'Egypt Is Returning To A Mubarak Style Era'

Courtesy Of BBC News

Interview with Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim theologian  whose grandfather is one of the founding members of the Muslim Brotherhood, told BBC World News that Egypt is on the verge of returning to a 'Mubarak style' era. 


"Mohamed Morsi is due to be charged with new accusations while Mubarak is going to be freed. This is something which is a coming back to a Mubarak's era."

"Burning of churches is something which could've been done by the intelligence. We have no proof that it is the Muslim Brotherhood who is doing this."

Professor Ramadan added that he does not believe that its members are behind the recent attacks on Coptic churches.

The real question is: "Is the West ready for democracy in the Arab world, because in the end, the United States is supporting the army" and not "will the West ever accept a democratically elected Islamist government."

مصر اسلامية

"They Were Shooting To Kill"

WARNING: The video is EXTREMELY graphic. Viewer discretion is highly  advised.

Cairo Massacre: Field Hospital At Rabaa Al Adawiyya Square

"We received maybe four or five hundred through this hospital in maybe three hours. In this place more than 50 have died. They were murdered. From five o'clock in the morning until eight thirty we were overwhelmed. We have many doctors here, but when many casualties came at one time we couldn't manage. We had to do just the best we could: administer first aid and then refer them to the hospitals.

"This is the worst I have seen. The people here are innocent; they carry no weapons. The interior ministry are liars. We could not stop receiving casualties last night. Injuries came in the neck, in the head, in the chest and from the back."  They were shooting to kill". [Dr. Asharaf el-Din]

"At six o'clock, we ran out of medical supplies. We had to block the entrance to the hospital and call for help at the central stage.

When I arrived, the attack was very bad. I had never seen patients injured like this", he explained. "In the main field hospital we have only ten beds."

I cried as I worked. Mostly the casualties were young men between the ages of 20 and 30. One body was brought in with a bag. We opened it and inside we found a burial shroud. He had brought it with him."
[Dr. Salahuddin Osman, general and plastic surgeon from Mahala]

"I couldn't believe our army and our police would come at us like this. I returned at 8am which is when I saw the killings - just horrible things. I can't imagine why this happened."
[Mahmoud Ahmed, a medical student from Al Azhar University]

"I could not sleep because I thought as I tried to sleep what kind of creature would do what has happened? How can an Egyptian, a Muslim, do this to their own people? I will not sleep tonight either. I have to help my friends with whatever I can."
[Ibrahim Gemeah, teaching assistant from Al Azhar University]
.
"If this was animals being killed, people would care. But because it's us, they don't."
[Lawyer Islam Taher, alluding to the indifference of mainstream Egyptian opinion to the death of Morsi supporters]

"We asked them to record his death as a murder by police. But they forced us to accuse anonymous sources." [Ashraf Mamdouh, loading the body of his brother-in-law, Hegazy Zakaria, into a van that would take him to his funeral in a village outside Cairo]


"We didn't have enough places in the fridges to fit all the bodies. We had to do autopsies on the floor. At some points we had to ask families to help us with the process. It was chaos." [Dr Hazem Hossam]

A Military Coup Aborts Egypt's Fledgling Democracy

قائد قوة تأمين منزل الرئيس يكشف مخطط الانقلاب



قال العميد طارق الجوهري - قائد بقوة تأمين الرئيس - أن الرئيس محمد مرسي تعرض لمؤامرات كبيره في الفترة الماضية وأن بعض الضباط تأمروا عليه يوم حصار الاتحادية الشهير وأنهم ارتكبوا جرائم تحت بيت الرئيس وفيها تآمر واضح عليه.

وأضاف الجوهري في لقاء على قناة مصر 25 أن إحدى تلك المؤامرات حدثت في شهر نوفمبر الماضي يوم الثلاثاء الدامي عندما تم حصار قصر الاتحادية وبيت الرئيس وقرر بعض الضباط وهم يسبون الرئيس أمامه الانسحاب وترك البلطجية يقتحمون البيت وكان اللواء المسئول عنهم صامت وتركهم ينفذون مخططهم.

وقال الجوهري:"أحد الضباط قال لي وصدمني أن مرسي نصف ساعة وسيكون في السجن وكانوا يحرضون المتظاهرين على الاقتحام وأن يحشدوا أعداد كبيرة لقتل أو اعتقال الرئيس وأن مفتش المباحث كان يؤيد أفعالهم وتركهم يتآمروا على الرئيس وشعرت أن هناك مؤامرة كاملة على الرئيس مرسي من جهات متعددة".

يذكر أن العميد طارق الجوهري تمت أحالته للمعاش بعد إدلاءه بهذه التصريحات لمراسل قناة مصر 25 دون أبداء أسباب الإحالة.

تعليق اللواء طاهر عزالدين ضابط سابق في القوات المسلحة المصرية على الانقلاب العسكري



ويفضح الله المجرمين مداخلة تلفزيونية قلبت الدنيا في مصر




ضابط قوات خاصه يطلق النار على معتصمي رابعه ثم يرسم ثالوث النصارى على صدره







فيديو مسرب لازم يوصل لكل اسلامي وللمستشار الغرياني خاصة ميعرفوش انه بث مباشر



The first speaker claims that Egypt is "secular" by nature and not "religious" by nature.

He also demands that anyone practicing Islam or affiliated with a religious party, must be excluded from political participation.

Egypt: Revolution Or Uprising?

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

... the army has called on the people to take to the streets on Friday. It has made clear that it intends the day to mark a turning point in its confrontation with the followers of Mohamed Morsi, the elected leader the generals removed on July 3.

And this is raising the question of whether what happened at the outset (the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011) was indeed a revolution, or rather an uprising.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has asked for a mass turnout at rallies on Friday to give the army a mandate to do what it sees as necessary to stamp out violence, thereby setting a collision course with supporters of ousted President Morsi.

"Are you willing to destroy the country in order to rule it? Would that be religious? Are you willing to ruin the army or have it on your side? It is not possible. It is a very grave matter?" said Sisi, addressing a military graduation ceremony.

"I urge all Egyptians to go to the streets on Friday to give me a mandate to counter violence and terrorism. This is a request to all Egyptians to show the whole world that the Egyptian people have a will and have a say."

Sisi's comments have, however, been described by his opponents as a call to war.

"Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who claimed in his first statement that he had to remove the elected president in a military coup to escape a national conflict and civil war, is now calling for a civil war himself to protect his military coup. 

"He is proving that he is the actual president for the country and that the president, his vice president and the government do not actually hold any power," said Mohamed El Beltagy, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt's transition has been likened to shaking the foundations of the old regime without dismantling it. That would require structural change that some argue has been prevented by what has been called "the deep state".

The police are said to be one part of the deep state. Their leadership has not changed since the revolution and some have accused them of working against Morsi by not fully deploying during his presidency. The judiciary is another, as many of Egypt's senior judges were appointed during the Mubarak era.

Corruption within the state bureaucracy could be another aspect of the deep state. And in the private sector, many business elites are still aligned with the old Mubarak regime. That includes a hostile media establishment that has generally shown itself to be anything but partial.

"Let me just make it very clear that this is not two sides fighting over democracy. It is one side that is fighting and dying for democracy, that has been dreaming for the last 60 years. And there is another side who want to kill democracy .... And suddently we have the military back again after just one year break. For six years we have been having them and now they are back. So it is a fight between people who are pro-democracy and people who want the military regime back again."

- Zakaryya Abdel-Hady, assistant professor of Islamic thought and culture at Qatar University

Israel's New Hero Is Egypt's: General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi

By Ari Shavit

The New Israeli Hero is an Egyptian figure − General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. You don’t need an especially discerning eye to see the Israeli elite’s deep sympathy and barely concealed admiration for the commander of our large southern neighbor’s armed forces. The one who has just imprisoned the elected president who appointed him to his position.

While the U.S. administration’s stomach is turning at the headlong collision between General al-Sisi’s undemocratic enlightenment and Mohammed Morsi’s unenlightened democracy, Israel has no doubts. 

We’re all for Sisi. We’re all for the military coup d’etat. We’re all for the right of clean-shaven generals who were educated in America to end the rule of an elected, bearded leader, who was also educated in America and who was supposed to subordinate the generals to his authority.

The Israeli yearning for Sisi is two-fold. Looking out, we seek friendly dictators who will rule the hostile Arab masses surrounding us. But when we look in, many of us long for a supreme commander of our own who will limit the powers of the elected political leadership we loathe.

ISABEL KERSHNER of the New York Times, submitted the following piece:

... with Mr. Morsi’s ouster and the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt this week, Israelis see the prospect of a return to what they view as a more reliable status quo, as well as a weakening of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that runs Gaza.

“What is important for Israel is a stable Egypt,” said Shaul Shay, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council. “I don’t see the Muslim Brotherhood there swallowing the blow and waiting another 80 years to try to return to power. The story is not over, despite the fireworks in Cairo.”

While Mr. Morsi served as head of state, Israel’s only line of communication with Cairo was through the Egyptian military and security establishment, which is now controlling Egypt’s political process. Perhaps more reassuring to Israel is the role of Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the top commander who led the move to depose Mr. Morsi.

General Sisi is well known in Israel’s defense establishment from his past roles in military intelligence and in northern Sinai. An Israeli expert said that even after Mr. Morsi appointed General Sisi as his defense minister, the general’s office continued to communicate and coordinate directly with Israel.

... 

Still, for some Israelis, the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood was reason enough to celebrate.

“It’s good that the Muslim Brotherhood has gone,” said Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt. “If they had stayed in power for another two or three years, they’d have taken control of the military and everything else, and Egypt would have become like Iran.”

Mr. Morsi did not radically shift Egyptian policy toward Israel, upholding Egypt’s commitment to the peace treaty. 

Under his authority, the Egyptian military acted in the volatile Sinai Peninsula against Islamic militants who had been attacking Egyptian forces in recent years and using the wild desert terrain to stage cross-border attacks against Israel. 

Israeli experts said Israeli-Egyptian security coordination over Sinai in the last year had been closer and more intense than during the era of Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

... 

Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described Egypt as “the sick man on the Nile,” adding, “A situation in which Egypt, a nation of 85 million people, is in danger of some kind of implosion is a horror scenario for all of us.”

Internal chaos would also be likely to further erode Egypt’s historic role as a leader of the Arab world, but Israeli analysts said its influence had already been in decline for years.

“Egypt is busy with its own domestic problems and is not much of an actor on the regional scene,” said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

In Egypt: 'Deep State' and Opposition Joined Forces To Plot Coup

Meetings Between Generals and Opposition Leaders Show The Workings Of An Assortment Of Forces That Wield Tremendous Influence

By CHARLES LEVINSON and MATT BRADLEY

The message: If the opposition could put enough protesters in the streets, the military would step in—and forcibly remove the president.

"It was a simple question the opposition put to the military," said Ahmed Samih, who is close to several opposition attendees. "Will you be with us again?" The military said it would. Others familiar with the meetings described them similarly.

By June 30, millions of Egyptians took to the streets, calling for Mr. Morsi to go. Three days later, the military unseated him.

Suggestions that Mr. Morsi's overthrow was planned in advance, as opposed to an emergency response, have implications for U.S. aid. "If there was evidence this…was blatantly premeditated, then it would put more pressure to cut off aid on the [Obama] administration, which is currently trying to avoid having to label this a coup d'état," said Josh Stacher, a Kent State University political science professor and Egypt expert.

The meetings between the generals and opposition leaders also show the workings of what is known in Egypt as the "deep state"—an assortment of long-standing political and bureaucratic forces that wield tremendous influence. A military spokesman, Col. Ahmed Ali, acknowledged that "there was a process of getting to know people that previously the military had little dealings with."

The secret meetings between the military and secular opposition parties were key to the political chess game leading to Mr. Morsi's departure. The meetings represented a strange-bedfellows rapprochement between two groups long at odds: Egypt's opposition, and the remnants of the Mubarak regime. Their enmity dates to the 30-year dictatorship of Mr. Mubarak, which used its security services to quash the opposition.

Today, in a reversal, the opposition and Mubarak-era forces are united. They view Mr. Morsi and his Islamist ideology as a threat.

The meeting of minds between Mubarak-era powers and the secular opposition has coincided with a resurgence of bare-knuckle political tactics resembling Mubarak-era violence. In the days before Mr. Morsi's ouster, for instance, a wave of violence against Muslim Brotherhood offices bore similarities to violence on behalf of the Mubarak regime during previous elections in the Mubarak era.

Within Egypt they are viewed by many who witnessed the violence as efforts by Mubarak-era power brokers to push Mr. Morsi out using methods that once sustained Mubarak.

With Mr. Morsi out, Mubarak-era figures and institutions are gaining influence. The military chose a Mubarak-era judge as interim president. Other Mubarak-era judges are set to head efforts to draft a new constitution.

Egypt's opposition and Mubarak-era officials began to mend ties in November. Opposition parties united under the banner of Mr. ElBaradei's National Salvation Front.

Mubarak-era loyalists had long distrusted Mr. ElBaradei. But after Mr. Morsi's declaration, the ice thawed. Some influential Mubarak-era figures joined Mr. ElBaradei, including Hany Sarie Eldin, the lawyer for imprisoned steel magnate and Mubarak regime heavyweight Ahmed Ezz.

Mr. Eldin's joining "sent a message to powerful businessmen who were skeptical about the revolution and ElBaradei that they could trust him," said Rabab al-Mahdi, a political-science professor at American University of Cairo who is close to NSF leaders.

The two sides needed each other. Opposition parties had popular credibility, unlike Mubarak-era officials. Mubarak figures brought deep pockets and influence over the powerful state bureaucracy.

Some of these figures "are the ones who continue the methods of the so-called deep state," said Ms. Mahdi. "They are the ones who know who are the election thugs, how to hire them," she said. They know "which public-sector managers have the biggest networks of employees."

As Mr. Morsi's ouster neared, there were increasing meetings between the military and opposition. They included Mr. ElBaradei, former presidential candidate and Arab League chief Mr. Moussa, and another presidential candidate, Hamdeen Sabahy, according to Ms. Mahdi and Mr. Samih, both close to top NSF members.

Some meetings took place at the Navy Officers' Club, where the generals said that if enough Egyptians joined public protests, the military would have little choice but to intervene, according to several activists close to Mr. ElBaradei and U.S. officials. "The military's answer was, if enough people come out into the streets, then it will be exactly like Mubarak," Mr. Samih said.

Since Mr. Mubarak's ouster, Egypt's activists have proved woeful at grass roots organizing outside cities. But in late April a previously little-known group, Tamarod, separately launched a petition against Mr. Morsi.

Tamarod's effort took off. Its founders claim they gathered 22 million signatures in less than eight weeks. The numbers are impossible to verify, but were widely reported as fact by state and private media, two hotbeds of anti-Muslim Brotherhood zeal.

In the town of Zagazig, former Mubarak party lawmaker Lotfy Shehata said he rallied support for Tamarod using the same political networks that got him elected under Mr. Mubarak.

As agitation against the Muslim Brotherhood grew, the Brotherhood formally asked the Minister of Interior for protection of their offices nationwide. Gen. Mohammed Ibrahim, Minister of Interior, publicly declined.

Gen. Ibrahim faced pressure from powerful figures in the former Mubarak camp. On June 24, Ahmed Shafiq—the last prime minister appointed by Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Morsi's closest rival for president—said in a television interview that he warned the general to not show support for the Brotherhood.

"I told him…the coming days will not be on your side if you do, and these days will be very soon," Mr. Shafiq said on TV. "They will see black days," he said, referring to the Brotherhood.

Days later, Mr. Shafiq's warning materialized. Armed young men began ransacking Muslim Brotherhood offices nationwide.

In Zagazig, an hour north of Cairo, armed men showed up outside a Muslim Brotherhood office the night of June 27, according to neighbors and residents of the building housing the office. As they approached, the electricity went out, according to eyewitnesses not affiliated with the Brotherhood. Gunshots rang out, these witnesses said. Seven Muslim Brotherhood defenders were shot, one fatally.

The province's deputy governor, a Muslim Brotherhood member appointed by Mr. Morsi, called the police chief and ordered him to intervene to prevent violence, according to local Brotherhood leader Yasser Hag. Mr. Hag said the police chief said he couldn't help, citing the need to protect 7,000 antigovernment protesters elsewhere.

The police declined to comment. In an interview, Mr. Shehata, the former Mubarak party lawmaker in the area, said police couldn't respond because they were stretched thin protecting protesters. He said the youths were random mobs and would be arrested if caught.

Another building resident, Mohammed Nasser Ammar, who said he opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, said that as the youths laid siege through the night, he and his neighbors phoned the police many times. "Each time they would say that they are coming, but then they don't show up," he said. Other residents gave similar accounts.

Nationwide that evening and in the next few days, dozens of Brotherhood offices were hit.

Mr. Ammar noted the similarities to Mubarak-era political tactics on behalf of then-ruling-party candidates. "The thugs that used to come out then, and the events happening during that time, was pretty much the same to this time," he said.

Egyptian Military Sniper Firing Into A Crowded Pro-Morsi Protest In Cairo

It’s not clear from the first seconds of the video who is firing or from where, but the rapid fire of the assault rifle is unmistakable. With the shots ringing so clear over the shouts of the crowd, chanting in support of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, so is the proximity. The camera jumps, some protesters step back or turn to run. In only a few shorts seconds – so short, he must have been awfully close – three men carry a fourth back through the crowd, limp and covered in blood.

Then, at 50 seconds into the video, embedded below, the cameraman pans up to see a soldier in military camouflage peering over the top of a building. The soldier aims carefully before each shot – fired, it’s not clear at whom, somewhere into the crowd. More bleeding young men are carried away.

Egyptian military troops opened fire on pro-Morsi protesters this morning, killing at least 40 and injuring 300. It’s purportedly taken from outside Cairo’s Republican Guard headquarters, where Morsi’s supporters believe he is being held and where Monday morning’s violence took place. 

A military spokesman says the troops were defending against armed Morsi supporters; the protesters say soldiers shot at them from rooftops and behind barricades without warning. The video does not definitively prove either of their stories – it is far too narrow and bereft of context to tell us the broader story of what happened – but it is a disturbing moment.

The video was clearly taken during the day; Monday’s shooting mostly occurred during or before dawn. Wall Street Journal report Tamer El-Ghobashy says that several witnesses told him the episode continued until about 8 AM, by which time Cairo is quite sunny.

Source: The Washington Post

President Mohamed Morsi's Final Days

The army chief came to President Mohammed Morsi with a simple demand: Step down on your own.

"Over my dead body!" Morsi replied to General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi on Monday, two days before the army eventually ousted him after a year in office.

In the end, Egypt's first freely elected president found himself isolated, abandoned by allies and no one in the army or police willing to support him.

Even his Republican Guards simply stepped away as army commandos came to take him to an undisclosed defence ministry facility, according to army, security and Muslim Brotherhood officials, who gave the Associated Press an account of Morsi's final hours in office.

The Muslim Brotherhood officials said they saw the end coming for Morsi as early as 23 June – a week before the opposition planned its first big protest. The military gave the president seven days to work out his differences with the opposition.

There was such distrust between Morsi and the security agencies that they began withholding information from him – deploying troops and armour in cities without his knowledge.

Police also refused to protect Muslim Brotherhood offices that came under attack in the latest wave of protests.

Therefore, when Morsi was fighting for his survival, there was no one to turn to, except calling for outside help through western ambassadors and a small coterie of aides from the Brotherhood who could do little more than help him record two last-minute speeches.

A Brotherhood spokesman, Murad Ali, said the military had already decided that Morsi had to go, and Sisi would not entertain any of the concessions that the president was prepared to make.

"We were naive ... We didn't imagine betrayal would go this far," Ali said.

"It was like, 'either we put you in jail, or you come out and announce you are resigning,'" Ali added.

Brotherhood officials said they saw the end coming.

"We knew it was over on 23 June. Western ambassadors told us that," said another Brotherhood spokesman. US ambassador Anne Patterson was one of the envoys, he added.

Morsi searched for allies in the army, ordering two top aides – Asaad el-Sheikh and Rifaah el-Tahtawy – to establish contact with potentially sympathetic officers in the 2nd Field Army based in Port Said and Ismailia on the Suez Canal.

The objective was to find a bargaining chip to use with Sisi, security officials with firsthand knowledge of the contacts said.

There were no signs that Morsi's overtures had any effect, but Sisi, on learning of the contacts, took no chances. He issued directives to all unit commanders not to engage in any contacts with the presidential palace and, as a precaution, dispatched elite troops to units whose commanders had been contacted by Morsi's aides.

The next day, he and his family moved into the Cairo headquarters of the Republican Guards, an army branch that protects the president.

According to the usually authoritative newspaper Al-Ahram, Morsi was offered safe passage to Turkey, Libya or elsewhere, but he declined. He also was offered immunity from prosecution if he voluntarily stepped down.

Morsi gave a speech late on Tuesday in which he vowed to stay in power and urged supporters to fight to protect his legitimacy.

Soon after, Sisi placed him under "confinement" in the Republican Guard headquarters. The next day the military's deadline to Morsi expired. At 5am troops began deploying across major cities and the military posted videos of the movements to its Facebook page in a bid to reassure the public. Republican Guards assigned to the president and his aides walked away at midday and army commandos arrived.

There was no commotion and Morsi went quietly. That evening, Sisi announced Morsi's removal.

ElBaradei Sought West's Support For Forcibly Ousting President Morsi

Mohamed ElBaradei, said Thursday that he had worked hard to convince Western powers of what he called the necessity of forcibly ousting President Mohamed Morsi.

In an interview, Mr. ElBaradei also defended the widening arrests of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and the shutdown of Islamist television networks that followed the removal of Mr. Morsi on Wednesday by Egypt’s generals.

In tandem with the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi, the judicial authorities replaced the attorney general he had appointed, reinstating the prosecutor installed by Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic president ousted in Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

The Mubarak appointee, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, spent years in office prosecuting Islamists. 

Give Egypt A Chance For Change

By Mahboob A Khawaja

The land of pharaohs and magic appears to be intermingled with in-house fireballs generating conflicts of hope and expectation. The generals are becoming restless with the Tahrir Square shouting matches, crumbling economic affairs, emotional outbursts of the emotionally charged people and their aspirations, domestic strife - and wanting overnight results from their long political struggle. 

The military on Monday didn't attempt to disguise its plans to intervene, saying it would "announce a road map for the future and the steps overseeing its implementation …" in 48 hours if President Mohamed Morsi failed "to meet the demands of the people". 

It is an unimaginative and short-sighted picture that a politically responsible government in one year could deliver unthinkable goods and amenities of life amid a socio-economic context that is besieged at best. Society becomes productive when there is peace, freedom of thoughts and movement and collaborative endeavors for change and development. 

Egypt faces complex and critical situations. What was destroyed by over half of the century of continued authoritarian rule, political insanity and societal destruction cannot be restructured and rebuild in a year or two. Suspicious and paranoid army leaders need not to jump into a volatile political affairs. No generals can understand what is good for the public conscience and aspirations. In an emerging democracy, people enjoin passion to demonstrate, and to shout at one another is not abnormal. 

There is no political emergency in need of military dictates or intervention. The generals are not equipped with the capacity to politically reason the unreason. They are not the political entity to pursue peaceful dialogue for human change. Morsi was elected through a fair political system and he must have time and opportunities to devise new thinking, plan and take concerted actions to deliver goods and services to the embittered pubic. 

Today's Egypt seems more standing and moving on a rational path of change and development than in Hosni Mubarak's era of dictatorial rule by one party against all. It will be unwise and unwarranted if the military intervenes in the political process for societal change and future-making. Such an intervention could block all avenues of peaceful political transformation for the good of the people. 

There was no political dialogue in Mubarak's authoritarian rule, but Morsi has helped facilitate talk between opponents. Egypt needed new political imagination and political institutions to undo the paradox of history. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are articulating some and more to come with the consensus of the people over certain period of time. One year in office is just a dot on the screen for change. Political Change moves on its own pace, not what some external forces should dictate or determine it. 

If opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood dream of glory and triumph and think they enjoin some magic solutions to five decades of economic-political mismanagement, they are disconnected from the real world of change. What is happening in Egypt is the test case for both the short- and the long-term in the process of political development. There is no quick fix of any socio-economic ills perpetuated by so many against all Egyptians. 

If political progress is stopped, it will ruin Egypt's lifelines for freedom and democracy. 

People enjoy the freedom to stand for their rights and dignity without any coercive and secretive police actions. Tahrir Square has become a symbol of the continued essence of freedom and collective will of the people of Egypt. It should retain its historic identity and value. 

When the people of Egypt were oppressed and dehumanized for over half of a century, there were few outcries and human rights concerns in the Western news media or in the stonewalled Arabian peninsula for moral-intellectual support and recognition of the need for change and political dialogue. Western scholars and official policy makers never seemed to imagine that Arab people could rise against the odds and beyond the obvious to strive for their rights and freedom as did many other nations in the Western industrialized world. 

The Egyptian people have made sacrifices and articulated the hope and optimism for a new world of human rights and political imagination. Today, the absolute rulers and common folk in Arab nations appear to be living in two different worlds - varied conflicting time zones between the people and the palaces, and being unable to see each other to reconcile and to understand the prevalent political realities shaping the present and carving out the future of the Arab world. Egypt could well be a role model for change and future-building 

Most of the Arab Middle East world is dominated by neo-colonialism and ruled by ruthless authoritarian rulers denying the people their inborn sense of freedom, human dignity and the will to participate in political governance. The oil-generated wealth and the new concept of "modernity" could not facilitate a promising future with sustainable system of governance, participation and initiatives of the people to replace nomadic ignorance and neo-colonialism endured under the European imperialism. 

Arabia appears to be in conflict within itself, its time and role in modern history, vast resources of natural fossil fuels and Arab authoritarianism controlled and managed by the Western-trained secret police apparatus across the world. 

Economic developments have led to more conflicts and wars throughout the Middle East states seeking recognition and co-existence with the challenging political and economic developments scenarios. The individualistic absolutism has produced authoritarianism maintained by the Western military alliances and political intrigues generating new age of political mismanagement and institutionalized corruption. 

Sooner or later, the neo-colonial kings and presidents will make their way out, not by persuasive reasoning but by the power of the people's movement and sacrifices for freedom, peace and craving for new educated and intelligent leadership from the new generations. 

The victory of military coups is never permanent. The emerging battlegrounds clearly indicate that some ignorant rulers continue to rely on the force of evil to determine the future of the people. The supremacy of force and evil mongering is transitory and people across the Arab states will ultimately triumph their rights and freedom for a new and democratic system of governance. 

People are determined to challenge the authoritarian absolutism and now the global community is anxiously supporting movements for change and freedom. It is becoming more and more conceivable that nothing could safeguard the absolute rulers from the consequences of their own triviality, insanity and viciousness against the people, led by the young entrepreneurs of information age implying new ideas and creative strategies to move public sentiment, peaceful organized protests, effective public communication, and continued political demonstration across the Arab world. 

How To Rebuild?
There must a rational concern and immediate thinking on the part of able and competent Muslim thinkers to plan for change and to build a future from the deliberate ruins of many quarters of the Arab world. What was destroyed instantly by draconian forces, cannot be rebuild overnight. The thinking people of the Arab hub must search for planned changes and an action plan that covers both the short and long terms, and reach out for a sustainable mechanism of value-based governance that enlists politically active and informed people from the young generation. 

Given the new vision, approaches and strategic priorities outlined by Morsi, for sure, there will be a new future for Egypt that is different from the conditions imposed by dictators, be they Bashar al-Assad or Hosni Mubarak and so many others in waiting across the Arab world. 

There are more daunting challenges and opportunities ahead for concerned Arab-Muslim scholars and thinkers to grasp the momentum of political change to sort out feasible political and socio-economic remedies. The role and tasks of the people dealing with change and is painfully critical and progressive over certain period of time. The societal problems they are faced with are too complex to administer a single pill to treat the cancerous sickness. 

Professor Fouad Ajami said it right: "The problems of the Arab world are the result of self-inflicted wounds." If the one-track rulers were open to listening and learning (vital traits of effective modern leadership), the catastrophic war in Syria - troops firing on demonstrators, funeral processions and worshippers in Masjids, the killings of innocent citizens and destruction of the social environment and political horrors, could have been avoided. 

The question is how to manage new and challenging opportunities to undo past political strangulations and economic chaos and return to normalcy? That requires soul searching, foresight and a strong commitment - more than a revolution - to set the proper strategies and initiate solid plans. Do the Arabs societies have the proactive visionary and competent people and institutions to deal with change and conflict management? 

Of all the Arab states, Egypt under Morsi stands a better chance to cope with the phenomenon of change and to reconstruct its economy, political systems and national productivity. Change will come whether Arab dictators like it or not, and all of the Arab lands will embrace people-oriented Islamic-valued governance. 

Sadly enough, Western news media offer irrational sensational and dramatic television coverage of public outcries for change, economic well-being and social justice. There is no revolution in Egypt because few millions are out in streets; this is an evolving culture of political emancipation for the good of Egyptian democracy. The process of political change must be allowed its due course of tests and evolutionary growth and credibility. Otherwise, Egypt could go back to another pharaoh, more of the generals, and more of the dying face of Mubarak. 

On the pertinent issues of sustainable change and human development for the future, the author's article "Arab Authoritarian World is Changing - but how to make sense-out of nonsense" (Opinion Maker: 8/19/2011, Media Monitors Network: 8/21/2011, Aljazeera-CCUN: 8/29/2011), offered the following observation:

If you scan and analyze over half of the century affairs to discover that Arab rulers had no accomplishments to their record. They failed on all the major front battles: failure in leadership, perception of change and development of the future, shameful failure in dealing with the freedom of Palestine and establishment of an independent State of Palestine, no strategy to cope with the growing influence of Israel in the Middle East, and creating viable societal economic and political infrastructures for a sustainable future. Under the guise of modernity, they propelled Western enhanced militarization and secretive police-based institutionalized system using "fear" as a strategy for their governance.

Modern Arab armies are not the armies of Islam but to safeguard the rulers and their palaces. The armed forces of the modern Arab States supposed to be defending the Arab citizens and their rights and dignity are killing them. The egomaniac rulers, who loved the sensation of power and extravagant life in palaces built on moving sand and with stolen wealth, use iron fist rule to torture and kill the political opponents alleging Islamic extremism. The paranoid and ruthless kings, princes, presidents and fattish Generals do not frighten anybody, anymore except the self ...

The Arab people have a success story to convey to the future generations for change and development but the absolute rulers stand no chance for any story of success and have no message to the future generations and the reason what went wrong to them, what made them commit heinous crimes and institutionalize a rule of insanity against their own self and the people they claim to rule.

Dr Mahboob A Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including his latest, Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking(Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012). 

An Egyptian Coup In The Making

Many Forces Are Lined Up Against President Morsi. But Who Will Take His Place If He Falls?

By Christopher Dickey

If Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi lasts another week in office—or even another day—it will be a minor miracle, given the forces now arrayed against him: the nation’s streets filled with more than a million protesters on Sunday; the military is fed up with his administration’s incompetence; and his own Muslim Brotherhood may well decide Morsi is expendable, if the party itself wants to survive. But precisely what and who will replace him in the Arab world’s most populous and powerful country remain open questions, the answers to which will go a long way toward determining the future of the entire Middle East.

Minute by minute, the momentum for change is building in Cairo. Late Monday afternoon, the powerful minister of Defense and head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, bluntly warned Morsi’s government: “We give you the next 48 hours as your last chance to do your duty.” If not, he said, it would be the army’s duty “to put forward a road map for the future instead.” When the crowds in Tahrir Square heard the announcement, they erupted in cheers. “We are behind you to finish the road map!” they shouted. Morsi is scheduled to address the nation at 9:00 p.m. local time (3 p.m. EDT) and tell us what path forward he sees—or has been told to follow.

Many on the ground in Cairo regard this drama as little more than a military coup with well-orchestrated protests giving the army the pretext to make a move. 

But neither the anti-government demonstrators calling for the army to intervene nor the officers in the high command itself actually want the military to rule. The army’s interests have always been to maintain its independence, its prestige, and its highly profitable industries while avoiding the dirty business of running a nearly ungovernable country with an economy on the verge of implosion.

Robert Springborg at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, an authority on the Egyptian military, says the situation is further complicated by the disarray of the opposition, which has now proved, once again, it can gather people in the street but lacks the organization able to run a government. Springborg believes the military would like the Brotherhood-dominated government to make a host of concessions, including liberalization of the Constitution and opening the way to new elections. “I think Morsi himself is expendable,” says Springborg. “Morsi is now dead weight for them.”

“Morsi is now dead weight for them.”

But adding to the complications are possible divisions within the military itself, where al-Sisi is tainted by his past close cooperation with the once-fearsome and now feckless Islamist party.

After President Hosni Mubarak was ousted a year and a half ago by street protests and a military putsch, the Brotherhood initially played a smart game. It was the best-organized opposition organization, and at first indicated an unwillingness to seek the presidency, knowing how thankless that job was likely to be.

But in the end, the Brotherhood could not resist, and the party won the election. In short order, the Brotherhood rammed through an unpopular Constitution, alienated all the rich Gulf states except Qatar, flirted with Iran, and set teeth on edge in Washington, which still supplies Egypt with billions of dollars in aid each year. Most importantly, the Brotherhood failed to turn around the economy. And as it came under more pressure, the Brotherhood grew more aggressive.

Earlier this year, Morsi tried to bring hundreds of thousands of police and security forces under his control by appointing his hand-picked man, Mohamed Ibrahim, to run the Interior Ministry. “Ibrahim is a ham-fisted idiot,” says Springborg. “So they got the guy they wanted and the ranks said ‘No.’” They simply refused to follow his orders. On Sunday night when a mob attacked the Muslim Brotherhood’s party headquarters, the cops just stood aside. “It was fair game,” said Springborg. “What clearer message can you send to the ruling party than to let people in to steal its files and its air conditioners?”

Al-Sisi is also one of this government’s appointees, and he is now in a position where he needs to prove to the rest of the officer corps he’s not really Morsi’s man, says Springborg.

Al-Sisi was in touch with the Brotherhood for months before he was named defense minister last year. “He was their go-to guy,” says Springborg. “They trusted him and they were aware of his political leanings, which were Islamist. Does that mean he was a Brotherhood loyalist? I doubt it. But he had his connections, and he was clearly the Brotherhood’s No. 1 choice.”

As al-Sisi was rising to the highest levels of the Egyptian military, he studied for a year with the Americans at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The papers he wrote there were almost like Islamist tracts, says Springborg, who has read them. “He believes that to understand the Arab world you have to understand that it is Islamic, and that democracy without regard to Islam can never work, and that religious figures have to play a role in any sort of exercise of government.”

Al-Sisi wanted “respect for the military and its privileges and for the country to be more Islamist,” says Springborg. “But the Brotherhood has been so incompetent that any guy with Islamist leanings like al-Sisi would feel that these guys have damaged the project. The Brothers of Egypt have managed to deal a very heavy blow to Arab Islamism, so someone like al-Sisi really has to back away from them. I really don’t think he has a choice.”

The country’s disastrous economy hangs over the whole picture “like a tidal wave,” says Springborg, and the military rank and file is not immune. There is “a lot of discontent within the junior ranks,” he says. “These guys are tied to the street and they don’t want the military to defend an order that the street is not accepting.”

So we may well see a president of Egypt resign in the next few hours or days, but that is not so much the end of the country’s drama as the beginning of a new act.

Egypt: Tug Of War

As the crisis in Egypt develops, it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not about. It is not about the proposed constitution, many of whose provisions opposition members put their signatures to, before changing their minds and walking out of the drafting committee. Negotiations on the contentious clauses have been offered and rejected. Nor is it about the date of the referendum, which the Egyptian justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, offered to postpone. Again, this was rejected. Nor even is it about the temporary but absolute powers that the Egyptian president,Mohamed Morsi, assumed for himself – which will lapse the moment the referendum is held whatever the result.

Urging the opposition to shun dialogue, Mohamed ElBaradei said that Morsi had lost his legitimacy. So the target of the opposition National Salvation Front is not the constitution, or the emergency decree, but Morsi himself. What follows is a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, and to prevent a referendum and fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which Islamists stand a good chance of winning. Morsi, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

In weighing who occupies the moral high ground, let us start with what happened on Wednesday night. That is when the crisis, sparked by Morsi's decree when he was at the height of his domestic popularity over the role he played in stopping the Israeli assault on Gaza, turned violent. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party sanctioned a violent assault on a peaceful encampment of opposition supporters outside the presidential palace. But lethal force came later, and Islamists were its principle victims. Five of the six people killed in Cairo were members of the Brotherhood and one came from the opposition. Two more Islamists were killed outside the capital. Brotherhood offices were attacked up and down the country, while no other party offices were touched. This does not fit the opposition's narrative to be the victims of Islamist violence. Both sides are victims of violence and the real perpetrators are their common enemy.

Morsi undoubtedly made grave mistakes. In pre-empting a decision by the constitutional court to derail his constitution, his decree was cast too wide. The final draft of the constitution has many faults, although none are set in stone. The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held.

Via: "The Guardian"