Egypt’s long awaited and much anticipated presidential elections—the first of their kind to take place in the nation’s 7,000 year history—are here.  As we await the final results—and as the Western mainstream media fixate on images of purple-stained fingers—it is well to remember that there is much more at stake in Egypt’s elections than the mere “right” to vote.

While some Egyptians are certainly voting according to their convictions, the fundamental divide revolves around religion—how much or how little the candidates in question are in favor of Islamic Sharia law.  In other words, Islamists are voting for Islamists—Abdel Mon‘im Abul Futuh and Muhammad Mursi—whereas non-Islamists (secularists, liberals, and non-Muslims) are voting for non-Islamists, such as Amr Musa and Ahmed Shafiq.

Bear in mind that this is not the same thing as American voters being divided between “liberal” Democrats and “conservative” Republicans; rather, this election is much more existential in nature—possibly cataclysmic for Egyptian society.  For, whereas both American Republicans and Democrats operate under the selfsame U.S. Constitution, in Egypt, an Islamist president will usher in Sharia law, which will fundamentally transform the nation.

One veiled woman interviewed yesterday at the voting polls put it best: “We came to elect the man who implements Sharia (Islamic law).  But I am afraid of liberals, secularists, Christians. I am afraid of their reaction if an Islamist wins. They won’t let it go easily. But God be with us.”

Interestingly, while she sums up the ultimate purpose Islamists like herself are voting—to empower “the man who implements Sharia”—she alsoprojects her own Islamist mentality onto non-Islamists, implying that if a Sharia-friendly president is fairly elected, non-Islamists will rebel.  In fact, it is the Islamists who are on record warning that if a secularist emerges as president, that itself will be proof positive that the elections were rigged, and anarmed jihad will be proclaimed.

None of this is surprising, considering that Islamists have not hid their abhorrence for democracy as an infidel heresy to be exploited as a gateway to a Sharia-enforcing theocracy which will, ironically, eliminate democracy.  Some have gone so far as to insist that cheating in elections to empower Sharia is an obligation.  And, rather than encourage Egyptians to vote for whom they think is best suited for Egypt, days prior to these elections, various authoritative Muslim clerics and institutions decreed that Egypt’s Muslims are “obligated” to vote for Sharia-supporting Islamists, while voters are “forbidden” to vote for non-Islamists—a proclamation with threats of hellfire.

One of the two front-running candidates (along with Amr Moussa, 75, a former foreign minister under Mubarak and most recently secretary-general of the Arab League), Fotouh, 61, is a doctor and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political party took nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliamentary elections and is the best-organized political force in the country. He served for 25 years in the Brotherhood’s leadership body before being expelled last year when he defied the group’s leaders to run for the presidency.

Fotouh is described as a reformist member of the organization, and as such has received support from younger Brothers, even though the Brotherhood is putting forth its own candidate, Mohammed Morsi. Fotouh is viewed as more liberal than the other Islamists in the race, prompting comparisons to Turkey’s Recep Erdogan. That would be the same Erdogan who proclaimed that “there is no moderate Islam,” who advised Turkish immigrants in Europe that “assimilation is a crime against humanity,” who has taken an increasingly bellicose stance toward Israel – and who is a favorite of Obama in the Middle East.

“Aboul Fotouh has said that he wants to be the Erdogan of Egypt, and I think that U.S. relations with Turkey may be a good example of what we could expect,” says Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy. In that case, what we can expect is an increasingly militant fundamentalist regime hostile to Israel.

In addition to some Muslim Brothers, Fotouh has also received support from ultra-fundamentalist Salafis, who are competing with the Brotherhood. Since the Arab Spring revolution, the Salafis won nearly a quarter of the parliamentary seats, surprising the unprepared Brothers with their strong showing.

Now, in response to the success of Fotouh’s campaign and his Salafi backing, the Brotherhood has ramped up its religious rhetoric to draw Salafis to Morsi’s support. At a recent rally near Cairo University, speaker after speaker cast Morsi as the only true Islamist candidate and the one who would ensure the implementation of sharia. The clear message is that Fotouh is not Islamic enough.

They need not be concerned about that. An avowed radical in his youth, Fatouh helped found the terrorist organization Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya, which now endorses his candidacy, and spent five years in Mubarak’s prisons alongside such figures as al Qaeda’s Dr. al-Zawahiri. Newsweek points out that some Egyptians are casting a suspicious eye on his split from the Brotherhood, and are accusing Fotouh of downplaying his Islamist tendencies.

The Washington Institute’s Eric Trager, who interviewed him last year, said that “the notion that Aboul Fotouh is some kind of progressive is farcical.” Said Sadek, a political sociologist at the American University in Cairo, says electing Fotouh would be the equivalent of establishing a theocratic state. “He didn’t renounce the ideas of the Moslem Brotherhood even when he was jailed by Mubarak,” says Sadek . “You’re telling me he’s different now?”

GLORIA Center Middle East expert Barry Rubin notes that the Obama administration is unconcerned about Aboul Fotouh’s aggressively Islamist comments – for example, that Israel is racist, an enemy of Egypt, and an illegitimate occupier – as mere “campaign rhetoric.” The assumption is that the reality of governance will make a moderate out of  Fotouh, as it does for American politicians. Rubin points out that similar wishful thinking about extremists has never played out that way historically in the real world.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi: One of many Muslims who see democracy as a gateway to Sharia.

The following article was originally published by the Gatestone Institute.

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, a beautiful thing,” 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 as a “jihad,” adding that paradise awaits whoever is “martyred” during the electoral campaign.

Most recently, 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,” specifically naming the three Islamists, Muhammad Mursi (candidate of the Salafist party), Abd al-Mun’im Abu al-Futuh (candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing), and Muhammad al-Salim al-Awwa (who contributed to making Coptic life miserable in Egypt). 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.

Consider some examples of Muslim sympathy following his death: Egypt’s Al Akhbar newspaper called the Pope’s burial “the funeral of the century,” reporting that a million Egyptians—likely more Muslims than Christians—came out to mourn him; “His death is a tragedy and a great loss for Egypt and its people, Muslims and Christians,” declared Egypt’s Grand Mufti; a recent episode of Al Dalil, famous for criticizing Islam, gave several more examples of Egyptian Muslims mourning and sympathizing with their Christian counterparts—including one Muslim who had tried to give his kidney to the ailing Pope.

In short, human nature took over.  Some of Egypt’s Muslims saw in Pope Shenouda a beloved national figure—much to the chagrin of Islam’s clerics, like Khaled Abdullah, who, in amazement, said, “I can’t believe it—what I saw today [the Pope’s funeral], I can’t believe it.  If a Companion [of Muhammad, among Islam’s most revered people] died we wouldn’t do this for him,” adding that Muslim participation and mourning in the funeral was “hurtful to the feelings of 80 million Muslims.”

Accordingly, Islam’s clerics rushed in, pointing out Sharia law’s teachings concerning the death of an infidel, or non-Muslim, like Pope Shenouda.  Fatwas appeared, many saying it is forbidden to offer condolences to the Copts, others saying it is permissible—but through carefully crafted words, and in the hopes of attracting Copts to Islam (reminding one of Sheikh Muhammad Hassan’s assertion that smiling to non-Muslims is permissible, but only as a way to attract them to Islam).  Salafi leader, Yassir al-Burhami, permitted minor condolences—mostly by way of tawriya, using words that console, but that have a generic or pro-Islam meaning—while insisting it is forbidden to pray for deceased infidels (since all non-Muslims are destined and deserving of hell, Koran 9: 113).

The most vicious condemnations came from Sheikh Wagdi Ghoneim, formerly a Californian mosque prayer-leader, who, a day after Pope Shenouda’s death, referred to him as an “accursed criminal” and praised Allah for his death: “Yesterday [March 17], thanks be to Allah, the head of infidelity and polytheism, this so-called Shenouda, died—may Allah be avenged on him.  He perished, and all were relieved of him—people, worshippers, trees, and animals; Egypt is relieved of him, for he initiated sectarian strife.”

Editor’s note: To read Part I of this three-part article series, click here. 

Conceding Israeli control of the 34-mile-wide area known as Judea and Samaria to any of Israel’s actual or even potential enemies means a return to the pre-1967 nine-mile waistline across Israel’s coastal strip and a security border of 223 miles to patrol and defend. Retention of said territories means a mere 62 miles of security border to patrol and defend. It also means Israeli control of vital mountain passes, the 4,200-foot high ground overlooking the Jordan Rift Valley, and the minimal strategic depth between the Jordan River and Israel’s highly populated and industrialized coastal plain.

To comprehend why this is so important to Israel’s security, it is necessary to understand the difference between Israel before mass mobilization and afterwards.

When Israel fights a war, it must take into account many factors: weapons technologies, tactical knowledge, motivation and education of the soldiers, etc. However, the prime factor is still numbers. The best equipped and most superiorly trained army cannot win if it is hopelessly outnumbered. This has always been an issue for Israel.

The IDF, as every responsible army, must be prepared for every eventuality. Israel cannot afford to lose a war. According to reports, the latest annual IDF General Staff exercises dealt with various combinations of possible attacks from different fronts including south (Gaza and Egypt), north (Lebanon and Syria) and east (Iran). Other possibilities were also taken into account, but those were the major ones.

In each of these possibilities, strategic depth is a critical factor. In the south, Israel has already given up its strategic buffer areas, and if the IDF were to fail to take the battle into enemy territory (basic IDF doctrine), the fighting would be within easy range of major Israeli population centers.

In the north, the Golan Heights are, as always, critical, and in the northeast and east, Judea and Samaria are not only vital for defense, but would also serve as passage ways for mobilization and logistics. (The Cross-Samarian Highway, for example, was originally planned by the IDF General Staff following the 1967 Six Day War as the major connecting artery to the Jordan Valley from the coastal plain.)

Despite the immense security risks Israel faces, the Jewish State’s small population means it doesn’t have the security of a large standing army despite the immense security risks it faces. For that reason, soldiers who have completed their mandatory service, continue in the reserves – especially in combat units – well into their forties, contributing up to over a month or more of service each year for both training and active-duty assignments. In short: the army reserves constitute the backbone of the IDF’s manpower needs.

IDF doctrine encompasses a number of basic security truths. Among them are that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war, we must have a credible deterrent posture including territorially, and that the outcome of war must be determined quickly and decisively. Proper preparation means Israel’s small standing army must be equipped with an early-warning capability, coupled with an efficient reserve mobilization and deployment system.

Israel, prior to mobilization, is basically a relatively weak country militarily in terms of all out war with more than one front involved – which is a distinct possibility that the IDF planners seriously take into account. Post-mobilization Israel, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

Israel has the potential to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reserves which more than triples the manpower of the Israeli army. This considerably alters the ratio against the enemy. While exact figures are classified, suffice to say the combined Arab armies outnumber Israel’s standing army by a ratio of approximately 15 to 1. Whereas after a full scale call-up of Israel’s reserves, the ratio is reduced to less than 4 to 1.

The problem, however, is that Mother Teresa was a Christian; and playing her role required the Muslim actress to wear the crucifix around her neck and read some Biblical verses, thereby incensing Islamists, to the point that they proclaimed her an apostate infidel, through takfir—just as they did with many other artists, most recently, Adel Emam.

Earlier Tork had said that she does not “consider playing such a role as risky, due to the fact that she will be playing the role of a woman who is very religious and lives her life based on religious principals and ethics.” She is now discovering that such “ecumenism” is primarily a Western construct, and that, for many in the Islamic world, a Muslim merely acting the life of a Christian, wearing the cross or quoting the Bible, is a great crime—regardless of the saintly life led by the Christian.

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Considering Egypt’s presidential elections take place later this month, last weekend’s Islamist clash with the military could not have come at a worse time.

First, the story: due to overall impatience—and rage that the Salafi presidential candidate, Abu Ismail, was disqualified (several secular candidates were also disqualified)—emboldened Islamists began to gather around the Defense Ministry in Abbassia, Cairo, late last week, chanting jihadi slogans, and preparing for a “million man” protest for Friday, May 4^th.

As Egypt’s Al Ahram put it, “Major Egyptian Islamist parties and groups—including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Calling and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—have issued calls for a Tahrir Square demonstration on Friday under the banner of ‘Saving the revolution.’ … Several non-Islamist revolutionary groups, meanwhile, have expressed their refusal to participate in the event.”  In other words, last Friday was largely an Islamist protest (even though some in the Western media still portray it as a “general” demonstration).

There, in front of the Defense Ministry, the Islamists exposed their true face—exposed their hunger for power, their unpatriotic motivations, and their political ineptitude.  For starters, among those leading the protests was none other than Muhammad al-Zawahiri, a brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a seasoned jihadi in his own right, who was only recently acquitted and released from prison, where, since 1998, he was incarcerated “on charges of undergoing military training in Albania and planning military operations in Egypt.”

Before the Friday protest,  Zawahiri appeared “at the head of hundreds of protesters,” including “dozens of jihadis,” demonstrating in front of the Defense Ministry.” They waved banners that read, “Victory or Death” and chanted “Jihad! Jihad!”—all punctuated by cries of “Allahu Akbar!”  Likewise, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya—the group responsible for slaughtering some 60 European tourists in the 1997 Luxor Massacre—was at the protests.  Even the so-called “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood participated.

Two lessons emerge here: 1) an Islamist is an Islamist is an Islamist: when it comes down to ideology, they are one; 2) Violence and more calls to jihad are the fruits of clemency—the thanks Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) gets for releasing such Islamists imprisoned during ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s tenure.

As for the actual protests (which, as one might expect from the quality of its participants, quickly turned savage) this Egyptian news clip shows bearded Salafis wreaking havoc and screaming jihadi slogans as they try to break into the Defense Ministry, homemade bombs waiting to be used, and a girl in black hijab savagely tearing down a security barbed-wire—the hallmarks of a jihadi takeover.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Of course, it was never a war on “terror” anyway; as many have pointed out, terror is a tactic, not an enemy. We weren’t waging a War on Blitzkrieg in World War II. And terrorism was never the only threat posed by our Islamic enemy, which Obama limits to “al Qaeda and its affiliates.” In fact, our focus on violent jihad has left us vulnerable to the subversive Muslim Brotherhood’s more insidious “civilization jihad,” which continues apace.

Obama himself has been supportive of the Brotherhood’s rise to political power internationally and has opened the door for them at home. He has literally welcomed them into the White House (at least his predecessors made them work for such access by infiltrating), pretending that we are now partners in the political process instead of enemies. But while the Obama administration trumpets this and the waning influence of al Qaeda as the end of the ill-named War on Terror, Frank Gaffney declares that we are no closer to victory than we were on 9/11.

Gaffney runs the Washington D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), a nonprofit organization for national security research and policy advocacy founded in 1988. In 2010 Gaffney and CSP published Shariah: The Threat to America, a highly acclaimed report on the dangerous reality of political Islam. Now he and his team have rolled out a free, ten-part, online “video briefing” entitled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Video Course,” designed to educate American citizens about “a threat most Americans are even unaware even exists within our country, let alone the peril it represents”:

The threat is the totalitarian, supremacist doctrine its adherents call shariah, and the organized, disciplined, and increasingly successful efforts such adherents – most especially the Muslim Brotherhood – to bring it here.

Gaffney describes the course as a “distillation of all we’ve learned” in the 24 years since the CSP’s inception. Narrated by the quietly intense Gaffney himself, the videos range from fifteen minutes to two hours in length (eight hours total), and define how and why our very civilization is in danger.

Part 1 lays the groundwork in “The Threat Doctrine of Shariah & the Muslim Brotherhood.” Part 2 elaborates on the Brotherhood’s plan to “eliminate Western civilization from within” in “The Brotherhood’s ‘Civilization Jihad’ in America.” In Part 3, the course takes a closer look at the Brotherhood’s penetration and manipulation of the Republican Party and the conservative movement in America – a development which will come as a shock to those who are concerned only about the complicity and naiveté of the left.

In Part 4, the course examines a case study in such infiltration, the story of a Brotherhood-linked conservative activist named Suhail Khan. Part 5 offers examples of the many ways in which Khan’s mentor, influential tax reform advocate Grover Norquist, and his team are actively promoting the Islamist agenda, and Part 6 scrutinizes how Norquist’s Islamist protégés are running for office as Republicans. In Part 7, Gaffney et al. examine how Norquist’s ongoing Islamist influence operation is advancing the agendas of the civilization jihadists.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

To start, consider the ultimate source of this practice: it’s neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Salafis; rather, as with most of Islam’s perversities—from adult breastfeeding to pedophilia marriage—Islamic necrophilia is traced to the fount of Islam, its prophet Muhammad, as found in a hadith (or tradition) that exists in no less than six of Islam’s classical reference texts, including Kanz al-‘Umal by Mutaqi al-Hindi and Al-Hujja fi Biyan al-Mahujja, an authoritative text on Sunni Doctrine, by Abu Qassim al-Asbahani.

According to this hadith, Muhammad took off his shirt and placed it on a dead woman and “lay” with her in the grave.  The buriers proceeded to bury the corpse and the prophet with dirt, exclaiming, “O Prophet, we see you do a thing you never did with anyone else,” to which Muhammad responded: “I have dressed her in my shirt so that she may be dressed in heavenly robes, and I have laid with her in her grave so that the pressures of the grave [also known as Islam’s “torments of the grave”] may be alleviated from her.”

With its own candidate, Hazem Abu Ismail, disqualified by the election commission, Egypt’s Salafist political party, al-Nour, has endorsed former Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh for the presidency. While being called a “moderate” by many news outlets, Fotouh’s radical past and a questionable interpretation of Islam’s dedication to equality and tolerance presents a problem for both the West and Egypt’s more liberal and secular voters.

The endorsement came on the heels of a bloody confrontation between hundreds of supporters of Ismail who were staging a sit-in in front of the defense ministry and unknown assailants on Saturday night. The official statement on the riot said that 91 protestors were injured with no fatalities. But an independent group of doctors who treated protestors at the scene say that 4 protestors were killed and more than 70 were injured.

The protests were just one in a series of demonstrations against military rule in recent weeks that have reignited passions on the streets of Cairo and given rise to an Islamist power play in parliament. The speaker of the lower house, Saad el-Katatni, announced that parliament was suspending its sessions until May 6, protesting the refusal of the military government to replace the cabinet of Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri. Within hours of that announcement, the military apparently caved in to the demands of the Islamist majority and agreed to replace cabinet ministers with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and representatives of other parties in parliament.

The endorsement of Fotouh, a so-called “moderate” Islamist, will likely further split the Salfists who have been at sea since the unexpected disqualification of Abu Ismail, a popular TV cleric whose bombastic sermons against Israel and the West were popular among the extremists who make up the Nour party. While the backing of Nour will no doubt give a boost to Fotouh’s candidacy, the move has also disillusioned many in the party who want a president who will immediately impose Sharia law and transform Egypt into a fundamentalist Islamic state.

Objections by liberals and secularists to the unilateral decision of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) to prorogue parliament went unheeded despite nearly 80 lawmakers signing a letter to el-Katatni calling on the speaker to rescind the order to suspend the lower house, or the People’s Assembly. The letter contained the complaint that the decision had not been put to a vote by the full chamber. Members who objected remained in their seats, refusing to leave even after the session was adjourned.

But the protest was a sideshow to the real drama – a tense confrontation between the FJP and its allies, and the military. Both sides appear to be testing the limits of their power in post-Mubarak Egypt. The military is seeking to reduce the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing that the FJP would take away many of the perks and power of the soldiers under a new, Brotherhood-written constitution. The FJP, with the backing of the revolutionary street, has been flexing its muscles in parliament by trying to undercut military rule and shoulder its way into the government. The ruling military council led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi has often found itself at odds with the Islamists, but is so politically unpopular that any pushback is immediately met with large protests in Tahrir Square. The army has the guns, but the Brotherhood has the backing of the people. Tantawi has not forgotten what happened to Mubarak, hence, he has taken a cautious approach in handling parliament.

The Islamists have been calling on the military government to fire the cabinet for weeks. They have threatened to stage a no-confidence vote in the el-Ganzouri government despite threats from the military that such a vote was illegal, that only the military council had the power to remove ministers. This latest ploy by the FJP to suspend parliament for a week has apparently moved Tantawi to give in to some of the demands and bring Islamists and others into the government. But an unidentified spokesman for the military said on Sunday night that any changes to the cabinet would be “limited.” This will likely not sit well with the FJP

In suspending parliament, el-Katatni said, “It is my responsibility as speaker of the People’s Assembly to safeguard the chamber’s dignity and that of its members. There must be a solution to this crisis.” On April 24, parliament rejected the military’s economic and political program, which is akin to a “no confidence” vote in many parliamentary democracies. But neither side apparently wants to test the other in what would be a dangerous showdown between the two competing power centers in Egypt.

The first proposed law would lower the legal age a girl can marry to 14. The second proposal, inspired by a fatwa from a Moroccan cleric, would grant husbands permission to have sex with their wives within 6 hours of their death.

Another Islamist-sponsored piece of legislation would repeal the right of women to seek a divorce from an abusive husband without obstruction from her spouse. Still another proposal would mandate the barbaric practice of female circumcision.

The series of proposals, as well as others under consideration that would severely restrict opportunities for women and girls in education and employment, aim to roll back the modest progress on women’s rights that advocates won during the Mubarak era. The laws threaten to reduce women to the status of chattel where they will be literally owned by their husbands who will be able to control all aspects of their personal lives.

The proposals come as the Obama administration appears to have accepted the rule of Islamists in Egypt, Tunisia, and other “Arab Spring” countries while exposing their naive belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is “moderate” and “secular” in its nature.

And the proposals make a mockery of promises by the Muslim Brotherhood that they would seek to implement Sharia law slowly. In a few weeks, women in Egypt may see their status return to those of their ancestors in the Middle Ages.

The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) is being pushed by the more radical Salfis (al-Nour) to quicken the implementation of Sharia law. The presidential election is partly responsible for this, as the al-Nour candidate, Hazem Abu Ismail, was declared ineligible to run by the country’s election commission and the FJP’s second candidate (their first candidate was also disqualified), party chief Mohammed Morsi, has had to tack to the right in order to gain the support of the Salifis. Thus, Morsi declared that a council of Muslim scholars will “advise” parliament on all proposed legislation and added ”The Qur’an is our constitution, and sharia is our guide!” This push to satisfy the Salifis led to an important endorsement from the Jurisprudence Commission for Rights and Reform, a panel of clerics mostly from the ultraconservative Salafis and new Islamist parties. It is likely to gain him another endorsement soon from a hard-line organization of extremist clerics as well.

With gradual “reform” of women’s rights out the window, the proposed legislation has angered the small group of advocates who fought for the secularization of Egyptian society in the last decade. Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) President Dr Mervat al-Talawi, wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Assembly, warning that the proposed changes were “marginalizing and undermining the status of women” and “would negatively affect the country’s human development.”

At least, that’s what some say, while others say it was only the Egyptian gas company that canceled the deal and not the Egyptian government.

Israel’s leading daily Israel Hayom cites “analysts in the Arabic press” who say “the national gas company could not have taken such a fateful decision without the go-ahead from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which effectively rules Egypt.” Yet Israel Hayom also mentions “senior officials” in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office who claim that “the Egyptian government had not been involved in the decision in any way, and that it was a purely commercial move.”

Indeed, one of those downplaying the development is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who said: “We don’t see this gas cutoff as something that is born out of political developments. This is actually a business dispute between the Israeli company and the Egyptian company.” Yet his finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said: “This is a dangerous precedent that overshadows the peace agreements…between Israel and Egypt.”

One can sum it up simply by saying that: the cutoff is not a good development; and since the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in January last year, the Israeli government has consistently downplayed negative developments and held out hopes that the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty will endure. Bumps in the road since Mubarak’s ouster have included:

● The bombing of Egypt’s gas pipeline in Sinai no less than 14 times

● Sinai’s deterioration into a badlands dominated by Bedouin gangs and terrorists, leading to last August’s terror attack on southern Israel

● The subsequent storming of the Israeli embassy by a mob in Cairo and near-lynching of six of its workers

● The overwhelming victory of Islamists in Egypt’s parliamentary elections

● The firing of a rocket from Sinai into Israel’s southern coastal resort of Eilat

● A furious backlash in recent days against Egypt’s Grand Mufti for merely visiting Jerusalem, with MPs and others demanding that he step down

The ousted candidates include former Mubarak vice president and head of intelligence Omar Suleiman; Muslim Brotherhood party official Khairat al-Shater; and the radical Salfis TV preacher Hazem Salah Aboul Ismail. The Muslim Brotherhood, in anticipation that al-Shater might be barred from running, is fielding a second candidate, Mohammed Morsi. He is not as well known as al-Shater and this has dimmed prospects for an Islamist victory.

The disqualifications add to the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the election as the military hinted it might delay the presidential contest until a constitution is written. The Supreme Court suspended the panel that was chosen by parliament to write the document, citing its lack of diversity (70% of the members were Islamists). A delay would almost certainly cause the Egyptian street to explode in anger at the military rulers, of whom many Egyptians are already suspicious.

The likely beneficiary of the disqualifications is former Arab League chief and a Mubarak-era foreign minister Amr Moussa. He leads in the most recent poll taken at the beginning of this month. Another candidate who will gain from the disqualifications is a former Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh who left the organization after clashing with the leadership. That same poll also showed that 40% of Egyptians were undecided on who to support, reflecting a national mood of uncertainty.

All told, 10 of the 23 presidential candidates were disqualified by the commission — a body filled with judges who are holdovers from the Mubarak regime. Their decision is supposed to be final but the three major candidates have all indicated that they will seek an appeal of the commission’s ruling.

Suleiman was barred for not having the requisite number of endorsements from each governorate. Al-Shater was disqualified because of a conviction during the Mubarak regime. And Abu Ismail was barred from running because his mother held an American passport. Suleiman had no chance for a reprieve given the technical nature of the violation that is keeping him off the ballot. The same could be said for Ismail, although his supporters, who threw rocks and scuffled with police in front of the election commission headquarters following the announcement, violently disagreed.

The case of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party candidate al-Shater was believed by some analysts to be different. His conviction of a crime occurred at a time when the Mubarak regime was rounding up Muslim Brotherhood members and creating non-existent charges to put them in jail. But the election commission ruled a conviction is a conviction and al-Shater was barred.

“We do not accept it. We will challenge it,” said Gehad El-Haddad, a member of the steering committee for the Renaissance Project, the hub of the FJP presidential effort.

Editor’s note: The following news items from Arabic media related to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were first translated and interpreted by Shillman Journalism Fellow Raymond Ibrahim.

Muslim Brotherhood Calls for a ‘United Arab States’ with Jerusalem as its Capital

Once again, we see how Western concepts, when articulated through an Islamic framework, lead to results antithetical to the West.  For instance, “democracy” and “elections”—which in the West suggest “freedom,” “human rights,” “liberty,” etc.—are today being used to bring Sharia law, the antithesis of Western law, to power.

In this recent video, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Dr. Safwat Hegazy, a popular preacher, talks about how he yearns to see Arab nations become “like the United States”—for them to unify into the “United Arab States.”  While that may sound like an admirable (or at least neutral) goal, bear in mind what he is alluding to: the resurrection of a caliphate—which by nature exists to expand, including through jihad.

Moreover, Hegazy made clear that his interest in seeing the “United Arab States” has less to do with Arab solidarity (nationalism) and more to do with Islamic allegiance (religion).  As he gushed about how wonderful it would be for Arab nations to unite into one bloc, the secular and skeptical host interviewing him reluctantly agreed, “so long as the capital is Cairo,” that is, so long as Egypt’s integrity remains.

To this, Hegazy replied: “No, I say the capital is Jerusalem, Allah willing.”

Thus, just as that sacrosanct word “democracy” is being abused to establish fascist rule in the Muslim world, so too is the notion of a “United Arab States” fraught with problems—from the elimination of Israel to the establishment of an expansionist caliphate on its remains.

Muslim Brotherhood: Only ‘Drunks, Druggies and Adulterers’ Reject Sharia

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood earlier made a few assertions that ruffled the nation’s secular and Christian populace.

At a conference attended by some 5,000, senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, Dr. Essam el-Erian, Vice President of the “Freedom and Justice” party, the Brotherhood’s political wing, declared that “No one in Egypt—not a Copt, a liberal, a leftist, no one—dares say they are against Islam and the application of Sharia: all say they want the Islamic Sharia [applied]. And when referendum time comes, whoever says ‘we do not want Sharia’ will expose their hidden intentions.”

He went on to threaten Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces with “massacres” if it interfered in politics and Islam’s role in the constitution and addressed the nation’s Coptic Christians as follows: “You will never find a strong fortress for your faith and rights except in Islam and Sharia,” adding, “Our Lord has commanded us to be just, and we have learned it from Islam. We do not wish to hurt anyone…”

Earlier, for instance, there was Dr. Talat Zahran, an Egyptian cleric who proclaimed that it is “obligatory to cheat at elections—a beautiful thing.” His logic was simple: voting is a tool, an instrument, the only value of which is to empower Sharia.

Now an Egyptian cleric has thoroughly Islamized the concept of voting.

Context: the presidential campaign of Abu Ismail—the Salafi candidate who openly declared that there is no freedom in Islam, the candidate most likely to try to implement the totality of Sharia if elected—has been compromised due to recent allegations that his mother was an American citizen.   In response, Hazim Shuman, a cleric that appears on satellite, just issued a fatwa saying, “Voting for Abu Ismail is jihad in the path of Allah [jihad fi sabil Allah], and paradise awaits whoever is martyred during Abu Ismail’s political campaign.”

Anyone familiar with Islam’s language knows that jihad fi sabil Allah is synonymous with violence or, from a non-Muslim perspective, terror.  For example, the standard Islamic legal text, Umdat al-Salik (“Reliance of the Traveler”) translates fi sabil Allah as “those fighting for Allah”; next to the index entry for fi sabil Allah it simply says “see jihad.”

Incidentally, “jihad in the path of Allah” is what conquered most of what is now called the “Muslim world.”

The logic of this fatwa is as follows: one of the primary purposes of violent jihad is to establish Islamic law; because Abu Ismail is the most likely candidate to institutionalize Sharia if elected, supporting him any which way—including, apparently, through violence and death—is a form of jihad with the highest paradisiacal rewards for those who die trying.

In short, democracy, voting—even the individual candidates, including Abu Ismail—are all means to one end: the establishment of Islamic law.

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Khairat al-Shater, Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s American charm offensive got off to a rough start this week. Members of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Brotherhood’s political wing, arrived in Washington D.C. this week for a series of meetings with U.S. officials, media, and think tanks, with the purpose of presenting a moderate image of the Brotherhood and allaying fears that it will impose Sharia law and threaten Egypt’s minority groups, including secularists and Coptic Christians. Instead, the Brotherhood’s delegation was confronted with news that, back in Egypt, those fears were being confirmed.

Over the weekend, the Brotherhood announced that it would field a candidate in May’s presidential election, breaking an earlier pledge not to do so. Given the Brotherhood’s political and organizational clout, the candidate, businessman and Brotherhood bigwig Khairat al-Shater, is now considered the frontrunner, reinforcing concerns that the Islamist group wants to completely dominate the Egyptian parliament. Worse still for the Brotherhood’s supposedly moderate image was that al-Shater made it expressly clear that his “first and final project and objective” would be to impose Sharia law on the country. Already, he has stirred controversy in Egypt by lobbying for the support of Egypt’s hard-line Salafist clerics, offering them effective approval over all legislation to make sure that it is compliant with Sharia.

That left the Brotherhood’s delegation scrambling to sanitize al-Shater’s statements.  Asked to account for its political about-face, and one that seemed likely to bring to power a committed proponent of Sharia law, the Brotherhood’s visiting delegation tried to make light of the news. Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, one of the lawmakers in the delegation, insisted that the Brotherhood was committed to a “civil state” and was only seeking to implement the “principles” of Sharia law rather than its strict application. “The principles are universal: freedom, human rights, justice for all. This is the priority of the Freedom and Justice Party,” Dardery said at an event at Georgetown University. Sharia, in short, was not the Brotherhood’s primary concern in post-Mubarak Egypt.

But that dubious pretense became virtually indefensible on Wednesday, when an Egyptian court sentenced a 17-year-old Christian boy to three years in jail for the crime of publishing cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed on his Facebook page. The Sharia-inspired sentence came in the aftermath of a wave of attacks on Christians by Muslim mobs, in which Christian homes were burned and Christians were injured. The violence highlighted the pressing worry that Egypt’s Christians could lose their rights under a Brotherhood-led regime. Christians have already been shut out of the political process, and Christian parties have responded by quitting a working group drafting the country’s new constitution, saying that their concerns were being ignored. Their departure represents a growing political disenfranchisement that gives the lie to the Brotherhood’s claim of seeking “justice for all.”

“State Department officials said they were untroubled and even optimistic about the Brotherhood’s reversal of its pledge not to seek the presidency,” the Times reports.

Shater has had extensive contact with U.S. officials and has convinced them that he’s not to be feared. Apparently, these U.S. officials have forgotten about (or never were informed of) the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and history.

The Brotherhood’s leaders preach a strategy of “gradualism” towards “mastership of the world.” Hamas has officially added “a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine” to its name. The Vice Chairman of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party says Hamas is a “resistance group” and that Cairo should host one of its offices. The Brotherhood’s leaders are not shy about their goal of destroying Israel and its internal documents refer to its “work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”

In November, a Brotherhood spokesman stated without equivocation, “The Sharia, the Muslim legal framework, must be the foundation for everything.” On November 24, senior Brotherhood leaders publicly preached violent jihad, and the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a Brotherhood entity, declared that it is time to “revive the duty of jihad in all its forms.” One top leader, Mohamad Katatni, predicts that the revolution in Egypt would lead to the elimination of the state of Israel.

The State Department’s welcoming of Shater’s candidacy is partly due to fear of the Salafist candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He is outwardly hostile to the West. The Salafists shocked the West when they won nearly one-fourth of the vote in Egypt’s elections. The latest poll shows that Ismail leaped forward from as low as fifth place to second place at 22%, about 10% behind the secularist presidential frontrunner, Amr Moussa.

Ismail is happy about Shater’s candidacy. He believes that it will take votes away from Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a Muslim Brotherhood leader whose membership was suspended when he ran for president against the leadership’s wishes. He’s currently polling at 8%. The election is held in May, and if no single candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, a run-off is held between the top two candidates the next month. If it comes down to Moussa and Ismail, the Islamists will rally behind Ismail and give him a landslide victory.

The following interview with Freedom Center Shillman Journalism Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was conducted by Wolff Bachner and first appeared on

Most of us in the West have little knowledge of what life is like for Christians in the Muslim world. Take for example, the Coptic Christians, who were once the dominant religious group in Egypt. Previously the mainstay of their nation, Copts are now living as an oppressed minority, denied religious freedom and equal status in Egyptian life. The Copts are routinely denied meaningful employment and may not hold positions in the Egyptian Civil Service. Copts are refused permission to build new churches and even a request to renovate a church that is badly in need of repair can lead to an outbreak of severe Muslim violence against the Copts. Recently, there have even been calls for a return to collecting Jizya from the Copts, a tax that the Qur’an instructs Muslims to charge to all Dhimmis (non-Muslims) whenever Muslims are in power.

To give our readers an accurate picture of the situation in Egypt, we asked Raymond Ibrahim to answer several questions about the Coptic Christians. Raymond is the son of Coptic Christian parents who were born in Egypt and he has firsthand knowledge about Coptic life under Islam. Raymond is a highly respected Middle East and Islam specialist, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, best known for The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday, 2007), he guest lectures at universities, including the National Defense Intelligence College. Raymond also briefs governmental agencies, such as U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Among other media, he has appeared on Inquisitr.com, MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN, PBS, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, CBN, and NPR. Raymond is fluent in Arabic and he has studied the Qur’an and many ancient Islamic historical documents in the original language. You can find Raymond’s latest writings at http://www.raymondibrahim.com.

Here is our interview with Raymond Ibrahim:

1. Who are the Coptic Christians and what is their history?

Raymond Ibrahim:

The Copts are the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, before the Arab/Muslim invasion around 641 A.D.  The word “Copt” simply means “Egyptian”; however, because all Egyptians were Christian in the 7th century—Egypt was a major Christian center, so much so that Alexandria vied with Rome over ecclesiastical leadership—“Copt” also became synonymous with “Christian.”  In short, the word Copt is similar to the word Jew: both words convey a people and a religion. Tradition teaches that St. Mark, author of the Gospel of the same name, proselytized the pagan Egyptians of the 1st century; by approximately the 3rd century, Christianity was the dominant religion; and by the 7th century when Islam burst into Egypt, Christianity was THE religion.

2. When did persecution of the Copts begin and why?

Raymond Ibrahim:

Muslim persecution of the Copts begins with the Islamic invasion.  It is true that, at the time, the Copts were already under nearly a decade of persecution by the Byzantine Empire over doctrinal disputes.  However, with Islam’s entry, the persecution took on a different shape, and grew steadily worse, until the modern era and the age of colonialism.  At first, and because the Copts were the majority people of Egypt, they were merely deemed a subject race, to be heavily taxed and kept in line by their Muslim overlords.  Over the years, however, their subject status came to be codified in what is seen as Islam’s divine and immutable law, or Sharia.

3. What is Life like for a Copt today in Egypt?

Raymond Ibrahim:

There are approximately 10 million Copts in Egypt, roughly 12% of the population.  This is not an insignificant number.  In fact, in the entire Middle East, Copts make for the largest Christian minority.  Accordingly, the everyday average Copt is not “persecuted”; however, everyday forms of discrimination are common (for instance, only Muslims get hired for the best jobs, and so forth).  The problem, though, is that persecution of the sort that occurred centuries ago—for instance, the ongoing attacks on churches—is on the rise, unsurprisingly so, considering the overall Islamization of Egypt in recent decades, culminating with Islamists, who were once in jail for their extremist views, now sitting in Egypt’s new parliament.

4. What can the Copts do to protect their lives and preserve their religion?  What does the future hold for the Copts? Can they survive in the Middle East and remain faithful Coptic Christians?