Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while still mayor of Istanbul, famously quipped, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” Alas, as Martin Kramer has so often warned, it appears that Egypt Islamists are taking the same tact. On May 19, Islamic Jihad Organization member Shaykh Usamah Qasim took to the pages of Al-Misri al-Yawm to warn that Islamists would not tolerate a victory by any of the non-Islamist candidates. According to a translation provided by the Open Source Center:
…The victory of former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq or former Arab League chief Amr Musa in the coming presidential elections would lead some Islamic and non-Islamic groups to respond with “armed action.” “Thus, the fate of any of them who reaches the presidency will be like that of former President Anwar al-Sadat, who was assassinated,” Qasim said.
One-in-three Middle Eastern Arabs live in Egypt. Unfortunately, it looks like the Nile may once again flow with blood.
Love ya, but it's "taking the same tack" (not tact.) It's from sailing, where one ship may sail at the same angle with respect to the wind as another.
you beat me to it! it's a little depressing that commentary writers make mistakes like this, but it's also encouraging that the commentary audience notices.
Will His White House Highness Who oh so gently pushed Mubarak out of power in Jan-Feb 2011, while reassuring us that the US was not opposed to Muslim Brotherhood participation in democratic elections, and that the MB was "largely secular" [through the mouth of James Clapper], do anything to uphold the minimal integrity of the Egyptian election process in view of threats like this one?
Rooting for "secular" candidates is pointless; they won't survive and those few who do will be fakes or in the pockets of Islamists. Better to let things unfold as they are, so that the US and others have no illusions about what they are dealing with and can begin de-funding this most-populous, but entirely bankrupt and dysfunctional state. A good time for a UN operation to secure refuge for secularists and the Coptic Christians who are on the to-be-slaughtered list.
Egypt is like when an angry 14 steals her dads' car. You see her screeching away from the house and you know she's going to smash it into something. It's simply a matter of when and where and how many of her friends are ejected from the crash and die at the scene.
What, you mean the new Egypt is not the great success all the Democracy fo’sure crowd had declared after they ran off Mubarak? Merde me, who coulda known that?