Politico posted an article yesterday (updated today) about the recent political turmoil in Egypt.
The article reports:
But underscoring the sharp divisions facing the untested leader, Adly Mansour, his office said it was naming Mohammed ElBaradei, one of Morsi’s top critics, as interim prime minister but later backtracked on the decision.
Mansour’s spokesman Ahmed el-Musalamani denied that the appointment of the Nobel Peace laureate was ever certain. However, reporters gathered at the presidential palace were ushered into a room where they were told by an official to wait for the president who would arrive shortly to announce ElBaradei’s appointment.
The struggle in Egypt is between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the military attempting to set up a secular democracy similar to what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk set up in Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt as a response to that government model–it was a protest to the idea of a secular government in a Muslim country.
ElBaradei is considered to be someone who would run the country as a secular nation, and the ultraconservative Salafi el-Nour party objected to ElBaradei’s appointment. Talks between the two sides are continuing.
Meanwhile, there are riots in the streets as both sides protest–one in favor or returning Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to leadership and the other in favor of removing Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Which side is the United States on? The State Department is officially not taking sides, but we might take a look at some of the details of President Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo to answer that question.
On June 3, 2009, Fox News reported that 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc received official invitations to attend President Obama’s speech.
The article at Fox News notes:
The Muslim Brotherhood, though, has a complicated history.
Though the hard-line group, which calls for an Islamic state and has close ties to the militant Hamas, is officially banned in Egypt, its members have considerable sway in the country and its lawmakers, who run as independents, hold 88 seats in Egypt’s 454-seat parliament.
The Brotherhood renounced the use of violence in the 1970s and now says it seeks democratic reform in Egypt. It is the most powerful opposition movement in the country, and many analysts argue Washington should engage the Brotherhood directly to show it is open to dealing with nonviolent Islamist movements.
The group is not on the State Department’s official list of foreign terrorist groups.
Keep in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood traditionally practices two types of jihad–violent jihad and civilization jihad. Civilization jihad involves taking over a country by infiltrating its government and quietly seizing power. The goals of both types of jihad are the same–to create a caliphate under Sharia Law. By specifically inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to his speech in Cairo in 2009, President Obama may well have paved the way for the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unfortunately, things in Egypt may get worse before they get better.
