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Friday, February 4, 2011

Will Egypt Become an Islamic State?

When they have the power and the guns we are for peace and the ballot. When we have the power we will use the guns. — Vladimir Lenin

I have been reluctant to write about the riots and civil unrest going on in Egypt these days. There has been way too much bloviating from the talking heads and pundits on TV and columnist in the newspapers and blogs. There have been a lot of opinions thrown out into the air waves, but very little facts from the people on the ground. Perhaps that’s because facts had hard to come by right now.

Journalist and reporters can only report on events happening in their immediate vicinity and TV cameras can see only what is near. The pundits are trying to put these events into the box of their own belief system, not in a historical context as they should. This is what I will attempt to do in the next few paragraphs.

You hear a lot of talk about democracy. This civil unrest was not about democracy, it started over the price of food, mainly wheat which is used to make bread — the main staple of the Egyptian’s diet. Food cost had risen to such a high level that many lower class Egyptians were going hungry and this is what led them to the streets.

No revolution in the history of the world that started with riots in the streets has resulted in a democratic government. People like to use our revolution as an example, but they cannot. Our revolution was begun by businessmen, farmers and burghers who were revolting against a tyrannical king who was thousands of miles distant. It began over unjust taxation and laws passed by that king. There were no riots in the streets. The leaders wrote and declaration of independence and eventually a constitution for a federal republic where states had sovereignty and government was limited. There were no expressions of social and economic justice for all.

When I saw Mohamed ElBaradei in the midst of the crowd on the third day of the riots all I could think of was Lenin taking control of the Bolshevik revolution in October, 1917. The Russian people were rioting for the same reason as the Egyptians — bread. This opened the door for the communists to take control of the revolution. It should be noted that when the first civil unrest began in March leading to the abdication of the Tsar Nicholas II and the establishment of the provisional government Alexander Kerensky Lenin was languishing in Switzerland. It was not until October that the Germans secreted Lenin into Russia with the aim of him taking control of the revolution and withdrawing Russia from WWI, which he did.

Eventually Lenin’s Bolsheviks took control of the Russian revolution and they ruled with a dictatorial hand for 70 years using guns and not the ballot. The same can be said of the French Revolution, the takeover of Germany by the Nazis, the Cuban revolution, the Iranian revolution and every other revolution that began with riots in the streets.

These revolutions usually begin with civil unrest over living conditions and students play a big part in the very early days. People like to point to the students and hold them up as idealistic fighters for human rights and democracy. They (the students) may believe they are fighting for the betterment of mankind, but they are mere pawns in the hands of the adults who will eventually take control of the revolution. Lenin had a term for them — useful idiots. He also used this term for liberal journalist sympathetic to the cause of the revolution.

I see the same thing happening in Egypt. The civil unrest began with riots over bread and the students calling for the removal of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s dictatorial ruler since 1980. Mubarak is refusing to go and has promised elections in September. This will not satisfy the mobs in the streets and they will continue to riot for his removal.

Now a two new factor have entered into the mix — the pro Mubarak faction and the Muslim Brotherhood. The pro Mubarak group is composed mainly of the government and intelligence forces with the guns. This adds a new equation of violence to the mix.

Egypt’s Lenin factor is the Muslim Brotherhood. While they did not begin this unrest they will surely take control of events as Lenin did in 1917. They are the real adults in this mix of groups. They are the ones with the money, the organization and desire to take control of Egypt. Mubarak, like his predecessors Nasser and Sadat were able to throttle the Brotherhood. Once Mubarak is gone no leader, ElBaradei included, will be able to hold the Muslim Brotherhood back just as Kerensky’s Provisional Government could not hold back Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The brotherhood will claim to be for peace and the ballot until they gain the power then they will use the guns. This is what happened in Iran.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a very dangerous organization. Their belief is: The Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood's goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia. It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. They also have a passionate hatred for Jews and Israel.

Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Ismailia in March 1928 along with six workers of the Suez Canal Company. It began as a religious, political, and social movement with the credo, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.” Al-Banna called for the return to an original Islam and followed Islamic reformers like Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. According to him, contemporary Islam had lost its social dominance, because most Muslims had been corrupted by Western influences. Sharia law based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah were seen as laws passed down by Allah that should be applied to all parts of life, including the organization of the government and the handling of everyday problems.

By the late 1940s the Brotherhood was reckoned to have as many as 2 million members, while its strong Pan-Islamic ideas had gained its supporters in other Arab lands". The Muslim Brotherhood also tried to build up something like an Islamist International (sound familiar), thus founding groups in Lebanon (in 1936), Syria (1937), and Transjordan (1946). It also recruited among the foreign students in Cairo. Its headquarters in Cairo became a center and meeting place for representatives from the whole Muslim world.

Underground links to the Nazis began during the 1930s and were close during the Second World War, involving agitation against the British, Jewish immigration to Palestine, espionage and sabotage, as well as support for terrorist activities orchestrated by Haj Amin el-Hussaini in British Mandate of Palestine, as a wide range of declassified documents from the British, American and Nazi German governmental archives, as well as from personal accounts and memoirs from that period, confirm. Reflecting this connection the Muslim Brotherhood also disseminated Hitler's Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion widely in Arab translations, helping to deepen and extend already existing hostile views about Jews and secular Western societies generally.

In the 1930’s the west paid little attention to the writings of Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf. Many said it was mere rhetoric and the raving of an anti-Semite. If you read Mein Kampf you will see that Hitler, while preaching an anti-Semitic gospel was also calling for social and economic justice, nationalism, health care for all Germans and even an anti-smoking policy. It was not until the end of WWII that the west realized that Mein Kampf was his road map to world domination and the elimination of the Jews.

How long will we have to wait to realize that the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood is not mere rhetoric, but their road map to world domination through the establishment of a second caliphate? If Egypt falls under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood they along with Iran will have the largest Muslim population in the region. And like Hitler did, they will attempt swallow up their neighbors into their caliphate. Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria and Syria will be their targets. How long will they wait to attack Israel and how long Israel resorts to the use of nuclear weapons?

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