The mainstream Western view of the election is bizarre and very damaging. In this fantasy, Aboul Fatouh is portrayed as the liberal candidate. If he wins, everything will be just fine and dandy. You can go back to sleep.
What evidence is adduced for this picture? Basically, none. The idea is that his moderation was proven because he defied the Brotherhood to run for the office. Yet the reality is the exact opposite. The Brotherhood refused to run a candidate at a time when it was following a cautious strategy, wanting to show that it wasn’t seeking total power and could co-habit—at least for five years—with a non-Islamist president.
By declaring his candidacy, Aboul Fatouh was in fact taking a more radical approach. Later, when the Brotherhood felt more confident after winning almost half the parliamentary seats it became more aggressive.
Most important of all, Aboul Fatouh is the candidate endorsed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based anti-American, antisemitic hardliner. Qaradawi would never endorse anyone who was actually “moderate” must less “liberal.”
There are three factors likely to determine the first round:
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–What proportion of Muslim Brotherhood (parliamentary) voters will support Mursi? Perhaps a quarter or more of the Brotherhood voters backed the group not so much because they wanted an Islamic state but because they thought the Brotherhood was more honest, would govern better, and so on. Will they stick with the Brotherhood for the presidency or will they go for Aboul Fatouh or even Musa?
–Having no candidate of their own who will the Salafi support? Since there goal is to provide a more radical alternative to the Brotherhood, some—but not all—of the leaders will probably go for Aboul Fatouh. But what about their voters who have almost no organizational loyalty—in contrast to the Brotherhood voters—and will presumably support the man they see as the one with the most radical Islamist vision. Few of these people will back Musa.
—Who will support Musa? There is no nationalist bloc in Egypt today. Might Musa emerge as the secularist candidate uniting those voters (only 25 percent we should remember) who don’t want Islamism? No. The Christians and liberals don’t look at Musa as their man and will probably split their vote among three competing liberal candidates who don’t have a chance.
The result may well be an Islamist versus Islamist run-off. In any event, it is likely that by the end of the year Egypt will have an Islamist president, parliament, and Constitution. Laws will be drastically altered, women’s rights disappear, and Hamas would be backed up if it attacked Israel.
Once in power, an Islamist government would eventually appoint similar people to run the military, the religious establishment, the schools, and the courts. Those who don’t like it will head for the West in droves.
The alliance with America would be over (whatever cosmetic pretense of friendship remained and despite how much money the Obama Administration pumped in. And the whole region will be sent a signal that this is the era of revolutionary Islamism and jihad at a time when America is weak or even—as many moderate Arabs believe—siding with the Islamists.
In the West, no one in power is prepared for this revolution, an upheaval that will rival or exceed the 1979 one in Iran for its impact.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
The re-election of Pr. O in Nov 2012 will most likely be a green light for the Islamists of the ME.
Some dreamers in the West seem to think that what is happening in Egypt is somehow connected with true social revolutions, such as that going on now in
CHINA
Indeed, this may be happening with the Westernized minority; but I think it will be some time before we see rock concerts in Cairo, and quite a while longer before Jews are welcome to perform. Even at that, I wouldn’t rejoice in that day; because the kind of “Jew” that would be accepted there would not have any connection to the Bible; and the Arabs who would receive him would be godless Muslims in torn blue jeans.
In that day, when there is no longer American and Chinese, Jew and Arab. the world will be one and its god one; but its god will be a dragon with a human face. Until that day dawns, a day when the benevolent Big Beast issues forth a Pax Hedonica and those who oppose it will have no country to flee to, we can be pretty assured that things will continue as they have, with very old-fashioned Jews at war with very old-fashioned Arabs.
Enjoy what you have, while it lasts. A war over Sinai? Fantastic! It’s the devil we all know.
Pray that God spare us, though, from the “Peace” that’s being prepared for us. The Chinese people have a word to describe someone who’s disappeared during the middle of the night at the hands of the authorities. They say such a one has been “harmonized”. The world wants a “peace”, in which the Jews of Israel have been “pacified”; a world, as well, of universal “harmony”, in which all who oppose it are “harmonized”. God, please give us war instead!
Ted,
I expect the upheaval “that will rival or exceed the 1979 one in Iran for its impact” will include Israel re-taking the Sinai peninsula, minimally to the Mitla Pass and maximally to the Suez Canal — thus restoring the Israeli defensive boundaries in place from Jun 10, 1967 until Oct 6, 1973.
Plainly, no Islamist Egyptian government — either full-scale Salafist or the purportedly watered-down version espoused by the Ilkwan — will keep the peace with Israel in accordance with the peace treaty for the sake of which US President James Earl Carter twisted the arm of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to evacuate the Sinai peninsula more than 30 years ago. Those people intend to set Israel up for a military sucker punch, possibly in conjunction with coordinated attacks from Iran and the Hezbollah gang in southern Lebanon. Possibly, they would work to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Trans-Jordan to restore once again the hostile total encirclement of Israel that prevailed before various US administrations began setting up their now-dying checkerboard of client states around the Middle East.
In order to forestall all of this, Israel must accomplish the following:
First, Israel must use Zahal alone to destroy the nuclear stockpiles of Iran before they blossom full-scale into nuclear weapons intended only for a single target — the State of Israel. The government of Barack Hussein Obama will never take military action again Iran, and now that they are pulling away from the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be assumed that Obama will not use American military force against any other Muslim state, regardless of the danger any such state becomes to the State of Israel.
Second, Israel must permanently block any future move to create an independent Arab state in any part of Shomron and Yehuda. That can only be accomplished in the short term by annexing the parts of these territories included in Area C as defined by the Oslo Accords and the mostly Arab-free parts adjoining the Jordan River and the Dead Sea that are administered by the Israeli regional councils for those parts of the Israeli administered territories.
Third, Israel must re-take and this time annex the Sinai Peninsula, so that no Arab army can get closer to Israel’s long southwestern border than the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Suez.
Fourth, if Hezbollah mounts any attack on Israel from the north, Zahal must cross the border, conquer, hold and annex that part of southern Lebanon located south of the Litani River gorge, with that annexed territory to form a permanent military defense zone to protect all of northern Israel.
The overall situation that is developing around the Middle East, combined with growing unwillingness on the part of the United States to help maintain a permanent Israeli military defensive advantage against its enemies, and indeed, a growing sense of military helplessness in the United States in the face of what is now accurately seen as lost wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, dictate that Israel now has no feasible option but to expand its military defensive zones in all directions. And this must be done irrespective of growing hostility against Israel on the part of America’s NATO allies.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI