The Military Is Egypt’s Best Hope

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egypts military

Completely agree with Andrew here…the only way forward in Egypt is to back the military. There never was, nor will there ever be true “Democracy”. To believe The Muslim Brotherhood is the “democratic” way is beyond comprehension. There is no freedom in Sharia:

The defining mission of the Muslim Brotherhood is the implementation of sharia, as noted for several years by a hardy few of us Islamophobes. An “Islamophobe,” by the way, is someone who takes seriously the things Muslim Brotherhood operatives say and the scriptures on which they rely; the Muslims who say the things that Islamophobes have the temerity to mention are called “moderates” — see how this works?

Sharia is Islam’s societal framework and legal code. Particularly as construed by Islamic supremacists, whose ideology dominates the Middle East, sharia is authoritarian, anti-liberty, anti-equality, and intolerant of minority rights. Indeed, in 1990, Islamic supremacists felt the need to issue their own “Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” precisely because they cannot abide the aspirations laid out in the purportedly “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” promulgated by the United Nations in 1948. Human rights, for the Islamist, must bow to the repressive injunctions of sharia.

Consequently, in a couple of books that are largely about the history, ideology, methodology, and goals of the Muslim Brotherhood — The Grand Jihad and, last year, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy — I tried to establish two premises. The first is that Islamic supremacism is fundamentally anti-democratic. That proposition cannot be too Islamophobic since influential Islamic supremacists themselves freely concede that sharia cannot coexist with a secular civil society or with any system in which people are free to ignore sharia in enacting their own law.

The second is that elections do not equal democracy. To the contrary, democracy is a culture of governance committed to the protection of minority rights and equality of opportunity. Sharia abides neither of those principles.

Taken together, these two premises lead, inexorably, to this conclusion: In a sharia culture, popular elections inevitably empower anti-democrats. I began Spring Fever with a quip by Turkey’s Islamic-supremacist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that ought to be a lot more notorious: “Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination.” Islamists step off the train at sharia station, which is a civilization’s distance away from liberty and equality. In a sharia society, “democracy” — taken to mean mere voting — is not a culture. It is just another means of imposing totalitarian sharia. To be sure, it is a means less brutal than violent jihad, but a means to the same sorry end.

Western commentators should thus stop mindlessly repeating the Brotherhood mantra that Mohamed Morsi is, or was, the “democratically elected” president. He was the popularly elected president of an overwhelmingly anti-democratic society — the same society whose citizens, only eight months ago, voted to approve a sharia constitution by a two-to-one landslide. The Brothers rhetorically tug at our pro-democracy heartstrings, but the fact remains that installing anti-democrats in positions of power, even if done by a popular vote, is the antithesis of real democracy.

Obama called Morsi “Democratically elected” but as Andrew argues, he was “popularly-elected in an anti-democratic society.” Thankfully, and smartly, he is not entertaining thoughts of cutting off aid to Egypt’s military….yet. Sadly McCain and friends are.

Hopefully Obama realizes that the military is the best hope for Egypt:

But to break Spring Fever, we must finally stop projecting our values on other cultures as if they were “universal,” to borrow the U.N.’s supercilious claim. The Muslim Middle East is part of a different civilization and does not share our core beliefs. Adherent to supremacist Islam, it rejects equality under the law (the rights of non-Muslims are inferior to those of Muslims, and those of women to those of men). In Muslim countries, religious minorities are systematically oppressed and persecuted. The sovereign is deemed to be Allah, acting through the Muslim ruler or caliph. There are no “constituents” to “represent”; the people are subjects who owe the caliph obedience and whose only legitimate expectation of the caliph is his fidelity to sharia.

In such an anti-democratic society, a pro-Western military may be the best chance for sowing true democracy. Only capable armed forces can check the violent proclivities of Islamic supremacism. The Coptic Christian minority, which makes up a fast-diminishing 10 percent of Egypt’s population, supported the military’s ouster of Morsi not because Copts reject democracy but because only the armed forces can protect them. Under the governance of Islamic supremacists, and now in the crosshairs of incensed Brotherhood thugs, the Copts are targets of murder and mayhem while their churches are being torched across the country.

As I explained in a column earlier this week, sharia dictates the persecution and killing of gay people. Women, too, stood to lose human-rights protections under Egypt’s Islamic-supremacist rule. Putting aside the many other sharia provisions that reduce women to chattel, a prohibition against female genital mutilation, put in place by Mubarak’s military-backed dictatorship, was certain to be scrapped — mainstream constructions of sharia hold that “female circumcision” is mandatory, and even “more enlightened” interpretations call for it to be permitted and thus reject an outright ban.

…Egypt has never had a democracy, so there is no “restoring” it. Pragmatically speaking, the country has two alternatives: (a) a rapid resort to popular elections, which are certain, once again, to empower Islamic supremacists (who have proved, in election after election, that they appeal to a significant majority of the populace); or (b) military rule through an appointed technocratic government. The former would crush any hope for real democracy. The latter, at least potentially, could force a new consensus constitution that requires equality under the law and respect for minority rights; that delays popular elections until secular democrats are better positioned to compete with Islamic supremacists; and that requires convincing acceptance of the new constitution and renunciation of violence as a precondition to participation in elections.

It might take a number of years, and the Egyptian military — like Turkey’s Kemalist army before it was gutted by Erdogan — would have to make clear its determination to uphold minority rights. But if we really care about promoting democracy, the coup against Morsi is Egypt’s only hope

Things are going to get worse because make no mistake, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s military are at war. But when given two choices, military rule or rule by fanatical Islam the choice is quite clear for American interests.

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I believe this site has a couple of Sharia apologists who contend that ”Sharia is different everywhere,” so that we MUST ALLOW Sharia to be implemented so as to find out what is in that particular Sharia brand.
(Sound like Pelosi on ObamaCare, don’t they?)
Well, all I needed to do was read the old books on Islam on my personal bookshelves to see that all apologists for Sharia are wrong.

Just today news broke in Egypt that, while the MB were being cleaned out of a Mosque, their supporters completely destroyed one of Egypt’s finest antiquities museums.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396100/Looters-ransack-Egyptian-antiques-museum-snatch-priceless-artefacts-armed-police-inside-stormed-Cairo-mosque.html#ixzz2cFhf0UgN

Now, in America…..
Look what is planned for 9-11-13.
The American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC) is hosting what it hopes will be a gathering of one million people in Washington, D.C., on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.
But their wish list?
1. CHANGE the 1st AMENDMENT!!!!
It presently allows Muslims to be insulted!
It presently allows Islam to be criticized!
2. Expose the TRUTH about the 9-11-01 attacks.
Yes, the JEWS really did it.
No JEWS were killed that day, doncha know.
3. STOP LOOKING AT US!!
Muslims want the right to conspire in secret.
Stop the surveillance of Muslims.

When you click on the Facebook page, it says: “Join 1 million Muslims on September 11th 2013 to help us get the truth about 9/11.”
Guess how many had signed up?
10.

@Nan G: Agree with the NSA or not. If they don’t investigate those ten people, then I don’t know who else they would want to spy on.

@Nan G: Just today news broke in Egypt that, while the MB were being cleaned out of a Mosque, their supporters completely destroyed one of Egypt’s finest antiquities museums.

Nan G, the ministry is accusing the MB of the looting, but there is no proof. Fact of the matter, the anti-MB mobs are acting as badly as the MB. The Egyptian military has to protect the MB they arrest… assuming they don’t just mow them down with artillery, as has also been the case… because the mobs are trying to tear them apart. It’s a vision of humans out of control, despite their ideology.

Ergo while the Egyptian military finds it beneficial to say it’s the MB, it can just as likely be the others out in the street, behaving badly.

Which brings me to the crux of Curt’s and Andrew’s posts… going full circle back to the beginning.

What most of this proves is that the Egyptians didn’t figure out they had it better under Mubarek. Think of the timelines:

1: Egyptians protested in their Arab Spring, demanding Mubarek be ousted, and that the government be non-militarized.

2: So the military who, under Mubarek, actually acts with restraint, despite their own violent protests and burnings, takes over the interim govt until an election.

3: The idiot Egyptians not only elect an MB leader (even if by a slim popular vote), but vote for a Shariah law Constitution by a landslide.

4: When they figure out they don’t like what they voted for, they again demand that the military they hate, remove the guy they, themselves, elected.

5: According to the non MB Egyptians, and the rest of the rest of the Muslim world, Mubarek’s more restrained use of hte military (and a lot against the MB themselves in his reign), was bad. But now killing MB or lynching them in the streets is all good. I guess their idea of an “election” is whatever protest wins the day, and help of the military. They sure don’t respect what system they put in to place, and they prefer violence for immediate change… resulting in just more chaos.

Apparently there are some cultures that can find a way to a quasi Muslim democracy. Iraq is feeling their way thru, and fighting off their disgruntled sore losers within their borders. Pakistan has been doing it for decades. But apparently places like Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt end up more civilized, and economically productive, when under a dictator who holds the Islamists at bay.

Or put in to other words, “too stupid to vote” comes to mind. Egypt has become no better than Syria. Neither side is worth supporting. Step back, don’t take sides, and let them do their will. Deal with it when the dust settles.

All in all, this is the perfect martyrdom of the MB, and will be used as such. They attempted to play the westernized election game, against the advice of Zawahiri and hard core Islamists, and won. Yet the masses still use violence to throw them out and behave little better. Yup… it’s like an Islamist recruiting poster dream.

@Tired American: Agree with the NSA or not. If they don’t investigate those ten people, then I don’t know who else they would want to spy on.

Another confusing perspective on data mining. People are against it for privacy concerns, but if someone wants to march in a protest that they disagree with, and say so on a social media site, it’s a-okay?

Egyptian prosecutors have placed 250 Muslim Brotherhood supporters under investigation for murder, attempted murder and terrorism…..

Mustafa Hijazi, a political advisor to the interim government, told journalists in a press conference that Egypt is in the process of legalizing all the groups operating in the public service domain but it “doesn’t accept” those who commit actions “outside the law or the authorities of police or army.”

Hijazi said the government will work to combat “terrorism and radicalism.” He added that Muslim Brotherhood loyalists have engaged in violence and not peaceful protests.

No more of the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of, “execute first, then trial.”
Looks like the interim gov’t is going by the book, the secular book whereby laws are known in advance, not made up on the spot by religious creeps.

Nan G, neither the Egyptian military, nor the Mubarek regime, ever had any warm fuzzies for the MB. It’s an organization that has been “banned” for decades. They only escaped that “ban” category by restructuring as a non government group. However a rose by any other name.

There are no good guys in Egypt, any more than there are good guys in Syria. This should be obvious with the landslide vote for the Constitution based on Shariah law. Without a “Mubarek” figure in the middle, it’s all a roll of the dice.

Maybe I’m missing something but what is our strategic interest in Egypt? I get places like Iraq and Saudi Arabia i.e. OIL. But what does Egypt have that we just can’t live without? Sure they are a market for some of our goods and services but not such that they are worth spending a fortune on propping up. Might it not be better to just let them go their own way? Does it matter if their government is pro or anti western? I mean sure it would be nice if they were pro west, but what’s nice and what’s necessary are often two different things. Of course its entirely possible that I am completely off the mark here and indeed the fate of the free world will be determined by how we play this Egyptian thing. But if that is the case, could someone please explain to me why that is so???

itsme, The value of Egypt is the same as most countries in the North African, Middle East and west Asian region. We want them to be a partner in counterterrorism, and we want them to keep the peace with Israel, surrounded by enemies and fair weather friends at best. The US pledges it’s support to our allies, and Israel is invaluable one in both intel from the region, and technological advances in defense. Egypt has been a major player in keeping the peace with israel in the region. We don’t want to lose that, and neither does Israel.

We can’t isolate ourselves from the world, but we can pick and choose our intervention and battles wisely.

Why did it take this long for the Muslim Brotherhood to be declared a “terrorist organization”? I hope the issue takes off, and they are declared so by other countries.

@Nan G: NAn I think that you may be giving this just a bit more importance that it deserves. These ultra right religious fanatics have little support amongst muslims. Muslims themselves take less notice of it than you. Care to place a wageror guess on how many will showm up for the march ?

WHEN THE PEOPLE ELECT ONE BECAUSE OF COLOR OR PROMISES
they are selfishly think of only themselves instead of knowing that an election is
to vote not for them personally but for the COUNTRY BEST INTEREST
which they will more benefit on a longer period,
the mistake of doing so is costing dearly the COUNTRY WHERE IT’S DONE,
AND PLUS A HARD DISCOVERY TO REPLACE THE WRONG
AT A COST OF LIVES, MANY LIVES,
NO MATTER WHICH COUNTRY WE SPEAK OF,

@MataHarley: “There are no good guys in Egypt, any more than there are good guys in Syria.” True.
The world will not miss dictators like Saddam, Gaddaffi, Mubarek and Assad. The road to Democracy is often difficult but in the end it is worth the journey.

it cost lives to live thru the diffiicult time,AND IT’S DONE NOW AS WE ARE ENTERING A NEW YEAR OF 2014, i WANDER HOW THEY WILL SEE THEIR FUTURE, AFTER THAT MORSI WILL BE HANG
ALONG HIS CLOSEST LOYALS WITH THE BLOOD OF THE PEOPLE ON THEIR HANDS,
THE MISERY OF THOSE LOSING THEIR LOVED ONES,
THERE IS A SLIVER LIGHT ON THE ARISEN WE CAN PERCIEVE WITH OUR BEST WISH OF A REAL
PEACEFULL RECOVERY, OF A BRAVE PEOPLE NOW DIVIDED AMONG EACH OTHER FOR AS LONG
AS THEY LIVE, AND THEIR CHILDREN WILL CARRY ON THE HATE,
IT WOULD HAVE NOT HAPPENED IF ONE WOULD HAVE NOT ASK MUBARACK TO LEAVE
AND INCITE THE CHANGE OF THE WRONG GUARD BECAUSE HE CHOOSE THE WRONG NEXT LEADER, BECAUSE OF HIS ARROGANCE TO WANT TO BECOME CLOSE TO THE MB AND HELP HIS FRIENDS TO BREAK EGYPT TOTALLY,