Der ägyptische Blogger Maikal Nabil Sanad erklärt frustriert, warum der Schah sich 1979 besser hätte mit den Feinden der USA verbünden sollen. Eine Lehre, die er für die liberale und nichtreligiöse Opposition in Ägypten zieht:

http://www.maikelnabil.com/2013/05/pahlavis-greatest-sin.html

Im gar nicht so einfachen Dialog mit dem Islam  gab es ja immer auch immer die Stimmen, die sagten, nein also sowas wie den Taliban oder Shabiba-Milizen Terror in Afghanistan oder Somalia, finsteres Toyota-Pickup Mittelalter, das können Sie doch nicht meinen oder wollen.

Doch genau das meinen und wollen wir, antwortet jetzt ein Jihad Mufti aus Ägypten:

Circumstances in Egypt will not improve unless Sharia is applied, Jihad Movement Mufti Sayed Imam said. Imam said the Afghanistan’s Taliban model and Somali Islamic rule are the best systems and most able to protect society from “thuggery” and rape.

Jihad, das ist doch irgendwie Selbstverbesserung oder sowas. Richtig?

Nein, sagt dieser Mufti, Jihad, das ist “fighting infidels, not to seek livelihood and or education.”

Der Mann repräsentiert sicher nicht eine große Anzahl von Ägyptern, die Muslimbrüder sind ihm auch viel zu säkular und lasch, aber er ist ein Mufti und wir werden wohl kaum hören, das irgendwer aus dem islamischen Lager nachdrücklich diesen Mann als unislamisch denunzieren wird.

Morsi is no one’s hero. He is a particularly pusillanimous head of state, too spineless to lead, too fearful to follow, too panicked and self-doubting to reform. After two years of futile talks with the IMF, the $4.8 billion loan his country desired is nowhere in sight, mainly because Morsi can’t bear to clean the very house he so intemperately has come to occupy (but not before making sure it was vacated by other revolutionaries).

I have never been one to pray for the kind of revolution predicted by the savvy farmer quoted above. The speedy exit of a Shah, a Gorbachev, a Mubarak—who knows who or what will come next? But if Egypt’s farmers, its gas station attendants, its poor, its Copts, its comedians, its lawyers, and its brave internal critics choose to clip the strings of the Muslim Brotherhood’s marionette—well, who are we to object?

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Egypt has hit breaking point in its ability to pay for imports of oil, wheat and other basic commodities, forcing it to call in diplomatic favours or seek easy payment terms from suppliers who hope for future advantage in return.

Two years after ousting Hosni Mubarak, new, Islamist leaders are struggling to win a credit line from the IMF as they try to manage the hopes of 84 million people with a depreciating currency and an economy hooked on state subsidies but starved of tourism revenues since the political upheavals began.

Fuel shortages, tighter security at petrol stations and scuffles in the streets are becoming common in Egyptian towns as state importers struggle to meet demand for diesel and gasoline.

Read more: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/67993/Business/Economy/Egypt-calls-in-favours-as-credit-crunch-hits-key-i.aspx

Ein weiterer Abgesang auf die Muslimbrüder, erschienen in Al Ahram:

Lacking in vision, remarkably incompetent and afflicted by a severe dearth of intelligent cadre (they managed to drive out their best and most politically sophisticated members), the Muslim Brotherhood leadership is driven, frenziedly and feverishly, to “seize the moment”, to capture Egypt’s state and society now, in the full knowledge that by tomorrow it will be never – their decades-old yearning lost forever, their future “bound in shallows and in miseries”.

More than anything else, it is this feverish zeal that best explains the attacks and the bungled retreats, the innumerable barefaced lies, the killings, the torture, the ravenous power grabbing, the always failed attempts at intimidation and terror and the almost indifferent squandering in mere months of a popular goodwill the group had built over a great many decades.

Nothing else, not incompetence, nor lack of vision, nor yet dearth of cadre, but a frenzied, irrational compulsion, bordering on psychosis, can explain political behaviour that – Samson like – is driving both the 84-year old group and the nation to ruin.

From a broad historical perspective, the Arab Spring has heralded the autumn of so-called “Islamic revival” as we’ve known it since the 70s of the last century.

I am not the first or the last person to write about Egyptian Muslims’ crisis of faith that started the moment Islamists took power and enlightened Egyptians on the fantastic legislations and policies they wanted to implement in the name of Shari’a, with Islamic jurisprudence to back it up. I also will spare you anecdotal evidence on the rise of atheists in Egypt, or the kind of conversations that are now acceptable to have in Egyptian society.

I will simply propose the following argument: What is happening in Egypt, no matter how unfortunate, seems to have a single silver lining, which is the complete and utter defeat of the political Islam project worldwide. At this point, it seems that Egypt’s destiny is to either defeat or contain Islamism, thanks to the Muslim Brotherhood, who is now officially the most ferocious enemy that Islam as a faith has ever seen. (…)

Egypt’s Islamists have waited 80 years to get into power, and now that they have, the countdown to their now-inevitable fall has begun. One day we will all live in a secular Egypt, and it will all be thanks to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Den ganzen Artikel von Mahmoud Salem lesen

Aus der Schweizer WOZ:

Kairos Altstadt gleicht teilweise einer von den IslamistInnen befreiten Zone. Hier hat die Jugend die Macht übernommen. Bärte schmücken in der näheren Umgebung des Tahrirplatzes nur noch Puppen, die an Ampeln und Bäumen baumeln. «Der Muslimbruder an den Galgen, der Salafist in die Hölle», steht auf den Puppen geschrieben. Über den Tahrirplatz wabert nicht mehr Tränengas; stattdessen kommt aus den Zelten ein anderer Duft in Form einer süsslichen Marihuanawolke. Pärchen halten Händchen, und Jugendliche schäkern in aller Öffentlichkeit, als wollten sie allen AnhängerInnen der Geschlechtertrennung sagen: «Ihr könnt uns mal.» Auch die Homosexuellenbewegung hat sich mit einem Graffiti an der Mohammed-Mahmoud-Strasse – sie mündet auf den Tah­rirplatz – verewigt: «Schwulenfeindlichkeit ist antirevolutionär» verkünden zwei auf Beton gepinselte Männer, die sich küssen.

Dozens of young men and women put on a public ‘Harlem Shake’ performance in front of the Muslim Brotherhood’s national headquarters in Cairo’s Moqattam district on Thursday. (…)

A number of FJP offices around the country have been attacked or torched by demonstrators in the past two months.

Recently, a number of activists organised a football tournament in front of the Brotherhood’s headquarters under the banner “glory to the martyrs.”

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Amnesty International has criticised a move by authorities to prohibit contact between national NGOs and foreign organisations without prior permission from security bodies, calling it “a new low for freedom of association“.

In a letter to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Egypt’s Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs stated that no “local entity” is permitted to engage with “international entities” in any way without the permission of the “security bodies”, referring to instructions issued by the Prime Minister.

The Egyptian Government has restricted NGOs through rules on registration and obtaining foreign funding. Drafts of new laws seen by Amnesty International tighten the restrictions even more, in some cases severely limiting the ability of NGOs to conduct fact-finding visits and other essential activities.

In July 2011, the Egyptian government launched an investigation into the foreign funding of NGOs, leading to a series of raids on both international and local civil society groups in December of that year.

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In January, the Interior Ministry ordered the import of 140,000 teargas canisters from the United States at a cost of LE17 million. (…)

A memorandum written on 28 January by Major General Magdy al-Gohary, head of the department for police supply, shed more light on the order.

“The US government was stringent in issuing export permits for Egypt items that have been contracted since July, due to the unstable situation in Egypt and what was circulated by the media and rights groups about the US company’s effect on protesters while using [the gas canisters] against rioters in Egypt.”

“The permit from the US government was obtained after removing the company’s name and country of origin written on the items. While writing the memorandum on 28 January 2013, procedures were taken to ship the items via sea. They are expected to reach the Egyptian ports during the first half of April.”

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Ibrahim El-Houdaiby suggests in Al Ahram the Opposition should, instead of only criticising,  focus on what they would do if the Brotherhood didn’t exist, to present an alternative the people can believe in:

There is no way to defend the political performance of the Muslim Brotherhood: blood continues to spill, there is economic recession, the legitimacy of the political regime is undermined, and other existing problems expose many defects and shortfalls worthy of criticism.

Criticising the Muslim Brotherhood as the group dominating executive and legislative powers is a right and duty, but the value of this criticism diminishes if it is not based on an alternative political agenda, and is essentially futile if it becomes the same political agenda of the critics.

It seems, nonetheless, that most opposition forces chose to limit their political platforms to criticising (and expressing hostility towards) the Muslim Brotherhood, or are at best distracted by criticising the Brotherhood, to varying degrees, instead of constructing their own agendas.

There are those who confined themselves in the personal realm and only focus on criticism of Brotherhood leaders, underlining their mistakes, highlighting their devious intentions, contradictory statements and actions — which achieves little no matter how true — without much political discussion.

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“The revolution is not 18 days, nor a year, or two. The revolution is permanent. The fact that we, women, have not reached our aspirations does not mean we should lose hope,” women’s rights activist Mariam Kirollos told Ahram Online.

However, women’s political representation in 2012, whether in the Constituent Assembly or the dissolved parliament, is far from what Kirollos and other women’s rights activists aspire to.

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Demonstrators chanted slogans against Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood. They demanded the prosecutor general’s resignation, and that the interior minister be tried for ordering excessive violence against protesters in recent events.

Samia Mahmoud, a protester who said she is not affiliated with any political party or movement, said that she joined the march to show her disapproval of Morsy and the Brotherhood’s policies. Another demonstrator, Hanan Mohamed, said Egyptians should only die from natural causes, not from bullets fired by the police.

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Es gibt nur eine handvoll Staaten, die Mahmoud Ahmadinejad überhaupt bei sich empfangen. Aber offensichtlich gilt: Was die Regierungen und Regime machen kommt beim Volk nicht unbedingt gut an. So passiert in Ägypten.

In der vergangenen Woche war Ahmadinejad in Kairo, um Mursi und seine Islamisten zu besuchen. Und in der Menge passierte es: Ein Mann warf einen Schuh nach dem Mahmoud.Ob er ihn getroffen hat, ist nicht bekannt.

Egypt’s High Constitutional Court on Sunday rejected a lawsuit challenging the illegality of the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt.

The lawsuit, first filed in 2008 by a number of Islamists lawyers, challenges a 2007 health ministry decision criminalising FGM and prohibiting doctors from practicing it, according to Al-Ahram’s Arabic-language news website.

Acounter-suit was later filed – by lawyers for the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights, labour lawyer Khaled Ali and doctors’ syndicate head Hamdy El-Sayed – against calls to legalise the controversial practise.

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Ola Galal in Masry al Youm über die Proteste im ägytischen Port Said und die Reaktionen der staatlichen Sicherheitskräfte

What happened in Port Said could not be explained as “acts of sabotage” committed by “outlaws” and “criminals” against whom the use of violence by state agents was justified. The events of Port Said were another instance of the state yet again contributing to turning a protest situation – an expression of rage; whether or not it was justified is besides the point – into a situation of escalating violence committed by its agents. Whether the members of the crowd provoked the security forces by initiating the throwing of rocks and Molotov cocktails does not justify the Interior Ministry’s use of violence, since in this situation the two “violences” are not equal.

The state that has monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, through its police and armed forces, is blaming its very victims for using “violence.” Yet its own violence is reaching a larger segment of the people, who were not initially involved in any acts of protest or confrontation with state agents, such as thirty-year-old Ahmed Mokhtar, who was shot in the leg by Interior Ministry soldiers on coming out of the mosque after performing the night prayer.

In so doing, the state is unintentionally helping give rise to more intense sentiments of rage among wider strata of the population. Mohamed El-Sayyed, aged 27, received a birdshot to the tip of his ear as he was observing the scene in front of the police station. He said: “Someone like me will not go home until I get my right back.”

“Just off Tahrir Square, Ahram Online’s Bel Trew has been catching up with the Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment team, patrolling the streets after at least 19 women were violently sexually assaulted last Friday.

“The teams are trying a new tactic today that is more organised. Everyone has a specific role. Last time all the volunteers got hurt, I was injured in knee, the girls we rescued were in a terrible state. Six had to go to hospital, one had been stabbed in her genital area.”

“Last Friday, during one attack, we tried to get one girl out of a mob of 150 men. A vendor on Tahrir tried to help by setting butane gas on fire, which caused chaos.”

“Today, I’m part of the intervention team; my shift is from 3pm-2am. Our job is to get the girl out. There is also a ‘safety team’ – we rendez-vous with them once we’ve rescued the girl, they have clothes, a first aid kit and other women in the team who have been attacked themselves to offer psychological support.”

“Usually when we find the girls they are topless or their trousers have been removed. In a couple of cases volunteers have had to take off their own clothes to clothe the attacked woman.
Establishing trust with the victim is very important – we keep saying our names and who we’re working with to reassure them. We’re hoping today we won’t see these violent attacks.” Ahmed Aggour, 25, Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment volunteer. “

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Maikel Nabil Sanad über Mohamed Mursis Besuch in Berlin:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to surprise us all by inviting the Egyptian President to visit Berlin as her guest today — the same date Hitler took power in 1933. Yet she is doing this despite the fact that Morsy’s rhetoric qualifies him as an out-and-out neo-Nazi. This visit is an insult to Germany’s struggle against racism and nationalism over the past sixty years.(…)

We democratic activists in Egypt are extremely worried about any military cooperation between Germany and Egypt. Germany has always been one of the largest exporters of weapons to Egypt (right behind the United States). Such worries are particularly pronounced at a moment when the Egyptian police and army regularly use western-supplied weapons to crush non-violent protests that call for freedom and democracy. I don’t believe that German citizens accept the notion that they can only support their own economy by selling weapons to dictatorships like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which stand against the rights of their citizens to live in freedom and equality.

The three Suez Canal cities of Suez, Ismailia and Port Said are witnessing mass demonstrations in defiance of the regional curfew that was announced Sunday night by President Mohamed Morsi after several days of violent clashes.

On Monday evening, thousands demonstrating in each city chanted anti-Morsi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans, ignoring the 9pm to 6am curfew mandated by Morsi, who also imposed a state of emergency on the embattled cities.

The shops and street cafes of Suez are still open, according to an Ahram Online reporter. The army, for its part, is not interfering or trying to impose the curfew.

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Jetzt ist es selbst bei CNN angekommen: Die “arabische Straße”, was immer sie auch sein mag, hat gute Gründe die Obama Administration zu kritisieren, nicht weil sie in irgend einer Weise im Nahen Osten imperialistisch interveniert oder gar “Freedom and Democracy” gewaltsam verbreiten wollte, nein ganz im Gegenteil, weil sie im Kulturkampf, der überall in Nordafrika und dem Nahen Osten ausgebrochen ist, sich ganz deutlich positioniert und zwar auf Seiten von Muslimbrüdern autokratischen Scheichs am Golf:

Egypt and its families may be divided, but on one subject, all are united – in the belief that the United States is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government.

Visible in the throngs at the December demonstrations were signs opposing Qatar and the United States – yes, the U.S. and Qatar were lumped together as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood regime.

“This is such a historic opportunity to restore the image of the U.S., but instead it is putting itself in the same position as Qatar. … And this from President Obama – so disappointing,” Riham Bahi, a professor at American University in Cairo, said, reflecting views heard repeatedly last December in Egypt.

Den ganzen Artikel lesen

Zum heutigen, zweiten Jahrestag der Massenproteste in Ägypten Al-Ahram mit Liveticker:

Marches leaving from Shubra and Mostafa Mahmoud have reached a packed Tahrir as the masses chant “the people demand the overthrow of the regime.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party headquarters in Ismailia have been torched, Reuters reports.

Witnesses told the British news agency that a group of youths had first broken into and then ransacked the office of the FJP.

What would prompt a former youth member of the Muslim Brotherhood to declare that he is putting his belief in Islam “on hold”? What would convert young people to become not only non-religious but extremely anti-theist following long periods of activism with Egypt’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi club, the Salafis?

What I said may be surprising for many, but not for others. The past several years have witnessed every single young man or woman with a shred of critical thinking to leave the Islamist movement. Starting with the Egyptian revolution and the Islamists’ shameful position against it, young middle class educated members have ever since continued to trickle out.

But this mere organisational friction is not the subject of this article. What I intend to expound on is more far-reaching. It’s about those often-silent people who decided to abandon faith completely as a result of their faithful experiences. (…)

Islamists rising to power has not yielded their much-awaited fantasised moment of everything-turning-Islamic. Instead, it’s contributing to an unprecedented wave of skepticism, social secularisation and atheism. Young people feeling alienated by every Friday sermon that lacks substance or labels all non-Islamists as heretics and un-Egyptian are moving away from religion and “flying high above.”

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Islamists in Iran and Egypt share anti-Israel sentiment and support Hamas against the secular-nationalist Fatah. Committed to governance under Sharia (Islamic law), they both view Western culture as a threat. But despite these ideological affinities, political disagreements make a rapprochement unlikely. The Muslim Brotherhood believes it should assume a leadership role for all Islamist groups and states, while Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei describes himself as the “leader of the Islamic world.”
Moreover, the Sunni-Shia divide could pose a major challenge for Egypt-Iran relations, as the Muslim Brotherhood works to strengthen ties with Sunni allies. In fact, since Mubarak’s ouster, anti-Shia propaganda has gained traction in the Egyptian public sphere, with books alleging Shia corruption of Islam’s true meaning filling the shelves of Cairo’s bookstores. Before the revolution, Egypt was considered one of the most Shia-friendly Sunni countries in the Arab world. But the Muslim Brotherhood remains financially dependent on the Gulf monarchies, which are using Egypt as a platform for their anti-Shia, anti-Iran agenda.
The most urgent dispute between Iran and Egypt relates to Syria. As a result of Iran’s support for the brutal, repressive policies of the Assad regime, Islamists in Egypt are beginning to view Iran as a status quo power, not an agent of revolutionary change.

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The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a series of investigations into independent Egyptian newspapers on accusations of insulting the president or reporting false news. Some newspapers and media professionals face formal charges in connection to their critical reporting, according to news reports.

“There is a growing trend of targeting independent and critical voices under President Mohamed Morsi’s government, which is especially worrying in light of a lack of protection for the press under the new constitution,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Egypt is taking a large step back toward Mubarak-era practices.”

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