million Islamic center at Ground Zero, the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by jihadists on 9/11. He is also the author of a book called What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America. But the book hasn’t always been called that. It was called quite something else for non-English-speaking audiences. In Malaysia, it was published as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11.

[...]

Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread. As explained in my recent book, The Grand Jihad, dawa is proselytism, but not involving only spiritual elements — for Islam is not merely a religion, and spiritual elements are just a small part of its doctrine. In truth, Islam is a comprehensive political, social, and economic system with its own authoritarian legal framework, sharia, which aspires to govern all aspects of life.

[...]

This framework rejects core tenets of American constitutional republicanism: for example, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, equality of men and women, equality of Muslims and non-Muslims, and economic liberty, including the uses of private property (in Islam, owners hold property only as a custodians for the umma, the universal Muslim nation, and are beholden to the Islamic state regarding its use). Sharia prohibits the preaching of creeds other than Islam, the renunciation of Islam, any actions that divide the umma, and homosexuality. Its penalties are draconian, including savagely executed death sentences for apostates, homosexuals, and adulterers.

The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia. Scholar Robert Spencer incisively refers to “dawa practices as stealth jihad,” the advancement of the sharia agenda through means other than violence and agents other than terrorists. These include extortion, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of our legal system and tradition of religious liberty, infiltration of our political system, and fundraising. This is why Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the world’s most influential Islamic cleric, boldly promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe” through dawa. [...]

Read the whole thing for all the details and the dirt. I don't know which is more incredible; that this is actually happening, or that the Democrats are encouraging it.

Sharia law is incompatible with American values, and is not something we need to encourage in our own land. Unless of course you're an elitist Democrat who wants to chuck the constitution and replace it with something closer to what the Muslim Brotherhood also wants. They have a lot in common, mainly a distain for personal liberty and a lust for absolute power.

I've posted about the Muslim Brotherhood before:

The Nazi roots of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Democrat leadership has no problem with Dawa. Much to our peril. Another reason to vote them out in November.


Also see:

Islamism's actual NAZI history

The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America
     

Flotilla participants got what they wanted

Martyrdom:

Arab Media Reports on Flotilla Participants: Writing Wills, Preparing for Martyrdom, Determined to Reach Gaza or Die

Flotilla Participants

Following is information from the Arab media about some of the flotilla participants. It should be noted that many of these were from the Muslim Brotherhood across the Muslim world.

(For more on this subject, see also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 2986, "MEMRI TV Clips on the Gaza Flotilla: Activists On Board Chant Songs of Martyrdom at Departure," http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4249.htm.)

Egypt

In Friday sermons, Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Badi' expressed support for Hamas, frequently reiterating harsh statements in favor of jihad and of the armed struggle in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan (see http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4254.htm).

The Egyptian flotilla delegation included two members of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the Egyptian parliament: Muhammad Al-Baltaji and Hazem Farouq.

Al-Baltaji, who is deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc in Egypt, said at a March 2010 conference, "A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise." He also said that his movement "will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance," and that "resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia.[1] [...]

It goes on to list news reports from Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, and more, confirming that they were Jihadis preparing to die.

These are Middle Eastern news sources acknowledging this. So why does the Western media keep insisting it was "just humanitarian aid", when everyone in the Middle East knows it wasn't?

President Obama is criticizing Israel for not handling the situation better. Given that many of the flotilla participants were armed to the teeth and ready to die as martyrs, how could it have turned out any differently than it did?

Of course the Muslim Brotherhood was deeply involved, as well as an assortment of Western commies. They have so much in common.
     

Omar Sharif and other Arabs in a changing world

Egyptian Movie Star Omar Al-Sharif: Americans Are Ignorant; We Arabs Prefer the Neighborhood Sheik to Democracy

The link is a clip to an interview he did for Al-Hayat TV. The title annoyed me. When I watched the clip, I was a little more sympathetic, but not too much. He claims that Americans are ignorant because the majority of Americans don't travel outside of North America.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the people in the Middle East don't travel outside of the Middle East either; they aren't all wealthy jet-setters like himself, but the irony seems lost on him. Then he goes on about how the Middle East will never be democratic, and how the sheiks solve everything, etc.

Now it's not easy to criticize him on this point, because there is truth to what he says; it will never be just like the West, nor should it be. However, he's also part of an older generation that's resisting change. I don't say that's necessarily bad, but the world he knew is disappearing, and it's going to be replaced with something else, whether he likes it or not. The system he embraces works slowly, and is part of the past. The modern world moves much faster now, and the Arab world is being pulled into it, regardless. They need to adapt and find accommodation to it, in a way that works for them.

I don't think George Bush meant to make the Middle East a carbon copy of ourselves, yet he did recognize the need for change in the Middle East; that a state with modern technology requires some form of modern governance. Exactly HOW that government would form, and what it would turn out LIKE, are the gamble that Bush has taken, and we have yet to fully see the results, as the venture is still on-going.

So while I can't completely agree with al-Sharif, I also know he's not completely wrong either. The Old Arab World and the New Modern World are clashing; helping them to accommodate each other is the task before us. It's not easy, but neither can it be avoided, it MUST happen; the best we can do is try to help it along, even though the road is difficult.

As for Sharif himself, it's difficult to know exactly where he stands:


Egypt: Omar Sharif Defends Muslim Brotherhood

[...] Famous for his roles in David Lean's visually sumptuous productions Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Dr Zhivago (1965), he is better known for his bridge-playing expertise nowadays than for his acting. He still acts, yet for some bizarre reason, Muslim extremists have attacked him for his screen roles.

[...]

On a web message board which had previously been used by al Qaeda, a Muslim called "bachirma1" wrote: "Omar Sharif has stated that he has embraced the crusader idolatry. He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him."

Now, according to AKI, Omar Sharif, while addressing the organisers of the Cairo Film Festival, has bizarrely said that the infamous Muslim Brotherhood is not a threat to freedom of expression.

Banned in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwanu I-Muslimin or Hizb al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimoon) is quietly tolerated. In the Egyptian parliament, 88 of the 454 seats are taken by Muslim Brotherhood MPs, who entered September's elections passing themselves off as "independents".

Omar Sharif said: "I have know them for a long time and I remember that some members of the organisations in the 1950s were like me passionate about the avant garde in cinema and theatre."

"The Muslim Brotherhood does not threaten artistic freedom and I don't think that in the areas of innovation and art there is anything to fear from their strong presence in parliament."

He also claimed that "their victory at the last parliamentary elections is not a negative thing."

Apart from the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has killed its opponents, and its former spiritual leader, Sayyid Qutb, advocated killing as a political tool, the Muslim Brotherhood is Islamist in nature. Ayman al-Zawahiri was a member of the group before becoming a member of Egyptian Jihad and now al Qaeda.

The Muslim Brotherhood has given birth to many radical groups, including the terror group Hamas. The Brotherhood is also passionately anti-semitic and incites on its children's website hatred against Jews and Americans. It also indoctrinates the minds of its child surfers that it is a duty to wage armed jihad.

But if 74-year old Omar Sharif really believes that the Muslim Brotherhood supports creativity and freedom of speech, perhaps he is suffering senile deterioration. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) Is he trying to straddle two worlds? Are there subtleties at work here that we've missed? Both? Neither? Or is he just Egypt's version of Susan Sarandon, bending over backwards to embrace those who would kill us?

Did you know that Sharif started life as a Christian, and converted to Islam? And now he says he's an atheist? Read the whole thing for more interesting information about Sharif's background and career, with many embedded links.

As for Sharif's comments about ignorance in America, he shouldn't neglect to look in his own back yard as well. I don't have enough time to blog about all the ignorant things many Sheiks and Imams in the Middle East say about America and the West. Imams telling their followers lies, real whoppers, lies such as that Americans burn down movie theaters that show films critical of Christianity, as if to demonstrate that violent religious intolerance is normal in the rest of the world. The infamous Danish Cartoon riots were started by deliberate lies that were spread about the cartoons, to create the riots.

Perhaps more of the "neighborhood Sheiks" need to work on addressing the ignorance being preached in their neighborhoods? Occasionally, while looking through the many videos on Memri.org, I have seen sheiks and imams doing just that. Brave souls! I applaud them, and hope we start to see many more. For the sake of the Middle East. For the sake of us all.


Related Links:

State Islam and a modern society are incompatible

The Nazi roots of the Muslim Brotherhood

Islamism's actual NAZI history

Wikipedia: Omar Sharif
     

Cindy Sheehan defends the Muslim Brotherhood

She recently did an interview for Al Jazeera, while she was in Cairo:


Interview: Cindy Sheehan

She is in Egypt to protest the trial of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who she sees as "the moderate voice" for democracy. Yeah, that's what they're all about... NOT! They are the root cause of Muslim sponsored terrorism today:

The Nazi roots of the Muslim Brotherhood

The stupid bitch. Just when you think she couldn't be any more pathetic, she proves you wrong. Count on her to always support the worse of two evils.