by Daniel Pipes*
1. Dewy-eyed predictions of democracy within the year proved to be as silly as they appeared to be back then. Instead, a power-hungry military leadership shows it will do whatever necessary to remain in the saddle.
By Barry Rubin
I’d like to share with you a secret. Every day I read and hear things by people who claim to be experts on the Middle East. I have read them on the land; I have read them on the sea; I have read them in the air.
And they will never surrender to reality. Here are the two main causes of error:
–They think the Middle East is just like the West so they can extrapolate from their own experience. When someone would say, “If I were Yasir Arafat, I’d….” My response would be: Stop right there. I must run out to the corner store and get a pack of cigarettes. I have never smoked a cigarette. And I kept on running. You are not Arafat or Khomeini or Saddam Hussein or whatever and unless you have some understanding of how they actually think–and not your own Western pragmatic interpretation of what they should think–there’s no sense in discussing it.
by Raymond Ibrahim*
How many are the lies that Egypt’s military regime has forwarded concerning its role in attacking and killing Egyptian demonstrators since it usurped power a year ago?
There were, for instance, the lies concerning the Maspero massacre, where the military slaughtered Christian Copts who were protesting the constant attacks on their churches.
by Raymond Ibrahim*
The Obama administration supports “democracy” and “self determination” in the Middle East—two euphemisms that, in the real world, refer to “mob-rule” and “Islamic radicalization,” respectively. Yet, as Jimmy Carter recently put it: “I don’t have any problem with that [an "Islamist victory" in Egypt], and the U.S. government doesn’t have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed.”
by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat*
When Egypt’s Lower House convened on Jan. 23, Islamists held 360 out of its 498 seats, or 72 percent. This astounding figure, however, reflects less the country’s public opinion than it does a ploy by the ruling military leadership to remain in power.
In a recent article (”Egypt’s Sham Election,” Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past “tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money,” so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) “still play this tired old game.”
By Andrew Whitehead
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist hate group founded by terrorists, has called GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to task for Gingrich’s refusal to support a Muslim candidate for president if said candidate adhered to Sharia law.
According to CAIR’s National Legislative Director Corey Saylor:
“Several days ago The New York Times revealed a historic shift in US foreign policy, saying ‘the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties’ with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to US interests.” Given what the Muslim Brotherhood says IN ITS OWN WORDS EVERYDAY, I can only conclude that President Obama is a fool. Read for yourself at MEMRI:
The website of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt, Ikhwanonline.com, contains articles with antisemitic motifs, including Holocaust denial and descriptions of the “Jewish character” as covetous, exploitative, and a source of evil in human society. While articles of this tenor have been posted on the site in the past, their posting has recently taken on greater importance in light of the group’s increasing strength following the ouster of the Mubarak regime, as reflected by the results of the recent parliamentary elections.
In addition to antisemitic content, articles on the site also include praise for jihad and martyrdom, and condemnation of negotiation as a means of regaining Islamic lands. Among these are articles calling to kill Zionists and praising the September 9, 2011 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo — which one article called a landmark of the Egyptian revolution. Some senior officials in the MB’s Freedom and Justice party published articles on the site expressing reservations regarding the peace agreement with Israel and insisting that Egypt was entitled to amend it. …
by Raymond Ibrahim*
Although many Muslim leaders openly articulate their efforts as part of a larger picture — one that culminates in the resurrection of a caliphate adversarial by nature to all things non-Muslim — many Western leaders see only the moment, either out of context or, worse, in a false context built atop wishful thinking.
Among other things, this myopia causes virtually all Western politicians to overlook long-term threats and focus exclusively on violence and terror, the tangible and temporal — those things that may coincide with their tenure.
by Raymond Ibrahim*
The Nigerian church bombings, in which the Islamic group Boko Haram ["Western Education Is Forbidden"] killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world. Elsewhere in this region, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone.” A few examples:
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*
In the course of the present unrest across the Middle East and North Africa, it has become clear that questions of identity are going to be extremely important in deciding the future paths of the various countries in turmoil, not only as regards the divide between Islamists and secularists, but also concerning ethnic and sectarian tensions in countries like Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
For Christians in the region, the issue of identity will similarly be important in determining ways to adapt to the changing political order. This naturally raises the problem of how exactly these Christians define themselves. For example, what does it mean to speak of an “Arab Christian”? Which Christians in the region feel the strongest affinity with such a description? Which ones reject it most vehemently?
by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat*
According to Egypt’s elections committee, the Muslim Brotherhood won 37 percent of the vote of the first round of voting in Egypt; and the Salafis, who promote a yet more extreme Islamist program, won 24 percent, giving them together a jaw-dropping 61 percent of the vote.
This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?
By Barry Rubin
Since last February I have predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would win elections in Egypt. People have thought me very pessimistic. Now the votes are starting to come in and … it’s much worse than I thought. But my prediction that the Brotherhood and the other Islamists would gain a slight majority seems to have been fulfilled and then some. According to most reports the Brotherhood is scoring at just below 40 percent all by itself.
Why worse? For two reasons:
By Barry Rubin
Assuming that the Muslim Brotherhood and smaller Islamist groups do very well in Egypt’s parliamentary election today, what does it tell us about the modern history and political future of that country? The main cause for the political upheaval in Egypt was the long-term failure of the Arab nationalist regime that governed there, and in much of the Arab world, for well over half a century.
Rulers’ inability to keep promises about what they were going to achieve — pan-Arab union, rapid social and economic progress, genocide against Israel, driving out Western influences — has long been clear. Their corruption, the lack of freedom they offered and the economic hardships they brought have also long been clear.
by Raymond Ibrahim*
Egypt’s Maspero massacre — where the military killed dozens of Christians protesting the destruction of their churches — dominates October’s persecution headlines. Facts and details concerning the military’s “crimes against humanity” are documented in this report, and include videos of armored-vehicles running over civilians, a catalog of lies and deceitful tactics employed by Egypt’s rulers and state media, and other matters overlooked by the West.
by Daniel Pipes*
Western diplomats and journalists fell for Stalin’s show trials but eventually learned not to accept developments in the Soviet Union at face value. In the Soviet Union’s later years, a crowd assaulting a foreign embassy would have been assumed to have state approval.
Other autocrats engage in similar tricks and illusions. Indeed, it’s often best to bring the U.S.S.R. to mind while trying to understand tyrannies. Specifically, that was the case concerning the Sep. 9 mob attack against the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
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