Muslim Brotherhood Begins Exerting Influence in Post-Mubarak Egypt

Spread the love

Loading

Energized by a early parliamentary election victory where they and other hard-line Islamist parties will make up two-thirds of Egyptian national parliament, the Muslim Brotherhood has been quick to exert its influence and newfound legitimacy.

First they sent a signal to the Egyptian military (an established institutional power in Egypt) that they will decide the direction and future of the Arab world’s most populist country.

The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party said it was withdrawing from an advisory council being formed by the military leaders, saying that the military was trying to give the new council a major role in writing the constitution. On Wednesday, a member of the military council told a small group of Western journalists that to limit the power of a potential Islamist majority in the new Parliament, the military planned to give the new advisory council and the military-led cabinet major roles in forming a constitutional assembly. Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla of the military council contended during the briefing that the newly elected Parliament would not represent the will of the broader Egyptian public. The military council’s new plan and the Brotherhood’s response mark the beginning of a new round in an escalating conflict between the two sides — the military, Egypt’s most powerful institution, and the Brotherhood, its strongest political force — over the drafting of the Constitution and the military’s future role (New York Times: In Protest, Islamists Quit Egypt Council)

And, true to their ideology and historical “grievances,” the Brotherhood sent a jolt to the region by saying the current Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty should be reassessed.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of

6 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Democracy sucks, huh.

It all comes down to how hard the Army clique wants to fight the islamists…if they can get their loot/assets out of Egypt then their will to fight goes down accordingly. So far there has been no real “change” in Egypt…or any other “Arab Spring” country really — at least not in the sense that American media has hyped it up.

Anyway, the path forward either includes massive unrest bordering on civil war (akin to Iraq’s transition) or a pathetic denouement into fundamental islamic rule. Either way, Camp David is dead and the single most important positive of Carter’s presidency goes with it.

Good points, Malize.

Between 1/10th to 1/5th of all the Coptic Christians who lived in Egypt at the start of this so-called Arab Spring have left that country.
More than 40% of those Coptics remaining have visited at least one embassy to see how arrangements can be made to seek asylum or otherwise get out of Egypt.

Many of the Egyptian military officers have been opening and filling foreign bank accounts along with buying land in European countries where they can get landed immigrant status easily.
Who knows where their funds came from…..the Egyptian currency has been looted almost to the point of full collapse.

Under Obama, and with his help, Israel has gone from being the only democratic country in the Middle East that respects women, minorities and gays and being surrounded by nations in treaty with them to being the only democratic nation in the Middle East which respects women, minorities and gays but is surrounded by enemy states.

Gee, thanks, Obama………NOT!

Where are the lefties who declared this such a victory for obama now?

Hard Right Bring back the Mad Colonel and that poor misunderstood Mubarek.Hell,maybe we were a little hasty with Bin Laden.

Amazing video of an arms cache being hit on Sat. Dec 10th.
It was Gaza.
The IAF did both the missile fire and the video.
Note you have to watch all the way to the end to catch all of the secondary explosions as the arms warehouse continues to explode over and over.
Note, also that Hamas has no qualms about placing an armory in a residential neighborhood.
The IAF pinpointed their shot so no residents were hit.
But Hamas did not make it easy.
If Egypt begins arming Hamas I’m sure the IAF will have no issue with bombing their supply as it moves toward Gaza.