Category Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood

Is Morsi Refusing a Military Deal?……….

      

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“A senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party was arrested Monday on the eve of a major Muslim holiday, while the family of the organization’s jailed leader issued a defiant statement saying he wouldn’t renounce his claim to Egypt’s presidency. As Egyptians prepared to celebrate Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, which begins Tuesday, neither the Brotherhood nor the military-backed interim government showed any sign of moving toward a political compromise. Most of the Brotherhood’s leadership has been in jail for months……………”

It looks like the ruling generals may be offering Mr. Morsi a deal. It looks like they may be offering him some kind of immunity, perhaps exile in Turkey or Qatar, in exchange for renouncing his right to the presidency (forget the Bahamas in this case). But of course it is not for him to renounce any ‘right” to leadership. It is up to voters, or so the legend says. Which means General Al Sisi, if he runs and wins (of course he’ll win), will have a shadow of illegitimacy hanging over him. But then most Arab leaders have a shadow of illegitimacy hanging over them, since most are not elected. So what else is new?

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Egypt, History, Muslim Brotherhood

Little Richard for President of Egypt: Ptolemies with no Airplanes or Tutti Frutti……

      

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Egyptian media quote a campaign to nominate Generalissimo Abdelfattah Al Sisi for for President of Egypt. Calling itself “Demand by a Nation”, the campaign claims it has collected 7 million signatures, three million of it in only one day during the 40th anniversary of the alleged October “victory” (referring to what Americans and Israelis call the Yom Kippur War of 1973)…………
Some media are now beginning to report that Al Sisi is leaning toward running, thus formalizing the facts on the ground. It is of course possible that he and his allies are behind the whole campaign. Except that they have to do something about that pesky Muslim Brotherhood guy named Mohammed Morsi who was elected and is still rotting in a military prison. Funny, a lot of state media don’t mention his name now, they often just refer to him as “el-m’azool=the deposed”, period.

Lately the military has been using tiny bits of its not-so-secret vast wealth, distributing cash and food and gifts on the populace, often dropping them by airplanes on villages and festivals. Even the uber-decadent Macedonian Ptolemies did not do that in their hay day in Alexandria. The Ptolemies did not have access to airplanes or chewing gum or Tutti Frutti.

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, ethnic cleansing, Muslim Brotherhood, Nazism

Egypt’s Wayward Liberals: New Arab Fascism, Arab Neo-Fascism…………..

      

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“Liberal talk-show hosts denounce the Brotherhood as a foreign menace and its members as “sadistic, extremely violent creatures” unfit for political life. A leading human rights advocate blames the Brotherhood’s “filthy” leaders for the deaths of more than 50 of their own supporters in a mass shooting by soldiers and the police. A hypernationalist euphoria unleashed in Egypt by the toppling of Mr. Morsi has swept up even liberals and leftists who spent years struggling against the country’s previous military-backed governments. An unpopular few among them have begun to raise alarms about what they are calling signs of “fascism”: the fervor in the streets, the glorification of the military as it tightens its grip and the enthusiastic cheers for the suppression of the Islamists. But the vast majority of liberals, leftists and intellectuals in Egypt have joined in the jubilation at the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood, laying into any dissenters. “We are moving from the bearded chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven chauvinistic right,” said Rabab el-Mahdi…………….”

Egypt’s “liberals”, who are not necessarily secularists or ‘democrats’, are on a fake roll, and on a rampage. They are savoring the demise of their Muslim Brotherhood rivals, and they are not taking any prisoners. Nor is the military junta that is ruling Egypt now (not that it ever stopped ruling). The language of Egypt’s so-called liberals, so long cowed under Mubarak, has been of Nazi (as in 1930s Germany) quality. They are using the same language the Nazis used against the Communists and the Social Democrats (and, incidentally, the Jews). They are hinting, not too subtly,  at something like “ethnic cleansing”: ‘eradication’ of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turning a blind eye to mass arrests of members who were not part of the government, turning a blind eye to proscriptions and property-confiscation, even as Mubarak fuloul are immune (some of them actually brag of having helped with the military takeover).
Egyptian media normally do not believe in gray areas. They often go over the top, exaggerate the goodness of one side (the ruling side) and evil of another side (the side that is out of power). I never cared for the Muslim Brotherhood, although I never equated them with the truly evil Salafists (so much for my objectivity). Now, after following the current hysteria in Egyptian media, they seem more honest to me than many of their current rivals. After all, they never censored or banned or closed the media of their rivals (or maybe they did not have the time). Their own media has been shut down by the military, with the enthusiastic approval of their “liberal” rivals.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Culture, Egypt, GCC, Humor, Muslim Brotherhood, UAE

UAE: Liberator of Egypt Retires from Twitter……….

      

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Liberator of Egypt and his ‘nooq’: proud family man


I noted in an earlier post that Dhahi Khalfan, chief of Dubai Police, might be part of a high-level delegation of UAE potentates that visited Egypt. As it turned out, he was not. General Khalfan is quite a character. He is allegedly widely considered the true “liberator of Egypt” by many of his compatriots, including some UAE journalists and academics and intellectuals who are not currently on trial or serving prison terms for their political views. He hinted last week that his battles on Twitter were instrumental in provoking the military coup led by General Al Sisi that overthrew the elected Muslim Brotherhood regime led by Mr. Morsi and replaced it with some Mubarak veterans.

It seems, from the photo posted above, that Mr. Khalfan may have retired from Twitter and other social media in order to spend more time with his family. You might notice him standing proudly, facing his four camels (called nooq نوق in Arabic in this particular case). Remember, they are four and only four of these “nooq”.

FYI: I have always written here that the camel is one of my favorite animals. It still is.
Happy Ramadan
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Cairo, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood

Waiting for a SCAF: is Gulf GCC Petro-Money Preparing the Way for an Egyptian Military Return?………..

         

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“But the conventional wisdom may not be completely accurate. Washington has evidence that as much as a billion dollars has been clandestinely introduced into Egypt since the June presidential election. The money has gone to some organizers of the riots taking place, including junior Army officers in mufti, to force the regime to react with excessive force and lose what little legitimacy it retains—which is precisely what has happened. A fatally weakened Morsi government might well have to accept a new regime of national unity that would include the military, which would become the dominant force in the arrangement without having to risk the opprobrium involved in actually forming a government. The primary objective of the new alignment would be to restore order, further enhancing the military’s status. On January 29, the Egyptian Army’s commanding general, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, not surprisingly suggested that the army might have to intervene if the civilian government proves incapable of suppressing the rioting. So who is behind the unrest? The money fueling the confrontation comes from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States………………”

The Muslim Brotherhood tries to consolidate its power in the face of fear and opposition by other sectors of society. Egyptian relations with the West and Israel seem to be in a state of flux, to say the least. Egyptian relations with most Gulf potentates deteriorate. Reports and allegations and legends play a part in this political battle for control of Cairo:

  • A few weeks ago, Gulf and some British media reported about Brig General Qassem Suleimani of the Iranian Al-Quds Brigade, bête noir of the West and its allies. The bizarre report alleged that he has visited Cairo and met with Egyptian security officials at a Cairo hotel (this hotel part is very cute). A secret meeting at a hotel? Where exactly, at the hotel bar? The report alleged that the Egyptian regime was seeking Iranian help in tightening domestic security control. The “meeting at the hotel” part gave it away: clearly anti Brotherhood propaganda.
  • But the idea of that report was probably two-pronged: to discredit the Egyptian regime AND to discredit the local Muslim Brotherhood of the GCC Gulf states. They have done this before on the Gulf. The Bahrain and Saudi regimes always associate their protesters with outsiders: the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guard or with Hezbollah or both (occasionally Iraq and Syria are thrown in, with some salt grains). The UAE is getting into the act with enthusiasm.
  • Fast forward: two or so weeks ago Saudi deputy minister of defense, Khaled Bin Sultan was reported to have visited Egypt. He was reported to have met with Egyptian military commanders.
  • Fast forward to these days: there are a lot of tweets and other media reports now praising the Egyptian military. Some of them calling for a military intervention to “save the revolution”. This last one is not a joke, they are serious. Mubarak’s military to save the revolution that overthrew Mubarak! A mixture of Kafka and Orwell.
  • Fast forward some more: some are increasingly trying to paint the military as an acceptable alternative to the elected regime of the Muslim Brotherhood. That means Mubarak-ism without Mubarak again. No doubt this is the ideal outcome for the potentates of the Gulf states. It is also favored in Western capitals as well, at least in Washington and London, but they can’t say it openly now, can they?
  • Perhaps some Egyptians think the military is safer because it is not ‘dogmatic’, and it does not have a menacing political base and organization, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore it is easy to confront and send back to the barracks. This goes against Egyptian history of the past 60 years.
  • There is always the reasonable fear of the Hitler precedent of 1933. One election that ends all elections, to be won by the Islamists. This has happened in many countries in the past.

Cheers
mhg

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Anti-Semitism, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Racism

Morsi to the Descendants of Apes and Pigs (and Prophets): I was Kidding……………

         

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“A spokesman for President Mohamed Morsi said on Wednesday that inflammatory comments that he made about Jews before taking office had been intended as criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians but had been taken out of context. The spokesman said that Mr. Morsi respected all monotheistic religions and religious freedom. It was Mr. Morsi’s first public response to news reports that as a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood he had made anti-Semitic statements about Jews and Zionists. A recently resurfaced video of a speech that Mr. Morsi gave at a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta nearly three years ago shows him urging his listeners “to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” In another video of a television interview he gave the same year, Mr. Morsi criticized Zionists in recognizably anti-Semitic terms, as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs….……….”


Nothing was taken out of context: it is what he said. Morsi said it some time ago, before the presidency was even a dream for him. I posted on this last month. But to put it in perspective: calling Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” is common among most of the Muslim Brotherhood and all Salafis. Egyptian-Qatari Muslim Brother cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi once famously added in a video clip that Hitler was “God’s instrument to punish the Jews”. Everybody does it; that is almost everybody who is Muslim Brother and Salafi. I am not sure where it came from: I have not seen it in the Holy Quran or Hadith. Somewhere along the way these fundamentalist baboons created this term to refer to the Jewish people.


(FYI: This reminds me of a true story. When I first came to study in the USA as a teenager, I had colleagues and a few friends at my school back East who were Jewish. We used to kid each other. They used to ask me what we thought of Jews back home. I used to tell them that we thought they had tails, but it was something I made up. I had never heard of this “descendants of apes and pigs” thing. That was before the fundamentalist virus spread across our region and into our once-tolerant societies. The term must be something exclusive to these clowns. ).
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, GCC, Iran, Muslim Brotherhood, UAE

1. UAE Ties Dissidents to Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Not WYSIWYG …………

        

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“The rapprochement is of course not without risks. Salafists, now major players in Egyptian politics, are vehemently opposed to any Iranian influence or spread of Shia Islam, which many consider “enemy No 1”. The Gulf states and their regional and international allies also oppose such rapprochement and consider it a direct threat to their security. Yet ties, even intelligence ties, are strengthening. Major Genera Qassem Suleimani, a spy chief and commander of Iran’s Quds Force, reportedly visited Cairo last month for talks with senior officials close to President Mohammed Morsi. Almost at the same time, Egypt’s ambassador to Lebanon, Ashraf Hamdy, told Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star that Egypt would pursue a relationship with Hizbollah as a “real political and military force”. The onus is on regional countries to initiate measures to prevent the most populous Arab country from drifting towards the Iranian orbit, as happened with Iraq. Any alliance between the Iranian regime and the Brotherhood is likely to be more enduring and sustainable than Iran’s alliance with Baathist Syria……………….” The National (UAE)

All dissidents in the United Arab Emirates, fully owned and operated by the Al-Nahayan brothers of Abu Dhabi, are now affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. They are not considered affiliates of Hezbollah UAE which itself is affiliated with Hezbollah Gulf. Not anymore. The rulers, actually the owners, of the UAE have decreed (issued a royal farman) that attention is now shifting away from Lebanese Shi’a residents (if there are any left over there) and toward Egyptians who are now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. You might ask me about others: what about Al Qaeda and the Iranians? The latter are now tied to the MB through this unconfirmed tale of Brig. Qassem Suleimani doing the pilgrimage to a hotel in Cairo. Both are now an existential threat to both Netanyahu and the Al Nahayan (and the Al Khalifa too)? Confused by this fast GCC spin of events? We call it the new Gulf whiplash. Things are not what they seem. It is the opposite of WYSIWYG (look it up if you must). Ah, stay tuned, my confusable and confused friend. This is only part one (see the title up there?).
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi

GCC Gulf Oligarchs and their Islamists: the Thrill is Gone……………


         

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For decades some Gulf ruling oligarchs encouraged Islamist movements as one way to counter their main opposition of the time: the secular liberals, be they leftists or just Pan-Arabists or both. That was the era that started in the 1950’s and began to wane in the 1970s. It weakened further in the 1980s when some Arab countries and movements split about the Iran-Iraq war and the Islamist tide was rising. The final nail in the coffin of that era of secular liberal Arab movement came when Saddam Hussein’s tanks rolled into Kuwait in 1990. This is simplifying the story, but roughly it is correct. A brief review:

  • The Al Saud had already established their own theocratic kingdom in partnership with the Wahhabi clerics. It has been a convenient partnership: (a) the princes get complete control of the wealth and the weapons and the politics and the livelihood of the people and, (b) the clerics get control of the soul of the people under the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Both (a) and (b) share the keys to the chains that shackle the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. With the explosion of oil prices and the weakening of Arab secularism after 1970, the Al Saud and their Wahhabi clerics expanded beyond their borders, using the potent powers of money and previously-dormant sectarianism. The results have been spectacular, from their point of view. Wahhabism has spread into places as far as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, even Chechnya and the Caucasus. As well as many Arab states, both on the Persian-American Gulf and in places like Egypt under Mubarak, and now Syria. This dual (Al Saud-Wahhabi) control continues in the Arabian Peninsula, but the pressures are rising. The fear is receding and multiple opposition is rising from places like Hijaz and Najd and Qatif. In other Gulf GCC states Islamism has taken different paths.
  • The recent Gulf Islamist rise has been strongest and most threatening in Kuwait. That occurred mainly because the ruling political “elites” encouraged it as a counterweight to the old secular leftist forces. These (once-strong) secular forces often tended to focus on corruption and reform politics while the potentates thought that these issues were not worth the trouble (surprise, surprise). The Islamists in Kuwait (both Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood) grabbed the opportunity to expand and typically did not seem to care about issues of corruption or political freedom. The “elites” were quite comfortable with the seemingly non-threatening Islamist approach. It was a marriage made in heaven for both sides, but it has had terrible effects on the country both in terms of development and social divisiveness. Besides, the Islamists, as supreme opportunists, were biding their time. A massive crop of clerics and teachers, many of them Salafis educated in Saudi Wahhabi institutions, eventually managed to take effective control of the social agenda and dominate the educational system of the country. In recent years, and in alliance with some tribal elements, they came to dominate the political system as well. The country became dangerously divided. These Islamist fundamentalists (Salafis and Muslim Brothers) now lead the opposition. Ironically they are allied with some aging remnants of the secular liberal forces they had vehemently opposed in the past. What I call the pro-Saudi Wahhabi liberals are also eager allies of the Islamists now, as are some among the sincere reformist youth who are frustrated by corruption. All these current allies had lost out during the decades when the Islamists sided with the ruling “elites” against reform and accountability. Until recent years the (Sunni) Islamist groups of both stripes had claimed that “leftists and liberals and secularists” were the greatest danger to Islam and society. Well, they probably meant the ‘second’ greatest danger (after you know who). The Islamist opportunism and hypocrisy continues. But, as far as their relationship with the ruling “elites”, as B.B. King says in the great old song: the thrill is gone. For now.

  • In Bahrain many (but not all) of the Sunni Islamists bought into the sectarian fear-mongering narrative of the ruling Al Khalifa family. Many now see the Shi’a majority and their demand as a threat to their own influence in historically tolerant and secular Bahrain. The phony legislature is empty of any representative of the the opposition, both Shi’a and Sunni, even though the opposition parties won well over 65% of the vote in the last elections. Yet Bahrainis of all sects are now beginning to notice the danger of foreign mercenaries (Jordanians, Pakistanis, Syrians, etc.) imported by the Al Khalifa in increasing numbers to help keep their absolute power. Meanwhile the ruling family, arguably one of the most corrupt among the Gulf GCC potentates, has continued to systematically loot the country.

  • Qatar, nominally Wahhabi, has found its own “accommodation” with Arab Islamists. It is now the Best Forever Friend of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf, just as a couple of years ago it was the BFF (+F) of both Syria and Iran. It is now as close to the MB as the Saudis are suspicious of it.

  • The UAE has started a surprisingly fierce media war against the Muslim Brotherhood (M. Not just a media war: it is also cracking down on suspected MB inside its territory be they citizens or foreigners. It is now treating the Muslim Brothers as fiercely as it treated Lebanese Shi’as a year or two ago. My funny source tells me that some of the potentates in the UAE had formed close ties with the MB over the years. She tells me that the ruling Al-Nahayan brothers of Abu Dhabi have finally decided to crack down on them. UAE authorities claim they have uncovered a plot against the state, but oddly these plots were uncovered as soon as some academics suggested that the country reform its politics and become more democratic. The arrests are continuing as new plots are uncovered. Relations with MB Egypt are not good, not good at all.
  • As for Oman, I have often opined here, correctly, that the Omanis look across the seas rather than back toward the Arabian Peninsula. Smart Omanis! I have worked with them in the past on GCC economic matters, in my other incarnation, and I know that they go through the motions without conviction. They have little serious interest in either Arab or Gulf matters, but they also realize where they are located. Oman has always been focused on relations overseas: across the Arabian Sea, the Persian-American Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. They don’t really care much about the Peninsula or the wider Arab world.They just go through the proverbial motions.

Cheers
mhg

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