THE LOOSERS IN THIS NEW EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION
This is a victory which will send shock waves throughout the Middle East, emboldening Islamic radicals from Bahrain to Syria to persist in their efforts to topple their regimes, and confirming the Israeli view that the Arab Spring has become an Arab Winter.
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, is the Arab world’s first elected Islamist head of state. He now rules a nation of 81million people. While there is rejoicing among hardline Hamas supporters in Gaza tonight, Egyptian liberals and secularists will be bitterly disappointed, especially since it was they, rather than the Muslim Brotherhood, who toppled Hosni Mubarak.
The wealthy cosmopolitan middle-classes will be shuddering inside their villas in Cairo’s rich Heliopolis suburb.
People who pride themselves with a rich history enriched by Islam and an Islam enriched by diverse cultures, civilizations, and faiths. The Arab world at one time was a unique and rich mosaic of cultures, faiths and civilizations and yes, success. Sadly all that disappeared.
The Arab world was rich and powerful by its diversity and partnerships with Islam, with Christianity and Judaism. Islamic culture and civilization is not only an Arab civilization but also a Persian, Indians, Mogul, and Black civilizations. Equally the Arabs were enriched by ethnic diversity of Amazighs, Kurds, Turks and Blacks. The strength of the Arab world was its diversity not its narrow nationalism that ignored and disfranchised indigenous ethnic and religious communities.
Nasser firebrand nationalism simply ignored and neglected the significant role these communities and cultures play within the Arab world. Communities and ethnic groups that are indigenous to the Arab world and are an integral part of a region that spreads from Morocco to Bahrain, from Syrian to Yemen. Nasser brand of nationalism proved to be a total failure and took the Arab world from one disaster to another from one failing to another.
Nasser failed nationalism lost the Arabs Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Split the Arab world between “nationalists” and “reactionaries” and instigated a rash of military coupes plunging the Arab world into chaos and military dictatorship that is the source of all evils and failures in the Arab world.
The rise of military and party dictatorships in countries like Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Somalia plunged the Arabs into a spiral of failures, of poverty, proxy wars that costs trillions and cost the lives of millions, bankrupting the nations, plunging the nations into civil wars and inviting a second wave of foreign occupations and colonialism.
Such leadership not only looted the country, creating a class of “elitists military and party parasites”, they ruled with an iron fists, creating nations of fears, no different from the former Soviet republics, with extensive use of security police and substantial networks of informers and prisons, with security and “unintelligent” forces ruling and managed every thing from neighborhood bakery to universities to textile factories.
Colonialism was replaced by “nationalistic dictatorships’ with loss of freedom and liberties all in the name of national liberation, steadfastness and resistance to colonialism. Poor Palestine, it was the excuse for all of the pain and suffering Arabs had to endure, with Nasser, Assad, Saddam, Bashir, and Kaddafi are but few who championed Palestine. Of course we must not forget that little dictators and fraud Arafat.
These military dictatorships instead of investing in education, health, infrastructures, they decided to invest trillions in a military that at best can be described as incompetent, inefficient, more for parades than winning wars, of course except when put to use against the people. None of the major Arab armies ever won major wars.
Investments in a failed military took priorities over investing in people and one can see that clearly in the case of Yemen where close to 50% of the people below poverty line, with hundreds of thousands of children going hungry and millions unemployed, with Sudan and Egypt no different.
Now and for the last decades there is a rise of fiery brand of “Islamism” no less dangerous than “Arab nationalism” with emphasis on militant “jihad”, segregation of women and men in the name of purity and morality, with emphasis on fashion style rather than substantive value system of modern and scientific education, pursuance of excellence and human development with strong push for religious schism between Sunnis and Shiites, and the use of ignorance, illiteracy and terrorism as a mean to an end.
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Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick
Listen to this: "Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate."
Or then again, this: "Believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends."
Then there is the instruction to fight against those who are not of the true faith "until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued".
All are direct quotations from the Koran, which Muslims believe to be the absolute word of Allah, and which cannot be altered.
If you seek even more ferocious attacks on Christianity and Judaism, you will find them in the Hadith, Islam's other great book of scripture.
Week after week in those lands where Muslims rule and Christians are a minority, the message pours out from the mosques: "God did not have a son."
All the central doctrines of the Christian faith are emphatically denied. Things are said about Jews and Christians, sometimes comparing them to pigs and monkeys, which would attract the attention of the Thought Police if they were uttered here.
Only recently an Afghan was threatened with death - the prescribed punishment under Sharia law - for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Christians in Pakistan live in constant fear of attacks on their churches and their homes, usually following false allegations that someone has burned a Koran.
Coptic Christians in Egypt suffer a similar misery. Christian Arabs who can afford to have been emigrating by the thousands to avoid increasing persecution by their Muslim neighbours.
Hypocritical fury
For years Liberals in the West have spread the myth of "Muslim tolerance". It does not exist and never did. Where Islam rules, other faiths must cringe in humiliated subjection.
These are facts. Is it not astonishing that this militant, angry religion, whose name means not "Peace", but "Submission", whose whole existence is based on the denial and rejection of its rivals, dares to get into a self-righteous rage over an obscure quotation in a dull academic lecture by the head of the Roman Catholic Church?
In Islam it is still the year 1427. They have had no reformation. The more Islamic a state is, the more its women are shrouded and confined, the more its minorities are despised - and the more freedom of thought and speech are crushed.
And yet the deputy leader of Turkey's Islamist ruling party, Salih Kapusuz, attacks the Pope for having "a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages".
If we bow to this manufactured, hypocritical fury, then we will already have lost one of the most important battles to face us.
While our silly leaders bleat and panic about terror threats, a far greater menace to our free societies comes from the growing power of Islam in our midst.
Much of that power results from the weak-kneed refusal of our own liberal elite to stand up for what is good about our Christian civilisation. Back the Pope.
Stockwell... just a blip in the rise (and rise) of Politically Correct Cressida
Long ago, when I first heard of the policewoman Cressida Dick, left, I knew she was destined for the top. It was a gushing reference to her by a wellknown admirer of liberal policing which alerted me.
In her time at - yes - police college she seemed to have written a very right-on dissertation about the miners' strike. Does anyone have a copy of this, please?
Then there was the way she had "taken the decision to withdraw", rather than disperse, an all-day rave which blocked a main road in Oxford. 'Although people were breaking the law and causing disruption we let it go ahead,' she explained, claiming that any other decision might have led to people being hurt, damage to property and 'a lot of very bad publicity'. Can't have that, can we?
Mind you, she has had quite a lot of bad publicity recently over her odd role in the Stockwell shooting.
Yet, thanks partly to the special protection such politically correct officers seem to enjoy, it has not prevented her from being promoted to the post of Deputy Assistant Commissioner.
I think she will go higher yet - because of her opinions, not her qualifications.
Here come the pious liberal cavalry - but they're too late to save childhood
Einstein defined madness as doing the same thing over and over again, while continuing to expect a different result.
It is a form of insanity which powerfully affects our new governing class.
In the past few weeks, we have seen report after report detailing the failure of sex education, the failure of 'harm-reduction' drugs education, the failure of the morning-after pill to reduce abortion.
And in the next few months we shall see more and more millions of our money devoted to reinforcing these failures, on the grounds that they have not had enough 'resources'.
The idea that these schemes are plain wrong simply never sinks in.
Likewise, I richly enjoyed the pious epistle from a great cloud of liberal elite figures, wailing and beating their breasts over the tragic destruction of childhood which they have just noticed.
Well spotted, ladies and gentlemen. But how many of them have you heard joining in the unfashionable campaign to help mothers stay at home and bring up their own young?
How many have raised their voices against the use of TV as child-minder and third parent?
Those of us who have supported these causes - and who have warned for years of the poisoning of childhood by a combination of commercial greed and state interference - could have done with these people's support.
Now, at last, the liberal cavalry's hoofbeats can be heard in the distance. But will there be anyone left to rescue when they finally arrive?
• it in fire across the sky. Sami Tamimi, a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, said last week: "After much research and reading of journals I am convinced there is no such thing as ADHD or childhood depression. Instead, I believe children are reacting to changes in society."
I believe many doctors are beginning to realise the same thing. It is time for a national campaign by doctors against the disgusting practice of dosing children with powerful mind-altering drugs, when it is their schools, their homes, their diets, their lack of proper exercise and sleep, and their over-exposure to TV and computer rubbish that are really to blame.
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The tears of supporters of Ahmed Shafik: This is a victory which will send shock waves throughout the Middle East
Although optimists hope that Egypt will evolve along the lines of Turkey, which has a moderate Islamic government, the reality is that it is likely to see protracted strife between a still-powerful military – which has until now held all the power – and a strong Islamist movement that will make it more like strife-torn Pakistan.
The army have a lot to lose, while the Brotherhood has everything to gain.
Morsi’s background is typical of the middle class, academic professionals who dominate the Brotherhood’s leadership. He has a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southern California, and worked at Egypt’s Zagazig University. But he is leader in name only, which is why he is known as the ‘spare tyre’. He only ran for president after the ruling Supreme Council of the Army disqualified 62-year-old businessman Khariat Al Shater, the real strategic mind within the Brotherhood.
Al Shater has been in prison four times. He and Morsi represent the conservative strain of the Brotherhood, and rule out women and Christians ever standing as president. They want Egypt to be run along the lines of Saudi Arabia, where women are covered from head to toe and banned from driving, alcohol is forbidden and sharia law is commonplace. The wives of these two men wear the niqab, which covers the face and is unusual in Egypt – except in areas where the Brotherhood’s huge charitable involvement acts like a chill draught in a room.
The military, which thanks to its vast grants from the US still retains considerable power in Egypt, has made a deal with the Brotherhood drastically reducing the new president’s untested powers.
In a sense both sides have been engaged in a game of chicken. The Brotherhood has been using its supporters to flood Tahrir Square and threatening to unleash its trades unions to paralyse an Egyptian economy already limping along because of the collapse of mass tourism.
The generals – who could always fill the streets with troops – have issued a decree which restricts what president Morsi can do.
Morsi has no power over budgets, internal affairs or the army, in a country where the defence budget is 40 per cent of revenue. He may chair a new National Defence Council, but 11 of its 16 members will be serving generals.
But while the army holds many cards, the military’s commercial and industrial interests make it highly vulnerable to charges of institutional corruption of the sort that saw the ousting of Mubarak, himself a former air force general.
Limited: Mohammed Morsi may have won, but he is severely restrained in what he can do by the military and its generals
Fragile peace: In an echo of last year's turmoil, military police are deployed outside the electoral commission's offices in Cairo following the announcement, and it is the military who still hold much of the power
Since Mubarak went, relations with Israel have become far chillier. Morsi is a fervent supporter of Israel’s enemy Hamas, the Egyptians have cut off deliveries of natural gas to Israel, and they’ve opened the Sinai border to waves of African migrants who are causing serious law and order problems for the citizens of Tel Aviv.
The world can only watch and wait to see if Israel reacts – and how this uneasy partnership between the generals and the Brotherhood plays out. Many will be fearful, however, if in time the Islamists gain the upper hand.
'Please God, make it stop!' British female journalist, 22, describes horrific sexual assault in Egypt's Tahrir Sq after election result
- Natasha Smith attacked by a 'group of animals' who stripped her naked
- Only escaped after she was handed a burka and men's clothes
- 'I was tossed around like fresh meat among starving lions'
A British journalist was brutally sexually assaulted in Cairo's Tahrir Square as thousands of Egyptians gathered to celebrate the nation's presidential election results.
Natasha Smith, 22, has detailed how she was violently attacked by a 'group of animals' who stripped her naked, scratched and clenched her breasts and 'forced their fingers inside her'.
She only escaped by donning men's clothes and a burka and being whisked away to safety by two other men.
Assaulted: Natasha Smith has written about her horrific ordeal in Tahrir Square on her blog
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Mixed: Tahrir Square was a scene of celebration, but also of a horror, as Natasha Smith was assaulted
Brutal: Smith was attacked as thousands celebrated the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate as the new president
Writing on her blog, she said: 'All I could see was leering faces, more and more faces sneering and jeering as I was tossed around like fresh meat among starving lions.'
The incident occured on Sunday when Egyptians flooded the area celebrating the announcement Mohammed Morsi would be the nation's first democratically elected leader.
Smith, who will graduate with an MA in International Journalism from University College Falmouth in August, was in Tahrir to film the crowd for a documentary on women's rights.
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But the initial 'atmosphere of jubilation, excitement, and happiness', quickly turned against her.
She said: 'Just as I realised I had reached the end of the bridge, I noticed the crowd became thicker, and decided immediately to turn around to avoid Tahrir Square.
'My friends and I tried to leave. I tried to put my camera back in my rucksack. But in a split second, everything changed.
Accidental leader: Mohammed Morsi waves to the crowd during a presidential campaign rally
Rammed: Tahrir Square has become a focus point for the Arab Spring
'Men had been groping me for a while, but suddenly, something shifted. I found myself being dragged from my male friend, groped all over, with increasing force and aggression.
'I screamed. I could see what was happening and I saw that I was powerless to stop it. I couldn't believe I had got into this situation.'
The former Weymouth College and University of Nottingham student said she was then stripped naked and assaulted.
Attacked: CBS reporter Lara Logan moments before she was assaulted in February 2011
She wrote: 'I began to think, 'maybe this is just it. Maybe this is how I go, how I die. I’ve had a good life. Whether I live or die, this will all be over soon.'
A friend eventually reached her and managed to guide her to a medical tent. Local women helped protect her as she put on the burka and clothes.
She said: 'The men outside remained thirsty for blood; their prey had been cruelly snatched from their grasp.
'They peered in, so I had to duck down and hide. They attempted to attack the tent, and those inside began making a barricade out of chairs. They wanted my blood.'
She then escaped by posing as a stranger's wife and walking out hand-in-hand with the man.
She added: 'The women told me the attack was motivated by rumours spread by trouble-making thugs that I was a foreign spy.
'But if that was the cause, it was only really used as a pretext, an excuse, to molest and violate a blonde young Western girl.'
Smith is not the first western woman to be assaulted while working in Egypt. CBS News' Lara Logan was attacked during the 2011 revolution. She said 'men in the crowd had raped me with their hands'.
Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy was also assaulted by Egyptian security forces in November.
And Smith has vowed that the abuse would not stop her from exposing the wider issue of sexual assault in the country.
Broken and battered: Mona Tahawy was brutally assaulted last year
She said: 'I will overcome this and come back stronger and wiser. My documentary will be fuelled by my passion to help make people aware of just how serious this issue is.
'It's not just a passing news story that briefly gets people’s attention then is forgotten. This is a consistent trend and it has to stop.
'Arab women, western women – there are so many sufferers.'
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