Iran’s Moves in the Middle East and Why You Should Care, The Watchman via You Tube, February 10, 2015
Archive for the ‘Egypt’ category
Iran’s Moves in the Middle East and Why You Should Care.
February 10, 2015Egypt Under Al-Sisi: An Interview with Raymond Stock
February 9, 2015Egypt Under Al-Sisi: An Interview with Raymond Stock, Middle East Forum, February 8, 2015
by Jerry Gordon
The New English Review
February 2015
The introduction to this interview has been abridged.
To discuss Egypt’s prospects under the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi government, we invited back Dr. Raymond Stock whom we had interviewed in November 2012. (See: No Blinders About Egypt Under Muslim Brotherhood ). Stock is a Shillman/Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a former Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies at Drew University. He spent twenty years in Egypt and was deported by the Mubarak regime in 2010. He is writing a biography of 1988 Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) for Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is a prolific translator of his works.
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“[The Muslim Brotherhood] has deeply bonded with the highest levels of the Obama administration, which uncritically backed its creation of an elected, one-party dictatorship under Morsi.
“Unlike Morsi and the MB, who worked covertly with the terrorists in Sinai, al-Sisi wholeheartedly supports the peace with Israel.”
Egypt is now in an informal alliance with Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to confront Iran. That alliance is compromised, however, by recent moves from Egypt’s Gulf partners to mend fences with Iran as a result of their feeling exposed by Washington’s alarming pivot toward Tehran at the expense of its traditional Sunni clients.
“Obama’s leftist, rather Edward-Saidian worldview … sees indigenous anti-Western forces such as the Islamists to be the benignly natural and legitimate consequence of American and European policies during the colonial era and the Cold War.”
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Jerry Gordon: Ray Stock thank you for consenting to this interview.
Raymond Stock: Thank you for inviting me back.
Jerry Gordon: Egyptian President al-Sisi started 2015 with two dramatic moves- his New Year’s speech at al-Azhar University and Christmas greetings at a Coptic church with Pope Tawadros II present. What were the messages he conveyed to Muslim clerics, Coptic Christians and the world?
Raymond Stock: At al-Azhar, President al-Sisi was saying it is not merely an extremist interpretation of Islam that is threatening the world with global jihad, but ideas that are at the core of the mainstream, orthodox understanding of the religion–and that this would require a “religious revolution” to change.
At the Coptic Cathedral, he urged Egyptians not to define themselves by their religion, be it Christian or Muslim, but by the fact that they are Egyptians–a rejection of Islamism, which defines national identity in purely religious terms.
To the world, he was saying that Islam as it is being taught and practiced by its leading religious scholars has given birth to a globally destructive ideology which is now threatening us all.
Moreover, he wants to launch a movement within Islam to save the religion from itself, that is, before it tears itself apart completely and the rest of the world destroys it in self-defense.
And he challenged the clerics to take the lead in that effort by openly re-examining their own teachings and source materials for interpreting Islam.
Gordon: Al-Sisi has cracked down on press freedoms in Egypt and brought to trial three Al Jazeera correspondents. What in your view prompted that?
Stock: Though no libertarian, it is hard to say if al-Sisi himself has had anything to do directly with the suppression of press freedom, though it is happening on his watch. Going back to Pharaonic times, Egypt’s state institutions, the oldest in the world, and its political culture, have little tradition of respecting civil liberties. Some periods have been worse than others–the worst was actually under Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the 1950s and ’60s, when many thousands of political prisoners were sent “behind the sun” to camps in the Western Desert.
Al-Sisi is still so popular, the public so widely disgusted with the unending social and political chaos since the 2011 revolution, and so alarmed by the terrorist insurgency waged by the Islamists, that probably a majority of news editors and perhaps also of reporters have decided to support him completely and to oppose his critics automatically. At this point it is hard to find any clear connection with al-Sisi himself to this consensus, enshrined in a declaration by several hundred key media figures a few months ago. However, certainly if he didn’t like it he could well speak up against it–yet he hasn’t so far.
Pro-Sisi demonstrators celebrate the third anniversary of Mubarak’s overthrow, January 2014.
Last summer he publicly regretted the imprisonment of the three Al Jazeera journalists, saying he wished they had been deported instead. Citing his belief in an independent judiciary, he refused to intervene in the legal process. Now that they are being retried after winning on appeal, we’ll see if he pardons and deports them should they be convicted again.
Gordon: Following, al-Sisi’s ouster of President Morsi and crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood leaders, what has happened to the movement in Egypt?
Stock: Though deservedly banned as a terrorist group, its top leaders in jail and the rest driven underground or abroad, it is far from dead and remains a threat to the Egyptian state and society. Its refusal to accept the June 30 popular revolution (far larger than the one that overthrew Mubarak), parental bonds to Hamas, financial support from Qatar and wealthy Gulf donors (and possibly Iran), partnership with the Salafis and ideological affinity and outreach to groups like al-Qa’ida and Islamic Jihad have served it well in retaining its base while gaining sympathy–especially internationally.
Though all these factors–plus its horrendous behavior in power–have greatly alienated the majority of Egyptians, they are for the most part also its greatest assets for the future, if they can only survive the current storm. As they have shown in several major periods of repression in the past–the most severe being under Abdel-Nasser–they only need to endure until there is successor to al-Sisi, who may decide to restore the MB to political legitimacy as a means of fighting al-Sisi’s remaining political allies. (Anwar al-Sadat, for example, freed the MB activists from prison to combat the surviving members of Abdel-Nasser’s coterie.) Such a situation could put them in striking distance of taking power again.
Meanwhile, the MB has global headquarters in Istanbul and London, is very influential in Europe, and has enormously increased its penetration at the federal, state and local levels all over the US. As part of this, it has deeply bonded with the highest levels of the Obama administration, which uncritically backed its creation of an elected, one-party dictatorship under Morsi. Obama evidently seeks to help the MB to return to power in Egypt—as shown, for example, by the State Department’s recent hosting of a conference of MB allies at Foggy Bottom, though it may take a while. Al-Sisi probably only has a year or two to turn the economy around before he risks another uprising.
The goal of the terrorist insurgency is to discourage foreign investment and stifle the stimulus provided by major government projects such as the new second channel to the Suez Canal to aid the recovery from the last four years of chaos. This, they hope, will pave the way for new popular upheaval which they hope to manipulate if not lead.
Gordon: Has the Islamic State supplanted the Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood movements?
Stock: In a sense, yes, but the situation is actually quite complex. Ideologically, IS—like al-Qa’ida–is an extension of the Salafist movement and the MB (itself established as a Salafi organization in the Salafi library in Ismailiya, Egypt in 1928). IS, because of its uncompromising Islamist purity, harshness, brutality and its dramatic seizure of so much territory in Iraq and Syria, coupled with its incredibly savvy use of social media, has largely eclipsed all of its predecessors in recruitment of fighters to the Middle East. It also outpaced all of them in its creation of lone wolves and sleeper cells in Europe, America and elsewhere.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group last year.
That includes Egypt, where the MB-and-AQ aligned Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) organization is responsible for most of the attacks in the country over the past two years. ABM, along with its allies controls much of North Sinai and has declared its allegiance to IS. The MB, as noted, still retains a very strong base, as does the Salafi al-Nour Party which has pragmatically allied itself with Al-Sisi. The appeal of IS may frustrate their ability to draw younger members–yet it is far from clear that IS will do any better in the long run. So have many of the Islamists in Libya, the eastern half of which IS now controls, and may soon run Tripoli as well. The stunning success of IS provides further inspiration to groups like Boko Haram, which has overrun much of northeastern Nigeria and has recently spread into Cameroon, as well as al-Shabaab in Somalia. IS also now has a presence in southern Afghanistan and beyond. Unless it is destroyed militarily in the very near future–which is virtually impossible so long as Obama is President–IS threatens every state with a significant Muslim population, as well as the West, which is its ultimate target.
Gordon: Al-Sisi has propounded a doctrine of stability for Egypt. What is it and has he succeeded since his election?
Stock: I would say that if al-Sisi truly has established such a doctrine for stability, it would consist of the following:
- Anti-Islamism—i.e. a more limited role for Shariah (which is nonetheless still enshrined in the new constitution, yet no longer to be interpreted by the clerics at al-Azhar, but by the government, whose authority and much of its outlook is secular, not religious;
- Electoral democracy though with somewhat limited civil liberties, to satisfy both the demand for popular sovereignty and for an end to the endless chaos–strikes and demonstrations (and skyrocketing crime) since the fall of Mubarak in 2011, and to limit the public role of the Islamists, who are at war with Egypt; and
- An independent foreign policy—one that still seeks to maintain the traditional alliance with the U.S. and the West, but is not afraid to go elsewhere as needed.
Obama’s backing of the Islamists and his cutting of aid for the past two years have driven al-Sisi to radically diversity Egypt’s sources of funding and investment from abroad, including for the first time military aid. For more than three decades, Egypt’s military assistance came almost exclusively from Washington, though that is now being surpassed by multi-billion dollar arms deals from Moscow and even to an extent from Beijing, funded by al-Sisi’s backers in the Gulf. That puts the Egyptian-American alliance and its principal benefits—the more than thirty-five year peace with Israel, our priority access to the Suez Canal (now being expanded with a second channel but without US investment), and vital cooperation on security issues—seriously at risk.
Gordon: Some analysts have said that in the wake of the Arab Spring the old order of regional autocracies has re-emerged in an alliance against the Muslim Brotherhood. What is your view and especially in the case of Egypt’s North African neighborhood?
Stock: That depends on the country: in North Africa, King Mohammed VI is still in power, but the Muslim Brotherhood has won more seats than the other parties in parliament, a situation echoing that in Jordan, though it is less precarious at present. Algeria, still recovering from the savage Islamist bloodbath after the Army’s annulment of elections in January 1992, was least affected of all the states in the region by the Arab Spring. (Perhaps the only major result there was the lifting of the State of Emergency that had prevailed for nearly two decades, in February 2011.) Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began in December 2010, threw out its MB-affiliate controlled government in a popular movement backed by the army—in a situation that rather echoed the one in Egypt, and late last year elected a new secularist plurality in parliament and a new secularist president, Béji Caїd Essebsi.
In Libya, the feeble central government that we helped install by foolishly removing the vicious, eccentric but cooperative Col. Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi has predictably collapsed. Yet a new secularist-dominated government was elected last June 25 and a pro-secularist remnant of the Qaddafi era, General Khalifa Haftar, for the past year has been at war with the Islamist militias that have been the real powers since 2011. Haftar also wants to destroy the Libyan iteration of the Muslim Brotherhood, root and branch, especially after it launched an armed uprising in eastern Libya following Morsi’s ouster in Egypt in 2013. As a result of this chaos, generated by our own needless—or at least, badly botched–intervention in the Arab Spring, the U.S. now has no effective presence in Libya. The security vacuum prompted Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to cooperate in launching air strikes near Tripoli last summer in support of Haftar’s forces. IS and other Islamist organizations are now infiltrating weapons and fighters into Egypt from Libya, threatening the country’s—and the region’s—stability.
In the Eastern Arab world, Egypt’s principal allies now are Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who together immediately pledged 12 billion dollars in aid after Morsi’s removal, and have given billions more since. All of it and more is desperately needed to compensate for the depletion of Egypt’s hard currency reserves, loss of foreign investment and near-destruction of the once lucrative tourist industry that have all continued since the January 25th Revolution against Hosni Mubarak. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis oppose the MB and Hamas, who—along with Egypt under Morsi—are clients of their Gulf rival, Qatar. America’s annual, mainly military package of $1.5 billion seems trifling in comparison (unless viewed cumulatively since it began in 1979). Still, it will be difficult to switch to mainly Russian or Chinese systems–much as the latter may be based on hacked American designs–after so many years of absorbing Yankee equipment and training.
Gordon: What is the emerging change in Egypt’s relations with Israel, both geo-political and economic?
Stock: Unlike Morsi and the MB, who worked covertly with the terrorists in Sinai, al-Sisi wholeheartedly supports the peace with Israel. He has greatly increased security cooperation with the Jewish state—which had been endangered in the 2011-12 transition and during the Morsi era—to levels exceeding those under Mubarak. Again, even more than Mubarak, who loathed them too, al-Sisi sees the MB, Hamas and their Islamist allies as threats to Egypt as well as Israel. Likewise, he sees Iran—with whom Morsi sought a rapprochement—as Egypt’s greatest strategic adversary in the region.
As a result, Egypt is now in an informal alliance with Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to confront Iran. That alliance is compromised, however, by recent moves from Egypt’s Gulf partners to mend fences with Iran as a result of their feeling exposed by Washington’s alarming pivot toward Tehran at the expense of its traditional Sunni clients.
Meanwhile, though overall Israel-Egypt trade remains minimal (as it had through the decades of cold peace under Mubarak and afterward), energy-strapped Egypt may soon be importing natural gas from Israel’s newly-developed Tamar Reservoir in the Mediterranean. Given that Israel used to import natural gas from Egypt via a pipeline shared with Jordan (repeatedly sabotaged physically as well as assailed legally in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak), that is a remarkable turnaround indeed.
Gordon: What triggered Qatar’s re-opening of relations with Egypt despite the former’s support of Hamas and the Brotherhood?
Stock: The main factor was probably al-Sisi’s logical desire to stay in step with the policy of Egypt’s current primary foreign donors and investors, the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. After freezing relations with Qatar due to its support for Hamas and the MB, and perhaps also AQ and IS (the latter only early on?), and the universal irritant of Doha-based Al Jazeera, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, decided last summer to repair the rift, apparently in face of the increasing U.S. tilt toward Iran. The U.S. tried to bypass al-Sisi by turning to Qatar and Turkey—both of whom Cairo had shunned for their support of Islamists and their criticism of Morsi’s ouster—as intermediaries with Hamas in the Gaza conflict last summer.
Ironically, that move may have done more to damage relations with Washington than with either Doha or Ankara, who probably could not be totally excluded in any case, given their closeness to Hamas. Yet those two regional rival countries’ desire to cut out Cairo, the historic mediator between the Palestinians, Israel and the West, did aggravate the Egyptians enormously, to be sure.
Qatar has taken some token steps to distance itself from the MB, like deporting several MB leaders who had taken refuge there. But Qatar apparently continues to finance them in their new home in London, and few believe the change is more than cosmetic. Thus the warming with Egypt and even within the GCC may not long endure.
Gordon: Why has the US Administration maintained an arm’s length relationship with al-Sisi subsequent to the ouster of Morsi?
Stock: It is no doubt due to Obama’s leftist, rather Edward-Saidian worldview, which sees indigenous anti-Western forces such as the Islamists to be the benignly natural and legitimate consequence of American and European policies during the colonial era and the Cold War—for which he has apologized repeatedly. He also has a positive, nostalgic view of Islam, given that he was born of a Muslim father and having apparently been raised as one by his step-father during his early childhood in Indonesia, and seems to project this image onto radical groups like the MB who cleverly pose as moderates. He is thus surrounded by numerous pro-Islamist advisers, as well as those who simply take a naïve view of groups like the MB, Hamas and Hizbollah–and even the Taliban (not a new position, but one now getting attention in the news).
It also means that he denies the common Islamist ideology of all those groups as well as AQ and IS, or even any connection of their beliefs to Islam. This, despite their being made up entirely of Muslims, that they base their ideology and tactics on the Qur’an, Hadith and other key Islamic texts, and that they have a very wide appeal in the global Islamic community. This is even more bizarre if you compare his statements and those of his aides about this question to those of al-Sisi—a Muslim leader of a majority Muslim country—at the seat of Sunni Islam’s highest authority, al-Azhar, on New Year’s Day. One of them, Obama, is willfully blind; the other, al-Sisi, with devastating clarity, identifies the problem as coming from within the very heart of Islam.
On a personal level, Obama does not take kindly to those who cross him. Just look at his relationship with Congress, and with Benjamin Netanyahu, while ignoring his own transgressions against those he thinks are transgressing against him. He regarded al-Sisi’s patriotic overthrow of Morsi–whom he had bolstered with more and more aid even as the MB leader became more and dictatorial–at the demand of more than twice as many Egyptians as those who voted for Morsi, as a personal affront as well as ideological heresy. He has since punished al-Sisi and the Egyptian people who rejected his chosen savior of their destiny accordingly. That may have softened a bit recently, due to the need to find Arab allies to fight IS, but that is not a serious effort: the default position is against al-Sisi and for the MB.
Gordon: Given your Egyptian sojourn does al-Sisi have both the domestic and international support to implement his agenda?
Stock: Domestic, yes—all but a quarter to a third of the country wants him to succeed. But internationally is another story. Al-Sisi’s greatest enemy is not the MB, or even IS, but the president of the United States. When the State Department invited key figures from the pro-MB alliance of groups to a major conference in Washington this week, he was signaling his desire (and only Obama sets our foreign policy) to overthrow al-Sisi—just as his invitation to the leaders from the banned MB to sit in the front row of his Cairo speech in 2009 signaled that he wanted to remove Mubarak. So U.S.-dependent international institutions and allies may not be too supportive of al-Sisi.
The only possible silver lining for Egypt is, ironically (given our historic alliance), really a great problem for our country, if one values its role of global leadership since World War II. That is, Obama has done so much to destroy America’s standing with the rest of the world that even our closest allies no longer fear to stray, and may yet not follow his wishes regarding al-Sisi. Tragically, on many issues, that may be better for us all until Obama leaves office. For the heading he has set leads directly to hell, a destination that many countries, thanks to in large part to his policies, have already seen (and Syria and Libya have already become)–good intentions (by his lights) notwithstanding.
Gordon: Dr. Stock many thanks for this highly informative interview.
Stock: You’re most welcome.
Qatar, Egypt on a collision course
February 9, 2015Qatar, Egypt on a collision course, Israel Hayom, Dr. Reuven Berko, February 9, 2015
This anti-Egypt agenda, which seems to be shared by Turkey, is fueled by the desire to realize the dream of installing a Sunni Islamic empire, all while undermining moderate Arab regimes and giving a nod to Iran, as a way of covering all bases — just in case.
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Qatar and Egypt are at odds, and the attempts by the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to facilitate a reconciliation between them have failed.
Qatar’s relentless efforts to overthrow Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s regime and reinstate the Muslim Brotherhood to power are evident from the programs airing on the Doha-controlled Al-Jazeera television network, and from the publication of doctored wiretaps featuring the Egyptian president and his advisers, who allegedly “stole” Egypt away from the Muslim Brotherhood and the “holy” Mohammed Morsi.
This anti-Egypt agenda, which seems to be shared by Turkey, is fueled by the desire to realize the dream of installing a Sunni Islamic empire, all while undermining moderate Arab regimes and giving a nod to Iran, as a way of covering all bases — just in case.
Egypt’s decision to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood has resulted in increased incitement by Qatar as well as in an escalation in terrorist attacks in Egypt and Sinai. Egyptian intelligence has linked the latest series of attacks to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an offshoot of the Islamic State group, as well as to Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas and the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades are very much Qatar’s “babies,” and their involvement in these terrorist attacks has prompted Egypt to outlaw both.
In response, Al-Jazeera has begun portraying Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades’ operatives, who have denounced Sissi as a traitor to Islam and Arabs everywhere, as heroes fighting for the liberation of “Palestine.” The Qatari television station has also been obsessively covering the riots and unrest instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the regime, intimidate foreign investors, and reverse the image of stability Sissi’s government is trying to convey to the world.
The airing of secret wiretaps, on which Sissi is heard mocking the wealthy Persian Gulf states, at this time seeks to pit Cairo against the Gulf states, ahead of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, which is scheduled to convene in Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt, in late February, and where Egypt will lobby for aid.
Sissi’s assertion about the current situation in the Middle East is correct: Sunni Arab states are being offered as sacrifice to Iran, which is pursuing its nuclear endeavors uninterrupted. These states understand that Egypt’s stability is a prerequisite for their own national security, and therefore aiding Cairo is a favor that could only work to their advantage.
At the end of the day, in a reality where Iran poses an existential threat to other Arab countries, pointing to the emir of Qatar as a leader drowning in gold while millions of Egyptians go hungry — as heard on the wiretaps — may prove to be a double-edged sword, which may end up striking Qatar itself.
U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists
February 4, 2015U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, February 5, 2015
Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation. They were equally shocked when an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the bloc’s list of terror groups.
“Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.” — Linda S. Heard, Middle East Expert, Gulf News.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to return to the political arena through the American door and terrorist attacks. The U.S. policy appears to be devious and unreliable.” — Ezzat Ibrahim, columnist, Al Ahram.
“[Ousted Egyptian President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different.” — Mohamed Salmawi, Egyptian columnist
While the Egyptian government has been waging war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radical groups, the U.S. Administration and some Europeans are continuing to hamper efforts to combat terrorism.
Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation. They were equally shocked when an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the bloc’s list of terror groups.
The State Department’s hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders has outraged Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Sisi, who has been waging a relentless war against the organization over the past year.
One member of the delegation, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom, as he held up the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. (The gesture is named for Cairo’s Rabia Square, where counter-demonstrations backing ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi — who is from the Muslim Brotherhood — took place in August 2013.)
While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby (left) flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. At right, ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood) displays the Rabia sign.
“If the White House is out to offend some of its closest Arab allies and is intent on heightening their suspicions, it’s succeeded,” wrote Middle East expert Linda S. Heard. “If there’s a plot, then it’s unfolding,” she added. “Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.”
A statement issued by the Muslim Brotherhood said, “It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in a process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising fight, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom.”
The Egyptian government condemned the hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood officials by the State Department. Egyptian Foreign Minister Same Shoukry denounced the State Department’s move, saying, “The Muslim Brotherhood is not a political party, but according to the Egyptian law, which must be respected, it is designated as a terrorist organization.”
The timing of the meeting between State Department officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders could not have been worse for many Egyptians — it took place shortly after Islamist terrorists killed 31 soldiers and wounded 45 others in a series of attacks on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Although the Islamic State terror group took credit for the attacks, Sisi held the Muslim Brotherhood responsible. “Egypt is waging a war against the strongest clandestine group over the past two decades,” he said. “This organization has secretive arms, secretive thoughts and secretive forums.”
Egyptian columnists and newspaper editors have also attacked the U.S. Administration for its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The U.S. Administration is continuing to jeopardize its relations with Egypt by appeasing Muslim Brotherhood,” remarked columnist Ezzat Ibrahim. “The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to return to the political arena through the American door and terrorist attacks. The U.S. policy appears to be devious and unreliable.”
Another Egyptian columnist, Mohamed Salmawi, launched a scathing attack on the U.S. Administration; he accused it of deception and double standards. He said that the meeting between U.S. officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders exposes the U.S. Administration’s deceptive policy toward Islamic terror groups.
“The U.S. Administration says it is combating these groups at home while it is supporting them abroad,” Salmawi wrote. “This meeting has grave indications because it shows that Washington has not abandoned its policy of double standards toward Islamic terrorism.
Salmawi also took issue with the U.S. Administration for turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy and double talk of the Muslim Brotherhood. “One of the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, for example, told the world that he welcomes the Jews of Israel,” he added. “But this same leader announced in front of the Egyptian people that they should march in the millions to liberate Jerusalem from the occupation of the Jews. [Ousted President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different.”
Said Lindawi, a prominent Egyptian international affairs expert, said that the meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders with State Department officials means that the Obama Administration has given the organization a green light to carry out terrorist attacks against Egypt.
“The U.S. Administration has refused to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group,” hesaid. “The Americans continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is not responsible for the terrorist attacks in Egypt.”
By embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. Administration has sent the wrong message to moderate Arabs and Muslims. This is a message that says that Washington believes that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists.
Judging from the angry reactions of Egyptians, it has become obvious that most moderate Arabs and Muslims no longer see the U.S. as an ally in the war against Islamic terror groups. What is even more disturbing is that they view the U.S. as an ally and friend of the terrorists.
Foreigners, Diplomats Warned to Leave Egypt or Be Targeted for Jihad
February 3, 2015Foreigners, Diplomats Warned to Leave Egypt or Be Targeted for Jihad, Washington Free Beacon,
In this Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 file photo, Supporters of Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi hold a large Egyptian national flag as chant slogans against Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi outside Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque / AP
An Islamist organization sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood is warning all foreigners and diplomats to flee Egypt by the end of February or face becoming “a target by the Revolutionary Punishment Movement,” according to a recent warning posted online by a Brotherhood-affiliated site and read live on television by one of its broadcast organs.
The statement issues a threat to “all foreign nationals,” “all foreign companies,” and all “embassy foreigners, diplomats, and ambassadors,” ordering them to leave Egypt by the end of the month or face violent attacks, according to an independent translation of the Arabic statement.
Foreign travelers also are warned to “cancel their trips” and told “they are not welcome to Egypt during these difficult days.”
The warning comes just a week after Brotherhood leaders and allies were hosted for a meeting at the State Department, which drew fierce criticism from the Egyptian government.
It also follows a similar statement by the Brotherhood urging its supporters to prepare for a “long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt.
The latest threat was issued by an anti-government group identifying itself as “The Youth of the Revolution.” The statement was published late last week on a Brotherhood-affiliated Facebook page and also read on a Brotherhood-affiliated television station operating out of Turkey.
“After the successive meetings with revolutionaries in the squares, we decided with all the Revolutionary Punishment Movement the following,” the statement reads.
“All embassy foreigners, diplomats, and ambassadors, are given a deadline until Feb. 28 to leave the homeland,” it states.
“All foreign nationals, from all foreign, Arab, and African nationalities and all employees with companies working in Egypt [must] leave the country immediately,” it says. “This deadline will end on Feb. 11, 2015, and after that they will be a target by the Revolutionary Punishment Movement.”
Foreign companies “working in Egypt” are instructed to leave by Feb. 20, “withdraw their licenses in Egypt and end their work, otherwise all their projects will be targets by revolutionaries.”
The revolutionary youth group also instructs any country supporting the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to withdraw its backing.
Like the Brotherhood, the “The Youth of the Revolution” does not recognize al-Sisi as the rightful Egyptian leader and seeks to reinstall as president ousted Brotherhood ally Mohamed Morsi.
“All countries supporting the coup and assisting it monetarily and politically must immediately cease from any support to the coup within a month from this statement otherwise all their interests in the Middle East will be exposed to severe attacks that will have dire consequences,” the group warns.
Following the Washington Free Beacon’s initial report on the meeting between the State Department and Brotherhood-aligned leaders, the Egyptian foreign minister lashed out at the Obama administration, calling its policies “incomprehensible.”
State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki was forced to admit that she initially misled reporters about the meeting.
Psaki claimed that the trip was organized and funded by Georgetown University, a claim the university denied when contacted Monday by the Free Beacon.
Psaki was forced to correct the record at a briefing Monday with reporters.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have the accurate information on one small piece. The meeting was set up by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, a nonprofit. So the visit was not funded, as you know, by us or the U.S. Government, but it was also not funded by Georgetown,” Psaki said.
However, she continued to defend the decision to meet with the delegation.
When asked by a reporter, “is the building comfortable with continuing to do business with this center, this group,” Psaki responded, “Yes. Yes.”
Terrorism analyst and reporter Patrick Poole said Brotherhood offshoots such as this youth group have become increasingly violent as the Egyptian government continues its crackdown on the Brotherhood and terrorist groups.
“For a year and a half we’ve seen these Brotherhood youth cadre offshoots grow increasingly violent, whether it is the ‘Molotov Movement’, ‘Revolutionary Punishment Council’, or whatever name they operate under this month,” Poole said. “Initially it was targeting police and military personnel, then violence at the universities and civilian areas. So it’s no surprise now that they’re going after foreigners.”
Brotherhood leaders have quietly endorsed this violent rhetoric, he said.
“The Brotherhood leadership, the vast majority of which is now either in prison or in exile, has nurtured this culture,” Poole said. “They train for it and justify it in their indoctrination curriculum. And as the call for a new phase of all-out jihad published on the Brotherhood’s official website last week indicates, this latest threat of violence can be seen as a direct response to what the leadership openly called for just days before.”
Calls to Kill Pres. Al-Sisi and Egyptian Journalists on Turkey-Based Muslim Brotherhood TV Channels
February 3, 2015Calls to Kill Pres. Al-Sisi and Egyptian Journalists on Turkey-Based Muslim Brotherhood TV Channels, MEMRI TV via You Tube, January 30, 2015
(Please see also Egypt’s fight, America’s apathy. — DM)
In this compilation of video clips from Muslim Brotherhood TV channels, various Egyptian clerics and commentators call to kill Egyptian President Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi and the journalists who support him. Cleric Salama Abd Al-Qawi said, on Rabea TV, that anyone who killed Al-Sisi would be doing a good deed, cleric Wagdi Ghoneim told Misr Alan TV that “whoever can bring us the head of one of these dogs and Hell-dwellers” would be rewarded by Allah, and commentator Muhammad Awadh sai, on Misr Alan TV, that the punishment for the “inciting coup journalists” was death. The programs aired on January 10 and 26, 2015.
Egypt’s fight, America’s apathy
February 3, 2015Egypt’s fight, America’s apathy, Israel Hayom, Dr. Reuven Berko, February 3, 2015
[M]any Arab states long ago branded the movement and its “offspring” as illegal. In the Arab states, unlike in the West, Arabic is fully understood. This fact raises the suspicion that the U.S., which is losing interest in our region, has come to terms with radical Islam’s ascension to power in the Middle East, and is sacrificing its allies in the region.
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The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt refuses to accept the verdict of the electorate and is trying, through brutal terrorism, to delegitimize President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Ever since the el-Sissi government’s democratic election, Egypt has been plagued by a wave of terror perpetrated by the Brotherhood against the country’s army and security forces in Egypt proper and the Sinai Peninsula, which has damaged the economy and infrastructure.
In his most recent speech at Al-Azhar University, on Jan. 1, el-Sissi tried conveying to the “sane” senior religious leaders a brave message about the need to fight terror, calling for introspection and for them to implement a “religious revolution” against terror. His call has gone unanswered.
Indeed, Egypt is fighting these days against Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the terrorist group that has renamed itself the “Sinai Province” and has sworn allegiance to Islamic State. Over the past several months, Sinai Province terrorists have inflicted considerable damage and casualties on the Egyptian army, in a series of car bombings and shooting attacks. Last Thursday night, the group carried out four separate attacks on security forces in northern Sinai, killing at least 30 soldiers and police officers.
Egyptian sources pointed a finger at Hamas and its armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, accusing the Gaza-based terrorist group of aiding Sinai Province in its violent campaign. Evidence of this aid can be found in intercepted messages between the groups. Consequently, Egypt over the weekend banned Hamas’ military wing, listing it as a terrorist organization. In light of the dozens of slain soldiers, el-Sissi called on his security forces in Sinai to avenge the blood of their fallen comrades, and said: “We are fighting a well-funded global terrorist organization. … I am not tying your hands to prevent you from taking retribution from the terrorists.” During the heartfelt speech, el-Sissi announced the establishment of a new headquarters, commanded by a general, charged with waging war on terror and retaking Sinai.
As per its custom, Al-Jazeera distorted his message. One of the network’s “analysts” argued that el-Sissi’s words constituted a call for vengeance and civil war, and that he has turned the Egyptian army into a jury and hangman.
In contrast, in an interview with the network, the editor-in-chief of the weekly Egyptian newspaper Al-Mashhad protested the consistent incitement by Al-Jazeera against Egypt. Al-Jazeera, meanwhile, continues to incite, provide Hamas with material aid, and exalt the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades as a role model via its documentaries and programs. Within this framework, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades member Abdel Karim Al-Hanini, in his own series broadcast on Al-Jazeera, boasts of murdering Israeli civilians and soldiers, while instructing his audience, Palestinians and Muslim Brotherhood followers in Egypt alike, on how to build bombs.
Despite the events in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has yet to be outlawed in Europe and the United States. Many leaders still believe it is a legitimate political movement, despite knowing that it engages in terrorism across the globe and the “new Middle East,” and regardless of the fact that many Arab states long ago branded the movement and its “offspring” as illegal. In the Arab states, unlike in the West, Arabic is fully understood. This fact raises the suspicion that the U.S., which is losing interest in our region, has come to terms with radical Islam’s ascension to power in the Middle East, and is sacrificing its allies in the region. Its abstention from reining in Qatar, which incites and funds terrorism, testifies to the indifference of the United States to the damage this causes to Israel and to Egypt’s fight against fundamentalism, and will lead to the fall of other moderate Arab states.
It appears the Americans, who have soldiers based in the manipulative Qatar, along with the Europeans and partnered by Islamist Turkey and NATO, are implementing a policy of “after me, the deluge,” and have accepted the partition of the fading Middle East between the subversive Sunnis and the encroaching Iranians, who are establishing outposts and bridgeheads in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, as well as in Bahrain and Yemen. Both camps, the Sunni and Shiite, are now moving toward an arms race and inevitable apocalyptic clash, simultaneous to the completion of Iran’s nuclear program, in lieu of sanctions or a deal ensuring it is scaled back.
In the meantime, the European Union is working with Arab League foreign ministers and, bizarrely, Turkey and Qatar, two countries that support these terrorist movements, to create a front against Islamist terror. The criminals have been appointed the guards, indeed.
Open Jihad Declared in Egypt Following State Dept. Meeting with Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders
January 30, 2015(Please see also Calls To Kill President Al-Sisi And Egyptian Journalists On Muslim Brotherhood TV Channels. — DM)
The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just one day after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released this week.
Just days after a delegation that included two top Brotherhood leaders was hosted at the State Department, the organization released an official statement calling on its supporters to “prepare” for jihad, according to an independent translation of the statement first posted on Tuesday.
The statement also was issued just two days before a major terror attack Thursday in Egypt’s lawless Sinai region that killed at least 25.
“It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom,” it states.
Preparation for jihad is a key theme of the Brotherhood’s latest call for jihad.
An image posted with the statement shows two crossing swords and the word “prepare!” between them. Below the swords it reads, “the voice of truth, strength, and freedom.” According to the statement, “that is the motto of the Dawa of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The statement also invokes the well-known Muslim cleric Imam al-Bana, who founded the Brotherhood and has called for the death of Jews.
“Imam al-Bana prepared the jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers and the second [Supreme] Guide Hassan al-Hudaybi reconstructed the ‘secret apparatus’ to bleed the British occupiers,” the statement says.
The Brotherhood’s renewed call for jihad comes at a time when current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is cracking down on the group and imprisoning many of its supporters, who notoriously engaged in violence following the ouster of Brotherhood-ally Mohamed Morsi.
Egypt experts said the timing of this declaration is an embarrassment for the State Department.
“The fact that the Brotherhood issued its call to jihad two days after its meeting at the State Department will be grist for endless anti-American conspiracy theories about a supposed partnership between Washington and the Brotherhood,” said Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). “The State Department should have foreseen what an embarrassment this would be.”
One member of that U.S. delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.
“Now in the U.S. State Department. Your steadfastness impresses everyone,” reads an Arabic caption posted along with the photo.
Other members of that group included Gamal Heshmat, a leading member of the Brotherhood, and Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member who served as a parliamentarian from Luxor.
When asked on Tuesday evening to comment on the meeting, a State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon, “We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt.”
The official declined to elaborate on who may have been hosted or on any details about the timing and substance of any talks.
The meeting was described by a member of the delegation, Maha Azzam as “fruitful,” according to one person who attended a public event in Washington earlier this week hosted by the group.
The call for jihad, while surprising in light of the Brotherhood’s attempts to appear moderate, is part and parcel of organization’s longstanding beliefs, Trager said.
“Muslim Brothers have been committing violent acts for a very long time,” Trager explained. “Under Morsi, Muslim Brothers tortured protesters outside the presidential palace. After Morsi’s ouster, they have frequently attacked security forces and state property. “
“But until now, the official line from the Brotherhood was to support this implicitly by justifying its causes, without justifying the acts themselves,” he added. “ So the Brotherhood’s open call to jihad doesn’t necessarily mean a tactical shift, but a rhetorical one.”
Terrorism expert and national security reporter Patrick Poole said he was struck by the clarity of the Brotherhood’s call.
“It invokes the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist past, specifically mentioning the ‘special apparatus’ that waged terror in the 1940s and 1950s until the Nasser government cracked down on the group, as well as the troops sent by founder Hassan al-Banna to fight against Israel in 1948,” he said.
“It concludes saying that the Brotherhood has entered a new stage, warns of a long jihad ahead, and to prepare for martyrdom,” Poole said. “Not sure how much more clear they could be.”
Poole wondered if the call for jihad would convince Brotherhood apologists that the group still backs violence.
“What remains to be seen is how this announcement will be received inside the Beltway, where the vast majority of the ‘experts’ have repeatedly said that the Brotherhood had abandoned its terrorist past, which it is now clearly reviving, and had renounced violence,” Poole said. “Will this development be met with contrition, or silence? And what says the State Department who met with these guys this week?”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment before press time.
The Dangers of Obama’s Cognitive Dissonance
January 26, 2015The Dangers of Obama’s Cognitive Dissonance, Front Page Magazine,
The worst crisis we face is the relentless progress Iran is making toward creating nuclear weapons, a development that would set off an arms race in the Middle East and destabilize an already chaotic region. The Islamic Republic has already extended its malign influence into Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, creating a Shi’a crescent that threatens our allies in the region, especially Israel, Jordon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. If a failed gangster-state like North Korea can demand so much international attention just because it possesses nuclear weapons, think what Iran––with 3 times the population and the world’s 3rd largest oil reserves––could do. Oil won’t stay cheap forever.
Obama, in short, can say that “all options are on the table” all he wants, but the mullahs know he will not take military action against them, nor help Israel to. They know that Obama has withdrawn from the region, and at best will make only token gestures of engagement, like the current bombing campaign against ISIL. They know his ultimatums and “red line” threats are empty. They know he wants a deal more than they do, so he can burnish his legacy. Thus the Iranians are spinning out the negotiations, cadging extensions, pocketing concessions without reciprocating, and giving Obama just enough hope to think he can achieve what he thinks will be a Nixon-goes-to-China foreign policy coup, but will in fact will go down in history as a humiliating and dangerous blunder like Chamberlain’s Munich debacle.
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There are many moments from the past 6 years that demonstrate the criminal incompetence of this president and his administration. But for me, Obama’s interview with GloZell––whose claim to YouTube fame comes from eating Cheerios in a bathtub filled with milk––represents best the essential emptiness, triviality, and sheer dumbness of this president. Imagine Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 being interviewed by a carnival geek, and you can gauge just how low the most consequential political office in the world has sunk.
This interview, remember, took place the same time as problems requiring urgent presidential attention were escalating. Libya imploding, Iran inching toward a nuclear bomb, ISIS expanding in Syria and holding ground in northern Iraq, Iranian military assets active in Iraq, Yemen falling to an Iranian proxy terrorist group, another Iranian client, Bashar al Assad, strengthening his hold over Syria––and that’s just the Middle East. And don’t forget, the GloZell farce followed hard on Obama’s State of the Union address, a congeries of wishful thinking, narcissistic braggadocio, and outright-lies, a preposterous catalogue in which generous sprinklings of first-person-pronoun fairy dust transmuted every failure into an achievement.
It is the contradiction between fact and fiction, evident in every line of the president’s speech, that typifies progressives in general. This cognitive dissonance may simply be nothing more than the grubby machinations of those who will say and do anything for political power and the wealth and influence it brings. In other words, they know they are hypocrites. But it also could be something more dangerous than a venal character and moral corruption. One gets the feeling that many progressives actually believe what they say, that they are reciting the mantras of their ideological cult, no matter how contrary to reality or their own actions. What’s more important is that whatever the source, this failure to acknowledge reality, to think critically, and to respect intellectual coherence is dangerous to all of us, especially in the many foreign policy crises that have mushroomed on Obama’s watch.
And the worst crisis we face is the relentless progress Iran is making toward creating nuclear weapons, a development that would set off an arms race in the Middle East and destabilize an already chaotic region. The Islamic Republic has already extended its malign influence into Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, creating a Shi’a crescent that threatens our allies in the region, especially Israel, Jordon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. If a failed gangster-state like North Korea can demand so much international attention just because it possesses nuclear weapons, think what Iran––with 3 times the population and the world’s 3rd largest oil reserves––could do. Oil won’t stay cheap forever.
But in the face of this threat, Obama has appeased the mullahs under the guise of diplomatic “engagement” and negotiations, the time-proven way to avoid action while pretending to do something. Indeed, so besotted is he by his faith in diplomacy that he has threatened to veto a Congressional bill that would strengthen his negotiating position by toughening economic sanctions, the best non-lethal shot we have for changing the Iranians’ behavior, given the current decline in their oil revenues. But what we see here is a problem that transcends any one president or Secretary of State, for it reflects the intellectual error and failure of imagination peculiar to modernity.
The heart of this mistake is the belief that whatever their professed beliefs, all peoples everywhere are just like us and want the same things we want. Since our highest goods are peace and prosperity, we think other nations’ privilege the same things. If peoples behave differently, it’s because they are warped by poverty or bad governments or religious superstitions, and just need to be shown that they can achieve those boons in rational, peaceful ways, especially by adopting liberal democracy and free-market economies. Once they achieve freedom and start to enjoy the higher living standards economic development brings, they will see the error of their traditional ways and abandon aggression and violence, and resolve conflicts with the diplomacy and negotiation we prefer.
The problem with this scenario is not that other peoples don’t want freedom and prosperity, or are incapable of achieving them. Rather, it is that they often have other goals more important than the ones we prize. Like religion, for example, or national honor, or revenge. We may think such motives are irrational avatars from an uncivilized past, but they are still drivers of action in individuals and nations alike. They may be, to quote Orwell on the Nazis, “ghosts” out of the premodern world, but they’re still “ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.”
Of course, if weaker than an enemy or rival, such a people may conceal these motives, and pretend to play by the rules of the more powerful, until they are strong enough to use force to achieve their aims. In such situations, diplomatic engagement becomes a tactic for achieving through words what cannot be gained through deeds. As Robert Conquest said of our Cold War negotiations with the Soviets, “The Soviets did what their interests required when the alternative seemed less acceptable, and negotiation was merely a technical adjunct.”
History shows the truth of this insight, from the Munich Conference in 1938, to the many arms reduction treaties with the Soviet Union, which we know the Soviets and now the Russians have serially violated. More pertinent for Iran is the sorry history of the diplomatic attempts to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. For decades we indulged in cycles of concessions, agreements, conferences, and violations that all ended up with the North announcing it had gone nuclear. The failure to learn from that recent history is evident in Obama’s current reprise of that sordid dance in his engagement with Iran.
This is not to say that diplomacy can’t ever work. But to be effective, negotiation has to start with a clear understanding of the other side’s motives. One must avoid the “trap,” as Conquest called it, “of thinking that others think, within reason, like ourselves. But this trap is precisely the error that must be avoided in foreign affairs.” The rulers of Iran may lust after wealth and secular power, the default materialist motives recognized by the West. But that greed can coexist with their messianic, apocalyptic strain of Shi’a Islam, and the acceptability of violence in service to their faith that characterizes traditional Islam.
Thus when Muslim warriors tell us, as they have for 14 centuries, that they love death as we love life; when they proclaim, as Mohammed, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and the Fort Hood jihadist did, “I was instructed to fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah,” we’d better listen and take them seriously, rather than brush aside such profound religious beliefs as mere camouflage for materialist motives. Yet so blind is Obama to this truth, that he and his officials stubbornly refuse even to utter a phrase like “Islamic extremist,” since he has decided that all the Muslim violence roiling the world every day has “nothing to do with Islam.”
Second, diplomacy can work only when backed by a credible threat of force. The other side must believe that mind-concentrating violence will punish them for negotiating in bad faith and violating agreements. In the case of Iran, the mullahs must believe that we will put to the test their love of death and longing for paradise. But our long history with the Islamic Republic has proved the opposite. Iran has never been punished for taking our embassy staff hostage in 1979, for instigating the murder of 241 of our soldiers in Beirut in 1983, or for training and funding the terrorists who have killed our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or for being the world’s leading promoter of terrorist violence.
Obama, in short, can say that “all options are on the table” all he wants, but the mullahs know he will not take military action against them, nor help Israel to. They know that Obama has withdrawn from the region, and at best will make only token gestures of engagement, like the current bombing campaign against ISIL. They know his ultimatums and “red line” threats are empty. They know he wants a deal more than they do, so he can burnish his legacy. Thus the Iranians are spinning out the negotiations, cadging extensions, pocketing concessions without reciprocating, and giving Obama just enough hope to think he can achieve what he thinks will be a Nixon-goes-to-China foreign policy coup, but will in fact will go down in history as a humiliating and dangerous blunder like Chamberlain’s Munich debacle.
So much is obvious. Yet in his State of the Union speech Obama astonished even his loyal media retainers when he asserted that his negotiations have “halted the progress of its [Iran’s] nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” In reality, Iran continues to enrich uranium and is building new nuclear reactors, not to mention constructing missile sites and nuclear facilities in Syria. International inspectors are still barred from numerous sites in Iran, and so the West has no real idea of how many facilities exist there. This means that even if an agreement is signed, it will be worthless if it leaves Iran with the knowledge and technology needed to make nuclear bombs at a time of its choosing. And it means that someday we all will pay the price for our president’s cognitive dissonance.
Sisi’s Brave New Egypt?
January 21, 2015Sisi’s Brave New Egypt? Front Page Magazine,
Originally published by PJ Media.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi continues to be the antithesis of longstanding mainstream media portrayals of him.
First there was his historic speech where he, leader of the largest Arab nation, and a Muslim, accused Islamic thinking of being the scourge of humanity—in words that no Western leader would dare utter. This remarkable speech—which some say should earn him the Nobel Peace Prize—might have fallen by the wayside had it not been posted on my website and further disseminated by PJ Media’s Roger L. Simon, Michael Ledeen, Roger Kimball, and many others, including Bruce Thornton and Robert Spencer.
Instead, MSM headlines on the day of and days after Sisi’s speech included “Egypt President Sisi urged to free al-Jazeera reporter” (BBC, Jan 1), “Egyptian gays living in fear under Sisi regime” (USA Today, Jan. 2), and “George Clooney’s wife Amal risks arrest in Egypt” (Fox News, Jan. 3).
Of course, the MSM finally did report on Sisi’s speech—everyone else seemed to know about it—but, again, to portray Sisi in a negative light. Thus, after briefly quoting the Egyptian president’s call for a “religious revolution,” the New York Times immediately adds:
Others, though, insist that the sources of the violence are alienation and resentment, not theology. They argue that the authoritarian rulers of Arab states — who have tried for decades to control Muslim teaching and the application of Islamic law — have set off a violent backlash expressed in religious ideas and language.
In other words, jihadi terror is a product of Sisi, whom the NYT habitually portrays as an oppressive autocrat—especially for his attempts to try to de-radicalize Muslim sermons and teachings (as discussed in this article).
Next, Sisi went to the St. Mark Coptic Cathedral during Christmas Eve Mass to offer Egypt’s Christian minority his congratulations and well wishing. Here again he made history as the first Egyptian president to enter a church during Christmas mass—a thing vehemently criticized by the nation’s Islamists, including the Salafi party (Islamic law bans well wishing to non-Muslims on their religious celebrations, which is why earlier presidents—Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and of course Morsi—never attended Christmas mass).
Accordingly, the greetings Sisi received from the hundreds of Christians present were jubilant. His address was often interrupted by applause, clapping, and cheers of “We love you!” and “hand in hand”—phrases he reciprocated. Part of his speech follows:
Egypt has brought a humanistic and civilizing message to the world for millennia and we’re here today to confirm that we are capable of doing so again. Yes, a humanistic and civilizing message should once more emanate from Egypt. This is why we mustn’t call ourselves anything other than “Egyptians.” This is what we must be—Egyptians, just Egyptians, Egyptians indeed! I just want to tell you that Allah willing, Allah willing, we shall build our nation together, accommodate each other, make room for each other, and we shall like each other—love each other, love each other in earnest, so that people may see… So let me tell you once again, Happy New Year, Happy New Year to you all, Happy New Year to all Egyptians!
Sisi stood side-by-side with Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II—perhaps in remembrance of the fact that, when General Sisi first overthrew President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, Pope Tawadros stood side-by-side with him—and paid a heavy price: the Brotherhood and its sympathizers unleashed a Kristallnacht of “reprisals” that saw 82 Christian churches in Egypt attacked, many destroyed.
It is also significant to recall where Sisi came to offer his well-wishing to the Christians: the St. Mark Cathedral—Coptic Christianity’s most sacred church which, under Muhammad Morsi was, for the first time in its history, savagely attacked, by both Islamists and the nation’s security (see pictures here).
Once again, all of this has either been ignored or underplayed by most mainstream media.
There is, of course, a reason the MSM, which apparently follows the Obama administration’s lead, has been unkind to Sisi. One will recall that, although Sisi led the largest revolution in world history—a revolution that saw tens of millions take to the streets and ubiquitous signs and banners calling on U.S. President Obama and U.S. ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson to stop supporting terrorism (i.e., the Brotherhood)—U.S. leadership, followed by media, spoke only of a “military coup” against a “democratically elected president,” without pointing out that this president was pushing a draconian, Islamist agenda on millions who rejected it.
So what is the significance of all this—of Sisi? First, on the surface, all of this is positive. That Sisi would criticize the Muslim world and Islamic texts and thinking—in ways his Western counterparts could never—and then continue his “controversial” behavior by entering the Coptic Christian cathedral during Christmas mass to offer his greetings to Christians—a big no-no for Muslim leaders—is unprecedented. Nor can all this be merely for show. In the last attack on a Coptic church, it was two Muslim police officers guarding the church who died—not the Christian worshipers inside—a rarity.
That Sisi remains popular in Egypt also suggests that a large percentage of Egyptians approve of his behavior. Recently, for instance, after the Paris attacks, Amru Adib, host of Cairo Today, made some extremely critical comments concerning fellow Muslims/Egyptians, including by asking them “Are you, as Muslims, content with the fact that today we are all seen as terrorists by the world?… We [Egyptians] used to bring civilization to the world, today what? — We are barbarians! Barbarians I tell you!” (More of Adib’s assertions here.)
That said, the others are still there—the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, those whom we call “Islamists,” and their many sympathizers and allies.
Worst of all, they have that “corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas” that has been “sacralized over the centuries” (to use Sisi’s own words) to support them—texts and ideas that denounce Sisi as an “apostate” deserving of death, and thus promising a continued struggle for the soul of Egypt.
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