In the Cold War, we knew that the Soviet Bloc dissidents believed in freedom.
We knew they would set up liberal democracies when they won.
This war is different.
There
are so few voices in the Islamic Middle East
calling for religious freedom (e.g. for apostates),
sexual freedom (e.g. for gays)
or a pro-freedom
foreign policy (e.g. pro-Israel).
The Islamic street may want to get rid of the dictator,
but it rarely seems to want freedom.
In
Egypt,
Mubarak was a vile dictator who denied human rights.
But, when he was gone, Egyptians voted to install an
Islamist tyranny instead.
This was then overthrown in favour of a new tyranny.
The problem is not just a dictator.
The problem is the Egyptian people.
After the failures of revolutions and hopes for change in
Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan,
it's hard to have any optimism about the Arab or Islamic street.
Not enough of them want freedom.
They want other things.
Polls show that the Egyptian people themselves are the problem.
Poll, Apr 2011: Majority of Egyptians want Egypt's laws based on the Quran.
Poll, Spring 2011,
shows 62 percent of Egyptians support suicide bombing of civilians.
Poll, Apr 2011: Majority of Egyptians want to end the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Poll, May 2012.
60 percent of Egyptians want "strict" sharia law.
A further 32 percent want "moderate" sharia law.
On the role of religion in government, 61 percent chose Saudi Arabia as the preferred model.
There is no hope for these useless people and their useless revolution.
Poll, May 2012.
61 percent of Egyptians want to abandon the peace treaty with Israel.
Poll, Oct 2012.
74 percent of Egyptians want to break off diplomatic relations with Israel.
77 percent want to end the peace treaty with Israel.
61 percent support Iran's nuclear weapons.
87 percent want Egypt to have nuclear weapons.
The Egyptian people are the problem.
Poll of 2012, released Apr 2013.
2011 Egyptian revolution.
A mix of democrats and Islamists versus a dictatorship.
The violent and totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood
overwhelmed the democrats.
(Like what happened in Iran in 1979
and in Russia in 1917.)
Sandmonkey, 12 Feb 2011, on the fall of Mubarak:
"Tonight will be the first night where I go to bed and don't have to worry about state security hunting me down,
or about government goons sent to kidnap me; or about government sponsored hackers attacking my website.
Tonight, for the first time ever, I feel free .. and it is awesome!
Save any and all disagreements with any of the groups that operate them.
We will disagree with each other, and that will be sweet because no more dictatorship. Tomorrow we squabble, and .. tonite?
TONIGHT WE CELEBRATE!
FUCK OFF MUBARAK .. I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL!"
Larry Derfner, 2 Feb 2011, says Israel and the West have got to take the chance and support this.
He says the protest in Egypt and across the Arab world is, for all its flaws:
"by far the greatest, most powerful demonstration for democracy in Arab history".
Ted Leddy, 4 Mar 2011, understands the fears about the
Arab revolutions of 2011,
but says a bad ending is not inevitable:
"From the US State Department to Mossad intelligence, and every plethora of human rights organisations and NGO's in between, nobody saw this coming. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al Qaeda and Iran have been slow to take advantage of the situation. And the reason for this is because what is happening today in the Middle east is a genuine unrehearsed grassroots uprising by normal people against authoritarianism.
...
Most on the right believe that any overthrow of a dictator will result in .. the reemergence of a new strong man or worse, an Islamist movement. This is very possible. Furthermore, many are arguing that democracy cannot take hold until there is an Islamic reformation. Again, its a fair point.
...
Having said all that, human history is not predictable. Nobody predicted this might happen so who is to say where it might end up.
... I personally will continue to cheer when tyranny falls. I do not have the burden of responsibility of being in the White House so I accept that I can afford to be romantic where as others cannot. But the opportunity to replace tyranny with democracy on such a large scale does not come around often. If the opportunity is wasted, we will regret it for generations."
1989 in Eastern Europe:
We knew these people wanted to be free.
A sad video of
2011-12 in Egypt.
Sad because optimistic.
People said it was 1989, but it was not 1989.
Despite the promises, it turns out
most Egyptians
just want
a different sort of oppression.
Pessimism - All the jihad lovers and Israel haters support the revolution
There was a cloud over the Egyptian Revolution right from the start,
as it became clear that all the jihad supporters and Israel haters thought the revolution
was great.
The jihad-supporting
Seumas Milne is excited, 2 Feb 2011.
The jihad-supporting
Irish Anti War Movement, 1 Feb 2011, says the protests are
"the first signs of hope in many decades for a better future for the entire population of the Middle East,
not least the oppressed Palestinians across the border."
That is, they predict and hope that a tidal wave of Islamist oppression and violence
is coming.
Many of the revolutionaries believe in jihad and sharia, not freedom
Anti-Israel protesters.
They say Mubarak's peace with Israel is wrong,
because it wounds Arab pride:
"Yes, we have peace, but we have no dignity."
Egyptians don't believe in freedom:
90 percent say they believe in "freedom of religion".
But 84 percent support the death penalty for those who leave Islam.
Also here.
The Islamic Defenders Front
in Indonesia explains the paradox.
To many Muslims,
"freedom of religion" means freedom to promote Islam and suppress other religions.
Vowing to exterminate the Ahmadiyah sect, he says:
"the government must know which one is freedom of religion and which one is desecration [of religion]."
Roland Shirk, 12 Feb 2011, is worried by Mubarak's fall:
"In nations with no history of constitutional protections, with religious majorities that are openly intolerant, minorities fare much worse than they do under "enlightened" despots or colonial regimes. ...
The track record of modern Jacobin democracy gives us no reason to treasure much hope for the Christians of Egypt.
...
I fear that the failure of Mubarak to arrange for an orderly, undemocratic succession that would keep the Muslim Brotherhood where it belongs - firmly beneath the iron heel of a secular state - will cost far more Arab lives in the long run than it would have cost to repress the riots. I hope that I am proved wrong.
... I don't need to be vindicated by history. I would much, much rather be wrong."
Victor Davis Hanson, February 26, 2011,
says it is hard to believe in the Arab street, but this is their chance to prove themselves.
We will find out soon if the people are any better than the dictators.
"That may be, or it may be that these awful governments - from Baathism to theocracy to seventh-century monarchy to lunatic Gaddafism to military dictatorship - were all pretty much reflective, in varying degrees depending on local histories, of the values and customs of the masses."
Egyptian protesters say they want to destroy Israel.
CNN, Jan 2011.
Mubarak would be better than the people in this video.
Many "Arab Spring" revolutionaries
seem at first to be secular western liberals.
But scratch the surface and you often find just a different type of jihad lover.
I have even been fooled by these kind of people myself.
Egyptian revolution activist
Mona Seif
is
praised by human rights bodies around the world.
She is clear on this:
"Just a note: all my anti israel tweets were written in English precisely so that the international community celebrating our
revolution understands that we support the resistance of the palestinian nation against israel.
... i support a nation's right to resist occupation!"
And now I discover
that he, like his sister, supports jihad against Israel.
His quotes:
20 Dec 2009
(see screenshot):
"one should only debate human beings, zionists and other imperialists are not human beings."
3 July 2010
(see screenshot):
"my heroes have always killed colonialists".
His tweet links to an
article
about
the death of Abu Daoud
(who killed Israeli athletes in the Munich Massacre).
3 July 2010
(see screenshot):
"I consider killing any colonialists and specially zionists heroic, we need to kill more of them".
2 Sept 2010
(see screenshot):
"sorry folks but I'm incapable of debating zionists. I only know how to talk to humans."
3 Nov 2010
(see screenshot):
"dear zionists please don't ever talk to me, I'm a violent person who advocated the killing of all zionists including civilians, so fuck off".
14 Nov 2012
(see screenshot):
"there is a critical number of israelis that we need to kill and then the problem is solved".
In 2012, or soon after, when I discovered the above, I said:
"Can't they jail him again?"
Well they did. They jailed him again.
He is in jail as at 2022.
He almost certainly does not deserve it.
But wow, what an unsympathetic character.
Mona Seif, 30 Apr 2013.
calls for jihad against Israel.
Search for
"Monasosh Israel"
to see more hatred of Israel from her.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 15 Nov 2012,
calls for jihad against Israel.
He also wants to bring down America.
Search for
"Alaa Israel"
to see more hatred of Israel from him.
I very much regret calling for the release of this guy from prison.
Endless jihadi filth in his timeline.
This is a search for
"zionists".
He celebrates the killing of Americans and Israelis. He denies being a liberal.
He is no better than the Muslim Brotherhood.
A similar example of a "secular" Arab turning out to be useless:
Atheist
"ArabSecularist"
says he hates Israel and he
is a fan of Hezbollah:
"I have a pic. of Nasrallah on my Christmas tree."
I tell him
"You sound insane"
and he blocks me.
Can you imagine in a page on the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe,
a section called "Rape of western reporters"?
It says it all, really,
about how crap this revolution is.
Lara Logan
(from
South Africa,
working for American TV)
Lara Logan was covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square
as Mubarak stepped down in February 2011,
when she was attacked, beaten and sexually assaulted by the mob.
The crowd shouted "Jew, Jew!" and "Israeli!"
(she is not either).
She says
that
"her clothes were ripped off, she was kicked and punched, her hair pulled out and she was sexually attacked.
She said she had escaped being raped because of the intervention of a group of women who threw themselves on top of her, protecting her from further harm."
She says:
""For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands," Ms. Logan said ... She estimated that the attack involved 200 to 300 men.
...
[Her colleagues] estimated that they were separated from her for about 25 minutes.
"My clothes were torn to pieces," Ms. Logan said.
...
[She was] rescued by a group of civilians and Egyptian soldiers".
Later Lara Logan
After her attack, Lara Logan turned into an anti-jihadist,
hostile to Islamism and the "Islamist Spring".
Reporter Lara Logan brings ominous news from Middle East, 7 Oct 2012.
"Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya
... The event is a harbinger of our vulnerability, she said. Logan hopes that America will "exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.""
That looked good, but sadly later Logan went off in new directions into
conspiracy theories and hostility to the West.
She ended up being
pro-Putin
and anti-Ukraine.
What a disappointment she is.
Mona Eltahawy
(Egyptian Muslim, lives and writes in US)
Mona Eltahawy was arrested and
sexually assaulted by Egyptian security forces in Nov 2011.
British journalist Natasha Smith
stripped naked in public and sexually assaulted by mob celebrating Muslim Brotherhood victory, Cairo, June 2012.
See her account.
French female reporter
Sonia Dridi
was sexually assaulted by a mob of men near Tahrir Square in Oct 2012.
Egyptian Muslims cut off Christian's ear, 20 Mar 2011.
"Mr. Mitri said that the Muslims tried to convert him to Islam, but he refused."
Because nothing says "Come join our wonderful religion"
like cutting your ear off!
No 'Revolution' for Egypt's Christians -
Raymond Ibrahim, 27 Mar 2011, on the persecution of Christians since the so-called "freedom" revolution in Egypt.
Report in Sept 2011 says 100,000 Christians have fled Egypt since "liberation" in Mar 2011.
Imbaba church attacks, May 2011.
Muslim supremacists attack Christians
for no reason, burn 3 Christian churches.
Copts fight back.
6 Muslims and 4 Christians killed.
Maspero demonstrations, Oct 2011. Egyptian army kills Christian protesters in Cairo. 26 dead.
A sordid, disgusting revolution.
Violence against Christians.
State persecution of Christians.
The "liberated" new Egypt
looked almost worse than the old Egypt.
In Aug 2011, Egypt arrested
Ayman Mansour
for criticising Islam on Facebook. In Oct 2011, he got 3 years in jail.
Remind me what was the point of the Egyptian revolution again?
Israel, July 2011, says the Egyptian revolution has allowed a massive re-arming of the terror state of Gaza.
"Hamas and Islamic Jihad have obtained more than 10,000 rockets and missiles
- including a large stockpile of Iranian Fajr-5 rockets that can reach Tel Aviv".
Mob attack on Israeli Embassy in Cairo, Sept 2011.
An Islamist mob drives Israeli diplomats out of Egypt.
Egyptian police stand by and do nothing - just as they do during Islamist attacks on Copts.
Egyptian Muslim
Mohamed ElBaradei
is supposedly the face of "moderate", secular Egypt.
He is the former head of the useless
IAEA,
which let rogue states develop nuclear weapons.
He is a favourite of the western left,
and received the
Nobel Peace Prize
in 2005.
Mohamed ElBaradei, running for Egyptian President, says on 4 Apr 2011 that he would attack Israel:
"if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime."
"Zionist regime"?
I think we can see where he is coming from now.
Mario Loyola, 5 Apr 2011, says ElBaradei will encourage war:
"such a declaration creates a huge incentive for Hamas to attack Israeli civilians where Egypt's policy had previously been to discourage such attacks. Strategically speaking, Egypt would be embracing Hamas as the tip of its spear, turned now against Israel. Best of all (from the point of view of a Hamas terrorist), Egypt would be giving Hamas the ability to trigger a state of war between Egypt and Israel."
Remind me what the point of the Egyptian revolution was again?
Raymond Ibrahim, 1 Dec 2011:
"now that the people have spoken - empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and their Salafi henchmen - Egypt prepares to plummet headlong into a new dark age of primitivism."
Rusty Shackleford:
"Apparently Egyptians want to be more oppressed, not less."
Muslim Brotherhood wins.
A Muslim Brotherhood Islamofascist will be President.
What was the point of the Egyptian revolution? No point at all, it seems.
Irish Islamofascist Liam Egan celebrates, 25 June 2012.
"Muslims around the world will ... stand shoulder to shoulder with him as he seeks to establish Allah's law in the land.
...
Allahu Akbar".
Leader of left-wing party in Egypt
says that was the last election.
There will never be another one.
"They believe that if their candidate becomes president, Islam itself will have come to power
...
Therefore ... any opposition to him will be considered opposition to the Islamic enterprise, to the rule of Islam, and to the implementation of the shari'a.
If he takes the seat of power, he will never get up again. What advocate of political Islam has ever relinquished power?"
The new President of Egypt,
Mohamed Morsi
of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Atheist
Alber Saber is arrested for "insulting Islam" by the new Islamic state of Egypt, Sept 2012.
He is attacked and beaten in jail.
Saber campaigned to topple Mubarak.
Now he must be wondering what was the point.
Shame on Anyone Who Ever Thought Mohammad Morsi Was a Moderate, by Eric Trager, November 26, 2012,
as the new Muslim Brotherhood tyranny of Egypt takes shape.
"Washington ought to have known by now that "democratic dialogue" is virtually impossible with the Muslim Brotherhood
... The reason is that it is not a "democratic party" at all. Rather, it is a cultish organization that was never likely to moderate once it had grasped power.
... the very process through which one becomes a Muslim Brother is designed to weed out moderates.
...
The Brotherhood, in other words, does not tolerate pluralism - it methodically works to extinguish it.
...
Nor does the Brotherhood tolerate dissent from outside the organization. It has often accused its critics - Christians in particular - of launching a "war on Islam.""
The darkness descends on Egypt:
The May 2012 launch of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Mursi's campaign for President.
The speaker declares that Mursi will liberate Gaza
(I thought Gaza was already "liberated" by the Islamist enemy)
and restore a united Arab state with
Jerusalem as its capital.
From MEMRI.
See transcript.
"Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews.
Come on, you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas.
Forget about the whole world, forget about all the conferences.
Brandish your weapons ... Say your prayers ..."
Israel
destroys the Egyptian air force in one morning
in the Six Day War in 1967.
What Israel may have to do again if Egypt does not choose a sensible path.
Ignore the nonsense computer-generated subtitles.
See also photos
part 1 and
part 2.
3,000 Muslims attack Christians in village in Egypt, Jan 2012. Christian homes and shops were looted and burnt.
And what got the mob into such a frenzy?
A rumour that a Christian man had an intimate photo of a Muslim woman on his phone.
Let's burn Christian houses!
As Jihad Watch notes, Islamic anger and pride cause poverty:
"This mindset threatens a future of poverty and instability for Egypt, as no one is going to invest in a country where assets can be destroyed in a fit of rage at the drop of a hat.
There can be no prosperous society without stability, and no stability without a sense of priorities and self control on the individual, familial, and societal level."
14 year old Christian girl abducted in Egypt, Sept 2012.
She is raped and forcibly converted to Islam and forcibly married to a Muslim.
The police do nothing.
"The Salafist Front issued a statement on October 28, warning human rights organizations, especially the National Council for Women, not to attempt to return Sarah to her family, as she has converted to Islam and married a Muslim man."
4 Copts killed by Muslim mobs, Apr 2013. Christian shops and a day care centre are burnt.
Copts protest against the killings and another Copt is killed.
His family blames President Morsi:
"We thought that you are a president for all Egyptians,
but you proved that you are only president for your group".
Maikel Nabil Sanad
was in trouble with the Mubarak government.
He campaigned to topple Mubarak.
He is now in trouble with the Muslim Brotherhood government.
He must be wondering what was the point.
Millions of idiot Egyptians voted in 2011 and 2012 for the Muslim Brotherhood.
They voted to enslave their country.
Millions of other Egyptians worked to stop them.
In 2013 they got the army to topple the Muslim Brotherhood.
The millions of Egyptians who like the Muslim Brotherhood
and have other appalling ideas
have not gone away.
So heaven knows what comes next.
But maybe there is some hope.
Egyptian protests, 2012-13.
Liberal Egyptians fight for their freedom against the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama's disgusting statement, 3 July 2013:
"we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces
to remove President Morsi and suspend the Egyptian constitution.
I .. call on the Egyptian military ... to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters".
Siding with America's enemies.
Truly the worst President ever.
These are the kind of people President Obama is defending.
He is like the anti-Reagan.
Richard Waghorne, 16 Aug 2013:
"Egypt looks a lot like Iran in 1979, only this time the US is on the side of radical Islam."
Others attack the Muslim Brotherhood:
Some good news though:
Qatar turns against Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Qatar strips Muslim Brotherhood hate cleric Qaradawi of citizenship,
orders Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal out of the country.
Hilarious.
Killing Muslim Brotherhood types
doesn't suddenly make them not fascists.
Mark Steyn, 5 July 2013, warns against optimism:
"In the 2011 parliamentary elections, three-quarters of the vote went to either the Muslim Brotherhood or their principal rivals, the Even More Muslim Brotherhood. So, statistically speaking, a fair few of the "broad-based coalition" joining the Coptic Christians and urban secularists out on the streets are former Morsi guys.
Are they suddenly Swedish-style social democrats?
...
This week, the Brotherhood was checked - but not by anything recognizable as the forces of freedom.
...
Western ideas of real liberty have little purchase in Cairo."
The
Muslim Brotherhood, 2013, promises to "slaughter" all opposition. Irish leftist morons call the MB "democrats".
The western left is worried about the hurt done to the ultra-right-wing Islamists:
Robert Fisk, 14 Aug 2013, is bizarrely worried that fascists seeking sharia law will no longer trust democracy to implement their evil plans:
"What Muslim seeking a state based on his or her religion will ever trust the ballot box again?"
A better question
to ask would be:
"After election led to Muslim Brotherhood, what minority Copt would ever want democracy for Egypt?"
Egypt's Military: Doing What Germany's Should Have Done in 1933, Robert Reilly, 16 Aug 2013.
Yes this is like killing Hitler in 1933 or Lenin in 1917. There is some hope.
The military may have prevented a war with Israel.
"Thirty million people in the streets of Egypt, with the help of the Egyptian military, have saved the United States from the consequences of its disastrous policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood since President Barack Obama came to office."
Andrew C. McCarthy, 21 Aug 2013, warns that the big problem remains the Egyptian people
- the millions that supported the Muslim Brotherhood and have not gone away.
"Islamic supremacists do not win election landslides in Egypt because of the Brotherhood; the Brothers win elections because they are the best-organized Islamic supremacists in a substantially Islamic-supremacist country. Egypt is what it is not because of the Brotherhood but because of its sharia culture, ingrained after more than a millennium's dominance by Islamic scholars and imams.
In free elections, Islamic supremacists would still win control of parliament. After all, they won by an almost four-to-one landslide only two years ago."
Muslim Brotherhood murderers sentenced to death, March 2014, for throwing 9-year-old child off a roof in July 2013.
"I want all the Brotherhood leadership tried and sentenced to death", said the murdered child's father.
Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters killed, Aug 2013.
Emotional front page of Irish Times, 15 Aug 2013, wants us to have sympathy for supporters of Islamic fascism.
These "victims" need to get better so they can burn Christian churches.
Islamist thug
Morsi in prison,
Jan 2014.
The new Egyptian regime is not liberal or democratic.
But stopping the Muslim Brotherhood takeover
is still like
stopping Hitler in Jan 1933
or
stopping Lenin in Nov 1917.
The
Muslim Brotherhood reacted to being deposed
with an orgy of violence against Christians.
The MB and jihadists will carry on such persecution and violence against Christians forever.
It is what they do.
Egyptian human rights groups joint statement, Aug 2013, blames MB for attacks on Christians:
"In response to the storming of the sit-ins, members and supporters of the MB terrorized citizens in the capital and other provinces ...
They also attacked churches in Upper Egypt and Sinai, destroying and torching several of them, and threatened Christian citizens with further physical violence in several cities. Although the undersigned organizations previously cautioned the MB against such deplorable conduct and asked it to stop its incitement against Christians, the group disregarded these pleas and showed no concern for the lives of citizens".
The Muslim Brotherhood's War on Coptic Christians,
Kirsten Powers, The Daily Beast, 22 Aug 2013.
"The Muslim Brotherhood is showing the world its true colors.
The group that "renounced violence" in an effort to gain political power is engaged in a full-scale campaign of terror against Egypt's Christian minority. Brotherhood leaders have incited their followers to attack Christian homes, shops, schools and churches throughout the country."
Muslim Brotherhood attacks, desecrates Church of Virgin Mary in Zaytoun, Egypt, Nov 2013.
The mob of "students linked to the Muslim Brotherhood
...
came directly from Friday prayers in the mosque next door"
to attack the church.
No doubt they had been listening to incitement
from some Muslim Brotherhood hate cleric.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters attack Christian church, killing 4, Mar 2014.
They drag a Christian woman from her car, strip her naked, and beat and stab her to death.
On hate preaching at Friday prayers, one Christian said:
"Let me tell you, here in Ain Shams, we [Christians] know that every Friday is a day of death; that the day after Friday, Saturday, we'll be carried to the morgue!"
It's great to see the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But of course the new Egyptian regime is hardly liberal or democratic.
Since most Egyptians believe in oppression,
oppression carries on.
Sisi
(Abdel Fattah el-Sisi), the post-MB President of Egypt.
He converted from Islam to Christianity in 1998, and has been in trouble with the Egyptian authorities ever since.
Egypt arrests him
for "inciting strife" by talking about persecution of Christians, Dec 2013.
He faces 5 years in prison, June 2014,
for reporting on Islamic attacks on Christians.
His attorney says that:
"the real reason Boulous was charged and sentenced was because he abandoned Islam
and became a Christian".
Dalia Ziada
was forced to flee Egypt for criticising the barbaric Hamas massacre of 7 Oct 2023.
What is the difference between Sisi and the MB again?
Egyptian Amr Nohan
sentenced to 3 years in Oct 2015
for putting this image of President Sisi with Mickey Mouse ears on Facebook.
Remind me the difference between Sisi and the Muslim Brotherhood again?
Egyptian singer Shyma was arrested for this video "Andy Zoroof" in Nov 2017.
She could face 3 years in prison for "inciting debauchery".
Remind me the difference between Sisi and the Muslim Brotherhood again?