Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews;
Come on you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas.
Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews;
Come on you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas.Forget about the whole world, forget about the conferences,
Brandish your weapons, say your prayers.
Forget about the whole world, forget about the conferences,
Pray to the Lord that he banishes the sleep from the eyes of all Jews.—Excerpt of a song performed at the May 1 campaign launch of Muhammad Mursi, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate.According to Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, who emceed the event, “[Egypt] can see how the dream of the Islamic caliphate is being realized by Dr. Muhammad Mursi, his supporters, and his political party. We can see how the great dream shared by us all, that the United States of the Arabs be restored, will be [actualized] by Muhammad Mursi. The capital of the caliphate—the capital of the United States of the Arabs—will be Jerusalem. Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina; it shall be Jerusalem. Our cry shall be: ‘millions of martyrs march towards Jerusalem.’” [To view the video see ‘On Topics’ below—Ed.]
On Monday, Egypt’s electoral commission announced that Muhammad Mursi achieved a commanding victory in absentee voting for Egypt’s presidency. With results from 33 Egyptian diplomatic missions counted, the Brotherhood’s Mursi came in far ahead of competitors with 106,252 votes, followed by rival Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh with 77,499.
Voting began in Egypt on Wednesday, with a new president scheduled to be sworn in by July 1.
POLITICAL ISLAM TO COMPLETE TAKEOVER OF EGYPT,
MILITARY PERMITTING
Elhanan Miller
Times of Israel, May 23, 2012
Hours before polls opened in Egypt Wednesday for the first free elections in 60 years, many in Egypt—and indeed in the Arab world at large—made plain their sense that they are living through a historic moment. “If only I were Egyptian and could vote,” mused Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor of Arab-nationalist daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. “More than 50 million Egyptian voters are heading to the polls to elect their first president following the success of their blessed peaceful revolution.…”
Atwan’s sentiments may sound melodramatic, but they reflect a deep Arab sense that something dramatic has changed in the Middle East. In fact, if the parliamentary elections of late 2011 where religious parties swept 70% of the vote are any indication, Egypt’s next president will be an Islamist. And judging by the results of the absentee votes…Egypt’s transformation from a military autocracy to Islamic [rule is nearly complete].
Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Mursi won 36% of the absentee ballots, followed by independent Islamist candidate Abd Al-Munim Abu-Fattouh with 27%. The two leading secular candidates, former foreign minister and Arab League chief Amr Moussa and former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, won a mere 13% and 8% of the absentee vote, respectively. About 140,000 Egyptians living abroad cast their votes…a sample which…could be an indicator of the final results.…
Egypt’s first round of elections on May 23 and 24 is accompanied by a new-found sense of responsibility.… Even the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF)…issued a flowery-worded statement urging Egyptians to flock to the polls and stressing their political neutrality. “The Supreme Council of Armed Forces remains equally distant from all presidential candidates,” read the statement. “We allow the Egyptian voter complete freedom of choice.”
But amid the platitudes and outbursts of unabated optimism, worrying signs of a grim future continue to emerge. The fragmented Egyptian parliament failed on Monday to agree on a constitutional declaration, casting doubt on the exact prerogatives of the president and the parliament following the elections. Some representatives of the youth movements who led the January 25 revolution are even calling for an election boycott. “How can we participate in elections completely controlled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces?” asked the activists in a statement issued Tuesday.…
Yet according to one Egyptian security specialist, the military council will withdraw from political life following the elections, no later than July 1. “If the presidential elections end in the first round, SCAF will turn over power next week,” retired general Sameh Seif Yazal told the Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat.…
Will the military really sit back through Egypt’s historic moment and enjoy the show? We are about to find out.
VOTING IN EGYPT AS ‘HOLY WAR’ TO EMPOWER SHARIA
Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPage, May 23, 2012
Despite the fact that some in the West portray Islam and democracy as being perfectly compatible, evidence continues to emerge that, for many countries in the Middle East, democracy and elections are various means to one end: the establishment of a decidedly undemocratic form of law—Islamic, or Sharia Law.
Thus, Egyptian cleric Dr. Talat Zahran proclaimed that it is “obligatory to cheat at elections,” his logic being that voting is a tool, an instrument, the only value of which is to empower Sharia. Likewise, Hazim Shuman, a cleric who has his own TV program, issued a fatwa likening the voting for Islamist candidates who will implement Sharia to “jihad,” adding that paradise awaits whoever is “martyred” during the electoral campaign.
According to Al Wafd, last Friday, May 18, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of if not the most authoritative clerics in the Islamic world, “called on all Egyptians to vote for one of the Islamist candidates.…” Qaradawi described them as “best for Egypt” because they will “apply the Islamic Sharia and achieve justice.” Moreover, during his Friday sermon, Qaradawi said that it is “mandatory for every Egyptian to go and vote at the presidential elections,” calling it a form of “obligatory testimony” on behalf of Islam, and quoting Koran 2:283 as proof: “And do not conceal testimony, and whoever conceals it, his heart is surely sinful; and Allah knows what you do.” In short, Egypt’s Muslims are being threatened with hell fire if they don’t vote for the Sharia-pushing candidates.
Qaradawi’s position was restated Monday, May 21, when, according to Al Ahram, the Sharia Body for Rights and Reforms—one of the most powerful Islamic organizations, with members from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, and Al Azhar—issued a fatwa asserting that it is “impermissible to vote for anyone not intending to apply Islamic Sharia, and it is obligatory to vote for those who do seek to implement it.…”
If Qaradawi and many others are stressing the obligation to vote for those Islamists most likely to enforce Sharia, Sheikh Osama Qassim, a member of Egypt’s notorious Islamic Jihad, which also seeks to enforce Islamic law, recently attacked the non-Islamist candidates—specifically naming Ahmed Shafiq and Amr Mussa—saying that if they win the presidential elections, it will only be “by cheating,” at which point “the Islamist organizations” will resort to “armed action” (code for Jihad). He added that such presidents will suffer the same fate of Anwar Sadat (assassination), but that this time, the struggle will see “the Islamists achieve complete domination” in Egypt.
Finally, beyond threats and commands are the sheer bribes—in this case, a form of Islamic “bread and circuses.” As they were accused earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood was just caught bribing Egypt’s poor with packets of food. On Tuesday, an Egyptian activist posted a video on YouTube about “the Brotherhood’s scandal: they buy the votes of the poor through food and drink.” The video shows several poor women sitting with bags of food from the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice” party.…
Bribery is a form of deceit, and these presidential elections are something of a war for Egypt’s future; so, considering that Islam’s prophet Muhammad famously declared that “war is deceit,” all of the aforementioned approaches—threats of hellfire, threats of jihad, and food bribes—are legitimate.
THE SCARIEST SENTENCE
Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2012
If I’ve ever seen a sentence that spells disaster in the Middle East it’s this one: “People say things in a campaign and then when they get elected they actually have to govern.”
The specific context of this statement by [US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland] were remarks by the Obama administration’s favorite Egyptian presidential candidate, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, in a debate. He called Israel racist, an enemy of Egypt, and a state based on occupation (that is, which has no right to exist), then calling to alter the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain, says Nuland, he doesn’t really mean it. The problem with this, like hundreds of other statements by the currently dominant worldview in the West is that almost nobody is around in the mainstream media or academia to say: Wait a minute!… So let us parse Nuland’s sentence, which does accurately reflect US foreign policy today, and is indeed a death or prison sentence for many people in the Middle East.
Nothing is easier, of course, than finding examples of politicians who did not keep their election promises. But that’s not what we are dealing with here. No, the case here is: Do radical ideological movements say things in their campaigns to gain power, including election campaigns, which disappear due to the pragmatism forced by the need to govern?
I’ve heard this argument before, most notably in 1978-1979, when the Islamist revolution came to Iran. The Islamists have won every election since and have not been moderated by the need to govern. On the contrary, they have used their extremism to continue to govern.
“The depiction of Ayatollah Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.… Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.” It is only poetic injustice that Richard Falk, a man who totally misjudged the Iranian radical threat, has now been made by the UN the judge of Israel, which is facing that same threat.
The same kind of thing was said throughout the 1990s. Yasser Arafat will be moderated by having to pave roads and collect the garbage. Power is inevitably moderating and ideology is meaningless. This is not true, and history shows it isn’t true.
Were the Communists moderated by being in power? Well not in the USSR.… And not in China (well, yes, more than a bit, after only about a half-century). We’re still waiting for Cuba and North Korea, both between five and six decades old. Add in such examples as the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Ba’ath Party in Syria or Iraq, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
It is important to understand why this isn’t true. There are some dangerously false assumptions in Nuland’s simple sentence. She is assuming that radical movements are saying things to please voters in the same way that American politicians do. But American politicians are overwhelmingly unideological.…
But what if American politicians sincerely and passionately believed that every plank on their platform was ordered by the supreme being and that this was in fact the only reason their political party existed? Suppose their rivals were willing and able to destroy their careers or even kill them if they showed they were totally phony in their devotion? Suppose a large portion of the masses took all of this seriously and meant to hold them to their promises? And suppose they truly believed themselves that instituting Shari’a law…was the only way to govern? In other words, there are lots of reasons for radicals to remain radicals in government. And, after all, that is what usually happens.…
AN OPEN LETTER TO EGYPT’S NEXT PRESIDENT—
FROM TWO IDF RESERVISTS
Daniel Suhareanu & Avi Nave
Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2012
Mr. President,
Undeniably, you have a momentous undertaking ahead of you. Your economy is on the verge of collapse. Millions of your citizens are jobless, lack security and any sense of hope for the future. Egypt’s Coptic Christian community continues to wither away at the hands of religious extremists. Moreover, after three decades of peace, the historic treaty between our two nations is under threat, shaking the very foundation of stability in our region.
Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest mind in modern history, once said, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Watching Egypt’s new leaders confront these challenges, we fear that Einstein’s logic has fallen on deaf ears.
During campaign rallies, you referred to Israel as an “adversary” or “enemy,” to uproarious applause from potential voters. Debates turned into Israel-bashing competitions over who was more determined to review, alter or abrogate relations between our two nations. Meanwhile, journalists, lawmakers and religious clerics across the country continue to promote the same hateful conspiracy theories that were rampant under Mubarak’s rule.
At a time when Egyptians are in desperate need of inspiration, their leaders have chosen to invest in populism, demagoguery and propaganda. It’s a familiar strategy in the Middle East. As we speak, [Syrian President] Bashar Assad continues to stake the legitimacy of his murderous regime on his hatred for the Jewish state. Your predecessor also vainly attempted to scapegoat Israel in order to divert attention from his own failures.
By fueling the flames of hatred, you condemn both of our peoples to an ominous future. After years of neglect, the sands of the Sinai Peninsula have become fertile ground for terrorist activity, fomented by those who seek to drive a wedge between us. In August 2011, those extremists nearly succeeded. In penetrating our border and killing eight of our citizens, they caused a crisis that culminated in a brazen assault on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
Make no mistake; these terrorists remain determined to dismantle our decades-strong peace treaty. They have turned the Sinai into a launching pad for rockets aimed at our cities. Tell us, what will happen when a terrorist rocket strikes a hotel in Eilat? This nightmare scenario could materialize at any moment—and bring our two nations to the brink of war.
Despite this terrifying possibility, Egyptian leaders continue to incite their people using violent rhetoric. Even as they keep emergency rule firmly in place, your generals continuously call to “break the legs” and “cut out the tongues” of foreign states in the region—a clear reference to Israel.
While most Egyptians are too young to have experienced the brutal wars with Israel, their aging leadership would be wise to remember: It was the 30 years of conflict that drove our leaders to sign the Camp David accords. It was the tens of thousands of dead Egyptians and Israelis that prompted Anwar Sadat to fly to Jerusalem and address the Knesset. It was the billions of dollars wasted on our many wars which compelled our leaders to make peace and secure a better future for our two peoples.
Today, Egypt is once again at a historic crossroads. While the road ahead is uncertain, one thing is clear: Incitement against Israel will not create jobs for Egyptian youth. It will not build roads and infrastructure in the Nile Delta. It will not re-assimilate the citizens of the Sinai Peninsula back into society.
We implore you, don’t allow Egyptian society to descend into further chaos and instability. The narrative regarding Israel must be reformed. The inherent value of the peace between our two nations cannot be underestimated, and a future confrontation with the Jewish state is not in the best interests of your people. Rather, Israel has become a crucial security partner for Egypt and acts as a natural ally to counter the influence of those nations who seek to assert their influence over the entire region.
The Middle East needs a strong Egypt, one that will broker peace instead of war. The Egyptian people deserve a leader who will unlock their vast potential, reinvigorate their sense of hope, and guide them down the path to prosperity. Before you take your oath of office, it would be wise to take a good, hard look in the mirror. Will you be that leader?
Sincerely,
Daniel Suhareanu and Avi Nave.
(The authors are reserve soldiers in elite combat units in the Israel Defense Forces.)
