About that Muslim Brotherhood...

[KingOrfeo]

Egyptian presidential election starts tomorrow. (Well, today.)

From The Nation:

Among the top contenders is Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a 60-year-old liberal Islamist and former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. With a campaign that combines pro-revolution rhetoric and criticism of the military council with Islamist credentials, Aboul Fotouh has managed to appeal to a broad base of voters, building a unique coalition of support that brings together secular liberals and ultraconservative Salafis.

<snip>

Meanwhile, Aboul Fotouh’s former group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is promoting its own candidate, Mohamed Morsi, a 61-year-old engineer with a PhD from the University of Southern California and the president of its Freedom and Justice Party, which won roughly half of the seats in parliament last fall.

Morsi was not the Brotherhood’s first choice. In late March, the group reversed its earlier pledge not to field a presidential candidate by announcing it would nominate Khairet al-Shater, its leading strategist and financier, to run. When Shater was disqualified from the race two weeks later by the presidential elections commission over a politically motivated prison sentence he received under the Mubarak regime, the Brotherhood threw its weight behind Morsi.

<snip>

Morsi and Aboul Fotouh—the two leading Islamist contenders—are also pitted against the candidate long considered the front-runner in the race: Amr Moussa, the former Secretary General of the Arab League who served as Mubarak’s foreign minister from 1991 to 2001.

Moussa—perhaps more than any other candidate—enjoys widespread name recognition across urban and rural areas of the country. The 76-year-old diplomat has campaigned heavily over the past year, seeking to portray himself as an experienced statesmen that can bring stability back to the country and act as a bulwark against the rise of Islamist groups in post-Mubarak Egypt. In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood’s roughly 50 percent parliamentary bloc, ultraconservative Salafis won 25 percent of the seats in the People’s Assembly.

<snip>

Another candidate with ties to the former regime who has emerged as a dark-horse contender is Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister. A retired general who once commanded the country’s air force, Shafik served as Mubarak’s civil aviation minister for ten years. He was named prime minister on January 29, 2011—four days after the revolution began. With support from the military council, he remained in the post after Mubarak’s ouster, but was forced out of office just three weeks later in the midst of mass protests against him in Tahrir Square.

<snip>

The most prominent leftist contender in the election is Hamdeen Sabahi, a socialist and Arab nationalist in the tradition of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sabahi is also enjoying a last-minute surge in his candidacy, with an impressive roster of endorsements that includes leading intellectuals, artists and activists and a third-place finish in the Egyptian expat vote, capturing 15 percent, behind Morsi and Aboul Fotouh.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidate considered closest to the revolutionary youth who first led the uprising against Mubarak and who have continued to struggle against the military council that replaced him is Khaled Ali, a 40-year-old labor lawyer who made a name for himself fighting private-sector corruption and defending independent unions and worker protests. Ali spent his last day of campaigning by joining more than 200 people on a twenty-four-hour hunger strike in solidarity with hundreds of detainees facing military trials after being arrested in the wake of clashes with the army near the ministry of defense earlier this month.

 

[Beco]

Can you imagine being a woman in Egypt, standing side by side with your men in protest of the corrupt government..........then, the Brotherhood takes over and you're forced to wear a Burqa?

that has to suck....

 

[KingOrfeo]

Can you imagine being a woman in Egypt, standing side by side with your men in protest of the corrupt government..........then, the Brotherhood takes over and you're forced to wear a Burqa?

that has to suck....

The MB won't do that. That would be Al-Nour.

As for MB (or, in Egyptian elections, the Freedom and Justice Party):

Political platform

On launching the new party, the Muslim Brotherhood confirmed that it did not object to women or Copts serving in a ministerial post (cabinet),[20] though it deems both "unsuitable" for the presidency.[21] The group supports free-market capitalism, but without "manipulation or monopoly". The party’s political program would include tourism as a main source of national income.[22]

The Freedom and Justice Party will be based on Islamic law, "but will be acceptable to a wide segment of the population," said leading MB member Essam al-Arian.[23] The party’s membership will be open to all Egyptians who accept the terms of its program.[24] The spokesperson for the party said that "when we talk about the slogans of the revolution – freedom, social justice, equality – all of these are in the Sharia (Islamic law)."[25] There is rivalry between the Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafis, who regard the Freedom and Justice Party as having 'watered down' its values.[26]

It's more or less the Islamic equivalent of Christian democracy. No CD party in Europe wants to reinstate the Inquisition or revive the Crusades. (And no sensible Egyptian wants to get so nasty with Israel that U.S. aid dries up -- I understand we give roughly equal amounts to both countries.) And we have more than a few Republicans in the U.S. (not the majority of them, I think, not any more) whose gorge would rise at the thought of a female POTUS or a non-Christian POTUS. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the shwarma.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Watching the news tonight, it was very evident that Moussa the diplomat was by far the most charismatic of the bunch, interestingly, 3 of the 4 frontrunners are considered "liberal" by Arabic standards (Morsi is the one conservative).

I'll go out on a limb and predict Moussa will be announced as the winner on May 29th. Hopefully he'll get over 50% to avoid a runoff.

 

[KingOrfeo]

So far, it looks like there will be a runoff, in which the MB's Morsi almost certainly will be one of the two candidates; who will be the other is not yet clear.

DON'T PANIC. See post #903.

 

[busybody..]

The MB won't do that. That would be Al-Nour.

FUCKING ASSHOLE.

Muslim Brotherhood Candidiate Leading Presidential Election Promises To Bring Sharia Law To Egypt If He Wins Run-Off Vote…





CAIRO — When he joined the race for Egypt’s presidency just five weeks ago, Mohamed Morsy was mocked as the Muslim Brotherhood’s uncharismatic “spare tyre” after its first-choice candidate was disqualified.

But the 60-year-old engineer came first in the opening round, according to a Brotherhood tally after most votes were counted, thanks to a campaign that showed off the unequalled political muscle of Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement.

The run-off on June 16 and 17 with second-placed Ahmed Shafiq, who served as deposed leader Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, gives Egyptians a stark choice between a military man linked to the past and an Islamist whose conservative message appeals to some and alarms others in this nation of 82 million.

A Brotherhood official said that with votes counted from about 12,800 of the roughly 13,100 polling stations, Morsy had 25 percent, Shafiq 23 percent, a rival Islamist Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh 20 percent and leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi 19 percent.

Calling himself the only authentic Islamist in the race, Mursi has targeted devout voters whose support helped the Brotherhood and the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist movement to secure 70 percent of parliament seats earlier this year.


He has promised to implement Islamic sharia during rallies peppered with references to the Koran, God and the Prophet Mohammad and occasionally interrupted by pauses for mass prayer.

 

[Beco]

Watching the news tonight, it was very evident that Moussa the diplomat was by far the most charismatic of the bunch, interestingly, 3 of the 4 frontrunners are considered "liberal" by Arabic standards (Morsi is the one conservative).

I'll go out on a limb and predict Moussa will be announced as the winner on May 29th. Hopefully he'll get over 50% to avoid a runoff.

“We’ll pay the price here if any candidate decides to antagonize Israel,” a Sinai Bedouin told the website Egypt Independent. Another local resident gave a slightly different view, saying he would vote for either Moussa or Shafiq because “they are the only ones who can protect the Sinai from Israel.”

Its the other way around, pal....sheesh! What is with these people? Who bombing who from the Sinai??

 

[Beco]

Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power. They will cut off energy supplies to Israel. They will end the Dayton Accords, and call for the destruction of Israel. if they have not already.

Yay, President Obama for endorsing and advocating this!

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power. They will cut off energy supplies to Israel. They will end the Dayton Accords, and call for the destruction of Israel. if they have not already.

Yay, President Obama for endorsing and advocating this!

Maybe they'll study the lessons of how Israel cut off supplies to Palestine territory!

Oopsie, I said something critical of Israel. Time for you to get all haughty and Holocausty!!

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Maybe they'll study the lessons of how Israel cut off supplies to Palestine territory!

Oopsie, I said something critical of Israel. Time for you to get all haughty and Holocausty!!

there is something you gotta love about muslim's that blow themselves up. talk about a bunch of brainwashed idiots.


the only mistake that America is making is that we don't put them all in 1 room, and give them explosives to blow themselves up. it would be so cool if, after one packs on 100 lbs of explosives and 50 lbs of bearings , next 10-20 others get a up front view of that person's work

 

[phrodeau]

there is something you gotta love about muslim's that blow themselves up. talk about a bunch of brainwashed idiots.


the only mistake that America is making is that we don't put them all in 1 room, and give them explosives to blow themselves up. it would be so cool if, after one packs on 100 lbs of explosives and 50 lbs of bearings , next 10-20 others get a up front view of that person's work

You're a sadist, I see. That explains a lot.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Egyptian presidential election starts tomorrow. (Well, today.)

From The Nation:

The Facebook Caliphate
By Mark Steyn, NRO
May 26, 2012 4:00 A.M.

So how’s that old Arab Spring going? You remember — the “Facebook Revolution.” As I write, they’re counting the votes in Egypt’s presidential election, so by the time you read this the pecking order may have changed somewhat. But currently in first place is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi, who in an inspiring stump speech before the students of Cairo University the other night told them, “Death in the name of Allah is our goal.”

Like!

In second place is the military’s man Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister and a man who in a recent television interview said that “unfortunately the revolution succeeded.”

Like!

In third place is moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a 9/11 Truther endorsed by the terrorist organization al-Gama’a al-Islamiya. He’s a “moderate” because he thinks Egyptian Christians should be allowed to run for the presidency, although they shouldn’t be allowed to win.

Like!

As I said, this thrilling race is by no means over, and one would not rule out an eventual third-place finish by a rival beacon of progress such as Amr Moussa, the longtime Arab League flack and former Mubarak foreign minister. So what happened to all those candidates embodying the spirit of Egypt’s modern progressive democratic youth movement that all those Western media rubes were cooing over in Tahrir Square a year ago? How are they doing in Egypt’s first free presidential election?

You have 0 friends!

I don’t know about you, but I have the feeling that Messrs. Morsi, Shafiq, and Abolfotoh are not spending much time on Facebook, or even on Twitter. Indeed, for a “social-media revolution,” the principal beneficiaries seem to be remarkably antisocial: Liberated from the grip of Mubarak the new Egypt is a land where the Israeli embassy gets attacked and ransacked, Christians get killed and their churches burned to the ground, female reporters for the Western media are sexually assaulted in broad daylight, and for the rest of the gals a woman’s place is in the clitoridectomy clinic. In the course of the election campaign, the Muslim Brotherhood has cast off the veil of modernity and moderation that so beguiled the U.S. State Department and the New York Times: Khairat el-Shater, the deputy leader, now says that “the Koran is our Constitution” and that Mubarak-era laws permitting, for example, women to seek divorce should be revised. As the TV cleric Safwat Hegazy told thousands of supporters at a Brotherhood rally in the Nile Delta, “We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate coming true.”

...

Whatever one feels about the sharia-enforcing, Jew-hating, genital-mutilating enthusiasts of the Muslim Brotherhood, they do accurately reflect a significant slice — and perhaps a majority — of the Egyptian people. The problem with the old-school dictators was that in the end Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Qaddafi didn’t represent anything other than their Swiss bank accounts. The question for the wider world is what do “social media” represent? If they supposedly embody the forces of progress and modernity, then they’ve just taken an electoral pounding from guys who haven’t had a new idea since the seventh century.

No one should begrudge Mark Zuckerberg his billions, and decent people should revile in the strongest terms thug-senator Chuck Schumer’s attempts to punish Zuckerberg’s partner Eduardo Saverin for wishing to enjoy his profits under the less confiscatory tax arrangements of Singapore: It is a sign of terminal desperation when regimes that can’t compete for talent focus their energies on ever more elaborate procedures to prevent freeborn individuals voting with their feet.

...

A century ago, the West exported its values. So, in Farouk’s Egypt, at the start of a new legislative session, the King was driven to his toytown parliament to deliver the speech from the throne in an explicit if ramshackle simulacrum of Westminster’s rituals of constitutional monarchy. Today, we decline to export values, and complacently assume, as the very term “Facebook Revolution” suggests, that technology marches in support of modernity. It doesn’t. Facebook’s flat IPO and Egypt’s presidential election are in that sense part of the same story, of a developed world whose definitions of innovation and achievement have become too shrunken and undernourished. The vote in Egypt tells us a lot about them, but it also tells us something about us.

Like!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power. They will cut off energy supplies to Israel. They will end the Dayton Accords, and call for the destruction of Israel. if they have not already.

Yay, President Obama for endorsing and advocating this!

See, that's the problem with you wingers, you refuse to give the President his due!



His Cairo Speech was the LAUNCHING of the Arab Spring and one of the reason he was prehumorously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Egyptian Elections: Confirming Loring's 1884 Assessment?
Andrew G. Bostom, The American Thinker
May 26, 2012

William Wing Loring (1818-1886) was a an American soldier, lawyer, and Florida state representative. His career as a professional soldier included service in the armies of the United States, the Confederacy, and Egypt.

Loring fought in the Mexican War, during which he received two brevets for valor -- one to lieutenant colonel and another to colonel. A native Southerner, from Wilmington, North Carolina, Loring resigned from the U.S. Army on May 13, 1861 to fight with the Confederacy, telling his fellow officers, "The South is my home, and I am going to throw up my commission and shall join the Southern Army, and each of you can do as you think best."

Following the Confederate defeat in the Civil War, Loring served for nine years in the army of Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt. He thus joined some fifty Union and Confederate veterans who had been recommended to the Khedive by General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The April 1884 Preface to Loring's memoir, A Confederate Soldier in Egypt, notes:

[Loring's] acquaintance of more than a quarter century with Eastern lands and peoples, and ten years passed in high command in Egypt itself, with unlimited opportunities for study and observation in every direction, may perhaps justify the writer in hoping that the results here presented may not be unwelcome to the general reader.

From Loring's uniquely informed perspective, the 1884 Preface adds:

[He] endeavored to give in succinct outline such features of Egypt's history, political, religious, and social, as was deemed necessary to complete understanding of the drama now being enacted on her soil.

Ignaz Goldziher, the pre-eminent late 19th- and early 20th-century Islamologist and one of the greatest scholars of Islam the West ever produced, placed the phenomena Loring observed and described into a broader context reflecting global trends in Islamdom, circa 1882:

In recent times the Muhammadan world has been excited by a powerful idea. This is the idea of Panislamism. The spiritual fusion of politically disarrayed Islam into a great unity. The external form of this unity is the institution of the indivisible Caliphate, which is the oldest political structure of Islam. ... With regard to Islam, the unification of Muhammadan powers, and the awakening of the awareness of their unity and solidarity under a common authority is seen as the sole remedy against the dangers lurking in the womb of the future. And this unification is only conceived under the flag of the united Caliphate of Islam[.] ... [T]he idea of Panislamism is a militant idea in their [Muslim] eyes, as it was a militant idea at the time of the birth of young Islam. This idea now reigns over Muhammadan public opinion, in some places with such power that the representatives of European governments now complain of it.

But it was Loring's unapologetic 1884 observations of Egypt's deep-seated Islamic irredentism which, sadly, appear to have persisted into the present, as reflected by the vox populi ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood during the country's first series of open, democratic political elections -- both parliamentary and, now, presidential.

The precepts of the Koran form his [i.e., a Muslim's] character and shape his destiny. It penetrates every detail of his daily life, and rules even his most intimate domestic relations. It makes the yoke of the most crushing despotism the will of God. Even trades and professions are under its control. It is primarily responsible for the degradation of woman to the position of a toy and a slave. Everywhere in Egypt and the Turkish possessions the harem is filled with women, the property of one man who controls it. ... Reforms may be attempted, and partial and temporary success attend the efforts; but there can never be any lasting advance in education, morals, or government without a radical change in the religion of the East. Slavery in the household is the same today it has been for centuries. ... The Egyptian race will continue to languish under the heel of..Islam until some Arab Luther shall arise to strike off their fetters. ... They ... entrench themselves in their besotted ignorance against every form of progress as something contrary to Allah's command. Their daily prayer is, "O God, assist the forces of the Muslims. ... O God, frustrate the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of thy religion. O God, invest their banners and ruin their habitations, and give them and their wealth as booty to the Muslims!" In their daily lesson to their children [Note: confirming the slightly earlier 19th-century description of this prayer in E.W. Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, and contemporary Egyptian children's textbook analyses] they teach them to say, "O God, destroy the infidel and the polytheist, thine enemies, the enemies of thy religion. O God, make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and their families and their household and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, and their brothers and their friends, and their possessions and their wealth, and their race and their lands, as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of the beings of the whole world." It is no wonder that these people are ignorant and superstitious, and are carried away by the pride of religion, when the same barbarous lesson is taught that their led ancestors to rapine and plunder, and is the doctrine implanted in the mind of the present generation.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog...tions_confirming_lorings_1884_assessment.html

 

[Beco]

Maybe they'll study the lessons of how Israel cut off supplies to Palestine territory!

Oopsie, I said something critical of Israel. Time for you to get all haughty and Holocausty!!

Sorry my friend. The only "lowbrow feral brutes" are the Israel hating fanatics who fall over themselves with hysterical rhetoric, ridiculous hyperbole, and base lies in YOUR laughable attempts to attack Israel.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Sorry my friend. The only "lowbrow feral brutes" are the Israel hating fanatics who fall over themselves with hysterical rhetoric, ridiculous hyperbole, and base lies in YOUR laughable attempts to attack Israel.

Thas right, my friend, Israel is above criticism, because....because...umm...THE HOLOCAUST!!

 

[Beco]

Thas right, my friend, Israel is above criticism, because....because...umm...THE HOLOCAUST!!

that's your issue, not ours....if that is what you believe, then I guess its true, in your mind.

 

[RobDownSouth]

that's your issue, not ours....if that is what you believe, then I guess its true, in your mind.

Why is it, when you guys get cornered, you start reflexively nattering about the "trooth"?

 

[Beco]

Thas right, my friend, Israel is above criticism, because....because...umm...THE HOLOCAUST!!

that's right, my friend, and we can't criticize Obama because he's black......

 

[phrodeau]

Now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power. They will cut off energy supplies to Israel. They will end the Dayton Accords, and call for the destruction of Israel. if they have not already.

Yay, President Obama for endorsing and advocating this!

Israel has enough energy. They only need it six days a week.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Egyptian Elections: Confirming Loring's 1884 Assessment?
Andrew G. Bostom, The American Thinker
May 26, 2012


http://www.americanthinker.com/blog...tions_confirming_lorings_1884_assessment.html

Link spamming the same article in multiple threads doesn't impress anyone.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Morsy (apparently) wins -- FWIW.

The Muslim Brotherhood has declared their candidate, Mohammed Morsi, the winner of Egypt's presidential runoff, and unofficial vote tallies show him leading the race by more than one million votes.

The group held a press conference early on Monday morning to announce Morsi's victory. With 12,793 of the country's roughly 13,000 polling stations reporting, Morsi had 12.7 million votes, while his opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, had 11.84 million, the group said.

<snip>

Representatives from Shafiq's campaign told several local media outlets that they would not accept the Brotherhood's tally, and would wait for final results.

In a statement, Shafiq, the final prime minister under deposed president Hosni Mubarak, also accused the Brotherhood of fraud.

<snip>


SCAF issues its constitutional annex

The new president will take office amid great political uncertainty.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt's military rulers, added to the confusion on Sunday night, when they released their long-awaited "constitutional annex", a decree outlining the powers of the new president.

Those powers are quite limited: He may declare war, for example, only after seeking SCAF's approval. The decree also reminds the president that he can call on the military to quell "unrest" inside the country.

SCAF dissolved parliament last week following a ruling by the supreme court, which found the legislature unconstitutional. The court ruled that provisions of the electoral law - which allowed political parties to compete for seats reserved for independent candidates - violated the constitution.

With the legislature gone, the generals reasserted control over the legislative process, and over the country's budget.

"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces shall exercise the powers referred to under the first clause of article 56 [the article on legislative power]... until the election of a new People's Assembly," the decree states.

The decree issued on Sunday promises fresh legislative elections, but not until a new constitution has been drafted. Before it was dissolved, the parliament appointed a 100-member assembly to draft that constitution; it will be allowed to continue its work, though if it runs into "obstacles", SCAF will appoint a replacement.

The Muslim Brotherhood was quick to condemn the decree, calling it "null and unconstitutional" in a brief statement on Twitter. Asked about the decree during the group's press conference, Ahmed Abdel-Atti, Morsi's campaign co-ordinator, said he expected "popular action" against it in the near future.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Your reading assignment http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1235

Still think the protests in Egypt are about freedom and democracy?

I think David Horowitz is an odious crank, and you embarrass yourself by linking to any of his sites.

 

[koalabear]

I think David Horowitz is an odious crank, and you embarrass yourself by linking to any of his sites.

Funny, that's what people say about you twinkie boy.