Mohammed Morsi Has Died

The Daily Caller is reporting today that former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has died following his collapse in an Egyptian courtroom.

The article reports:

Morsi was 67. He has been in custody since his ousting as president in 2013 during a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which he represented, reported BBC.

Morsi was being tried on espionage charges when he passed out and was taken to a hospital, reported TIME.

His presidential term was short-lived after he was elected in the country’s first free elections in 2012 after the expulsion of former President Hosni Mubarak. Morsi broke out of prison in 2011 during the uprisings against Mubarak and was sentenced to death in 2015 for the jail break after being removed from power. He was sentenced for conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah militants to break out, but the death sentence was overturned in 2016.

…President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has led Egypt since 2014. El-Sisi has promoted peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims in his country, including by presiding over the opening of a cathedral, but Egypt’s human rights record is far from perfect. For example, an Egyptian TV journalist was sentenced to prison for a year in January and fined 3,000 Egyptian pounds after interviewing a gay man on his show in August 2018, Egypt state-run media reported.

President el-Sisi was essentially put in place by the military to end President Morsi’s reign of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt is not actually a democracy, but the military seems to run it with a fairly even hand–allowing most people to quietly practice their faith.

This Is An Old Article That I Missed At The Time

In September 2016, The Federalist posted an article about the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring began as a movement that was supposed to bring freedom to some of the dictatorships in the Middle East. Unfortunately, what it brought was governments controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and the attempted implementation of Sharia Law. Egypt is a prime example of that although they were able to get out from under the rule of the Muslim extremists.

The article reports:

The “Arab Spring,” as it was dubbed, was a series of protests across the Middle East that initially showed a growing resistance to tyranny and oppression of dictators throughout the region. In a rare regional uprising, the people of the Islamic world seemed to have had enough with dictatorship and oppression.

Only, they didn’t get freedom when they toppled these dictators.

The article notes that Glenn Beck (during his last month on Fox News) predicted the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. He was mocked for this prediction, which turned out to be accurate.

The article at The Federalist shows the role that Hillary Clinton played in the destabilization of the Middle East that led to the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. The article includes a memo detailing her involvement.

The article reports:

The United States government is believed to have utilized a program called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, co-founded by a close Hillary Clinton adviser, to provide networking opportunities for an activist plotting to overthrow Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak several years before the “Arab Spring” protests that led to widespread regime change in the Middle East.

Through the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, the U.S. learned that the Muslim Brotherhood was supportive of a plan to overthrow Mubarak. The U.S.-supported Muslim Brotherhood later briefly ruled Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster.

It is important to recognize that the program was created before Clinton took office as Secretary of State, but she continued with it, and apparently not in a way that promoted peaceful protest in the region.

On November 18, 2008, two weeks after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president, the U.S. State Department announced the first Alliance of Youth Movements Summit at Columbia Law School in New York City. A permanent group called the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) was developed by Summit leaders after the first Summit convened.

Bush State Department official Jared Cohen, listed as the “international press contact” for the Summit, described some goals of the conference before it convened in December.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes other information related to America‘s actions in the Middle East under President Obama. It does not paint a pretty picture.

The Brutal Culture We Don’t Understand And Insist On Importing

The Middle East is a tough neighborhood. Aside from the basic political unrest, there seems to be constant news of terrorist attacks and innocent people being murdered. The brutality of the region seems to be part of the culture. There are aspects of American culture that can be violent, but we have not accepted those elements in quite the same way.

PJ Media posted an article today about some recent events in the Middle East and one man’s reaction to those events.

The article reports:

In December, the Islamic State claimed a suicide bombing in a church inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral compound that killed 29 (all but one were women and girls). On Palm Sunday, two separate Islamic State suicide bombings killed nearly 50 worshippers.

Over the weekend, the group threatened more attacks on Christians

The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 and has been a problem for Egypt ever since. Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has tried to keep the Muslim Brotherhood in check since he took office. Obviously, he has not been totally successful. It is somewhat annoying to me that some Americans in the last administration were extremely sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. One in particular posted some strange tweets.

The article reports one of Mohamed Elibiary’s (former Obama Homeland Security Advisory Council member)  tweets:

Reading ISIS’s latest mag “otherizing” Egypt’s Copts. Subhanallah how what goes around comes around. Coptic ldrs did same to MB Egyptians.

The article explains:

What has Elibiary upset? Many in the Coptic Christian community backed the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in 2013. In his tweet, he references “MB Egyptians” — Muslim Brotherhood Egyptians.

During the time Morsi was President of Egypt, Christians were relentlessly persecuted. Although the persecution has somewhat abated under el-Sisi, it does continue. The Coptic Christians are one of the oldest branches of Christianity in the Middle East, dating back to about 42 AD. By the beginning of the Third Century, they comprised the majority of Egypt’s population. Many of them have left in recent years because of persecution.

According to Pew Research:

The highest share (of Christians in Egypt) reported in the past century was in 1927, when the census found that 8.3% of Egyptians were Christians. In each of seven subsequent censuses, the Christian share of the population gradually shrank, ending at 5.7% in 1996. Religion data has not been made available from Egypt’s most recent census, conducted in 2006. But in a large, nationally representative 2008 survey — the Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey, conducted among 16,527 women ages 15 to 49 — about 5% of the respondents were Christian. Thus, the best available census and survey data indicate that Christians now number roughly 5% of the Egyptian population, or about 4 million people. The Pew Forum’s recent report on The Future of the Global Muslim Population estimated that approximately 95% of Egyptians were Muslims in 2010.

Religious tolerance is not a part of Koranic Islam. Infidels have to be converted or killed. Sharia Law takes precedence over any Constitution or law of the land. So I have a few questions. Why was a man who supports the Muslim Brotherhood in the Department of Homeland Security in America? Why are we importing ‘refugees’ who will not respect our Constitution and who believe that killing infidels is acceptable? Where will American Christians flee if our citizens elect people who support the persecution of Christians? How many of our government appointees from the last administration share the beliefs of Mohamed Elibiary?

 

Some History To Explain Some Current Events

Technically Egypt is considered a Republic. However, Egypt has a history of military coups, protests, and assassinations that have forced changes in leadership. As I am sure you remember, there were protests in Egypt as part of the so-called Arab Spring. As a result of those protests, on 13 February 2011, the military dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution. In June 2012, Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt. On 2 August 2012, Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35-member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers including four from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928. It has a two-fold purpose–to implement sharia law worldwide and to re-establish the imperial Islamic state (caliphate). Al Qaeda has the same objectives as the Muslim Brotherhood–they differ only in timing and tactics. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat after he signed a peace treaty with Israel. Although most Egyptians supported the treaty, Egypt was kicked out of the Arab League because of Anwar Sadat’s actions, and he was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood. That is some of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and explains why the Egyptian military removed Mohamed Morsi from office. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected President and sworn in on June 8, 2104. My purpose in explaining the history is to illustrate the reasons el-Sisi has found it necessary to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. They are very active in Egypt and are a threat to the nation’s freedom.

President Obama had a much better relationship with Morsi than he did with el-Sisi. President Obama was much more sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than he was to those who opposed them. When President Obama spoke al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2009, he specifically invited 10 members of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc to attend the speech. President Obama’s actions showed much more sympathy to the Muslim Brotherhood than to those who wanted religious freedom in Egypt. So where am I going with this?

Our relationship with Egypt has improved since President Trump took office.

The Daily Caller is reporting today:

Egypt has released an Egyptian American woman who was imprisoned in Cairo for several years after Donald Trump struck a deal with the Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.

Aya Hijazi, 30, a U.S. citizen and humanitarian worker, had been in prison for three years on child abuse and trafficking charges — which the U.S. dismissed as false — because she operated a nonprofit dedicated to helping kids on the street with her husband. Last week, an Egyptian court dropped all charges against her.

Ms. Hijazi had been in prison for three years. Donald Trump has been President for three months. There is no reason that President Obama could not have freed this woman as soon as she was arrested (other than the fact that he did not have a good relationship with el-Sisi).

Egyptians will probably never enjoy the degree of freedom that Americans enjoy, but it is to our advantage to stay on good terms with as many world leaders as possible. Some of the early indications are that the Trump Administration will endeavor to do this.