Statistically, the majority of terrorism is our terrorism, it is state terrorism.
The greatest victims of terrorism are Muslims.
The whole understanding of terrorism is upside down.
Now there is as opposed to state terrorism, privatized terrorism, it’s very tiny. It’s run by organizations like Al-Qaeda.
There is a study from the University of Chicago a study that found of this privatized terrorism in the last 30-odd years, something like 20,000 people had died, a very tiny figure compared to the millions who have died as result of state terrorism.
The attacks on 9/11 were appropriated by a clique in the U.S. establishment in order to further its aims around the world.
There is no war on terror. There is a war of terror.
The Sultan Hassan Mosque is a compact and stylish mosque.It is one of the masterpieces of Mamluk architecture.
The building was commissioned by Sultan Hassan bin Al-Nasir Muhammad bin Qalawun in 1356 AD as a mosque and religious school for all four juristic branches of Sunni Islam.
Construction started in 1356 AD and ended 7 years later in 1363 AD
After Israel attacked its Arab enemies during the 6 day war in June 1967, it then proceeded to attack its ally: The United States, in the form of the U.S.S. Liberty, a surveillance vessel, which was monitoring the ongoing war.
The United States assumed that Egypt had conducted the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, and launched an aircraft loaded with an atomic bomb, with instruction to drop the atomic bomb on Cairo, Egypt.
Later, the U.S. was made aware that the attack on the Liberty was conducted by Israel. It then recalled the aircraft back to its carrier.
In mid-August 2013 an Egyptian friend of mine asked how I would assess the prospects of the nonviolent protests against the military coup. The Obama administration would turn a blind eye to one, two, or at most three bloodbaths, I predicted, but then would be forced by international public opinion to rein in the Egyptian army. As it happened, I was wrong. The massacres continued, enabling coup leaders to entrench their power and clamp down on the opposition. The obvious question is, Why did Gandhian nonviolence fail in Egypt?
In fact, it might have succeeded if, in the moment of truth, Egyptian secularists had not betrayed their avowed liberal values and effectively justified the mass slaughter.
Mahatma Gandhi conceived nonviolent resistance not as an act of martyrdom but as a practical, political tactic. To actively engage the broad public in support of a just cause, he believed, protesters had to make extraordinary personal sacrifices. The sight of their willingness to court physical injury and even death would evoke pity, then outrage and at some point active participation by sympathetic but normally quiescent bystanders. However, a protest movement could only elicit public support, according to Gandhi, if it satisfied a pair of conditions. It had to be “innocent” in both its means—that is, its tactics had to be nonviolent—and its ends—that is, its political goal had be perceived as just.
Although protesters in Egypt objectively met the threshold requirements of successful nonviolence, their heroic acts of self-sacrifice, marching unarmed, knowingly and willingly, into the line of fire, in order to restore a democratically elected government, failed to arouse global indignation. This was almost certainly because Egyptian secularists, who represent themselves, and command authority abroad, as principled, robust defenders of human rights, distorted the unfolding tragedy.
First, in a textbook display of false equivalence, Egyptian secularists declared that the means (tactics) of both sides were equally abhorrent. After the first army bloodbath on July 8, when several score nonviolent protesters were gunned down, Mohamed ElBaradei, who was uniquely placed to rattle the conscience of the West (he is a respected diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner), sermonized, “Violence begets violence and should be strongly condemned.” In mid-August, when the army had already killed hundreds of nonviolent protesters, novelist Ahdaf Soueif found cause to extenuate the bloodletting: “We need, of course, to remember that the sit-ins were to varying degrees armed…. We need to remember that the sit-ins caused death.” Even if a handful of protesters were armed (was there ever a nonviolent resistance that wasn’t infiltrated by the random armed protester?), the balance sheet of deaths attested to the fact that Egypt had witnessed not armed battles but a one-sided, protracted massacre.
Second, Egyptian secularists put the ends (goals) of the coup leaders and nonviolent protesters on the same plane of being either equally illegitimate (or equally democratic) and consequently equally undeserving (or equally deserving) of support. The question was put to Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch, how did it come to pass that Egyptians who had “fought so hard for democracy…are now trying so hard to overthrow their first democratically elected government?”
She replied:
I think that’s not really the question. I think the question is: Why did 14 million people turn out on June 30th? I think some of the coverage of this crisis in Egypt right now is oversimplifying it as a choice between democracy or the military and it’s really far more complex than that.
Because 14 million people is the biggest demonstration that Egypt has ever seen and that was not a pro-military demonstration. That was an anti-Morsi demonstration. So the question is: Why have we got to a moment where 14 million people turn out in opposition to President Morsi’s rule and what has he done in the last year to bring us to this moment? Now there are those at this point who would welcome the military in with open arms. There are others who have deep reservations about …a return of the military to power. But I think the question is not purely one of legitimacy versus a coup.[*]
But was the choice between “democracy or the military” and “legitimacy versus a coup” really “oversimplifying” a “far more complex” situation? Morsi was the democratically elected president of Egypt. If a majority of Egyptians had come to sour on his rule by the end of June 2013, they could have impeached him if and when they won parliamentary elections, slated for a few months later. (No one has alleged that Morsi intended to cancel these elections.) For an authentic defender of democratic institutions and human rights, it’s hard to conceive a simpler choice.
The nonviolent resistance thus failed because Egyptian secularists, who enjoyed the status of Egypt’s moral arbiters and authoritative interlocutors in the West, falsely depicted the protesters’ means and ends as tainted. It was alleged that they were as culpable as coup leaders of deploying violence, and that their claim on democratic legitimacy was no better than that of coup leaders. Had respected secularists such as ElBaradei, Soueif, and Morayef unequivocally condemned the coup and concomitant bloodbaths, it would have put Washington in an untenable position. President Obama might have been compelled to act more decisively, which in turn could have caused the coup leaders to think twice whether to proceed with their murderous repression. The bottom line is, the equivocations, rationalizations and misrepresentations of Egyptian secularists enabled the coup leaders to drown the nonviolent resistance in a river of blood.
It remains to inquire, What accounts for the Egyptian secularists’ betrayal of their avowed principles? It sprang, as informed commentators such as Khaled Abou El Fadl have pointed out, from arrogance compounded by contempt for religion.[†] On the one hand, secularists are all for democracy so long as everyone in the room acknowledges they are the most enlightened and should be placed in charge. On the other hand, the pervasive belief among secularists nowadays is that religion epitomizes backwardness. Consequently, when forced to choose between an elected religious party and a secular military coup, secularists embraced the coup as the lesser of two evils. They were not duped by the military but, rather, made a conscious—or, to be exact, subconscious—decision to go along with it.
This secular revulsion of religious people is of relatively recent vintage. True, V.I. Lenin said that only a militant atheist could be a communist. But in the not-so-distant past, an amicable modus vivendi had been worked out between secular and religious progressives. Famed leftwing journalist Alexander Cockburn, recalling his father’s generation (spanning the 20th century), observed that atheists then “lived in a world and consorted with people for whom religion had profound meaning, often inspiring them to acts of nobility and extraordinary self-sacrifice.” Whereas in the secular mindset nowadays, he continued, “religious people are stupid,” in fact “they weren’t stupid, and the atheists…didn’t deride them, but cheerfully swapped quotations from the Sermon on the Mount. The context was one of respect and mutual striving for a better world.” Indeed, many signature progressive causes of my own generation, whether it be the U.S. Civil Rights Movement or the struggles in Central America, were steeped in religion.
What, then, has changed? Before, religion suffused the spiritual ambiance, while the hard core consisted of tangible political struggles for justice that resonated among secularists: equal rights under the law, anti-imperialism, the right of the poor to a decent life. But in Egypt, religion was not, so to speak, background music; it was the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood’s self-image and of the image it projected, while demands for social justice were submerged in, sidelined by, subordinated to, or at the periphery of this religious identity. It was, if not all, then nearly all, about religion. In the meantime, sexual politics—women’s rights, gay rights, etc.—have come to dominate and define broad sectors of secular culture, often overshadowing and taking precedence over solidarity with workers, the poor and outcast, which used to be at the center, and the natural constituency, of progressive secular politics.[‡] These “litmus test” sexual identity issues have come to decide whether one falls on the “backward” or “enlightened” side of the great divide. The Muslim Brothers in Egypt (like Christian conservatives in the U.S.) fall squarely on the “backward” side.
It’s pointless trying to adjudicate which side is “backward” and which side “enlightened,” if only because so much of the debate is culturally bound, and it’s nearly impossible to predict the verdict that History will render a century from now. Consider the question of dress codes.
When Europeans came to North America, they decided that the Natives must be savages because they paraded their (comparatively) naked bodies in public. Now Europeans have decided that Muslim society is backward because Muslim women are (comparatively) overdressed. The simple facts are, every culture has a dress code, where it draws the line on the permissible versus impermissible is often arbitrary—what, pray tell, is the point of string bathing suits?—and cannot possibly constitute an inherent indicator of a progressive versus regressive society. Neither believers nor nonbelievers can, in retrospect, claim a monopoly on enlightened behavior. Secularists, for example, were certainly correct when they championed the rights of workers and racial minorities, but they were also dead wrong when they lent support, in the name of Science and Progress, to Eugenics (including forced sterilization of “defective” people), and to the horrors of Stalinism.
The critical question before us is, Can political alliances yet be formed between the Muslim Brotherhood and secularists? My sense is, only if both sides radically reorder their priorities, focusing on those commons concerns—the rule of law, equality under the law, the rights of workers and the poor—that enabled mutually beneficial and mutually respectful alliances to be forged between religious and secular constituencies in the past. If rational grounds for hope exist, it’s because each side needs the other. Each side has something to learn and gain from the other, and the combined energies of both are needed if the current nightmare is ever to end.
[*] For argument’s sake, I set aside that (1) this representative of a respected human rights organization uncritically repeated the absurd crowd figures touted by the military, and (2) in her mind the critical question was what Morsi, and Morsi alone, had done to cause people to take to the streets, as if those who, from the day after the revolution, set out to restore the ancient regime played no part in the ensuing social discontent and unrest.
[†] Professor Abou El Fadl’s commentary right after the coup puts the lie to the alibi of Egyptian secularists that its outcome could not have been predicted. Already on July 9, 2013, he wrote, “In a year from now, the young dreamy youth who rejoiced and danced when Morsi was overthrown will find themselves in the next cell block to the Brotherhood.”
[‡] Women’s rights now trump the rights of the working poor even as women constitute the majority among them. Thus, liberal feminists figured among President Bill Clinton’s most ardent supporters because of his public embrace of women’s issues such as abortion rights, although his policies such as “welfare reform” devastated the lives of the poor and women of color. On the other hand, the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City resulted from a successful marriage between the working-class politics of the Old Left and the identity politics (personified by de Blasio’s spouse and children) of the post-New Left.
The scathing attacks against Field Marshall Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, have been relentless and are only gaining steam.
This is an Arabic poem, by Jihad Al-Torbani – جهاد الترباني:
انتخبوا العرص انتخبوا العرص سليل العار انتخبوا من حرق الثوار انتخبوا حبيبًا للأوغاد انتخبوا عدوًا للأخيار انتخبوا من سحق الأطفال انتخبوا من سجن الأحرار عودوا وانتخبوا فرعونًا وارضوا بدمار بعد دمار فرعون بأرضكم استعلى … وبشعبه آلهة قد صار يا مصر شبابك قد ملوا… من حكم العسكر والفجار لن يرضى شبابك إرهابًا من صنع الشرطة والأشرار لن يخش رجالك تقتيلًا لن تخشى نساؤك صوت النار لن يرض العيش بإذلال … قوم كسروا قيد الأسوار هي حكمة تاريخ كتبت … فاسمع ما جاء من الأخبار في بيت قصيد تحفظه.. وتخلده بين الآشعار لا خير بأرض يحكمها عرص وبدا من غير وقار انتخبوا
U.S. policy should be reinforcing the interim government [of Egypt]… the United States must articulate a global strategy in what has become a cold war between the civilized societies of the world and violent Islamic fundamentalists who seek our overthrow. This is a mortal struggle with enemies who diametrically oppose Western moral philosophies and democratic worldviews.
[Norm Coleman, a Republican U.S. senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009, was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee]
Egypt’s former Mufti giving a Fatwa to the generals, permitting them to kill peaceful demonstrators and opponents of the coup.
اضرب في المليان
إياك أن تضحي بأفرادك وجنودك من أجل هؤلاء الخوارج
طوبى لمن قتلهم وقتلوه (يقصد الرافضين للإنقلاب)
من قتلهم كان أولى بالله منهم
يجب أن نطهر مصرنا من هذه الأوباش
إنهم لا يستحقون مصريتنا .. إننا نصاب بالعار منهم
يجب أن نتبرأ منهم براءة الذئب من دم ابن يعقوب
دول ناس نتنة!! .. ريحتهم وحشة!! … في الظاهر والباطن!!
النبي حذرنا من هذا .. يقولون الشرعية، أي شرعية؟ … الإمام المحجور في الفقه ذهبت شرعيته … احفظو هذه الكلمة .. ده محجور عليه .. يعني معتقل .. والمصيبة أن أمره قد ذهب للقضاء فسقطت شرعيته .. إن كان قد بقي له شبهة شرعية ، وهو لم تبق له شبهة شرعية، يعني بالثُـلث
ولقد تواترت الرؤى بتأييدكم من قبل رسول الله (محمد إبراهيم بيبص للسما وبيقول صلى الله عليه وسلم) … ولقد تواترت الرؤى بتأييدكم من قبل رسول الله ومن قبل أولياء الله
عندما رأيت صور مسجد الفتح بالأمس ، الزبالة والنجاسة والرعب الذي كانو فيه وكأن الله أنزله في أولئك … “مبررا تحريق المساجد” : هناك مسجد حرقه رسول الله .. لماذا؟ .. لأنه لا يريد هذه اللواعة والمكر في الظاهر والفساد في الباطن
هؤلاء الخوارج سماهم الرسول “كلاب النار” مع صلاتهم وصيامهم وقرآنهم
علي جمعة محرضا الجيش على القتل: لا تخف بدعوى الدين، فالدين معك والله معك ورسوله معك والمؤمنون معك والشعب بعد ذلك ظهير لك
علي جمعة للجيش: اثبتو وانقلو هذا الشعور إلى أهليكم وجيرانكم وجنودكم ، نحن على الحق .. سيهزم الجمع ويولون الدبر
علي جمعة لقيادات الجيش: الحضور الكريم رضي الله عنكم وأرضاكم .. شكرا لكم .. هذه هي سماحة الإسلام .. وقوة الإسلام .. وحلاوة الإسلام
cavalierzee 