A Brotherhood of Terror and Violence

Arab States have very little in the way of immunization and protection from violent extremists and uncompromising ideologies. Most have weak, underdeveloped national institutions and a long history of one party or one man rule sustained for decades by corruption and nepotism with the help of Western governments, chiefly the United States. National armies are all that stand between the extremists and the total collapse of the Nation State.

When Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, they not only removed a dictator from power they destroyed the national army that was fiercely loyal to the regime. The result was total chaos and a river of blood unleashed on to the streets of Iraq daily. To this day, ten years on from the invasion, Iraq has still had no respite from terror. What was once one of the most developed Arab countries with a high percentage of university graduates is one of the most backward and conflict ridden. It is little wonder then that Arab populations are deeply protective of their national armed forces, now more than ever, as they see them as the only bulwark to the coming Takfeeri tide and the brotherhood of terror. (Takfeeris are groups that consider everyone a heretic except those who follow their strict interpretation of Islam)

Today, Egypt is faced with a clear threat to its security, stability and national cohesion. The Muslim Brotherhood stubbornly refuses to accept that Mursi will never be restored to power, the country’s armed forces are adamant about that and with good reason. In the deposed President’s single year in office there have been many troubling developments, not least was the new constitution passed through a Brotherhood dominated parliament in spite of widespread public opposition.

The Mursi administration instead of working with other political factions and trying to arrive at a minimum consensus decided to marginalize and alienate all political powers and turn a deaf ear to the public outcry and implement a purely Ikhwani agenda, an agenda that views Egyptian society as a whole as not true believers and aims to wipe away the old social order and install a new one. This is not limited to Egypt; brotherhood affiliated political groups across the Arab world follow a similar agenda. In the UAE, suspected brotherhood members were jailed on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government, while in other Gulf countries there is fear that the brotherhood might try to do the same their own countries too.

Today, the Western media and men like John McCain are siding with the terrorists and extremists, those who threaten to plunge Egypt into the abyss. For them that is ok as long as the terrorists are not at their own door steps! For some, there is a clear agenda at play. The US would probably like to see Egypt continue to struggle, teetering on the brink of collapse for the foreseeable future, this is one way the US can insure nationalist forces in Egypt might not foment any anti-Israel agenda and place the Egypt/Israel peace treaty at risk. If the brotherhood takes power again, it will be too busy implementing its internal agenda to bother with foreign affairs, which would allow Israel to breathe easy, for a while at least.

Western liberals, many of whom I count as friends, are puzzled and perplexed at the attitude of Egypt’s liberals: “Do they not know that when the army is done subduing the Brotherhood that they will turn on them next?” they may very well ask. The fact is the West does not have the moral right to tell us to ‘eat cake’ when we can’t find a dry piece of crusty bread to sustain ourselves. Western countries can afford the rollercoaster of democracy, they have laws everyone respects, they have constitutions everyone agrees on, they have institutions everyone benefits from, and they have a high degree of social justice when compared to Arab countries. They have no right to tell us to respect the ballot box that brought the Brotherhood to power and may bring others like them all across the Arab world. Mursi won an election thanks to Gulf money and decades of preparation and plotting, secular liberal forces in Egypt did not have such advantages.

I pray to God to protect and preserve our national armies because they are our only guarantee for a stable and secure future for our children and our children’s children. God bless us all and save us from evil in all its forms.