by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
<\/em>Stonegate Institute<\/em><\/p>\n The myths of a “patriotic” or “altruistic” Egyptian military carefully protecting the “rights” of its citizenry \u2014 the narrative of the mainstream media of the January 25 Revolution \u2014 are long gone.<\/p>\n Back in January, it was natural to conclude that the Egyptian military was the “savior” of the people, and that their “anti-democratic<\/a>” president, Hosni Mubarak, embodied all of Egypt’s ills: such views are intrinsic to the Western worldview. Today, however, far from allowing protesters to\u00a0stand atop its tanks<\/a>\u00a0in triumph, the military has taken to\u00a0mowing them down with tanks<\/a>\u00a0atMaspero<\/a>, and\u00a0other barbarities<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 culminating in the recent massacre of civilians in Tahrir [ironically, “Liberation”] Square.<\/p>\n The military’s behavior is hardly inexplicable; Egypt’s own history offers countless precedents demonstrating context and continuity. Consider the Mamluks, the non-Muslims who were abducted and enslaved in youth, indoctrinated in Islam, and trained to become jihadists par excellence. While the Ottoman Janissaries, who terrorized Europe for centuries, are the most notorious of\u00a0Islam’s slave soldiers<\/a>, Egypt’s Mamluks \u2014 the word\u00a0mamluk<\/em>simply means “owned” \u2014 actually assumed power, establishing a slave dynasty in Egypt from 1258-1517.<\/p>\n Known for their fierce prowess \u2014 testified to by the fact that it was they who first defeated the otherwise unstoppable Mongol hordes at Ayn Jalut \u2014 Egypt’s Mamluk rulers were naturally oppressive, to both Muslims (which is\u00a0legitimate<\/a>under Islamic law) and non-Muslims (which is expected).<\/p>\n As\u00a0James Jankwoski<\/a>\u00a0put it:<\/p>\n Ultimately, Mamluk rule rested on force. The chronicles of the period are replete with examples of Mamluk violence against the indigenous population of Egypt… From horseback, they simply terrorized those lesser breeds who crossed their paths. The sudden and arbitrary use of force by the government and its dominant military elite; frequent resort to cruelty to make a point; ingenious methods of torture employed both for exemplary purpose and to extract wealth from others: all these measures were routine in the Mamluk era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One immediately discerns parallels between Mamluk Egypt and today’s military-run Egypt, from the fact that the Mamluks ousted their former Ayyubid master and installed their leader as ruler \u2014 just as the Egyptian military ousted Mubarak and installed their leader, Mohamed Tantawi, as ruler \u2014 to the fact that Egyptian citizens are again being terrorized and killed regularly, whether at Maspero or Tahrir Square.<\/p>\n But while the Mamluks were not indigenous, Egypt’s military today is made up natives; and while the Mamluks were slaves, today’s soldiers are free. These differences make the brutality of today’s military that much more objectionable.<\/p>\n In both cases, Egypt’s Christians suffer the most, especially under the concept of “collective punishment<\/a>,” wherein Islam’s “dhimmi” Christians are attacked in response to other Christians: during the Mamluk era, when Muslims were fighting and defining themselves against the Christian Crusaders, today as the Muslim world becomes increasingly hostile to and defines itself against all things Western, including Christianity.<\/p>\n Reading Adel Guindy’s\u00a0Hikayat al-Ihtilal<\/em>\u00a0[“Stories of Occupation”], an Arabic study of the various occupying forces of Egypt since the Arab invasion ca. AD 640, one comes across centuries of burned churches and persecuted Christians, forced conversions, and exorbitant\u00a0jizya\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 taxes imposed on non-Muslims, who were, and evidently still are, treated as sub-human, second-class citizens (see Quran 9:29). These abuses of non-Muslim “infidels” were everyday features of Mamluk Egypt, so much so that it was then that the majority of Egypt’s Christians sought relief by converting to Islam.<\/p>\n Currently, under military rule, Egypt’s Christians are persecuted, calls for\u00a0jizya<\/em><\/a>are back, and churches are destroyed with regularity.<\/p>\n Hikayat al-Ihtilal<\/em>\u00a0describes how, over 500 years ago, Muslims screaming “Allahu Akbar!” would destroy and plunder churches while Mamluk rulers sat by and looked on, as usual blaming the Christians. Today’s upsurge in\u00a0church attacks<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 with officials either looking the other way or\u00a0even justifying them<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 is, in fact, what caused Christians to protest at Maspero in the first place, only to be massacred.<\/p>\n At the close of his study concerning the Mamluk era, Guindy makes an especially pertinent observation: with the Mamluks’ rise to power, “Egypt entered into a five-and-a-half-century coma, which it did not revive from until the voice of Napoleon was heard knocking on its doors in 1798.”<\/p>\n In fact, it was only during the colonial era and into the 20th century \u2014 when Egyptians sought to emulate the ways of a then-confident West \u2014 that the Mamluk “approach” went dormant.<\/p>\n Today, as both Western appeal and influence fade in the Middle East \u2014 in Egypt, starting with Nasser’s Free Officers’ coup in 1952 and culminating in Tantawi’s pure military dictatorship \u2014 the threat of Egypt lapsing back into a “coma” becomes all too real, particularly under Muslim Brotherhood and\/or Salafist rule, which early elections indicate.<\/p>\n [Note: Stonegate Institute’s title for this article is “An Old Egyptian Tradition: A Military that Brutalizes Egyptians”]<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a92012 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim Stonegate Institute The myths of a “patriotic” or “altruistic” Egyptian military carefully protecting the “rights” of its citizenry \u2014 the narrative of the mainstream media of the January 25 Revolution \u2014 are long gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[118,227],"tags":[510,192,1035,228,1017,1019,30],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-jd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3848,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-egyptian-revolution-can-be-the-best-or-worst-thing-to-happen\/","url_meta":{"origin":1191,"position":0},"title":"Why the Egyptian Revolution Can Be the Best or Worst Thing to Happen","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim NRO's\u00a0The Corner It is clear that the media and its host of analysts are split in two camps on the Egyptian revolution: one that sees it as a wonderful expression of \"people-power\" that, left alone, will naturally culminate into some sort of pluralistic democracy, and another that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6341,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/egyptians-enraged-by-u-s-outreach-to-muslim-brotherhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":1191,"position":1},"title":"Egyptians Enraged by U.S. Outreach to Muslim Brotherhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0PJ Media In the eyes of tens of millions of Egyptians, Senators John McCain\u2019s and Lindsey Graham\u2019s recent words and deeds in Egypt\u2014which have the \u201cblessing\u201d of President Obama\u2014have unequivocally proven that U.S. leadership is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. 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Bradley (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). To the general reader,\u00a0Inside Egypt\u00a0is a good introduction to some of the problems rife in the most populous, Arabic-speaking country. 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