Egypt: "Why Not Us?"

by Michael Armanious
November 25, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4062/egypt-why-not-us

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No one in his right mind will invest in a country where persecution -- and not the rule of law -- is the norm. Egypt has, in other words, declared war on the people who are in the best position to help it develop.

"They are creating terrorists." — Fatima Naoot, Egyptian poet.

Two and half years after the January 25, 2011 revolution, Egyptians still are wondering about their dream of building a modern Egypt. They look around, see the economic successes of China, South Korea and Israel and ask "Why not us?"
It is a reasonable question. The Egyptian economy has stagnated while the rest of the world has moved ahead. Since the 1950s, China has become an economic powerhouse, recently designated by the World Bank as the second largest economy after the USA. Less than 70 years ago, South Korea was a wasteland. Today it is the world's 11th largest economy and has a vibrant, emerging democratic culture. Just 65 years ago, Israel was born. Today it is home to more start-ups and IPOs per capita than any other country in the world.
Sixty-one years ago, when Egypt was liberated from the British occupation and became an independent state, it had massive resources, but unfortunately it chose a different path. The result has been an ugly combination of illiteracy, misery, and corruption. Egypt does not work as a modern nation state. Foreign investors have been driven from the country by social and political unrest. Members of the country's Christian minority, which has historically played a significant role in Egypt's economic development, have seen their lives and property destroyed. And women, who play a transformative role in the education and well-being of their children, are still being badly mistreated.
Egypt has, in other words, declared war on the people who are in the best position to help it develop.
It does not look as if this view will change in the near future. Egyptians have a tradition of blaming their misfortune on Westerners and Zionists, but never look within. They are loath to look at how the decisions they have made contribute to Egypt's failure as a nation-state. Moreover, Egyptian elites are working hard to make things worse by promoting the creation of what R.I. Moore called a "persecuting society:" promoting a mentality that calls for the isolation and harassment of people who deviate from the Islamic norm.
The architecture of this persecuting society is rooted in the Egyptian constitution, as revealed by Dr. Saad El-Din Hilaly, professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Al-Azhar University. Hilaly, who serves as Al-Azhar's representative to the 2013 constitution committee, stated in a October 29, 2013 TV broadcast, that the new constitution will allow people to believe in God or in anything else as long as these convictions remains locked in their heart and not made known publicly. He also stressed that only Muslims are allowed to reveal their faith publicly to preserve a harmonious society.

The Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, pictured above, is part of Al-Azhar University. (Image source: David Stanley)

Is it any wonder, in the light of these ideas, that religious minorities, particularly the Coptic Christians, are under continuous attack by Islamists?
The architecture of this persecuting society can also be seen in textbooks used at religious schools overseen by Al-Azhar University, which oversees the education of Muslims from kindergarten to graduate school. The use of these textbooks, which promote Sharia law, is not confined to religious schools or "madrassas," but in all schools supervised by Al-Azhar – in kindergartens as well as medical schools – and anything between. These textbooks teach youngsters that Christian woman should wear metal rings around their neck to distinguish them from the superior Muslim women. Books used in Al-Azhar-run high schools in the 2013-2014 school year teach students that a women's pregnancy can last as long as 4 years. Dr. Ismael Shaheen, deputy head of the Al-Azhar University, defended the use of these textbooks in televised interview on November 16, 2013. When challenged about the use of textbooks that say a pregnancy can last as long as four years, he stated, "This fact was supported by western medical journals." (In a tactic often used by Islamists, Shaheen did not provide the name of a journal to prove his point, but said he would provide a source at a later date.)
What do Egyptians think will be the result of exposing children to such ideas for the duration of their childhood and early adulthood? Fatima Naoot, an Egyptian poet and guest on the same show, answered this question: "They are creating terrorists."
The architecture of this persecuting society can also be seen in the sermons proffered by Egyptian clerics. Sheikh Muhammad Hassan, for example, a popular Egyptian Salafi cleric in the Sunni Muslim world – who earned his PhD form Al-Azhar University in 2011 – recently called upon all Muslims to eradicate all man-made laws in a favor of the Sharia law.
Because of the spread of ideas such as these, Egypt has earned a place at the bottom of a ranking of 22 Arab states with respect to the treatment of women. A report on women published by Thomson Reuters said that 99.3% of women and girls are subjected to sexual harassment in Egypt, and that, "Female genital mutilation is endemic in Egypt, where 91 percent of women and girls – 27.2 million in all – are subjected to such procedures."
Christian girls receive additional abusive treatment under the Sharia laws promoted by Sheikh Hassan: These children are subject to many forms violence such as beating, rape, and mental abuse, and then they are forced to marry older Muslim men. The kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam of underage Christian girls is also endemic.
These abuses of human rights are committed with religious sanction. Sheikh Yasser Borhami, a medical doctor and Salafist cleric in Egypt, claimed that, in general, age does not matter in marriage so long as the girl physically "appears" to be capable of the sexual relationship and the local traditional social order allows it. (In a dispiriting aside, Borhami has appeared regularly on Egyptian television after having spoken with Salafist men who have kidnapped Christian girls from their families. Ostensibly, he tries to obtain the return of the girls to their families, but he usually reports that the girls wish to stay where they are – as Muslim women.)
The consequence is that women and minorities are subjected to different kind of mental abuse, which can be fairly described as intellectual terrorism. Coptic Christians complain that Sharia law is making them second-class citizens in their own country. As the Egyptian human rights activist, Cynthia Farahat, put it in January 2012: "The first class citizen is the Egyptian Sunni Muslim male, the second class is the Sunni female. The third is the Christian male. The fourth is the Christian female. I am a fourth-class Egyptian citizen with absolutely no legal rights."
Coptic Christians in Egypt have been blackmailed by Egypt's ruling Muslims into acquiescing to the oppression they endure. They might speak out, but only to a point, because Islamists assert that there is a divide between the state and churches. Islamists routinely proclaim that Christian churches should remain houses of worship the leaders of which stay out of politics. Mixing politics and religion is apparently a privilege reserved for Islamists.
Anba [Bishop] Bola, the Coptic Church's representative to the committee that is currently re-writing Egypt's constitution, admitted as such in a televised interview that aired on Oct. 8, 2013. During the interview, Anba Bola spoke of telling the committee how the implementation of Sharia law is making Coptic Christians, the nation's inhabitants since before the Islamic conquest, second-class citizens in their own homeland. At a certain point, when he became aware that Al-Azhar's representatives to the committee were offended by his remarks, he evidently decided to throw the democratic process into the trash and stated that, "Al-Azhar should have power to interpret the constitution and that Copts should respect Al-Azhar's interpretations." Bola capitulated to the inevitable – the creation of a persecuting society in the land of the Nile.
Egypt has an abundance of natural resources and is situated at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe. It should be an economic powerhouse capable of providing jobs and economic well-being for its people, who have suffered enough. But no one in his right mind will invest in a country where persecution – and not the rule of law – is the norm.
Until Islamist clerics learn to follow their own advice and stay out of politics – and allow women and Christians to live in peace – Egypt will remain a backwater. Only when Egyptians look within and admit to themselves that it is their own decisions that are really causing so much unnecessary misfortune, will Egypt be transformed to a modern state.
Michael Armanious, a U.S.-based news analyst and video producer, was born and raised in Egypt.

Related Topics: Egypt | Michael Armanious

The French Critique France

by Peter Martino
November 25, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4066/france-hollande-popularity

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There is a possibility that the next presidential election in France will be fought between two political daughters: Martine Aubry, daughter of Jacques Delors, and Marine le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie le Pen. Neither lady is a political friend of America.

Without the EU, many European countries retain their national sovereignty and at least the possibility of strengthening their pan-Atlantic ties.

The popularity of French President François Hollande has fallen lower than ever. So low, in fact, that on Armistice Day, November 11, when the president participated in the commemoration ceremonies marking the end of the First World War, he was booed and jeered at by an angry crowd. It was an incident unheard of dimensions. Du jamais vu, as they say in France. For the French, the November 11 ceremonies are sacred, and the president, symbolizing the nation, acts as its high priest rather than as a politician representing a political agenda.
It was the first time ever that a French head of state was booed on Armistice Day. The demonstrators shouted "Hollande resign!" and "Socialist dictatorship" and called for a "French Spring." Police arrested about 70 people, but President Hollande and Interior minister Manuel Valls fled from the scene as soon as they had laid down their wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

French President François Hollande has the lowest popularity ratings of any president since the establishment of France's Fifth Republic in 1958. (Image source: Parti Socialiste)

Some of the demonstrators were wearing red caps or bonnets rouges. The Bonnets Rouges movement is spreading rapidly. It began a few weeks ago in the western region of Brittany with Breton farmers and truck drivers protesting the French government's intention to introduce a new eco-tax of 0.1 euro per kilometer. The government has suspended its plans, but the protests continue and have turned into an anti-tax movement. The red caps refer to the hats Breton farmers wore in the late 17^th century when they were protesting new taxes introduced by the French King Louis XIV and his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
Hollande's popularity ratings have fallen to below 25% – the lowest level of any president since the establishment of France's Fifth Republic in 1958. During the past three years, taxes in France have increased by 70 billion euros; government debt has risen to almost 100% of GDP, and unemployment has reached 12%.
Pundits expect that Hollande might soon replace Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. Replacing the prime minister is a trick often used by unpopular presidents. They blame the prime minister for their own unpopularity, hoping that a new man or woman at the helm of the government might restore the people's confidence in the authorities.
The media mention three names as possible replacements for Ayrault. There is the leftist Claude Bartolone, the Speaker of the Lower House of the French parliament, the Assemblée Nationale, but many consider him too far to the left. There is Interior Minister Valls, who is the most popular of the Socialist ministers but who is considered too much of a right-winger by the rest of the Socialist Party. And there is Martine Aubry, a former Socialist minister in the late 1990s and currently the popular Mayor of Lille. Aubry is the daughter of Jacques Delors, a former French finance minister and former president of the European Commission, who, in the late 1980s was the great adversary of Margaret Thatcher in his attempts to impose European federalism on Britain.
It is unlikely, however, that Aubry would want the job of French prime minister at this stage. The 63-year old politician is ambitious and apparently has presidential aspirations. The position of prime minister is an excellent platform for every politician wanting to become president. However, the Socialist Party is expected to lose next March's municipal elections as well as next May's European elections. Hence, Aubry, who is as shrewd as her father, would prefer to become prime minister after next year's elections, so that these elections will not reflect badly on her, and she can use the post-election period as a good starting point to rebuild her party. If she succeeds in doing that, she might be able to oust the unpopular Hollande as the Socialist candidate for the 2017 presidential elections.
There is, however, another political daughter who has set her eyes on the 2017 presidential elections. She is Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the far-right Front National party. Since Marine le Pen succeeded her father as leader of the FN in 2011, she has moved her party away from the extremist fringe, distancing herself from its racist and anti-Semitic past. Under her leadership, the FN has become the most popular party in the French opinion polls. With the center-right UMP party still in tatters after former president Nicolas Sarkozy's disastrous years in power, the FN is slowly filling the void on the French political right.
There is a possibility that the next presidential contest in France will be fought between the two political daughters, Martine and Marine. Neither lady is a political friend of America. Aubry, like her father, believes in a strong and federal European Union (EU) under Franco-German leadership, while Le Pen believes in a strong France, which together with Germany and Russia, should take the lead in countering Anglo-Saxon world domination. Marine Le Pen, however, opposes the EU. Bearing this in mind, many think it is better that Le Pen gain the upper hand. Without the EU, countries such as the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, and obviously Britain, retain their national sovereignty and at least the possibility of strengthening their pan-Atlantic ties.

Related Topics: France | Peter Martino

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