Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood filling pro-Western military’s ranks with Islamists

egyptian military academy

By Bill Gertz:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated government recently allowed members of the Brotherhood and hardline jihadists to join Egypt’s military academy for the first time as part of what U.S. officials say is a covert effort to impose Islamist rule in the key Middle East state.

According to U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports, the government of President Mohamed Morsi is covertly taking steps to take control over the pro-Western military and the police forces as part of a campaign to solidify Islamist control.

Egypt for decades had banned the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamist groups from both the military and police academies after Islamic terrorists in the military assassinated Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The Egyptian military also for decades has maintained close ties to the U.S. military. Analysts in the U.S. intelligence community and the military are viewing the introduction of Islamists into the national military academy, disclosed last week, with concern.

Muslim Brotherhood members and hardline Salafi groups are regarded as dedicated first to jihad, or holy war, and other Islamist principles rather than to the country.

“Any opening of the Egyptian military to Islamist elements would be a big and complicated change,” said one U.S. official. “It’s not clear how it would be managed or how well the rank and file would absorb it.”

Read more at the Washington Times

 

The Obama Administration’s Disgraceful Muslim Brotherhood Policy

aap_3281_MAR04_egyptker2_800x6001-450x337By :

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government, which has the support of the Obama administration, has just issued arrest warrants for five activists on false charges that they allegedly used social media to incite violence against the Muslim Brotherhood.  These activists include a blogger who played a key role in the 2011 revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi was following through on his threat to the National Salvation Front and other opposition groups, which he issued last Sunday in the wake of clashes between protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo: “There is a president of the republic and there are emergency measures if any of them makes even the smallest of moves that undermines Egypt or the Egyptians. Their lives are worthless when it comes to the interests of Egypt and Egyptians. I am a president after a revolution, meaning that we can sacrifice a few so the country can move forward. It is absolutely no problem.”

In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood itself filed complaints against 169 opposition figures, which included a former presidential candidate who now works in television.

At the same time, sexual assaults against women have skyrocketed during the Morsi regime’s rule. And the Islamists who have been elevated into power blame the women for the violence against them. For example, an Islamist police general and lawmaker was quoted by the New York Times as proclaiming that “a girl contributes 100 percent to her own raping when she puts herself in these conditions.”

Read more at Front Page

 

Egypt: Too Big to Fail?

Mohamed-Morsi-via-AFPBy Adam Turner:

Recently, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, a supposed “moderate” Islamist, met with Iran’s anti-Semitic, genocidal, President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Reportedly, they had a friendly discussion.  Perhaps, in addition to the official topics, they also conversed about their mutual anti-Semitic attitudes.  President Ahmadinejad is already well-known for his hatred of the Jews.  President Morsi’s bigotry, on the other hand, has only publicly come to light this past year.  In 2010, President Morsi delivered a speech urging Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews. Soon after, Morsi described Jews as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”   When confronted by U.S. Senators on his impolitic language, Morsi implied that this was only a controversy because the American media was controlled by Jews.

But the two Islamist Presidents have much more in common than just their anti-Semitism.  Both lead radical, dictatorial, and anti-American regimes.  Like the radical Iranian government has since 1979, President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood Party continue to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrations in their country (Egypt), persecute independent members of the media, and actively pursue death sentences against Westerners or Americans engaging in Free Speech IN the West.

Unfortunately, none of this negative behavior by Egypt’s leadership seems to matter much to the U.S. government.  The administration’s immediate response – sending four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt.  A bipartisan Congress voted to support the sale.  This is all part of the $1.5 billion or so U.S. aid, most of it military, which has gone to Egypt annually since 1979.

When questioned about the consistent flow of U.S. aid to Egypt, the same argument is often made by the foreign policy elites – Egypt is the colossus of the Arab world, and it would be irrational and unwise for the U.S. to simply let it become a rogue state, or to collapse, as a failed state.  And so the U.S. money spigot must be kept consistently open, if not cracked a bit wider, regardless of how the Islamist-run Egyptian government acts.  In fact, if you persist in doubting this wisdom, sometimes you are belittled as an ignorant isolationist-like opponent of all foreign aid.

But let’s re-examine that pearl of conventional wisdom regarding U.S. aid to Egypt. It simply isn’t valid, as Egypt under the MB is already a rogue state, and it is also pretty much guaranteed to become a failed state.

The fact that Egypt is a rogue state should be patently obvious at this point.  The Egyptian MB has produced Hamas in Gaza, a well-known terrorist organization.  In fact, the MB and Hamas are so close that thousands of Hamas warriors may have been sent to Egypt to help President Morsi protect his regime by crushing Egyptian democratic protestors.  President Morsi and his MB have already shown their willingness to corrupt the democratic process, kill Egyptian demonstrators, discriminate against the Coptic Christians, allow for the harassment or rape of women, and prevent the exercise of a culture of freedom of speech among ordinary Egyptians and foreigners alike.  For more information, see here, here, here and here.  Even President Obama – in a moment of clarity – revealed that he is unsure whether Egypt’s MB regime is an ally of ours.

Read more at Front Page

Also see:

The Belly Dancing Barometer  by Thomas Friedman

NY Times Avoids Linking Morsi’s Anti-Semitism to Muslim Brotherhood Ideology

by IPT:

3,000 Foreign Jihadis to Terrorize Egyptian Opposition?

 

 

mursi-450x338Front Page:

By Raymond Ibrahim

The title of a recent Al Khabar News report declares: “Morsi summons 3,000 jihadis from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Iran to be an Islamic army to strike the police and army forces” of Egypt.

According to the report, Ibrahim Ali, a lawyer of various Islamic groups, said that 3,000 leaders and members of the Jihad Groups and the notorious Islamic Group—including the brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the army officer who planned and participated in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat—will arrive in Egypt in a few days.

Ali added that most of these leaders are coming from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kenya, Iran, and even London.  Similar reports had appeared earlier, in November: these seasoned jihadis may already be in Egypt.  Moreover, back in August, days after Morsi assumed Egypt’s presidency, he released jihadi convicts from the nation’s two most notorious terrorist organizations, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group—including several held under tight security and on death row for committing especially heinous acts of terror in Egypt.

It is often forgotten that Morsi himself, Egypt’s president, was a former convict in Egypt, imprisoned for his designs to impose Sharia on the social order—precisely what he is doing now unfettered, including by summoning and releasing jihadis to subdue his fellow Egyptians who oppose the Islamization of Egypt—which has millions of Christians and liberal Muslims.  At the very least, one can argue that, at the time of the elections, half the nation was against Islamization, as the vote between Morsi and the secularist Ahmed Shafiq was split down the middle (some authoritative sources even say that Shafiq won).

Now, even more Egyptians are going against Morsi, as evinced by these popular revolts.

A recent talk show on El Balad TV expressed the popular resentment being felt by the average Egyptian, when a Muslim woman called in saying to the MB official on the show:

You people [Muslim Brotherhood] must give people and their ideas some room, you can’t always get angry and fight—it’s unacceptable…. Come on you guys, what’s the deal? We have come to hate the world. I swear to God, if there is an empty mountain for me to live in, I would take my children and go there! You’ve made us hate our lives! Let me tell you something: I voted for Morsi. May God have paralyzed my hand! May a car have run me over when I went to the voting booth!

In other words, Morsi needs all the help he can get, and it is certainly not far fetched to believe that he would summon the aid of foreign jihadis.  For example, here is a list circulating on twitter by the jihadi organization Ansar Al Sharia—“the Supporters of Sharia”—indicating who it will kill should Muhammad Morsi fail; among the names is new Coptic Pope Tawadros.

Moreover, the amount of violence inflicted so far on Egyptian protesters certainly can be described as terrorism.  Aside from those killed, here are some pictures of those beat and tortured.  Many of these victims tell the same story: they were threatened to admit publicly that “outside” sources had hired them to protest otherwise they were severely beat and tortured.

In typical Islamist projection fashion, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is enlisting the aid of fellow but foreign Islamists and jihadis, is trying to portray the grassroots revolts against it as a foreign conspiracy.

Nor is there any doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood was always more interested in empowering Islam over improving Egypt—a natural consequence of the Islamist mentality, which sees the triumph of Islam and Muslims, the collective Umma, more important than the triumph of one’s nation and immediate neighbors.

A couple examples: Brotherhood representative Safwat Hegazy—who earlier predicted the group would be “masters of the world”—is more interested in seeing Jerusalem as capital of the Islamic caliphate than Cairo prospering for Egypt; and the former General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood,  Muhammad Akef, when pressured to talk more about Egypt and less about Islam, declared “the hell with Egypt,” clearly indicting that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam’s.

Speaking of the General Guide, only recently, more evidence emerged demonstrating that Morsi is little more than a tool of Islamization: although many accused Morsi of simply being a stooge to the General Guide—currently Muhammad Badie, who, as head of the Muslim Brotherhood, has one goal, the enforcement of Sharia in Egypt—Morsi brushed aside such talk, saying he was his own man, that his policies for Egypt would have nothing to do with Brotherhood interests, that he was a president for all Egyptians, etc., etc.

Amazingly, however, a couple days ago on Egyptian satellite TV, a Muslim Brotherhood official actually admitted that “Yes, the General Guide rules Muhammad Morsi,” to a flabbergasted host, who in resignation, said, “Well that’s it; it’s over.  What else is there to say?”

Indeed, what else is there to say about an Egyptian president who terrorizes Egyptian citizens into accepting Sharia law?

 

Also see: Axis of Evil: 1000 Hamas #Savages land in Cairo

 

Morsi Annuls Decree, Advances 12/15/12 Constitutional Referendum

Morsi-new-decree

Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi (C) attends a meeting with Egypt’s Vice President Mahmoud Mekky (4th L) with other politicians and heads of parties at the presidential palace in Cairo December 8, 2012. A new decree was issued to accomplish the same popularly supported result as the 11/22/12 decree—a more Sharia-compliant constitution for a Sharia-thirsty Egyptian society

by Andrew Bostom

Al-Ahram has just published (Sunday 12/9/12)  in English translation the full text of a new constitutional declaration that revokes the controversial constitutional declaration issued by Egyptian President Morsi on November 22, 2012.

The earlier decree granting Morsi sweeping executive powers, which he insisted was necessary to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward, did in fact break the deadlock over the draft constitution. According to Mohammad Salim al-Awa, spokesman for a national political dialogue  held Saturday (albeit, boycotted by the major Morsi government opposition groups), the most contentious article from the prior 11/22/12 edict, which placed all of Morsi’s actions beyond judicial review, has been abrogated.

But the referendum on Egypt’s newly minted, increasingly Sharia-compliant draft constitution, will proceed apace, under the following conditions, outlined in item 3 of the new declaration:

3- If the people vote against the draft constitution in the referendum on Saturday, 15 December 2012, the president is to call for the direct election of a new Constituent Assembly of 100 members within three months.

The new Assembly is to finish its task within six months from its election date. The president is to then call for a referendum on the new draft presented by the Assembly within thirty days of receiving it.

In all cases, vote counting and the announcement of results in the constitutional referendum is to take place publicly in election subcommittees as soon as the voting process is finished. The results are to be validated by the head of the subcommittee.

Despite polling data reported yesterday from Vote Compass Egypt, indicating a mass Egyptian popular support of 70% for the constitution,  National Salvation Front “liberal” opposition leader Mohamed El-Baradei, with predictable (if delusive) bravado,  tweeted shortly after 2 a.m Sunday 12/9/12,

We have broken the barrier of fear: A constitution that axes our rights and freedoms is a constitution we will bring down today before tomorrow. Our strength is in our will.

Egyptian Americans protest, urge White House to stand against Mohammed Morsi

imagesCAI9WNYLBy:

Hundreds of Egyptian Americans protested in front of the White House and marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. Saturday, urging President Obama to stand against newly elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. The protest came as Morsi sought to ease tensions in Egypt by removing part of the decree that awarded him near-absolute control.

After a contentious election process, many in Egypt were suspicious that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood sought to be the dominant political power. Morsi soon took steps to solidify that political dominance. In November, he caused a mass uprising by annulling several constitutional amendments that restricted his power – including an amendment that provided judicial oversight of his actions.

Although Morsi has replaced his initial decree with a modified version, his initial power grab has left many Egyptians uneasy.

“Morsi’s declaration on 22 November, as well as the draft constitution planned to be voted on in a referendum are an absolute shame to anything that we can even call a democracy,” said Miriam Aziz, an international student from Egypt attending American University. Aziz was one of hundreds who protested outside the White House.

“It is by all means a populist tyranny and a dictatorship,” Aziz said of Morsi’s administration. “We are here to raise our voices and echo the voices of our brothers and sisters and family and friends in Egypt protesting this.”

Aside from a Dec. 6 call to Morsi, President Obama has largely been silent on the uprising in Egypt. During the call, Obama urged all political leaders in Egypt to denounce violence. He also urged an open dialogue between Morsi and his opposition, but stressed that the dialogue should occur without preconditions.

Protesters in front of the White House urged President Obama to do more.

Read more at the Examiner

Walid Phares posted on his facebook page:

Historic slogans in Washington DC. Egyptian Americans shouting:

“MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ARE FASCISTS”…

Revolutionary signs displayed during the courageous Egyptian American demonstration that took place Saturday from in front of the White …

House to the Egyptian embassy. The chanting and the slogans as well as the signs were historic. Among them “Muslim Brotherhood are fascists.” And “why do you side with the Islamists, President Obama.” Note that the majority of the participants were moderate Muslim Egyptians and some Copts as well. There were no CAIR operatives to be seen on the scene, and the charge of Islamophobia was destroyed into pieces in front of the Administration’s advisors, Middle East studies academia and Islamist lobbies in the US. This demonstration showed that the Islamist lobbies are a minority of militants funded by Petrodollars and are now being exposed for their lies. Most Egyptians in the US and in Egypt are against the Muslim Brotherhood, even though the latter can steal elections and would steal the next referendum.
See also:

 

 

 

Egypt: Morsi Engineering a Train Wreck

imagesCAH1KX4Wby Michael Armanious

While Egypt was unable to supply medicine to the victims of the crash at Assiut, it has sent millions of dollars worth of medicine to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. How about making sure the hospitals in Egypt have enough medicine to treat Egyptians? Morsi is not governing the country for the benefit of its citizens. He is using it as a platform to implement the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi fled the presidential palace in Cairo and returned, in the face of huge opposition to his attempt to turn his country into an Islamist state, but he is not out of the picture — not by a long shot.

Yes, some police officers have sided with the protesters, but Morsi, (who will likely lay low for a while so as to not offend his political and financial patrons in the West), still has a huge base of support in the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to dominate the largest Arab country in the world. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has been on the sidelines of power since its founding in the 1920s, will stop at nothing to maintain its power. Credible reports indicate the organization has sent out teams of thugs to attack their secularist opponents in Tahrir Square and in front of presidential palace.

These are the tactics of fascism; and while Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood will stop at nothing to remain in power, it is clear that they, like all fascist movements, have no interest or desire to wield power for the benefit of the people they govern, but are instead intent on using the country they dominate to create an Islamic millennial utopia, through violence if necessary.

Morsi’s indifference to the well-being of Egyptian citizens became evident in the aftermath of a train accident that took place in the Egyptian province of Assiut on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012. CNN provided details about the accident, which killed more than fifty people, mostly elementary school children: “The train dragged the bus for nearly half a mile. Children’s shoes, books and school bags were strewn across the tracks. The twisted shell of the bus was left under the train.”

One father, Hamada Noor Abdul El-Rashid, lost his four children. He stated that he was thankful that he found their bodies in one piece, unlike many other parents.

The cause of the accident is still being investigated, but it appears that the attendant responsible for lowering the gate to stop automobile traffic from crossing the tracks when trains approach was taking drugs prior to the collision. The prospect of that the attendant was under the influence of drugs threatens to obscure another scandal.

Why is it that Egypt, one of the leading countries in the Middle East, is relying on an antiquated manual system to manage its railroad crossings? It’s part of a bigger problem of unsafe railways and roads that has plagued Egypt ever since the British were tossed out in the 1950s.

Egypt’s medical system is also in shambles. The survivors of the Nov. 17 accident were rushed to nearby hospitals that lacked the medicine needed to treat them. Parents and doctors were frantically looking for medical supplies and the necessarily medications — especially the ones that stop bleeding — to help the children.

While Egypt was unable to provide medicine to the victims of the crash in Assiut, it has sent millions of dollars worth of medicine to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

On October 24 2012, when it was becoming increasingly evident that a showdown between Hamas and Israel was imminent, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi gave a major speech from Al Azhar University in Cairo, in which he promised to send tons of medical supplies to Hamas in Gaza. He said that supporting Gaza in its fight with Israel is a religious and political duty.

How about fixing the roads in Egypt? And how about making sure that the hospitals in the country have the medicine they need to treat Egyptians? Morsi may be president of Egypt, but he is not governing the country for the benefit of its citizens. He is using it as a platform to implement the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is also evident in the content of Morsi’s public speeches. The day before the accident, he gave a speech in which he condemned Israel in angry and emotional terms for 25 minutes. The day of the accident in Assiut, Morsi spoke about the tragedy for about two minutes, in rambling and incoherent terms.

Dealing with the material needs of the Egyptian people is not high on Morsi’s agenda. A few weeks ago, his government indicated its goal of raising $100 million dollars to block pornographic websites in Egypt. However, they have done little, if anything about Egypt’s major drug problem, which apparently played a role in the tragedy in Assiut.

Morsi’s actions and public statements demonstrate that he and the Muslim Brotherhood are committed to furthering the international Islamist agenda – not Egypt’s well-being. The Brotherhood’s main objectives are to restore a caliphate, drive the kuffars [infidels] out of the Middle East and spread Islam to the rest of the world. Those who will not convert to Islam must, under shariah [Islamic religious law], accept second-class status.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

Michael Armanious, a Coptic rights activist blogs at The New Egypt. His writings have appeared in The Boston Herald, PJ Media, and The Commentator.

Why Doesn’t Egypt’s Military Do Something About Morsi’s Power Grab?

APTOPIX%20Mideast%20Egypt_LeffPJ Media: By Rick Moran

The simple answer is that Morsi bribed the soldiers in the new constitution by allowing them to keep their independence from the legislature and run their own foreign policy. The Egyptian parliament will have no control over the military budget and, in return for this, the military has accepted Morsi as president of Egypt.

USA Today:

Egypt’s military played a decisive role in the 2011 uprising that ended the rule of former dictator Hosni Mubarak in the face of a popular uprising. The generals are likely to stand aside this time, however, as Egypt’s new Islamist president Mohamed Morsi consolidates his hold on power, and demonstrators clog Cairo’s Tahrir Square in protest, Egypt watchers say.

Signs of the military’s shift are evident in the proposed constitution that has prompted strong opposition in the square, says Eric Trager, an analyst at the Washington Institute who has studied the Muslim Brotherhood organization that backs Morsi.

“The military gets something in the constitution and it has an incentive to play along with the Muslim Brotherhood,” Trager says.

The constitution, drafted without input from secularists and Christians and passed Thursday night in a rushed session of parliament, preserves the military’s control over its budget and foreign policy, meaning it can maintain peace with Israel and retain billions of dollars of U.S. aid, Trager says.

The military did not withdraw its representative from the constitutional assembly that drafted the document. And it did not protest earlier this year, when Morsi retired 70 senior officers and replaced the top generals after security lapses in the Sinai Peninsula.

It appears that the Brotherhood and Morsi have solidified a deal with the military in which Morsi is the political leader of Egypt, Trager says.

The military controls a large part of the economy, in addition to advancing its own interests in foreign policy, and as long as a Morsi-led government allows them that kind of independence, it isn’t likely that the soldiers would intervene in any Islamist-secularist street fight.

White believes the generals, who control a huge segment of Egypt’s economy, are waiting to see if Morsi backs down, which would leave him weakened and damaged politically, or if the situation worsens.

Others doubt the military will want to step back into the role of ruler and decider in case of street battles between Islamists and the opposition.

“Crowd control is not their (the military’s) forte,” says David Schenker, director of the program on Arab politics at the Washington Institute.

This raises the question of just how much pull Morsi has with the military. They would probably act if there was full-fledged chaos in the streets that threatened the stability of the regime, but short of that, what incentive would they have to intervene? They would only lose popularity and respect with the Egyptian people if they took part in a Mubarak-style crackdown. Morsi will apparently have to rely on his police force and Muslim Brotherhood-paid gangs who have appeared in recent days going after opposition protestors.

A referendum on the new constitution will be held December 15. Until then, things are going to be dicey for Morsi and the Brotherhood.

Morsi’s Maneuver

pic_related_113012_RVB_BBy Andrew C. McCarthy

Phase II of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s declaration of sweeping dictatorial powers was completed on Thursday night. That is when the “constituent assembly” hastily completed a draft constitution that would enshrine sharia principles as fundamental law.

Morsi grabbed the reins with a shrewd caveat: His dictatorship would end once the draft constitution was approved by Egyptians in a national referendum — which is to say, once the dictatorship had served its purpose. Nearly three months ago, in my e-book Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (which is about to be published in paperback), I explained that Morsi’s agglomeration of power — which was already underway only weeks after his election — was just a placeholder. He is an Islamic-supremacist hardliner whose ultimate goal has always been to impose sharia, the real dictatorship.

Remember the Brotherhood’s notorious motto, which includes the proclamation “the Koran is our law.” It is about to be. In effect, Morsi has used the West’s democracy fetish to put a gun to his population’s head: Either democratically approve anti-democratic sharia or accept the sharia-compliant rule of your democratically elected Islamist despot. Some choice.

Naturally, secularists and religious minorities are grousing. This has the Western media, once again, in full spring-fever flush. For our intelligentsia, the Middle East is a wonderland where Islamists are imagined to be “moderate” (even “largely secular”!) and — to hedge their bets, on the off chance that the Islamists turn out to be, well, Islamists — the population is imagined to be teeming with freedom-loving Jamal al-Madisons who crave American-style civil rights. In reality, supremacist Islam is the predominant ideology of the region. The Muslim Brotherhood is strong because it is the avant-garde of the Islamic masses. Non-Islamist democrats are a decided minority.

Of course, in a place like Egypt, with its population of 80 million people, a decided minority can easily be masqueraded as the majority. The West’s progressive media is good at that — ignoring tea-party throngs while lavishing coverage on five-person Occupy protests as if they were a groundswell. But, you see, the hocus-pocus works here only because we’ve ceded all the leading institutions of opinion to progressives for a half-century. Conditioned to see what they’ve been told to believe, half of our population no longer sees through the smoke and mirrors.

In contrast, the Islamists control and otherwise intimidate Egyptian society’s influential institutions by vigorously enforcing sharia’s repression of discussion and dissent. The public knows the tune is called by the likes of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood’s powerhouse jurist, not by Wael Ghonim and the young, tech-savvy progressives beloved of the New York Times. In Egypt, the conspiracy theories run against the progressives. The public won’t be snookered into seeing an Islamist uprising as a “democratic” upheaval. They’ll leave that to us.

The Times and the Brotherhood-smitten Obama administration won’t tell you, but Spring Fever will: The constitution was always the prize. That is why the Brothers pursued it with their signature mendacity. The story goes back to the weeks immediately after Mubarak’s fall in early 2011 — back to the most tellingly underreported and willfully misreported event in the “Arab Spring” saga: Egypt’s first-ever free election.

With the trillion-plus dollars U.S. taxpayers have expended to promote “Islamic democracy” and its companion fantasy that elections equal democracy, you’d think you might have heard a bit more about the maiden voyage in Arabia’s most important country. But no, the story barely registered. That is because the Islamists crushed the secular democrats. To grasp what happened on Thursday night, you need to understand why. That first election, zealously contested in sectarian terms, was precisely about Egypt’s future constitution.

Read more at National Review