Egypt | Army Ousts Mursi govt, violence erupts | News & Discussions
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hussain0216
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No no violence
My natural inclination is to fight
But that is what the military and the liberals want, no matter what the Muslim in Egypt do the military and seculars will hate them supported by a biased anti muslim world who will look the other way because the people dying are so called islamists
So the muslim brotherhood needs to keep it peaceful for the moment at least in the face of enormous provocation
Garner the support of Muslims across the world
They have waited 80 years they can wait more, the seculars and military must eventually be crushed
Bu for the moment the M.B protests are removing all legitimacy from the military and state
The military and seculars are looking like scum and Egypt is ungovernable
There are 1.7 billion Muslims with every year hundreds of millions of more muslims being added through birth or conversion
Reality is all this chaos due to necessary change is not even a tiny scratch in our numbers
My natural inclination is to fight
But that is what the military and the liberals want, no matter what the Muslim in Egypt do the military and seculars will hate them supported by a biased anti muslim world who will look the other way because the people dying are so called islamists
So the muslim brotherhood needs to keep it peaceful for the moment at least in the face of enormous provocation
Garner the support of Muslims across the world
They have waited 80 years they can wait more, the seculars and military must eventually be crushed
Bu for the moment the M.B protests are removing all legitimacy from the military and state
The military and seculars are looking like scum and Egypt is ungovernable
There are 1.7 billion Muslims with every year hundreds of millions of more muslims being added through birth or conversion
Reality is all this chaos due to necessary change is not even a tiny scratch in our numbers
kalu_miah
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Egypt's bloodbath: The battle for Egypt | The Economist
The battle for Egypt
The generals killing spree is a reckless denial of the lessons from the Arab spring
Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition
BARELY a month and a half into a government dominated by a general who had displaced a Muslim Brother in a coup that was cheered on by most of the people, Egypt is once again plunged into violence. On August 14th armed police, backed by helicopters in the skies and bulldozers on the streets, stormed thousands of the Brothers supporters encamped beside a mosque and a university in Cairo. Hundreds were killed and nearly 3,000 injured and the violence spread to other cities, including Alexandria and Suez (see article). A score of churches were burned by angry Islamists. The government declared a curfew in some provinces and a month-long state of emergency across the country. The last time that happened, when Hosni Mubarak took over as president after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, the state of emergency remained in force for 30 years.
The government has pleaded that it used the utmost degree of self-restraint this week. In fact, its choice to unleash deadly force against its own people was brutal and reckless. Far from marking the closing chapter in a popular coup, the killing threatens a period of strife that could drag the country towards civil war. At worst, the spectre of Algeria looms: the army there prevented Islamists from taking office after they won the first round of an election in 1991, and as many as 200,000 died in the decade-long bloodbath that ensued.
Thankfully Egypt still has a long way to go before that fate befalls it. But its 85m people are as deeply divided today as at any time since Egypt became a republic in 1953. The question is whether suppression really is now the way to deal with the Muslim Brothers, or whether it simply adds to the mayhem.
Death on the Nile
One view holds that the Muslim Brothers never intended to share power or to relinquish it in an election. There is no doubt that Muhammad Morsis performance as president was a disaster. He won about a quarter of the eligible vote and proceeded to flout every sort of democratic norm. His government packed a constitutional committee with Islamists, rushing through electoral and other laws without due consent. It let sectarian hatred against Muslim minorities and Egypts 8m-odd Christians rise unchecked. Combined with sheer incompetence in its stewardship of the economy, this destroyed the standing of Mr Morsi among ordinary Egyptians. More than 20m peoplehalf the adult populationwere said to have signed a petition for a referendum on his presidency.
Since his forced removal on July 3rd and subsequent incarceration, he and his fellow Brothers at large have refused any hint of compromise, and have demanded his reinstatement. How much more exhilarating was opposition than the tricky realities of governing. Victimhood, martyrdom even, has seemed a more potent political weapon than policymaking.
But that does not excuse the generalsfor either the coup or this bloodshed. The coup was not only wrong, it was also a tactical mistake. The Brothers would probably have lost any election handily; and if they had refused to hold a vote, then the people would have risen up. The armys violence since then has been disastrous. When it shot scores of people on July 8th, it drew a baleful lesson from the tepid Western response: that it could get away with it. In fact violence has served to unite Egypts various Islamist factionssome of which had previously rejected the Brothers almost as keenly as secular Egyptians did. The Brothers incompetence and abuse of power is now disappearing under a mantle of injustice and suffering.
The generals worst mistake, however, is to ignore the chief lesson of the Arab spring. This is that ordinary people yearn for dignity. They hate being bossed around by petty officials and ruled by corrupt autocrats. They reject the apparatus of a police state. Instead they want better lives, decent jobs and some basic freedoms. Egypts Islamists, in their reduced state, probably still make up 30% or so of the population. The generals cannot suppress them without also depriving millions of other Egyptians of the freedoms that they craveand which they have tasted, however briefly, since the overthrow of Mr Mubarak. Henceforth jihadists, in Egypt and beyond, who sympathise with al-Qaeda will find a more willing audience when they preach, as well as a supply of newly radicalised recruits. Likewise, each Islamist challenge will strengthen those in the army arguing for further suppression.
Go back to your barracks
If the generals want a stable Egypt, in which they command the loyalty of ordinary Egyptians, they should therefore draw back from the brink. Given their treatment at the hands of the army, it is hard to imagine the Brothers agreeing now to take part in a new political circus. But General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the power behind the throne, and his interim president, Adly Mansour, can create the conditions for a functioning economy and an inclusive politics. To do so they must set a timetable for parliamentary and presidential elections. The committee they have entrusted with amending the constitution should be widened to include more Islamists. And other Islamist parties, if the Brothers refuse to participate, should be wooed into playing their part in politicseventually, if not now.
The world must also act. This newspaper warned Western leaders that their lack of response to the July shootings would cause trouble; it has. It should not repeat the same mistake today. America should cancel joint military exercises due in September and withhold its next tranche of military aid (already disbursed for the current year) until a civilian government has been elected and takes office. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries should not write the generals a blank cheque just because they share a dislike of the Brothers.
No one could ever have thought that reinventing Egypt was going to be easy. It has never had a proper democracy. Much of its populace is illiterate. Most of its people live in poverty. And the question of how to accommodate Islam has everywhere proved vexed. But the generals should stop and think: in modern history such immense obstacles have never been overcome by violence.
The battle for Egypt
The generals killing spree is a reckless denial of the lessons from the Arab spring
Aug 17th 2013 |From the print edition
BARELY a month and a half into a government dominated by a general who had displaced a Muslim Brother in a coup that was cheered on by most of the people, Egypt is once again plunged into violence. On August 14th armed police, backed by helicopters in the skies and bulldozers on the streets, stormed thousands of the Brothers supporters encamped beside a mosque and a university in Cairo. Hundreds were killed and nearly 3,000 injured and the violence spread to other cities, including Alexandria and Suez (see article). A score of churches were burned by angry Islamists. The government declared a curfew in some provinces and a month-long state of emergency across the country. The last time that happened, when Hosni Mubarak took over as president after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, the state of emergency remained in force for 30 years.
The government has pleaded that it used the utmost degree of self-restraint this week. In fact, its choice to unleash deadly force against its own people was brutal and reckless. Far from marking the closing chapter in a popular coup, the killing threatens a period of strife that could drag the country towards civil war. At worst, the spectre of Algeria looms: the army there prevented Islamists from taking office after they won the first round of an election in 1991, and as many as 200,000 died in the decade-long bloodbath that ensued.
Thankfully Egypt still has a long way to go before that fate befalls it. But its 85m people are as deeply divided today as at any time since Egypt became a republic in 1953. The question is whether suppression really is now the way to deal with the Muslim Brothers, or whether it simply adds to the mayhem.
Death on the Nile
One view holds that the Muslim Brothers never intended to share power or to relinquish it in an election. There is no doubt that Muhammad Morsis performance as president was a disaster. He won about a quarter of the eligible vote and proceeded to flout every sort of democratic norm. His government packed a constitutional committee with Islamists, rushing through electoral and other laws without due consent. It let sectarian hatred against Muslim minorities and Egypts 8m-odd Christians rise unchecked. Combined with sheer incompetence in its stewardship of the economy, this destroyed the standing of Mr Morsi among ordinary Egyptians. More than 20m peoplehalf the adult populationwere said to have signed a petition for a referendum on his presidency.
Since his forced removal on July 3rd and subsequent incarceration, he and his fellow Brothers at large have refused any hint of compromise, and have demanded his reinstatement. How much more exhilarating was opposition than the tricky realities of governing. Victimhood, martyrdom even, has seemed a more potent political weapon than policymaking.
But that does not excuse the generalsfor either the coup or this bloodshed. The coup was not only wrong, it was also a tactical mistake. The Brothers would probably have lost any election handily; and if they had refused to hold a vote, then the people would have risen up. The armys violence since then has been disastrous. When it shot scores of people on July 8th, it drew a baleful lesson from the tepid Western response: that it could get away with it. In fact violence has served to unite Egypts various Islamist factionssome of which had previously rejected the Brothers almost as keenly as secular Egyptians did. The Brothers incompetence and abuse of power is now disappearing under a mantle of injustice and suffering.
The generals worst mistake, however, is to ignore the chief lesson of the Arab spring. This is that ordinary people yearn for dignity. They hate being bossed around by petty officials and ruled by corrupt autocrats. They reject the apparatus of a police state. Instead they want better lives, decent jobs and some basic freedoms. Egypts Islamists, in their reduced state, probably still make up 30% or so of the population. The generals cannot suppress them without also depriving millions of other Egyptians of the freedoms that they craveand which they have tasted, however briefly, since the overthrow of Mr Mubarak. Henceforth jihadists, in Egypt and beyond, who sympathise with al-Qaeda will find a more willing audience when they preach, as well as a supply of newly radicalised recruits. Likewise, each Islamist challenge will strengthen those in the army arguing for further suppression.
Go back to your barracks
If the generals want a stable Egypt, in which they command the loyalty of ordinary Egyptians, they should therefore draw back from the brink. Given their treatment at the hands of the army, it is hard to imagine the Brothers agreeing now to take part in a new political circus. But General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the power behind the throne, and his interim president, Adly Mansour, can create the conditions for a functioning economy and an inclusive politics. To do so they must set a timetable for parliamentary and presidential elections. The committee they have entrusted with amending the constitution should be widened to include more Islamists. And other Islamist parties, if the Brothers refuse to participate, should be wooed into playing their part in politicseventually, if not now.
The world must also act. This newspaper warned Western leaders that their lack of response to the July shootings would cause trouble; it has. It should not repeat the same mistake today. America should cancel joint military exercises due in September and withhold its next tranche of military aid (already disbursed for the current year) until a civilian government has been elected and takes office. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries should not write the generals a blank cheque just because they share a dislike of the Brothers.
No one could ever have thought that reinventing Egypt was going to be easy. It has never had a proper democracy. Much of its populace is illiterate. Most of its people live in poverty. And the question of how to accommodate Islam has everywhere proved vexed. But the generals should stop and think: in modern history such immense obstacles have never been overcome by violence.
kalu_miah
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Egypt: disaster on Europe's doorstep | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
Egypt: disaster on Europe's doorstep
Attempts to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood are met by a force that shows the military they do not have control of Egypt
Editorial
The Guardian, Friday 16 August 2013 15.47 EDT
Egypt had less than two days to recover from the shock of the worst bloodshed in its modern history at least 640 dead and 4,000 injured when the whole deadly cycle started again on Friday: mass arrests during the night, mass demonstrations on a nationwide scale, heavy gunfire ringing out in the heart of Cairo and the first reports of scores of deaths. The abyss facing Egypt under the current military government is huge. If the government carries out its ambition to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood and destroy it as a political force, it will be doing something more ambitious than the dictator Hosni Mubarak attempted. But in the process it may also shatter Egypt. The sheer size of the mass demonstrations on Friday are a sign that the military regime cannot hold the country on their own, and the anti-coup forces' ability to mount such sustained defiance and do so repeatedly, in the face of live fire is an indication of what Egypt's new military rulers are up against.
The crackdown has nevertheless been fuelled by the support from a significant section of the population, some of whom set up roadblocks in Cairo to stop marchers from entering the centre of the city. But claims from the supporters of the military government to be the authentic, and exclusive, voice of the Egyptian people should be treated sceptically. Before the polarisation of Egyptian society goes deeper, it is worth restating a few basic hopes. The first is that the shock generated by the deaths of fellow Egyptians will eventually bring people together. It is one thing to oppose an Islamic movement and fight at the polls the cause of a pluralistic, multifaith, democratic Egypt. It is quite another to applaud their deaths and justify their massacre.
So far only the Salafist al-Nour party, the liberal April 6 group and the far left revolutionary socialists have spoken against the killings. Most other factions call the Brotherhood a terrorist threat and support the government action. But the cracks are growing. Khaled Dawoud, the spokesman of the National Salvation Front, who supported the coup, resigned on Friday, tweeting that he could not continue with political parties who refused to condemn the shootings. If the ranks of the demonstrators are being swollen by prominent liberals such as the youth leader Abdul Rahman Fares and the secular poet Abdul Rahman Yousef, then a split between secular revolutionaries and the Brotherhood that goes right the way back to the start of the revolution in 2011 could be in the process of being repaired. This could be a way forward. The forces that combined to oust one military dictatorship will have to find a way of replacing a second and even more brutal one.
The second hope is that the anti-coup protest remains focused on the coup. This is not certain at present. At least 12 Coptic churches have been torched and over 20 attacked. The Brotherhood has condemned the attacks, saying that the fact that the Coptic church applauded the coup is no justification for sectarian attacks on Christian worshippers. They should go further and provide physical protection for them, especially if the police stand by and do nothing. Sectarianism is as much an enemy of an anti-coup movement as retaliatory violence is.
The international community is starting to grasp the dimensions of what is unfolding. Europe is on Egypt's doorstep and if it descends into civil conflict, as it still might, the displaced will travel north across the sea if they can. The EU foreign policy representative Baroness Ashton, who met with President Mohamed Morsi and called for utmost restraint, should continue with her mission. Diplomatic pressure from Europe is all the more important as Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah declared his support for what he termed Egypt's "fight against terrorism". There are no easy options here, but only one condition will guarantee Egypt's stability the return to full democratic legitimacy.
Egypt: disaster on Europe's doorstep
Attempts to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood are met by a force that shows the military they do not have control of Egypt
Editorial
The Guardian, Friday 16 August 2013 15.47 EDT
Egypt had less than two days to recover from the shock of the worst bloodshed in its modern history at least 640 dead and 4,000 injured when the whole deadly cycle started again on Friday: mass arrests during the night, mass demonstrations on a nationwide scale, heavy gunfire ringing out in the heart of Cairo and the first reports of scores of deaths. The abyss facing Egypt under the current military government is huge. If the government carries out its ambition to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood and destroy it as a political force, it will be doing something more ambitious than the dictator Hosni Mubarak attempted. But in the process it may also shatter Egypt. The sheer size of the mass demonstrations on Friday are a sign that the military regime cannot hold the country on their own, and the anti-coup forces' ability to mount such sustained defiance and do so repeatedly, in the face of live fire is an indication of what Egypt's new military rulers are up against.
The crackdown has nevertheless been fuelled by the support from a significant section of the population, some of whom set up roadblocks in Cairo to stop marchers from entering the centre of the city. But claims from the supporters of the military government to be the authentic, and exclusive, voice of the Egyptian people should be treated sceptically. Before the polarisation of Egyptian society goes deeper, it is worth restating a few basic hopes. The first is that the shock generated by the deaths of fellow Egyptians will eventually bring people together. It is one thing to oppose an Islamic movement and fight at the polls the cause of a pluralistic, multifaith, democratic Egypt. It is quite another to applaud their deaths and justify their massacre.
So far only the Salafist al-Nour party, the liberal April 6 group and the far left revolutionary socialists have spoken against the killings. Most other factions call the Brotherhood a terrorist threat and support the government action. But the cracks are growing. Khaled Dawoud, the spokesman of the National Salvation Front, who supported the coup, resigned on Friday, tweeting that he could not continue with political parties who refused to condemn the shootings. If the ranks of the demonstrators are being swollen by prominent liberals such as the youth leader Abdul Rahman Fares and the secular poet Abdul Rahman Yousef, then a split between secular revolutionaries and the Brotherhood that goes right the way back to the start of the revolution in 2011 could be in the process of being repaired. This could be a way forward. The forces that combined to oust one military dictatorship will have to find a way of replacing a second and even more brutal one.
The second hope is that the anti-coup protest remains focused on the coup. This is not certain at present. At least 12 Coptic churches have been torched and over 20 attacked. The Brotherhood has condemned the attacks, saying that the fact that the Coptic church applauded the coup is no justification for sectarian attacks on Christian worshippers. They should go further and provide physical protection for them, especially if the police stand by and do nothing. Sectarianism is as much an enemy of an anti-coup movement as retaliatory violence is.
The international community is starting to grasp the dimensions of what is unfolding. Europe is on Egypt's doorstep and if it descends into civil conflict, as it still might, the displaced will travel north across the sea if they can. The EU foreign policy representative Baroness Ashton, who met with President Mohamed Morsi and called for utmost restraint, should continue with her mission. Diplomatic pressure from Europe is all the more important as Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah declared his support for what he termed Egypt's "fight against terrorism". There are no easy options here, but only one condition will guarantee Egypt's stability the return to full democratic legitimacy.
islamrules
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army shooting unarmed muslims
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kalu_miah
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/world/middleeast/egypt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
New Bloodshed in Egypt as Islamists Defy Threat of Force
CAIRO — Dozens of people were reportedly killed in renewed clashes on Friday as thousands of followers of the embattled Muslim Brotherhood took to the streets of Cairo and other cities, facing police officers authorized to use lethal force if threatened.
As the Islamist Brotherhood sought to regain momentum after a crushing crackdown by security forces on Wednesday in which almost 640 people were killed, witnesses spoke of gunfire whistling over a main overpass in Cairo and at a downtown square as clashes erupted and police officers lobbed tear gas canisters. Reports of a rising death toll continued throughout the day, with up to 50 dead, said a Reuters report that quoted security officials. About 30 bodies were laid out in a mosque in Ramses Square, which was being used as a makeshift field hospital as the injured were brought in from clashes that included gunfire nearby.
Fatalities were also reported from protests in other parts of Cairo and in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal, and fighting erupted in Fayoum and Alexandria. In some of the urban battles, it was not immediately clear who was fighting, as gunmen in civilian clothes opened fire.
Under military lockdown after the authorities declared a state of emergency, Cairo and other cities had been bracing for more violence after Friday Prayer, which has been a central trigger for protest since the wave of turmoil known as the Arab Spring swept through the Arab world beginning in early 2011.
In response to the call for what the Brotherhood called a “Friday of rage,” thousands of supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, marched from northeast Cairo after the noon prayer, witnesses said, defying a show of strength from the military as they headed toward Ramses Square downtown. For its part, the army and security forces sealed off streets and positioned armored vehicles in Tahrir Square, once the crucible of broad revolt but now a stronghold of Morsi opponents.
Some of the violence had ebbed by nightfall and a curfew came into effect, but a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Gehad el-Haddad, said in a Twitter message that the day marked the first of what would be daily rallies across Egypt.
The outcome of the growing confrontation between secular and Islamist forces in Egypt — a contest that could shape the country and the region for years to come — seemed cloaked in uncertainty. “After the blows and arrests and killings that we are facing, emotions are too high to be guided by anyone,” Mr. Haddad said, according to Reuters.
The clash of powerful forces has alarmed many outsiders stunned by the ferocity of the crackdown and fearful of the potential regional repercussions. On Friday, news reports from Paris said President François Hollande consulted Britain and Germany about the crisis, but it was not immediately clear how the situation could be swayed by outsiders’ diplomacy.
On Thursday, some European officials called for a suspension of aid by the European Union, and at least one member state, Denmark, cut off support. The British and French summoned the Egyptian ambassadors in their countries to condemnthe violence. In Ankara, Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ideological ally of Mr. Morsi’s, called for an early meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what he called a “massacre.”
The Brotherhood, for decades the repository of Islamist sentiment, said it wanted millions to march on Friday to display “the pain and sorrow over the loss of our martyrs.” In a statement, the Brotherhood said the actions of the military-backed interim government against Mr. Morsi’s supporters had “increased our determination to end them.”
With their leaders jailed or silent, however, some Islamists reeled in shock at the killings, which began on Wednesday when security forces razed two protest camps where Mr. Morsi’s supporters had been staging sit-ins since his ouster six weeks ago. By Thursday night, health officials had counted 638 dead and nearly 4,000 injured, but the final toll was expected to rise further, in the worst mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.
The outcome of the internal Islamist debate may now be the most critical variable in deciding the next phase of the crisis. The military-backed government has made clear its determination to demonize and repress the Islamists with a ruthlessness exceeding even that of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the autocrat who first outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood six decades ago.
How the Islamists respond will inevitably reshape their movement and Egypt. Will they resume the accommodationist tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood under President Hosni Mubarak, escalate their street protests despite continued casualties, or turn to armed insurgency, as some members did in the 1990s?
President Obama, interrupting a weeklong vacation to address the bloodshed, stopped short of suspending the $1.3 billion in annual American military aid to Egypt but canceled joint military exercises scheduled to take place in a few months.
Instead of “reconciliation” after the military takeover, he said, “we’ve seen a more dangerous path taken through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s associations and supporters, and now tragically the violence that’s taken the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.” Mr. Obama added, “Our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back.”
Soon after the president’s speech, the State Department issued an advisory warning American citizens living in Egypt to leave because of the unrest. On Friday, European governments warned their citizens not to travel to Red Sea resorts, and tour operators responded by canceling trips to Egypt, Reuters reported.
The Cairo government accused Mr. Obama of failing to grasp the nature of the “terrorist acts” it said Egypt was facing.
A statement issued by the office of the interim president, Adli Mansour, said Mr. Obama’s remarks “would strengthen the violent armed groups and encourage them in their methods inimical to stability and the democratic transition.”
Egyptian Islamists had also lashed out across the country on Thursday.
On Thursday, after a string of attacks on Coptic Christian churches and businesses, at least one more church was set on fire, in Fayoum. In Cairo, some Islamists contended that the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, had appeared to endorse the crackdown, and they portrayed attacks on churches around the country as a counterattack. “When Pope Tawadros comes out after a massacre to thank the military and the police, then don’t accuse me of sectarianism,” said Mamdouh Hamdi, 35, an accountant.
The ultraconservative Nour Party, the liberal April 6 group and the far-left Revolutionary Socialists spoke out against the killings. But most other political factions denounced the Islamists as a terrorist threat and applauded the government action.
Veterans of Gamaa al-Islamiya, the ultraconservative Islamist group that waged a terrorist campaign in Egypt two decades ago and later renounced violence, said that since the military takeover they had been warning angry jihadists to shun their group’s former tactics.
“Because of our experience and the position that we have against the use of violence, we persuaded them that Egypt can’t stand fighting, that an armed conflict is a loss to everybody,” said Ammar Omar Abdel Rahman, a leader of Gamaa al-Islamiya and the son of the blind sheik convicted of terrorism in the United States 20 year ago.
But Wednesday’s crackdown had made that argument much harder to win, Mr. Abdel Rahman said. The security forces “are the aggressors,” he said. “Being a military doesn’t give you the right to kill and exterminate whoever you want.”
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London. Mayy El Sheikh and Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo, and Christine Hauser from New York.
New Bloodshed in Egypt as Islamists Defy Threat of Force
CAIRO — Dozens of people were reportedly killed in renewed clashes on Friday as thousands of followers of the embattled Muslim Brotherhood took to the streets of Cairo and other cities, facing police officers authorized to use lethal force if threatened.
As the Islamist Brotherhood sought to regain momentum after a crushing crackdown by security forces on Wednesday in which almost 640 people were killed, witnesses spoke of gunfire whistling over a main overpass in Cairo and at a downtown square as clashes erupted and police officers lobbed tear gas canisters. Reports of a rising death toll continued throughout the day, with up to 50 dead, said a Reuters report that quoted security officials. About 30 bodies were laid out in a mosque in Ramses Square, which was being used as a makeshift field hospital as the injured were brought in from clashes that included gunfire nearby.
Fatalities were also reported from protests in other parts of Cairo and in the city of Ismailia near the Suez Canal, and fighting erupted in Fayoum and Alexandria. In some of the urban battles, it was not immediately clear who was fighting, as gunmen in civilian clothes opened fire.
Under military lockdown after the authorities declared a state of emergency, Cairo and other cities had been bracing for more violence after Friday Prayer, which has been a central trigger for protest since the wave of turmoil known as the Arab Spring swept through the Arab world beginning in early 2011.
In response to the call for what the Brotherhood called a “Friday of rage,” thousands of supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, marched from northeast Cairo after the noon prayer, witnesses said, defying a show of strength from the military as they headed toward Ramses Square downtown. For its part, the army and security forces sealed off streets and positioned armored vehicles in Tahrir Square, once the crucible of broad revolt but now a stronghold of Morsi opponents.
Some of the violence had ebbed by nightfall and a curfew came into effect, but a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Gehad el-Haddad, said in a Twitter message that the day marked the first of what would be daily rallies across Egypt.
The outcome of the growing confrontation between secular and Islamist forces in Egypt — a contest that could shape the country and the region for years to come — seemed cloaked in uncertainty. “After the blows and arrests and killings that we are facing, emotions are too high to be guided by anyone,” Mr. Haddad said, according to Reuters.
The clash of powerful forces has alarmed many outsiders stunned by the ferocity of the crackdown and fearful of the potential regional repercussions. On Friday, news reports from Paris said President François Hollande consulted Britain and Germany about the crisis, but it was not immediately clear how the situation could be swayed by outsiders’ diplomacy.
On Thursday, some European officials called for a suspension of aid by the European Union, and at least one member state, Denmark, cut off support. The British and French summoned the Egyptian ambassadors in their countries to condemnthe violence. In Ankara, Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ideological ally of Mr. Morsi’s, called for an early meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what he called a “massacre.”
The Brotherhood, for decades the repository of Islamist sentiment, said it wanted millions to march on Friday to display “the pain and sorrow over the loss of our martyrs.” In a statement, the Brotherhood said the actions of the military-backed interim government against Mr. Morsi’s supporters had “increased our determination to end them.”
With their leaders jailed or silent, however, some Islamists reeled in shock at the killings, which began on Wednesday when security forces razed two protest camps where Mr. Morsi’s supporters had been staging sit-ins since his ouster six weeks ago. By Thursday night, health officials had counted 638 dead and nearly 4,000 injured, but the final toll was expected to rise further, in the worst mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.
The outcome of the internal Islamist debate may now be the most critical variable in deciding the next phase of the crisis. The military-backed government has made clear its determination to demonize and repress the Islamists with a ruthlessness exceeding even that of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the autocrat who first outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood six decades ago.
How the Islamists respond will inevitably reshape their movement and Egypt. Will they resume the accommodationist tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood under President Hosni Mubarak, escalate their street protests despite continued casualties, or turn to armed insurgency, as some members did in the 1990s?
President Obama, interrupting a weeklong vacation to address the bloodshed, stopped short of suspending the $1.3 billion in annual American military aid to Egypt but canceled joint military exercises scheduled to take place in a few months.
Instead of “reconciliation” after the military takeover, he said, “we’ve seen a more dangerous path taken through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s associations and supporters, and now tragically the violence that’s taken the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.” Mr. Obama added, “Our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back.”
Soon after the president’s speech, the State Department issued an advisory warning American citizens living in Egypt to leave because of the unrest. On Friday, European governments warned their citizens not to travel to Red Sea resorts, and tour operators responded by canceling trips to Egypt, Reuters reported.
The Cairo government accused Mr. Obama of failing to grasp the nature of the “terrorist acts” it said Egypt was facing.
A statement issued by the office of the interim president, Adli Mansour, said Mr. Obama’s remarks “would strengthen the violent armed groups and encourage them in their methods inimical to stability and the democratic transition.”
Egyptian Islamists had also lashed out across the country on Thursday.
On Thursday, after a string of attacks on Coptic Christian churches and businesses, at least one more church was set on fire, in Fayoum. In Cairo, some Islamists contended that the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, had appeared to endorse the crackdown, and they portrayed attacks on churches around the country as a counterattack. “When Pope Tawadros comes out after a massacre to thank the military and the police, then don’t accuse me of sectarianism,” said Mamdouh Hamdi, 35, an accountant.
The ultraconservative Nour Party, the liberal April 6 group and the far-left Revolutionary Socialists spoke out against the killings. But most other political factions denounced the Islamists as a terrorist threat and applauded the government action.
Veterans of Gamaa al-Islamiya, the ultraconservative Islamist group that waged a terrorist campaign in Egypt two decades ago and later renounced violence, said that since the military takeover they had been warning angry jihadists to shun their group’s former tactics.
“Because of our experience and the position that we have against the use of violence, we persuaded them that Egypt can’t stand fighting, that an armed conflict is a loss to everybody,” said Ammar Omar Abdel Rahman, a leader of Gamaa al-Islamiya and the son of the blind sheik convicted of terrorism in the United States 20 year ago.
But Wednesday’s crackdown had made that argument much harder to win, Mr. Abdel Rahman said. The security forces “are the aggressors,” he said. “Being a military doesn’t give you the right to kill and exterminate whoever you want.”
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London. Mayy El Sheikh and Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo, and Christine Hauser from New York.
Solomon2
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It never strikes Pakistanis as odd or praiseworthy that the Zionists in the room are the ones to talk about peace between Muslims, does it?
islamrules
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kuffars besieging masjid al fath in Ramsis , we might be looking at the next shuhada
islamrules
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this is by far the most heart breaking ever
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At the first days of this new massacre, we were seeing mostly heavily bearded guys, people who wore traditional clothes.
From these latest pics and videos, it's clearly can be seen that there is a vast variety in the protestors. I'm taking this analogy for increased support for protests.
From these latest pics and videos, it's clearly can be seen that there is a vast variety in the protestors. I'm taking this analogy for increased support for protests.
hussain0216
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If it looks like a chicken
Walks like a chicken
Clucks like a chicken
Then it's a chicken
olcayto
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Well no mate.
Muslims kill muslims all over the world. Egypt is not the first example.
İf we would for once look at the mirror instead of pointing fingers to each other.
We would have been in a much better position.
Solomon2
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Why the Brotherhood Failed
Barak Barfi
Imagine a government dominated by paranoia, convinced of conspiracies around every corner. That, in short, was the most defining aspect of the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power in Egypt. Though the country’s first democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup in July, the Brotherhood made its fair share of critical mistakes. It alienated the politicians essential to solving Egypt’s problems and declared war against the bureaucracy it needed to govern, all while the United States did little more than watch as its influence in the Arab world’s most important nation shrank to infinitesimal proportions.
The Brotherhood paranoia is not born of fantasy. For most of its eight decades, the group has been hounded by the central government. The Egyptian security services assassinated its founder, constantly incarcerated its leaders, and harassed its activists. Its years as an underground organization fostered a bunker mentality that views outsiders as threats to be neutralized. Once in office, the Brotherhood’s leaders were constantly obsessed that adversaries were plotting to bring it down. This explains President Mohamed Morsi’s Brotherhood-dominated cabinets, as well as his inability to build a coalition government at the very moment when Egypt’s problems required one.
The Brotherhood’s distrust of the secularists who propped up the regime of former President Hosni Mubarakis understandable, but it is more difficult to explain its alienation of the puritanical Salafist movement. These two Islamist organizations largely share the same goals, namely, making Egypt a more pious Muslim state. But during its year in power, the Brotherhood did everything possible to estrange the Salafist al-Nour party, which finished second in the 2011–12 parliamentary elections. Al-Nour supported the controversial constitution the Brotherhood rammed through Parliament. In exchange, the Salafists hoped to get the education and economic portfolios in Morsi’s Cabinet. Instead, they felt betrayed when they were offered the insignificant environment ministry. The final blow came in February, when Morsi dismissed senior al-Nour official Khalid Alam al-Din from his post as presidential adviser. Days later, leading Salafist Yasir Burhami attacked the Brotherhood, saying it was marginalizing and slandering al-Nour. Such enmity explains why the Salafists aligned with the secular forces to topple the Brotherhood in the days leading up to the July 3rd coup.
The Brotherhood’s paranoia also led to purges of Mubarak supporters in a clumsy full-court press against the security services, the judiciary, and the intellectual establishment. It made more trouble for itself with the third especially. Egyptians revere the writers, directors, and actors who made Cairo the cultural mecca of the Arab world, and the Ministry of Culture was the last bastion of the Mubarak establishment that had not succumbed to the Islamist wave that has gripped Egypt since Anwar Sadat assumed power in 1970. Minister Farouk Hosny, a favorite of Mubarak’s wife Suzanne, had served in his post since 1987, longer than any other Cabinet official. Though best known for his May 2008 pledge to burn Israeli books, Hosny consistently angered Islamists. His ministry’s decision in 2000 to re-publish the Syrian novelist Hayder Hayder’s Banquet for Seaweed—a critique of Islam—sparked massive protests. He further enraged Islamists in November 2006, when he told the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm that “there was an age when our mothers went to university and worked without the veil. It is in that spirit that we grew up. So why this regression?” When the Brotherhood took power, it set its sights on this pillar of the Mubarak establishment. Not surprisingly, it did so overzealously. Although it replaced Hosny with a non-Brotherhood member, Ala’a Abd al-Aziz, Aziz swiftly fired the heads of the Cairo Opera House, Fine Arts Division, and General Egyptian Book Organization. The intellectual backlash that ensued, which included a popular sit-in at the ministry building, further eroded support for the new government.
President Morsi himself created his fair share of problems as well. He originally supported a proposed IMF loan in November 2012, but pressure from the Brotherhood’s highest body, the Guidance Bureau, forced him to backtrack, hurting his credibility. Though Morsi was often captive to his Brotherhood superiors, he nevertheless went rogue when it suited him. In November 2012 he signed a presidential decree granting himself sweeping powers unchallengeable by any court. Shortly thereafter, he delivered a speech viciously attacking his adversaries, signaling his unwillingness to tolerate any opposition. His aides later confided that Morsi’s statements were unscripted and that he had expunged the more conciliatory remarks in the prepared text.
The generals holding power in Egypt were probably willing to overlook the Brotherhood’s missteps. Nor did the Brotherhood’s penchant for infusing religion into politics overly perturb Defense Minister Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. A scion of a conservative Muslim family, Sisi’s his uncle was a member of the Brotherhood and his wife wears a veil. All he and the other military brass wanted was enough stability to lift the country out of its economic and social doldrums. The Brotherhood’s bumbling, however, seemed to be making that impossible. The final straw appears to have been Morsi’s participation at a June 15th event organized by Islamist factions in support of the Syrian revolution. Among the speakers who irked the no-fuss generals was the firebrand Safwat Hijazi. His claim of sending weapons to Syrian rebels for over a year rang the alarm bells. The generals were enraged that Morsi sat silent as speaker after speaker whipped the crowd into a jingoistic frenzy as it chanted “To Jerusalem, we are going!”
As the military plotted its coup, senior American officials warned them in several conversations that Washington would not support it. The generals listened politely but were in no mood to heed their cautionary counsel, favoring the will of the street over American diktats.
In truth, Washington’s influence in Egypt has always been overstated. Cairo has traditionally marched to its own drum, only taking note of Washington’s advice when it dovetailed with its own interests. Mubarak’s willingness to skirmish with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in the 1980s stemmed from personal animosity rather than realpolitik. In the 1990s, when the international community isolated Qaddafi in an effort to get him to give up two Lockerbie bombing suspects, Mubarak was one of the few Arab leaders willing to meet with him. Egypt is also believed to have conspired with Libya to kidnap prominent Libyan dissident Mansour al-Kikhia in Cairo in 1993 and render him to Tripoli. Remittances by Egyptian workers in Libya were far more important than the need to placate Washington.
America’s clout in Egypt has been little understood by the Washington elite especially. The approximately $72.2 billion in aid the United States has doled out to Egypt since 1973 was never really meant to transform the country into an American satellite. Instead, the annual installments were ransoms paid to ensure Egypt would not participate in an Arab-Israeli war and to secure intelligence cooperation. Just as importantly, aid was a signal to other Arab Soviet allies that only Washington could deliver their lands occupied by Israel and the funds needed to build their economies. But with the demise of the rejectionist states, this raison d’être has vanished. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Qaddafi are dead. The Palestine Liberation Organization mended fences with Washington and Syria is adrift in a civil war its leaders will never recover from.
The collapse of the Mubarak regime has similarly devastated security collaboration. American intelligence services would never dare run agents in a country where Mubarak’s consigliere and spy chief Omar Suleiman laid his treasure chest open before them.
As the Brotherhood desperately tries to patch up relations with an alienated society and Washington quixotically seeks to reassert an influence it barely had before, both are trying to figure out what went wrong. And as they do, the Arab world’s most important nation sinks further into an abyss that portends more turmoil for a region that has known nothing but misfortune.
Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation. He recently returned from Egypt, where he spent time with Muslim Brotherhood supporters at the Raba’a al-Adawiyya mosque in Cairo.
Barak Barfi
Imagine a government dominated by paranoia, convinced of conspiracies around every corner. That, in short, was the most defining aspect of the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power in Egypt. Though the country’s first democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup in July, the Brotherhood made its fair share of critical mistakes. It alienated the politicians essential to solving Egypt’s problems and declared war against the bureaucracy it needed to govern, all while the United States did little more than watch as its influence in the Arab world’s most important nation shrank to infinitesimal proportions.
The Brotherhood paranoia is not born of fantasy. For most of its eight decades, the group has been hounded by the central government. The Egyptian security services assassinated its founder, constantly incarcerated its leaders, and harassed its activists. Its years as an underground organization fostered a bunker mentality that views outsiders as threats to be neutralized. Once in office, the Brotherhood’s leaders were constantly obsessed that adversaries were plotting to bring it down. This explains President Mohamed Morsi’s Brotherhood-dominated cabinets, as well as his inability to build a coalition government at the very moment when Egypt’s problems required one.
The Brotherhood’s distrust of the secularists who propped up the regime of former President Hosni Mubarakis understandable, but it is more difficult to explain its alienation of the puritanical Salafist movement. These two Islamist organizations largely share the same goals, namely, making Egypt a more pious Muslim state. But during its year in power, the Brotherhood did everything possible to estrange the Salafist al-Nour party, which finished second in the 2011–12 parliamentary elections. Al-Nour supported the controversial constitution the Brotherhood rammed through Parliament. In exchange, the Salafists hoped to get the education and economic portfolios in Morsi’s Cabinet. Instead, they felt betrayed when they were offered the insignificant environment ministry. The final blow came in February, when Morsi dismissed senior al-Nour official Khalid Alam al-Din from his post as presidential adviser. Days later, leading Salafist Yasir Burhami attacked the Brotherhood, saying it was marginalizing and slandering al-Nour. Such enmity explains why the Salafists aligned with the secular forces to topple the Brotherhood in the days leading up to the July 3rd coup.
The Brotherhood’s paranoia also led to purges of Mubarak supporters in a clumsy full-court press against the security services, the judiciary, and the intellectual establishment. It made more trouble for itself with the third especially. Egyptians revere the writers, directors, and actors who made Cairo the cultural mecca of the Arab world, and the Ministry of Culture was the last bastion of the Mubarak establishment that had not succumbed to the Islamist wave that has gripped Egypt since Anwar Sadat assumed power in 1970. Minister Farouk Hosny, a favorite of Mubarak’s wife Suzanne, had served in his post since 1987, longer than any other Cabinet official. Though best known for his May 2008 pledge to burn Israeli books, Hosny consistently angered Islamists. His ministry’s decision in 2000 to re-publish the Syrian novelist Hayder Hayder’s Banquet for Seaweed—a critique of Islam—sparked massive protests. He further enraged Islamists in November 2006, when he told the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm that “there was an age when our mothers went to university and worked without the veil. It is in that spirit that we grew up. So why this regression?” When the Brotherhood took power, it set its sights on this pillar of the Mubarak establishment. Not surprisingly, it did so overzealously. Although it replaced Hosny with a non-Brotherhood member, Ala’a Abd al-Aziz, Aziz swiftly fired the heads of the Cairo Opera House, Fine Arts Division, and General Egyptian Book Organization. The intellectual backlash that ensued, which included a popular sit-in at the ministry building, further eroded support for the new government.
President Morsi himself created his fair share of problems as well. He originally supported a proposed IMF loan in November 2012, but pressure from the Brotherhood’s highest body, the Guidance Bureau, forced him to backtrack, hurting his credibility. Though Morsi was often captive to his Brotherhood superiors, he nevertheless went rogue when it suited him. In November 2012 he signed a presidential decree granting himself sweeping powers unchallengeable by any court. Shortly thereafter, he delivered a speech viciously attacking his adversaries, signaling his unwillingness to tolerate any opposition. His aides later confided that Morsi’s statements were unscripted and that he had expunged the more conciliatory remarks in the prepared text.
The generals holding power in Egypt were probably willing to overlook the Brotherhood’s missteps. Nor did the Brotherhood’s penchant for infusing religion into politics overly perturb Defense Minister Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. A scion of a conservative Muslim family, Sisi’s his uncle was a member of the Brotherhood and his wife wears a veil. All he and the other military brass wanted was enough stability to lift the country out of its economic and social doldrums. The Brotherhood’s bumbling, however, seemed to be making that impossible. The final straw appears to have been Morsi’s participation at a June 15th event organized by Islamist factions in support of the Syrian revolution. Among the speakers who irked the no-fuss generals was the firebrand Safwat Hijazi. His claim of sending weapons to Syrian rebels for over a year rang the alarm bells. The generals were enraged that Morsi sat silent as speaker after speaker whipped the crowd into a jingoistic frenzy as it chanted “To Jerusalem, we are going!”
As the military plotted its coup, senior American officials warned them in several conversations that Washington would not support it. The generals listened politely but were in no mood to heed their cautionary counsel, favoring the will of the street over American diktats.
In truth, Washington’s influence in Egypt has always been overstated. Cairo has traditionally marched to its own drum, only taking note of Washington’s advice when it dovetailed with its own interests. Mubarak’s willingness to skirmish with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in the 1980s stemmed from personal animosity rather than realpolitik. In the 1990s, when the international community isolated Qaddafi in an effort to get him to give up two Lockerbie bombing suspects, Mubarak was one of the few Arab leaders willing to meet with him. Egypt is also believed to have conspired with Libya to kidnap prominent Libyan dissident Mansour al-Kikhia in Cairo in 1993 and render him to Tripoli. Remittances by Egyptian workers in Libya were far more important than the need to placate Washington.
America’s clout in Egypt has been little understood by the Washington elite especially. The approximately $72.2 billion in aid the United States has doled out to Egypt since 1973 was never really meant to transform the country into an American satellite. Instead, the annual installments were ransoms paid to ensure Egypt would not participate in an Arab-Israeli war and to secure intelligence cooperation. Just as importantly, aid was a signal to other Arab Soviet allies that only Washington could deliver their lands occupied by Israel and the funds needed to build their economies. But with the demise of the rejectionist states, this raison d’être has vanished. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Qaddafi are dead. The Palestine Liberation Organization mended fences with Washington and Syria is adrift in a civil war its leaders will never recover from.
The collapse of the Mubarak regime has similarly devastated security collaboration. American intelligence services would never dare run agents in a country where Mubarak’s consigliere and spy chief Omar Suleiman laid his treasure chest open before them.
As the Brotherhood desperately tries to patch up relations with an alienated society and Washington quixotically seeks to reassert an influence it barely had before, both are trying to figure out what went wrong. And as they do, the Arab world’s most important nation sinks further into an abyss that portends more turmoil for a region that has known nothing but misfortune.
Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation. He recently returned from Egypt, where he spent time with Muslim Brotherhood supporters at the Raba’a al-Adawiyya mosque in Cairo.
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