Egyptian scholar Samuel Tadros tells me that observers in Cairo are seeing Islamists out in full force among the protesters today for the first time since the demonstrations began. They poured out of the mosques after Friday prayers and are marching and shouting Islamist slogans. Protesters continue to take to the streets one hour into the curfew. Alexandria, where police withdrew hours before the military was deployed, reportedly remains out of government control and in chaos, with looting and fire-setting.
As much as Americans might like to see despots deposed in the Middle East, revolutions usually don't have a happy ending (for the despots or for those who want freedom). I wouldn't be surprised if in any country that overthrows it's despot that within a year or so either another despot has taken control or some sort of radical Islamist regime takes power.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNobody but an Egyptian scholar could figure out that that was going to happen.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree with Sam Hamilton -- yet the news centers appear not to even consider the possibility of Islamists taking this opportunity to depose nominally democratic governments (however corrupt) in the name of 'the people', and then promptly delivering the country into the hands of a fascist theocracy. I think that's exactly what's in the playbook.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is it, folks. Within days, Egypt could be an Iranian satellite, under the rule of an ayatollah. Only decisive action can prevent this from happening, and smother Egyptian Islamofascism while it is still young and vulnerable. Any crowd with Muslims in it should be targeted for airstrikes by the US Air Force. Any new, post-Mubarak government with Muslims in it should be removed by force.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne thing is for certain: with Mubarak at the helm the democrats of Egypt have no chance.
In a battle with the Islamists, at least there is a fight to be had. They may lose, but isn't it worth the struggle?
And Egypt is about as "nominally" democratic as Venezuela.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEgypt is nominally democratic? Sham elections are not real elections. By that standard, Iraq with Saddam was nominally democratic. If we keep supporting these unstable, despotic regimes we will become the enemy. It seems that we haven't learned the required lesson from Iran and are doomed to make the same mistake.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust got in a Stratfor email that says Al-Jazeera is reporting clashes between the military and the police. As Stratfor put it, "unconfirmed" reports.
Al-Jazeera may be whipping things up throughout the region, don't you think?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeople in the west (that's us) make one big mistake when forming foreign policy ideas, especially as it relates to Muslim countries. We think that our yearning to be free is universal. It isn't. This country's primal understanding of freedom and liberty is the result of 2K+ years of western philosophy. It became part of our cultural DNA. That philosophy, by in large, does not exist in the Arab and Persian cultures.
Another mistake we make is projecting that our hopes and dreams for our own children are universally accepted by parents in every culture. Again, they aren't. It's our own hubris that creates the most danger for us. We think that if we just "give" these people what we believe to be universal desires (liberty & freedom), all of our problems will eventually just go away. They won't.
Islam and freedom (freedom as we understand it) are cognitively dissonant. They cannot exist together precisely because adherence to Islam demands submission, which is directly antithetical to liberty and freedom. Until we understand this, we will never be able to forge effective foreign policy ideals to manage the threat of Islam.
By the way, I don't base this on any book I've read, or documentary I've seen. I base this entirely on my two 13-month tours in Iraq - perhaps the most secular of the Arab countries at that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou'll note the Left is vibrating with excitement over this. The reason is they need to rewrite history a bit, given the results in Iraq. it is funny how they could not muster much enthusiasm for the Iranian protesters, but they love this bunch. The old anti-American streak is still alive and well on the Left.
The elephant in the room here is Lebanon. The West wanted to believe it was a movement towards ordered liberty. In the end it was simply an opening for Iran and Hezbollah to seize control from Syria.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Obama administration should, publicly explain that these demonstrations are led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is seeking to spread fundimentalist Islam back into Egypt, re-establishing the Caliphate there. And that when we failed to support the Shah of Iran, the fundimentalists took that country over, leading to where they are now. Dictators can be the lesser of two evils, and have to be supported, but steered toward democracy by a strong U.S. president. But, we didn't have one with Carter, and we don't have one in Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs much as I want to support the oppressed masses who are yearning to be free....... this looks a lot more like 1979 than 1776. I hope I am wrong.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReally Scott, you need to take a class on World Religions and Culture or something. Japanese Society and Culture were 10 times as Anti-Freedom and Democracy as anything you'll see in the Middle East and now they're one of the more successful Democracies. India with a brutal cast system that relegated millions to poverty with a Social structure defined as "The Elite" and the rest of you is now the largest Democracy on this planet.
Turkey is a functioning Democracy. They've had their problems but Fundamentalism is largely kept in check by the Turkish people themselves. But no more problems than say the Ukraine or Serbia.
When you lump a bunch of diverse people into a group to look down upon you're setting yourself up to ignore and misunderstand a lot in this world. Tunisia just had a successful citizen uprising without lots of Islamic Fundamentalist. Egypt might too, who can tell I'm certainly not in Egypt and the news coverage of the country is pretty poor considering.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Ray - Ah, there it is. I need to take a "class". Maybe there's a book you can recommend as well. I have actually lived there. Have you?
As for Japan (another place I have actually lived & worked), proverbial apples and oranges. Japan didn't have to manage a countervailing force to democracy - Islam. Moreover, Japan and its people were beaten into submission (there's that word again), literally and figuratively. They were conquered in every sense of the word. Fortunately for them, they fell to a conqueror who had no desire to occupy them. Moreover, they were emerging from a period of 700+ years where job #1 was war. They were a culture that knew how to fully accept and follow an order. And, what was that "order"? Build and maintain a peaceful, democratic society. Like most orders, it was one they could follow. They had centuries of practice, doing just that.
They were also a fully-industrialized society. Like Germany, they could build things - machines, neighborhoods and buildings and the basic elements of the modern age, like wide-spread and reliable electric and water distribution. And finally, they were a perfectly homogenized society - by in large, no ethnic nor religious divisions existed.
Turkey is a economic crisis away from Islamic disaster. No one should kid themselves.
India, yep, it has a Muslim population, albeit a relatively small minority population, and it's a functioning Democracy. And, what gives India virtually all of its grief - MUSLIM extremists. Again, not a very compelling argument, Ray.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFantastic points, Scott Wilson.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe key to Egypt will be what the army does. If the army chooses to prop up Mubarak, lots of bloodshed but he survives. If the army stands on the sidelines, we probably get an islamist dictatorship. Best case is the army deposes Mubarak and emulates Turkey--provide stability and governance until legitimate elections are held, and send a strong signal that it will not accept an islamic regime. I have no idea where the army stands on this and to what degree the islamists have already infiltrated, but the third option is the one we need to pray for!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree with Scott, Ray needs to take a course in history.
I would add that charasmatic and powerful men founded all of the democracies that he trumpets. MacArthur was an autocrat, as Scott mentioned; Ataturk, ditto; and Ghandi rallied millions to his cause.
Egypt has a mob, and I wonder, has a democracy ever sprouted out of a mob?
Like someone said on this site, this seems more like 1979 than 1776.
Remember also that MacArthur left the emperor on the throne precisely because he needed a figurehead who would unify the Japanese. Ataturk was ruthless to his enemies before he imposed democracy on Turkey. And the empire trembled when Ghandi spoke.
And then there's the fact that Ataturk and MacArthur were secular autocrats, and India's government has been stable to the extent its been nuetral when tensions arise between its Islamic minority and the Hindu majority. In fact India actually imported a lot from the American constitution and the British parliament when it emerged from its status as a colony.
Really, Ray, do the mobs in Egypt have anything in common with these people and events? Are they carrying copies of the federalist papers ... carefully avoiding violent confrontation ... openly avowing secular government? Does the jailed nobel laureate have anything like the following of Ghandi or the power of Ataturk or MacArthur?
A rule for conservatives in assessing revolutionaries: A mob is a mob is a mob, unless and until there's compelling evidence to the contrary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJapan really does compare quite well to Islamic regimes because the majority of the people do not want said regime, but they would become outcasts and probably would have been killed for voicing their opinion. The Japanese people were swayed into WWII after having created a democratic government (Meiji-Taisho), but the Japanese military decided that imperialistic invasion of surrounding territories of "lesser Asians" would benefit the state that had so recently handed Russia a stunning defeat.
The Japanese military machine then plotted and executed the May 15th incident in 1932, replacing what was a democratic society with a military regime. The foolish and short-sighted Japanese supported the military - as the military was far more nationalistic - and the military suddenly made all war and conquest for the glory of the "God-emperor." When MacArthur made this emperor go on radio and publicly announce surrender, this effectively destroyed the backbone of Japan: The Japanese heard the surrender from their God himself, who had now become a failure of a man.
The same must happen to Islam. Islam and its ways must be ridiculed as Christianity is often ridiculed - seen by secular society for its peculiar strange attributes. The weakness of the Islamic jihadist is that if his suicidal nature is portrayed as absurd (in the same way that the kamikaze pilot was absurd) he will be shamed into becoming a rational and thinking person.
The sad thing is that Islam has so much more to ridicule than Christianity (the 72 virgins, the pedophilia, the polygamy, using women as drapery) and much of the youth in Islamic countries knows this instinctively from the movies they watch and the Internet. The left will never give them the voice to question their own religion, and neither will their own leaders, so they have no voice to express the questions that must be springing up in their heads.
The West must make the case for democracy and make it NOW, for Islam is NOT DEMOCRATIC. Islam is the OPPOSITE of democracy, and if that case is made, much of the Islamic youth will embrace it just as they did in Iran a year ago.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat makes the media think that the police and army of Egypt are using disproportionate force? It is their duty to protect the safety of people and property. You have seen the violence shown on the internet. Mubarak's party headquarters in flames. Protesters setting many fires. If the police and army were using disproportionate force, wouldn't there be quite a lot more bodies?
We saw the Communists take over when protesters eliminated the Czar; and Khomenei took over when protesters eliminated the Shah. The group best organized in Egypt, besides the government, is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is likely that if the government falls we will see yet another Islamist government. It took 70 years to get rid of those wonderful Communists who almost gave us thermonuclear war. Khomenei's progeny are still in power, going for nuclear bombs as soon as they can get them.
El Baradei still doesn't understand the mischief he is working. He has as much chance of becoming Prime Minister of Egypt as Chicken Little.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI congratulate two of the commenters.
1. The [Egyptian] mob is not carrying the Federalist Papers.
2. This [situation in Egypt] looks more like 1979 than 1776.
Wonderful!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe biggest danger is not just that the Islamists take power in Egypt. It is that they establish a true transnational Caliphate. Since Egypt is the center of the Arab world, an islamist takeover there is more likely to put a true Islamic Empire together than a takeover anywhere else. All the dominoes could fall quickly and implement Bin Laden's dream of a Third Caliphate, covering nearly the entire Sunni part fo the world.
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