Reply #9: Bwah! How ironic! (Reporting from Egypt...)

[onager]

I'm not sure how much coverage the recent Egyptian Parliamentary elections got in the West. I came over here (to Egypt) to work in October, when they were just starting. The election rounds went on for 2 months, using a weirdly complex formula reminiscent of elections in Florida or Ohio. i.e., apparently designed to make sure as few citizens as possible actually voted. (I spent most of 2005 in Egypt, partly in Cairo and mostly in Alexandria...where I am currently enjoying the Joyous Holiday Season.)

In the last Parliament, the Muslim Brotherhood held 15 seats. They now control 88 seats.

They ran under a big handicap. In the phrase ALWAYS associated with the Brotherhood in the local media, they are a "banned-but-tolerated" political party. (WTF? Shouldn't they be either one or the other?)

Because of that, their candidates had to run as independents. They succeeded largely because of a total collapse among the other secularist political parties in Egypt, who fell to bickering instead of forming a coalition against the Muslim Brotherhood and the eternally ruling National Democratic Party. Roundup of The Usual Suspects by the government didn't help either.

The Brotherhood election slogan: "Islam is the solution." (Grumpy Atheist must retort: "Only if you don't have a f!cking clue what the problem is.")

The irony? During the election campaigns, the Brotherhood seriously moderated their basic radical-Islamic hard-line philosophy. Their candidates spoke soothingly of using "persuasion, not coercion" in forcing women to cover themselves completely. (Most Egyptian Muslim women wear the hijab, the head covering. But not the full veil-and-gloves outfit that I saw on most women in Saudi Arabia, where I lived for 2 years.) The Brotherhood blathered about "more freedom for the people, under strict Islamic law"--an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

And now, after all that talk about "moderation" and "freedom," one of their leaders spouts those tired old lies about the Holocaust. That will guarantee the Brotherhood gets some international attention, though happily NOT the sort they wanted.

It reminds me of a recent quote I saw in the local press, from an Egyptian woman who is a lawyer with a long history of fighting for women's rights: "I'm glad they won. Now everyone will see what liars they are."

(If you don't know much about the Brotherhood, a google should educate you...unless you stumble across one of their propaganda websites. They have been one of the most radical Islamic groups since their formation in 1920. Banned for years in Egypt, Anwar Sadat unleashed them against "radical leftist" Egyptian student groups in the 1970s. The Brotherhood repaid Sadat by assassinating him. One of his assassins, a long-time M.B. leader who served a jail term in Egypt, was Ayman al-Zawahari--currently famous as a close adviser to Osama bin Laden.)

edited for Anal Retentive spelling and style reasons...