Remaining Focused While Watching The Events In Egypt

Unfortunately, the bloodshed in Egypt is just beginning. The Muslim Brotherhood will not go quietly–that is not their style. The thing to remember is that the Muslim Brotherhood had set up camps to protest the ouster of President Morsi. We need to consider what was happening in these protest camps. Terrorists were being trained, suicide missions were glorified, and preparations were being made for the propaganda war after the camps were broken up. That is the Muslim Brotherhood way.

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review Online reminding us how the Morsi supporters were behaving.

The article states:

When not similarly ignored, Islamic supremacist aggression against Egypt’s Christians — which was a prominent feature of Muslim Brotherhood governance — is disingenuously reported. Take this AFP report of the fact that the Brotherhood and its allies are torching Coptic churches. The AFP endeavors to exculpate the Islamic supremacists by editorializing, in the report, that these were “reprisal” attacks. But the Brotherhood was not ousted by the minority Copts. To be sure, the Copts far prefer to take their chances with a largely secular, technocratic government backed by the armed forces than the rampant persecution they endured while the Brotherhood was running the show. But it is the army, not the Copts, who ejected Morsi. AFP tries to obscure this by recounting that “the Coptic church backed Morsi’s removal, with Patriarch [i.e., Pope] Tawadros II appearing alongside army chief General Fattah al-Sisi as he announced the military coup.” As I observed in writing about the coup in the August 5 edition of National Review, however, Pope Tawadros was hardly alone — General Sisi also gathered by his side significant Islamic supremacist leaders: Grand Mufti Ahmed al-Tayeb of al-Azhar University and leaders of the Salafist al-Nour party (in addition to prominent secularists).

Men, women, and children are dying in Egypt as I write this. Some are innocent Coptic Christians, but many are Muslims being used as human shields in the ongoing propaganda war. It is truly unfortunate that lives are being lost in this struggle, but we need to understand that this struggle will eventually come to us. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is a world-wide caliphate. The Brotherhood plans to include America in that caliphate. There are many Muslims high in our government working toward that end. If you doubt that, watch the final episode of “The Muslim Brotherhood in America.” This 10-part series details the strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood to bring Sharia Law to America. The series is documented and provides proof of the claims it makes.

The military in Egypt is attempting to bring a democratic government to Egypt. I don’t think they had a choice but to close down the pro-Morsi camps. The people of Egypt are partially to blame for what is happening–they elected Morsi and they elected a parliament that wrote a constitution that would eventually turn Egypt into an Islamic state similar to Iran. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the Egyptians began to realize that President Morsi was undoing what they had hoped would be a democracy. Egypt is a mess and will continue to be a mess until the Muslim Brotherhood is convinced that they have to go back underground. The lesson that needs to be learned here is that Sharia Law and democracy are incompatible. Sharia Law is also incompatible to our representative republic. We need to remember that.

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The Muslim Brotherhood Is Not Going Quietly

CBN News posted a story today about the current unrest in Egypt. The ousting of President Morsi may have technically been a coup, but the people of Egypt were genuinely concerned about the direction that he had chosen for the country. The latest propaganda from the Islamists who supported President Morsi is that the Christians in Egypt were responsible for removing him from office. That propaganda has resulted in increased attacks on Christians in Egypt.

The article reports:

On Thursday, the body of a Christian merchant was found decapitated in a cemetery. Last Saturday, a Coptic Christian priest was shot by gunmen in an outdoor market.

Also, days after the military coup that removed Morsi from office, Muslim extremists in southern Egypt burned dozens of Christian homes and stabbed four believers to death.

“It’s part of the Brotherhood’s mobilization that they are targeting Christians, that they are renouncing them as behind this. If the Brotherhood is able to portray what happened as a Christian-dominated or Christian-driven protest, then they get to gain massive support in the streets,” Tadros (Samuel Tadros, a research fellow for the Hudson Institute) explained.

The former pope of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community encouraged believers to stay out of the public eye and politics for fear of backlash.

The military-backed government of Egypt has ordered the arrest of the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and nine other members. The Muslim Brotherhood is suspected of instigating the violence outside the Republican Guard building in Cairo this week.

If Egypt is to be free, with all minorities having equal rights, the Muslim Brotherhood has to be kept out of power. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is to turn Egypt into a state similar to Iran–with Sharia Law, which does not allow religious freedom. Hopefully the people of Egypt who support freedom for everyone will make their voices heard.

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Egypt A Year After The Revolution

It has been a year since Mohamed Morsi became President of Egypt. Egyptians are not happily celebrating that anniversary. Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor reported that as large crowds protested in Cairo, a small crowd attacked the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The article reports:

A Brotherhood spokesman, Gehad El Haddad, said on Twitter that a group of “thugs” was attacking the headquarters, and said two police captains left their posts protecting the headquarters to join the attack. No eyewitnesses reported seeing police engage in the attack. But Morsi has struggled to bring the security forces, long used for suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood, under his control. The police’s refusal to protect the Brotherhood headquarters and other Brotherhood offices are a telling sign.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. Hassan al Banna was killed in 1949 by Egyptian security services. A ban on Muslim Brotherhood activities was lifted in 1951. In 1952, the Muslim Brotherhood worked with Gamal Abdel Nasser and some young officers who overthrew King Farouk. Nassar began a crackdown on the Brotherhood in 1954, and much of the organization left Egypt and began operating worldwide. In the past, when Egypt had a leadership crisis, the military took control, and whomever they supported took power. However, President Morsi quickly moved to prevent that from happening.

In August, I reported (rightwinggranny.com) that President Morsi ordered Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to retire.

I stated:

This move essentially transfers power away from the military and strengthens the power of the President and the Parliament. The Parliament that was elected in Egypt was largely fundamentalist Islamists who support Sharia Law. Taking control of the military breaks down the last barrier to Sharia Law and to Egypt becoming what Iran became after the 1979 revolution there. The next step will be the official breaking of the treaty with Israel (which will only happen when Egypt feels that it has gotten all the U. S. foreign aid money it is going to get).

By taking power away from the military, President Morsi consolidated his power within Egypt. However, the people who began the revolution in 2011 were not all supporters of Sharia Law. Many of them wanted democracy. Democracy does not mean one election and then tyranny. Because it has become evident that President Morsi is steering Egypt toward being a caliphate, many of the people who originally wanted a change in government do not like the change they got.

It remains to be seen whether or not Morsi will hold power. The Muslim Brotherhood is very powerful and is not above using force to maintain power. It would be wonderful to see freedom come to Egypt, but I seriously doubt that will be the way this ends.

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Why Are We Sending Advanced Fighter Planes To These People?

PJ Media posted a story yesterday about recent remarks made by Egyptian President Morsi.

The article reports:

It’s no news that Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist, anti-Semitic monstrosity. The disgusting eruption of Jew-hatred from Morsi in 2010 is nothing new. What is new is the fact that the Obama administration and the New York Times are shocked — shocked — to discover the Morsi is a rabid Jew-hater. The Times wrote today:

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s scurrilous comments from nearly three years ago about Zionists and Jews, which just came to light, have raised serious doubts about whether he can ever be the force for moderation and stability that is needed. That kind of pure bigotry is unacceptable anywhere, anytime. But it is even more offensive in public discourse, coming from someone who became the president of a major country.

The sad truth is that defaming Jews is an all too standard feature of Egyptian, and Arab, discourse. Teaching children to hate and dehumanizing one’s adversaries is just the kind of twisted mentality that fuels the conflicts that torment the region.

CBN News reported today:

After coming under fire from the Obama administration, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is trying to explain away his racist remarks about Jews in a 2010 speech.

Morsi said his comments calling Jews “bloodsuckers and “descendants of apes and pigs” were aimed at Israeli policies and taken out of context.

I guess I’m a little confused. How can those remarks be seen as ‘taken out of context?’ Anti-Semitism from President Morsi is in no way a surprise, but the question is, “Do we want to sell advanced weaponry to a country that is likely to use them against a country (Israel) that is our best ally in the region?” The other thing to understand here is that Israel may be the first target, but the United States will be the second target.

As one of my facebook friends posted–“It’s time to stop giving foreign aid to countries that hate us and allow them to hate us for free.” I think that is a really good idea.

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Democracy As We Know It Has Ended In Egypt Before It Even Began

Democracy in some countries means one election one time and no further voting. In Egypt it took three elections–one for the President and two for the constitution. The Australian reported today that the second vote on the constitution in Egypt will cement the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement saying:

“The Egyptian people continue their march towards finalising the construction of a democratic modern state, after turning the page on oppression,” the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said in a statement.

This will mean the end of the Coptic Christians in Egypt. They will no longer have the freedom to worship that they previously enjoyed.

The article reports:

Rights groups say the charter limits the freedoms of religious minorities and women, while giving the military too much power.

Mr Morsi had to split the voting over two successive Saturdays after more than half of Egypt’s judges said they would not supervise the polling stations.

We will now be watching Egypt become an Islamist state similar to Iran. Sharia Law will eventually be instituted. This does not bode well for peace in the Middle East.

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One Of The Dangers Of The New Media

The credit for this article goes to DaTechGuyBlog. DaTechGuy truly represents the new media–he has his own radio show (Saturday morning 10-12 on WCRN 830 AM or on the internet at wcrnradio.com), he is on twitter, and he will go anywhere to follow a story. He lives in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and was picking up a pizza in a local pizza place recently where the owner was watching a satellite channel in Arabic. The owner was talking to DaTechGuy about the use of violence by the Muslim Brotherhood to suppress the protests. Naturally, DaTechGuy looked into this.

The article posted at DaTechGuyBlog today shows some of the tweets coming out of Egypt describing what is happening. He posts capture shots of some tweets by Sandmonkey.  One of the tweets of Sandmonkey cites another tweeter, Gehad El-Hadd. Sandmonkey claims that El-Hadd is a liar.

My purpose in pointing this out is to show that the new media can be used for bad or for good. DaTechGuy points out that you have to go through five pages of El-Hadd’s tweets before you get to tweets in Arabic. Sandmonkey tweets both in Arabic and in English. So if most of El-Hadd’s tweets are in English, what audience is he aiming at?

An article in the Egypt Daily News posted yesterday stated:

The Muslim Brotherhood is waging a war of perception, not just for domestic consumption but for a western audience, too. Perception is crucial for two reasons: To defeat non-Islamist opponents, who may lose faith quickly when watching the endless number of pro-Morsy protestors in comparison to their relatively lower number in Tahrir and, secondly, to convince western nations that Islamists are the only reliable, powerful force in Egypt and that they are backed by the “majority” of Egyptians.

Eighty years of a mushrooming underground within Egyptian society has resulted in deep mistrust of mainstream establishments. Islamists view members of these establishments and other non-Islamist forces with deep suspicion and consider them elitist, anti-religious snobs. The strict, rules that govern the Brotherhood’s internal structure were partly introduced to protect the group from outside “corruption.”

This combination plus simmering resentment and years of grievance have finally exploded in the recent crisis in Egypt, and it partly explains the abrupt, odd way that Morsy has chosen to deal with it.

The situation as I see it is that Morsi wants to consolidate his power in Egypt and set up his part of the world-wide caliphate the Muslim Brotherhood is planning to build. This will be easier for him to do if he can convince the West that he is actually the good guy and the people protesting him are the bad guys. He will do his best to put down this rebellion against his power grab, but he doesn’t want the West to think that he is creating the caliphate he is creating. Morsi is an expert at propaganda. It is no surprise that he will use traditional and new media for his purposes.

All of us need to be very careful in deciding exactly who and what what we believe.

One Election Does Not Make A Democracy

Fox News is reporting today that Egyptian President Morsi’s recent changes to Egyptian law are being criticized by the top judicial body in Egypt.

The article reports:

In a statement carried on MENA Saturday, the Supreme Judicial Council says they regret the declarations President Mohammed Morsi issued Thursday.

The council is packed with judges appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak. It regulates judicial promotions and is chaired by the head of the Court of Cassation.

Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered Saturday to protest in central Cairo, where supporters and opponents of Morsi clashed the day before in the worst violence since he took office.

The Times Union of Albany, New York, reports:

Morsi and the Brotherhood contend that supporters of the old regime are holding up progress toward democracy. They have focused on the judiciary, which many Egyptians see as too much under the sway of Mubarak-era judges and prosecutors and which has shaken up the political process several times with its rulings, including by dissolving the lower house of parliament, which the Brotherhood led.

His edicts effectively shut down the judiciary’s ability to do so again. At the same time, the courts were the only civilian branch of government with a degree of independence: Morsi already holds not only executive power but also legislative authority, since there is no parliament.

The timing of this is important. On Wednesday, Morsi brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and on Thursday, the new edicts were issued. The Obama Administration had just praised Morsi for his work on the cease-fire and was put in a position where it would have been awkward to criticize him. We have been snookered again.

Don’t look for democracy in Egypt. Sharia Law will be in effect shortly, and it is incompatible with democracy.

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Why Are We Giving Money To Egypt ?

Why are we giving money to Egypt? The short answer is very simple–it keeps the Suez Canal open. However, giving Egypt aid is beginning to look look like a losing proposition.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday about an interview the New York Times did with Egyptian President Morsi. It is no secret that President Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Has the press bothered to see what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for? The creed of the Muslim Brotherhood is: “God is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is a world-wide caliphate under sharia law. According to the documents introduced in the Holy Land Foundation Trial (the first part of the documents are in Arabic, the second part is the English translation), the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to turn America into an Islamic state (part of the world-side caliphate). Part of that plan is to bring Muslim Brotherhood leaders (known and unknown) close the the centers of power in America. Please note the following:

Breitbart.com reported on Friday that Bill Clinton will be hosting Egyptian President Morsi at the eighth annual meeting of Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York next week. President Morsi will be a ‘featured participant’ in the event.

The article at Power Line reports:

Morsi told the Times that it is up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize its alliance with Egypt. Morsi added that the U.S. needs to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state. “Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region,” he explained.

If American taxpayer money has caused the Arab world to dislike us, why are we still giving them money?

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Can American Aid Buy Peace ?

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the American State Department is working out a deal with the new Egyptian government to give them $1 billion in debt relief. Aside from the fact that America faces its own debt problems, what in the world are we supporting? This is obviously an effort by the State Department to encourage Egypt to keep the peace treaty it signed with Israel that returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Unfortunately, that peace is danger due to the actions of the new Egyptian government.

On August 6, the Los Angeles Times reported that Islamic militants have increased their presence in the Sinai Peninsula since the revolution in Egypt. We need to understand the the new government of Egypt will align itself with Iran and is fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israel.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

But the election in June of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohammed Morsi, has called the strength of the old alliance into question. Mr. Morsi selected Beijing last week for his first official trip outside the Middle East, followed by a trip to Iran—moves some observers saw as a deliberate snub to Egypt’s traditional Western backers.

The arrival of an Islamist government followed by political upheaval and disconcerting moves on the international stage fueled questions over the reliability of Mr. Morsi as a U.S. ally. But his efforts at internal stability and his public criticism of Syria’s regime while visiting Tehran last week, which angered his hosts, have helped balance U.S. views of the new Egyptian leader.

At the present moment, America is dealing with record budget deficits and facing drastic cuts to our military. I realize that I am only an ordinary citizen, but it makes absolutely no sense to me to give $1 billion to a country that is in the process of aligning itself with countries that do not wish us well.

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