Reply With QuoteIf I didn't know better, I would think you were telling me that Fox News might have misrepresented a group of non-Christians.Originally Posted by Erlend Grefsrud
They've got "Muslim" in their name, but since that word doesn't mean "bomb-strapped towel head" but is rather a reference to the dominant cultural heritage in the region, I don't see a problem.
Read up on 'em. They're no more extremist than the religious bloc of the Republican party.
If I didn't know better, I would think you were telling me that Fox News might have misrepresented a group of non-Christians.
Wait, this is supposed to be comforting?
Don't you find it comforting to know that the religious block of the US Republicans is about as crazy as humanity can get?
... Nevermind. I don't either.
But it's not a terrible comparison, I think. They want to establish an incorruptible religious regime, modelled on liberal democracy, but functioning entirely within the confines of their interpretation of Islam.
The most extreme caveman regressives on the Christian Right in the US wants, as far as I'm aware, the exact same thing. Just functioning entirely within the confines of their interpretation of Christianity.
I can never decide which is more crazy, their beliefs or the fact that they hate each other?
But if you happen to be born a tolerable human, who'll only ever know other tolerable humans, and you agree with their interpretation, it's no doubt a great thing. You are, arguably, as free as you could possibly want, in a society as just and equal as you could possibly want.
Plus you'll get to see people like yours truly legally exiled, put to death or locked away until we're dead. Not because we necessarily disagree with you on anything at all, but simply because we were born wrong.
Awesome stuff, really. Though to be honest, I think I prefer an invasion of Giger Aliens. At least with them, it'd be easier to convince myself that evil is a descriptive, not an actual force in the world.
And of course you would want them running America? :)
The religious bloc of the Republican Party are heavily involved in an election right here in my own fucking country. One of their craziest members was #2 this time around and is perfectly positioned for next time. Why would I fucking care if Egyptians like the Muslim Brotherhood? I've got my own problems.
I have no moral qualm about voting for the Muslim Brotherhood. My differences with them are political, and I would rather vote for them than vote for a return of the fascist security dictatorship of the Mubarak era, which is what a vote for Ahmed Shafik represents.
The Muslim Brotherhood has never engaged in violence, despite 80 years of being a political opposition, suffering intense and unjust crackdowns under the successive eras of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. That is admirable. They are, however, politicians through and through. They are also pro-business capitalists. They are running on platform of a "Renaissance" of sorts that harkens back to the Islamic golden age of science under the Abbasid caliphs that saw the emergence of scientists like Avicenna, Averroes, Al Khawarizmi, and so on who were the fathers of modern scientific disciplines, rather than a theocratic, modern caliphate. The Brotherhood are to the left of the Salafists, who are the more fundamentalist Muslims in favor of a purely Islamic state.
Moreover, the Brotherhood realises that it cannot win the presidential elections without garnering the support of the secular liberals like Aboul Fotouh, Hamdeen Sabbahi and the other revolutionary figures. In response, the political bargaining has begun. The liberals have presented the Brotherhood with a set of demands, including an inclusive constituent assembly to draft the Constitution, secular revolutionary Vice Presidents and a Prime Minister from outside the Brotherhood, and their candidate, Mohamed Morsi, has shown an openness to the demands. I believe they can reach a consensus that would be acceptable to the liberals.
My first choice was not the Brotherhood, but as I said, my differences with them are political. With Ahmed Shafik, the differences cannot be healed. The differences lie in the spilled blood of Egyptian revolutionary martyrs. So I'll be voting for the Brotherhood on Wednesday in the expat run-off votes.
The other thing is Tahrir Square is now filled once again with people of all walks of life protesting the Mubarak verdict. I spoke to soon when I said justice was served. While Mubarak and his interior minister got life in prison, the court acquitted 6 of the most senior generals of the interior ministry who were in charge during the protests, and logically must have carried out the orders that the top people were held responsible for. They are accessories to the murder of protesters. They deserve to be in jail. It has sparked worries that the state is sacrificing the top echelon of the regime in order to maintain the underlying security state.
It seems Egyptians are getting an early lesson in representative form of government, more often than not you end voting against somebody rather than for someone.
I hope you and Egypt in the future get an opportunity to continue have elections and end up with better candidates.
Seriously, dude, wth?
Is this an accurate characterization of what women face in Cairo?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/s...men/55470356/1
If so, I couldn't imagine voting for a candidate who would be likely to make things worse.
One of these things is more likely than the other.“Yes, we will either pray in Jerusalem or we will be martyred there,” Hegazy said.
It is an epic fail. And is most likely organised by former regime thugs who have been fomenting these assaults on protesters and demonstrators. This happened before, and unfortunately there are still many in Egypt who have not evolved in their view of the equality of the sexes, and Egypt has an endemic women's harassment problem. The stupidity of this conservatism is illustrated by examples of a prominent role for women in the early days of Islam in the heart of what was a 6th century Arabia that condoned female infanticide, for example by entrusting tasks such as the preservation of the Quran under the guardianship of a woman, giving women equal status in society, and so on.
The last time women were harassed at a public demonstration was when the iconic video of army soldiers kicking a woman who was stripped of her robes on the ground was aired, and Egyptian women staged a powerful demonstration in response. That's the kind of backlash I'm hoping for.
Also on Palestine, welcome to our version of the opiate of the masses.
I am personally a proponent of revising the Camp David Accords. Egypt should have the right to station troops in the Sinai, not only as an assertion of national sovereignty but also as a way of quelling the threat from armed bedouins and militants in the area.
Israel has violated the Camp David treaty in a fundamental way, because one of the provisions is a resolution to the Palestinian issue, which Israel has dithered on repeatedly.
The Muslim Brotherhood, if they were to win the presidential elections, will certainly not abrogate Camp David. What they should do, however, is ensure that the sale of cheap natural gas to Israel is not resumed (which was a way for corrupt Mubarak-era officials to make money), open the border with Gaza to allow regular travel as well as food, medical and construction supplies, take a more assertive role in enforcing the rights of the Palestinians, and downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel until its government gives up its belligerence on the issue of the Palestinian state. The price of normalisation with Israel, not only the part of Egypt but the entire Arab world, is a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, a return to the 1967 borders with land swaps, and a resolution to the problem of Palestinian refugees. That is a formula that has been endorsed repeatedly by Arab governments, and has only been seriously entertained by the Olmert administration in Israel.
Egypt should also never again allow Israel's wanton destruction such as in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008/2009 to go unchallenged. Egypt raised little public objection with the US, the UN or even with Israel during those incidents because it saw its main victims as Hezbollah (which Mubarak despised) and Hamas (Mubarak preferred the Palestinian Authority to Hamas).
Short of that, Israeli intransigence should be met with similar measures on the Egyptian side, though of course it would never amount to war.
Paralysis no longer be an option with the legislature being dissolved.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/14/world/...ing/index.html
Maybe not so Western-style after all. Looks like you had exactly as much democracy as the military allowed, and no more.
Yeah, I wondered how long they would sit on the sidelines. The problem now is that even if Morsi wins he won't be given any power. And if the public fully backs Morsi and the military backs down (or is removed) then the Muslim Brotherhood will end up having carte blanche to enact their agenda.
The next few hours and days will be very important here for the junta. History suggests the odds are in their favor.
It will be interesting to see the responses, respectively, of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the more liberal and more moderate anti-Mubarak people who were frozen out of the election. Will they present a common front?
You can be sure that Putin and his ilk around the world are reading the news today and smiling. Even Assad has probably had a brief respite from depression in his presidential bunker.
I wish I hadn't used up all my Egyptian references during the Arab Spring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz3KpwHQeEw
This is essentially a coup, and none of the activists and political groups are mincing their words on it, save for Mubarak's party. The Supreme Court first ruled that the law barring Mubarak's politicians from running in elections was unconstitutional, thereby allowing Shafik to context tomorrow's run-off. Then they ruled that the law regulating the parliamentary elections, which was passed by the military, was also unconstitutional, and ordered the Parliament dissolved.
As a consequence, the military assumed legislative authority and will appoint the assembly that will draft the Constitution. There is no dressing this up.
I suspect the Muslim Brotherhood, in keeping with their political opportunism, will contest the run-off election anyway, and rely on the fact that they are likely to win back control of Parliament and to have the Prime Minister position in the Cabinet, as Shafik has promised he would do. The military will likely retain control in that scenario of the "sovereign" ministries like defence, interior and foreign affairs. It is shameful and I hope they will withdraw from the run-off to prevent legitimising this palace coup with an election that brings Shafik to power.
A coup was my initial take on also but it was hard to sort through the rhetoric. I had hoped the Supreme Court was a separate institution, it appears that isn't the case. You have portrayed it in very stark terms and I must assume you know more than I do.
Is there anything the US could or should do in Egypt?
It sadly looks like the final result of the Arab spring is a relatively peaceful transition to "democracy" in Tunisia, and bloody one in Libya, and lots of dead bodies in the rest of the region.
The Supreme Court is a separate institution, but the justice system is hardly independent or impartial in Egypt and it is stacked with Mubarak-era appointees. Historically they are the reason we had the only marginally fair parliamentary elections under Mubarak in 2005, but they have regressed.
Cut the military aid.Is there anything the US could or should do in Egypt?
And the Muslim Brotherhood has won the Presidency. Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Egypt. I hope I didn't vote Ayatollah Khomeini into office.
The military will still have much real power. They are trying to pass now an outrageous Constitutional declaration that preserves their power.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/wo...pagewanted=allThe military’s new charter is the latest in a series of swift steps that the generals have taken to tighten their grasp on power just at the moment when they had promised to hand over to elected civilians the authority that they assumed on the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year. Their charter gives them control of all laws and the national budget, immunity from any oversight, and the power to veto a declaration of war.
After dissolving the Brotherhood-led Parliament elected four months ago, and locking out its lawmakers, the generals on Sunday night also seized control of the process of writing a permanent constitution. State news media reported that the generals had picked a 100-member panel to draft it.
“The new constitutional declaration completed Egypt’s official transformation into a military dictatorship,” Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, wrote in an online commentary. Under the military’s charter, the president appeared to be reduced to a powerless figurehead.
Hey, are you the Kareem mentioned at the end of the article?
I've read a bit of this thread, and am a little worried. I have family over in Cairo for the next few days. I'd appreciate an "it's all kicked off again" alert.
Nope, I used to be a journalist as well, but never wrote for the NYT.
Will do. I expect Islamist-led protests in the next couple of days over the Constitutional declaration, and they might be responded to with force. Hilariously, there's also a lawsuit that will be resolved on Tuesday arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood is an unconstitutional organisation, so it could be dissolved by tomorrow.
Cheers Kareem. I appreciate it. :)
So on NPR I heard someone say that, in effect, the whole Arab Spring thing in Egypt has amounted to giving the military leave to boot their commander in chief and take up the reins of command all by themselves. Is it that bald-faced? Is that all Egyptians have to show for it, new boss same as the old boss? Or is the reality something very different from the Mubarak years, but also very different from what people hoped it might be a few months ago, but still different?
I'm hoping for a South Korea type scenario. AIUI South Korea started out as basically as a military dictatorship but slowly morphed into a real democracy. Turkey more or less seems to be following a similar path.
Those are both interesting models, yeah. I don't know that much about the internal politics of the Egyptian military, but in the Turkish and ROK examples it seemed the military was mostly interested in stability and prosperity, and in Turkey's case, secularism. I wonder whether Egypt, though, is more complex as a society than either of those examples (complex though they are themselves). I find it difficult to believe that, after all that has happened in the past year, Egyptians are just going to go back to business as usual and forget about all this democracy and protest stuff.
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