by Bruce Thronton<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n The hope that democracy would bloom in Egypt following our collusion in removing Hosni Mubarak looks more and more delusional every day. Even our foreign policy wishful thinkers are no longer peddling the canard that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is \u201csecular\u201d and \u201cmoderate,\u201d thus proving that Muslims devoted to the global expansion of Islam and illiberal Sharia law can be liberal democrats friendly to our interests. But despite being mugged by the Islamist reality, too many democracy promoters in the West still refuse to acknowledge that the Iranian Revolution, not the American Revolution, is the likely model for the so-called \u201cArab Spring.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest moves by president Mohammed Morsi to aggrandize Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt would not surprise anyone even casually familiar with that organization\u2019s aims and ideology. But even those presumably in the know still cling to the Western narrative predicated on Western assumptions. For example, New York Times Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick recently said, \u201cThe Brotherhood, they\u2019re politicians. They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate \u2014 conservative but religious, but moderate \u2014 regular old political force.\u201d It takes just such a massive failure of imagination to ignore the illiberal and Islamist implications of Morsi\u2019s recent autocratic behavior, which is consistent with nearly 90 years of Muslim Brotherhood jihadist goals like \u201cthe Koran is our law\u201d and \u201cdeath for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.\u201d Is that not an aim \u201cviolent by nature\u201d? What other global \u201cregular old political force\u201d endorses such illiberal aspirations? Like many Westerners, Kirkpatrick confuses pragmatism for moderation.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t be fooled by the fact that Morsi\u2019s November 22 decree insulating his actions from judicial review has been partially rescinded. The decree already has served its purpose. The Islamist-dominated assembly has finished writing the new constitution that enshrines Sharia law, and a referendum on it will be held on Saturday. Ominously, Morsi has deployed the army as \u201csecurity,\u201d giving it the right to arrest civilians. As the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reports, \u201cIf voters pass the constitution on Saturday, it could give Islamists a nearly free hand to redraft the architecture of Egypt\u2019s nascent democracy.\u201d Andrew McCarthy last week\u00a0quoted<\/a>\u00a0Morsi adviser Khairat al-Shater to give us a hint at what purpose that new constitutional structure would serve: \u201cto subjugate people to God on earth\u201d and \u201cto organize our life and the lives of the people on the basis of Islam,\u201d which is \u201cour main and overall mission as Muslim Brothers.\u201d As for Kirkpatrick\u2019s old-fashioned pol Morsi, Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim recently\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that a Muslim Brotherhood official said on Egyptian television that \u201cSupreme Guide\u201d Muhammed Badie \u201crules Morsi.\u201d If true, this means an Egyptian government hostile to Israel and supportive of the terrorist gang Hamas, which like Badie explicitly endorses genocide, and committed to the \u201cGrand Jihad\u201d of subverting Western civilization from within.<\/p>\n But what about the protesters in Tahrir Square? Don\u2019t they represent a significant liberal opposition to an Iran-like state arising in Egypt? We will know after Saturday, when a postponement of the referendum, or a result rejecting the constitution, will demonstrate that the thousands protesting in Cairo we see on the news represent the preferences of 83 million Egyptians we don\u2019t see. But as Andrew Bostom\u00a0reports<\/a>, research by Vote Compass Egypt suggests that 70% of Egyptians will vote for a constitution that legalizes religious intolerance and ignores fundamental human rights, an outcome consistent with several years of polling in Egypt that consistently has found widespread support for Sharia law. Perhaps that\u2019s why the liberals are trying to postpone the vote and are calling for a boycott. They understand that \u201cdemocracy\u201d understood only as popular sovereignty will lead to illiberal and tyrannical results. If you don\u2019t believe them, listen to influential cleric Sheik Yasser Borhami, who\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0of the new constitution, \u201cThis constitution has more complete restraints on rights than ever existed before in any Egyptian constitution. This will not be a democracy that can allow what God forbids, or forbid what God allows.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, another venue of revolution against a brutal dictator, Syria, also looks more and more likely to result in chaos favorable not to liberal democracy, but to the Muslim Brotherhood and the more explicitly jihadist gangs fighting against Assad. According to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, the al-Qaeda franchise Al-Nusra Front \u201chas become one of the uprising\u2019s most effective fighting forces\u201d since \u201cits fighters, a small minority of the rebels, have the boldness and skill to storm fortified positions and lead other battalions to capture military bases and oil fields. As their successes mount, they gather more weapons and attract more fighters.\u201d Other Islamist groups were recently seen in a video leading a sing-along\u00a0extolling<\/a>\u00a0terrorism, the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the Taliban. More frightening still, another\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0has surfaced that \u2014 assuming it\u2019s authentic \u2014 shows the Free Syrian Army killing rabbits with some sort of poison gas.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t worry, the new \u201copposition alliance\u201d endorsed by France and the US is lead by Moaz al\u2013Khatib. As J.E. Dyer\u00a0reports<\/a>, Khatib is \u201ca Muslim Brotherhood member with a history of anti-Semitic, anti-Western statements, who has castigated as \u2018revisionists\u2019 fellow Muslims (like Alawites) whose beliefs differ on the margins, and who believes that the bombing of Israelis is \u2018evidence of God\u2019s justice.\u2019\u201d Yet despite all the signs that, as\u00a0Frontpage<\/em>\u2019s Daniel Greenfield wrote recently, \u201cSyria is coming down to a race between the Iranian allied Syrian government, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda,\u201d according to the London\u00a0Sunday Times<\/a><\/em>, \u201cThe United States is launching a covert operation to send weapons to Syrian rebels for the first time,\u201d including \u201cmortars, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles.\u201d Some of the weapons come from \u201cthe stockpiles of Muammar Gaddafi\u201d and \u201cinclude SA-7 missiles, which can be used to shoot down aircraft.\u201d It\u2019s looking more and more like a reprise of the debacle in Libya, where US military power was used to arm and empower jihadist gangs like the one that assassinated 4 Americans in Benghazi.<\/p>\n So this is what ten years of democracy promotion in the Middle East have brought us: illiberal states increasingly dominated by unstable mixtures of jihadist terrorists and more tactically savvy Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood who both share the goal of creating some version of Iran\u2019s Islamic government. In short, we will have colluded in creating states hostile to our interests and security, and those of our closest ally in the region, Israel. Such are the fruits of foreign policy wishful thinking.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine The hope that democracy would bloom in Egypt following our collusion in removing Hosni Mubarak looks more and more delusional every day. Even our foreign policy wishful thinkers are no longer peddling the canard that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is \u201csecular\u201d and \u201cmoderate,\u201d thus proving that Muslims devoted to the […]<\/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":[29,22,116],"tags":[119,1034,1035,1017,30,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2Q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1429,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-arab-winter-approaches\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":0},"title":"The Arab Winter Approaches","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The revolutions against Arab autocracies \u2014 dubbed the \u201cArab Spring\u201d \u2014 have been greeted in America with bipartisan celebration. To President Obama, the uprising in Egypt reflected the yearning of Egyptians for \u201cthe same things that we all want: a better life for ourselves\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":1358,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangers-of-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":1},"title":"The Dangers of Democracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The parliamentary elections that have begun in Egypt will impress only the most starry-eyed of democracy champions. These are the people who, like Senator Joe Lieberman, think that the \u201cArab Spring\u201d is all about people \u201cdemanding lives of democracy, dignity, economic opportunity, and involvement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Muslim Brotherhood"","block_context":{"text":"Muslim Brotherhood","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/muslim-brotherhood\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6475,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/watching-the-middle-east-implode\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":2},"title":"Watching the Middle East Implode","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Only when we recognize the fundamental role Islam plays in the region can we begin to craft sensible policies that put U.S. interests first. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Defining Ideas\u00a0 The revolutions against dictators in the Middle East dubbed the Arab Spring have degenerated into a complex, bloody m\u00e9lange of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2015,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-years-of-lessons-unlearned\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":3},"title":"Ten Years of Lessons Unlearned","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Ten years after 9\/11 many politicians and pundits continue to misinterpret Islamic jihadism. Typical is the following comment from Senator Joseph Lieberman\u2019s\u00a0essay\u00a0in\u00a0Foreign Affairs, in which he speaks of \u201can ideological struggle within Islam, waged between an extremist minority that seeks to enslave the world\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2406,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberating-libya-for-jihadists\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":4},"title":"Liberating Libya for Jihadists","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The fall of Muammar Gaddafi is making some in the West giddy with the usual \u201cArab Spring\u201d wishful visions of democracy and freedom flourishing throughout the Muslim Middle East, even as the last binge of democratic intoxication, the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3407,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-secularist-delusion\/","url_meta":{"origin":176,"position":5},"title":"The Secularist Delusion","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The dubious received wisdom rationalizing our current intervention in Libya was crystallized in Senator John Kerry\u2019s recent\u00a0essay\u00a0for\u00a0The Wall Street Journal. For Kerry, the rebels in Libya are the same as those in Egypt, \u201cpeacefully demanding freedom and dignity.\u201d Long oppressed by tyrants\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}