Egypt – Page 4 – praag.org

Statement by Egypt’s military chief

Egyptian soldiers near the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip earliers this year

“The armed forces couldn’t plug its ears or close its eyes as the movement and demands of the masses calling for them to play a national role, not a political role as the armed forces themselves will be the first to proclaim that they will stay away from politics.

The armed forces sensed – given their sharp vision – that the people sought their support, not power or rule but for general services and necessary protection of the demands of the revolution. This is the message that the armed forces received from all over urban Egypt, its cities, and its villages; it (the military) recognized the invitation, understood its intentions, appreciated its necessity and got closer to the national scene hoping, willing and abiding by all limits of duty, responsibility and honesty.

The armed forces have exerted lots of efforts over the past few months, directly and indirectly, to contain the internal situation and carry out a national reconciliation among all political forces including presidency starting on November 2012. It started with a call for national dialogue that all political forces responded to and was rejected by the presidency at the last moment. Then invitations and initiatives followed and continued since this time until this date.

The armed forces presented more than once their strategic assessment of the situation internally and outside the country, including the challenges and the dangers that are facing the nation on the security, economic, political and social levels along with the vision of the armed forces as a national institution on how to contain the causes of the social divisions and remove the causes of congestion and confront the challenges and the dangers to get out of the current crisis.

As part of the follow up to the current crisis, the general command of the armed forces held a meeting with the president of the republic at the Qasr al-Qobba presidential palace on June 22, 2013, during which it presented the opinion of the general command and its rejection of harming the national and religious state institution. And it assured its rejection of terrorizing and threatening the masses of the Egyptian people.

There was hope of achieving national reconciliation, developing a future plan and providing causes of confidence, assurances and stability to the people in order to achieve their ambitions and hopes. But the president’s speech last night and before the end of the 48-hour ultimatum didn’t meet or agree with the demands of the people. The situation prompted the armed forces, given their national and historic responsibility, to consult with some of the symbols of the national, political and youth forces without excluding or alienating anyone. The participants agreed on the future plan, which includes the initial steps to achieve a strong, coherent Egyptian society that doesn’t alienate of its sons and movements and end the state of struggle and divisions.

This map includes:

– Suspending the constitution temporarily.

– The head of the Supreme Constitutional Court takes the oath of office in front of the general assembly of the court.

– Carry out early presidential elections while the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court will be in charge of managing the state affairs during a transitional period until the election of a new president.

– The head of the Supreme Constitutional Court will have the power to issue constitutional declarations during the transitional period until the election of a new president.

– Forming a Cabinet of national, strong, capable experts who enjoy all powers during the current period.

– Forming a committee from across the spectrum and experts to review the proposed amendments of the constitution that has been temporarily suspended.

– Urging the Supreme Constitutional Court to expedite an elections law for parliament and to start to take measures to prepare for the parliamentary elections.

– Putting together a media code of ethics that ensures media freedom and achieves professional standards, credibility and objectivity and to prioritize the nation’s high interests.

– Taking executive measures to empower and engage the youth in the state institutions, to be a decision-making partner as aides to ministers, governors and in different executive posts.

– Forming a supreme committee for national reconciliation of personalities who enjoy credibility and acceptance by all national elites and represent different movements.

– The armed forces urge the great Egyptian people from across the spectrum to abide by peaceful demonstrations, avoid violence, which leads to more congestion and spills the blood of the innocent. It warns that it will confront, with cooperation of the men of the Interior Ministry, with all force and decisiveness any violation of peacefulness according to the law and driven by the national and historic responsibility.

– The armed forces salute and express gratitude to the men of the armed forces, the police, the judiciary, the honorable and the sincere for their great national role and their continued sacrifices to preserve the safety and security of Egypt and its great people.

God preserve Egypt and its great defiant people. – AP

Egyptians celebrate Morsi’s ouster

Egyptians protesting on 30 June against Mohamed Morsi — Egyptians protesting on 30 June against Mohammed Morsi

The general’s voice boomed from loudspeakers set up in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square and the boisterous crowds erupted into cheers, dancing and waving a sea of red, black and white Egyptian flags.

Fireworks burst in the sky and green lasers waved overhead as millions of Egyptians celebrated the military’s announcement that it was ousting Islamist Mohammed Morsi after four days of mass protests demanding his removal.

“The people finally overthrew the regime,” hundreds of thousands chanted, rocking the plaza in scenes reminiscent of the protests that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

But highlighting the deep divisions that remain, supporters of the Islamist leader cried “Down with military rule” after army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi finished his statement. Scores of Morsi backers also went on a rampage in southern Egypt, breaking shop facades in the southern city of Assiut, smashing a police car in Aswan, and attempting to break into a police station in the coastal city of Marsa Matrouh, leaving six people killed.

But in most of the Egyptian capital, el-Sissi was seen as a savior and the military was hailed by the public for answering their calls to remove Morsi, just over a year after his June 30 inauguration. Some people fired guns into the air to celebrate, and subway riders broke into cheers of “the people and the army are one hand.”

It also came after hours of waiting for the military to make its move as Morsi defiantly refused to step down despite the expiration of a Wednesday afternoon deadline to reach agreement with his opponents. Morsi was Egypt’s first democratically elected leader but he drew the ire of many Egyptians who accused him and his Muslim Brotherhood of polarizing the country by trying to impose Islamist rule and failing to introduce reforms.

“It was a nightmare and it ended,” said Mona el-Desouki, 38, waving an Egyptian flag as she stood in front of the famed Egyptian museum on the edge of Tahrir. “Life came back to us. Egypt is ours again. Our life will become as it was, with no difference between Muslims and Christians.”

Chants of “Misr” or “Egypt” also rang through the square. Signaling the high hopes that the country could return to a sense of normalcy, security officials removed some of the concrete barricades that have blocked several streets in the area because of the frequent clashes between protesters and police.

The military has long been seen as protectors of the people, although the generals were accused of holding onto power for too long after Mubarak’s ouster.

Protesters carried el-Sissi’s picture, and others climbed onto armored vehicles to take photographs with the soldiers. Residents of a house near one military post offered the soldiers tea and food, counting on them for protection from the wrath of Morsi’s supporters.

“When I saw these military trucks in front of our house, I felt safe because I know the Brotherhood and their supporters will not just leave that easily,” said one of the residents, 75-year-old Mervat Talaat.

People drove around Cairo, honking car horns as children waved Egyptian flags from the windows. Outside the presidential palace across town from Tahrir, people cried and hugged as cheers drowned out the rest of el-Sissi’s speech.

In the ancient city of Luxor, boats docked in the Nile River also sounded their horns as crowds marched by in celebration. People shot off fireworks in the city, which has suffered from a drastic drop in tourism due to the turmoil that has wracked Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster. Others handed out gifts and cartons of cigarettes to bystanders.

Ahmed Gad, 23, said it was the happiest moment of his life.

“In 2011 we won a political battle. This time we won a political and a religious battle because the Brotherhood kept accusing us of being heretics and used religion and acted as if they had the real Islam,” he said.

Mohammed Nageh, 25, said he had voted for Morsi but felt the Islamist leader had acted in the interest of himself and the Muslim Brotherhood and failing the rest of Egypt.

“I voted for him because I didn’t want the old regime back in,” he said as he danced and removed his shirt. “But this revolution was made for poor and they are the people who suffered the most. We are here to put the revolution back on track, so it serves the poor, not just the Brotherhood.” – AP

Egypt: Morsi wrestles with Army

President Mohamed Morsi rebuffed an army ultimatum to force a resolution to Egypt’s political crisis, saying on Tuesday that he had not been consulted and would pursue his own plans for national reconciliation.

The Islamist leader described as potentially confusing Monday’s 48-hour deadline set by the head of the armed forces for him to agree on a common platform with liberal rivals who have drawn millions into the streets demanding Morsi’s resignation.

Members of his Muslim Brotherhood have used the word “coup” to describe the military manoeuvre, which carries the threat of the generals imposing their own road map for the nation.

But in a statement issued at nearly 2am, nine hours after General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delighted Morsi’s opponents by effectively ordering the president to heed the demands of demonstrators, the president’s office used considerably less direct language to indicate he would try to take little notice.

“The president of the republic was not consulted about the statement issued by the armed forces,” it said. “The presidency sees that some of the statements in it carry meanings that could cause confusion in the complex national environment.”

Official video was released showing Morsi meeting the uniformed Sisi. Their body language seemed awkward, although it was unclear when it was shot.

The statement from Morsi’s office continued: “The presidency confirms that it is going forward on its previously plotted path to promote comprehensive national reconciliation regardless of any statements that deepen divisions between citizens.”

Describing civilian rule as a great gain from the revolution of 2011, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, in office for just a year, said he would not let the clock be turned back.

A sense of disintegration in the administration since the protests on Sunday has been heightened by the resignations tendered by several ministers who are not members of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. On Tuesday, the state news agency said the foreign minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, had also asked to step down.

Attacks on Brotherhood offices have added to feelings among Islamists that they are under siege.

Some Brotherhood leaders, who swept a series of votes last year, said they would look to put their own supporters on the streets. After the destruction of the Brotherhood’s headquarters in a battle overnight on Monday in which eight people were killed, the possibility of wider violence seems real.

World powers are looking on anxiously, including the United States, which has long funded the Egyptian army as a key component in the security of Washington’s ally Israel.

President Barack Obama has urged Morsi and his rivals to compromise. But Washington has also defended the legitimacy of Morsi’s election. It is unclear how far the Egyptian military has informed, or co-ordinated with, its US sponsors.

The sight of military helicopters streaming national flags over Cairo’s Tahrir Square at sunset, after Sisi had laid down the law, sent huge crowds into a frenzy of cheers.

But on the other side of Egypt’s polarised politics, a Brotherhood spokesman said it might considering forming “self-defence” committees after a series of attacks on its premises.

Among Morsi’s allies are groups with more militant pasts, including al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, a sometime associate of al-Qaeda, whose men fought Mubarak’s security forces for years and who have warned they would not tolerate renewed military rule.

An alliance of Islamist groups, including the Brotherhood, issued a cautious joint statement that avoided criticising the army but spoke of it being manipulated by rival parties.

Morsi has said he favours moving to elections for a new parliament that would give the opposition more say – if, as he points out, it has popular support. But the opposition, convinced the Brotherhood is out to entrench its rule forever, does not trust Morsi and wants to wipe clean a messy slate of institutional reforms since 2011 before holding a vote.

How far Sisi is prepare to push Morsi is not clear. Despite a hard line being taken by opposition leaders, some compromise in which Morsi was given time to lead the country, or perhaps to call a referendum on finishing his term, might be possible.

A military source said Sisi was keen not to repeat the experience of the year and a half between Mubarak’s fall and Morsi’s election, when a committee of generals formed a government that proved unpopular as the economy struggled.

The army’s preference would appear to be for a more hands-off approach, supervising government but not running it.

For many Egyptians, fixing the economy is key. Unrest since Mubarak fell has hobbled tourism and investment and the state finances are in poor shape, drained by extensive subsidy regimes and struggling to provide regular supplies of fuel. – Reuters

Dutch reporter raped in Tahrir Square

Egyptian media reported Sunday that a Dutch journalist was raped by several men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square a few days ago.

Dina Zakaria, a journalist reporting for the “Egypt 25” news channel affiliated with the January 25 revolution, shared the incident on her Facebook page Sunday: “A Dutch journalist in Tahrir was raped by men who dub themselves revolutionists. Her condition is severe and she is hospitalized.”

Meanwhile, a state hospital issued a statement that the journalist was admitted after being raped by five men several days ago. She underwent surgery and has been released. It was also reported that Egypt’s Prosecutor General Talaat Abdallah ordered his staff to go to the hospital to hear the woman’s story and reveal the circumstances behind the violent attack.

Egyptian women face sexual harassment and assaults on a daily basis. During and after the revolution, there have been a number of case of foreign reporters who were sexually assaulted, such as Sonia Dridi and Lara Logan.

Sexual harassment is not new within the conservative Egyptian society, yet the extent of this phenomenon has grown and become more violent and visible. The Egyptian law defines assault as a crime, but not sexual assault.

The United Nations claimed last month that it holds some 25 sexual assault reports that occurred in Tahrir Square, the center of the protest, in one week in the beginning of the year. The organization dedicated to preventing sexual assaults, whose activists patrolled Tahrir Square, reported 19 assaults on January 25 alone – the second anniversary of the uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Among the reports was also a case of a girl who was raped by a sharp instrument. – ynetnews.com

Obama Administration condemns Christian Copt protest in Egypt

Obama fully supported protests to overthrow the relatively friendly Egyptian Government of Mubarak. U.S. support paved way for an Islamist takeover by the oppressive and violent Muslim Brotherhood.

Now those suffering the most under this brutal Islamist rule want to protest, and the Obama Administration is trying to prevent it.

As Egyptians of all factions prepare to demonstrate in mass against the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi’s rule on June 30, the latter has been trying to reduce their numbers, which some predict will be in the millions and eclipse the Tahrir protests that earlier ousted Mubarak. Among other influential Egyptians, Morsi recently called on Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to urge his flock, Egypt’s millions of Christians, not to join the June 30 protests.While that may be expected, more troubling is that the U.S. ambassador to Egypt is also trying to prevent Egyptians from protesting—including the Copts. The June 18th edition of Sadi al-Balad reports that lawyer Ramses Naggar, the Coptic Church’s legal counsel, said that during [Anne W.] Patterson’s June 17 meeting with Pope Tawadros, she “asked him to urge the Copts not to participate” in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood. […]

So why is the Obama administration now asking Christians not to oppose their rulers–in this case, Islamists–who have daily proven themselves corrupt and worse, to the point that millions of Egyptians, most of them Muslims, are trying to oust them?

What’s worse is that the human rights abuses Egypt’s Coptic Christians have been suffering under Muslim Brotherhood rule are significantly worse than the human rights abuses that the average Egyptian suffered under Mubarak–making the Copts’ right to protest even more legitimate, and, if anything, more worthy of U.S support.

Among other things, under Morsi’s rule, the persecution of Copts has practically been legalized, as unprecedented numbers of Christians–men, women, and children–have been arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they “blasphemed” Islam and/or its prophet. It was also under Morsi’s reign that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral–holiest site of Coptic Christianity and headquarters to the Pope Tawadros himself–was besieged in broad daylight by Islamic rioters. When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral. And the targeting of Christian children–for abduction, ransom, rape, and/or forced conversion—has also reached unprecedented levels under Morsi.

Kuwait hangs ‘monster’ child rapist

Authorities in Kuwait on Tuesday hanged a 33-year-old Egyptian man dubbed a “monster” for the abduction and rape of 17 children under the age of 10, the public prosecution said.

Hajjaj Saadi, who was handed five death sentences, complained shortly before his execution that had not been given any assistance from the Egyptian government, a witness said.

Saadi strongly denied in court that he had committed any of the crimes, which shocked the Kuwaiti public, and insisted his confessions were extracted under duress.

Arrested in July 2007 as he prepared to board a flight to Luxor in Egypt, he became known as “the Hawalli monster” for the district near Kuwait City where the crimes took place.

The authorities said Saadi had confessed to raping 17 boys and girls after luring them onto rooftops in Hawalli, an area mainly inhabited by foreigners 12 kilometres (seven miles) south of the capital.

Another Egyptian man was executed at the same time after he was found guilty of killing an Asian couple by setting their home ablaze and attempting to murder another couple from Egypt the same way, said the prosecution.

Ahmad Abdulsalam al-Baili poured an inflammable material in the apartment of the Asian pair and set it on fire in April 2008, causing their deaths, it said in a statement.

Later he tried to kill an Egyptian couple the same way. They survived despite suffering injuries.

The hangings were the second set of executions in Kuwait since it reintroduced the death penalty following a six-year moratorium.

In April, the authorities in the oil-rich Gulf state executed a Saudi, a Pakistani and a stateless Arab who were convicted of murder. – AFP

Water wars: ‘No Nile, no Egypt’

Egypt’s foreign minister, vowing not to give up “a single drop of water from the Nile”, said on Sunday he would go to Addis Ababa to discuss a giant dam that Ethiopia has begun building in defiance of Cairo’s objections.

Speaking to Egypt’s state news agency MENA two days after the Ethiopian government flatly rejected a request from Cairo to halt the project, Mohamed Kamel Amr said Egyptians view any obstacle to the river’s flow as a threat to national survival.

“No Nile – no Egypt,” he said, highlighting the pressure on the Egyptian government, whose popularity is wilting in the face of economic troubles, to prevent the hydro power plant cutting already stretched water supplies for its 84 million people.

Last week, Ethiopia summoned the Egyptian ambassador after politicians in Cairo were shown on television suggesting military action or supporting Ethiopian rebels – a mark of the threat felt in Cairo from the plan to dam the Blue Nile, the tributary that supplies the bulk of water downstream in Egypt.

“Egypt won’t give up on a single drop of water from the Nile or any part of what arrives into Egypt from this water in terms of quantity and quality,” Amr told MENA, noting that Egypt has little rain and is effectively desert without its great river.

Speaking at a news conference, he declined to detail the action Egypt might take next but noted Ethiopian assurances that Africa’s biggest hydro station would not cut water supplies.

“We have a plan for action, which will start soon,” Amr said. “We’ll talk to Ethiopia and we’ll see what comes of it.

“Ethiopia has said it will not harm Egypt, not even by a liter of water. We are looking at … this being implemented.”

Countries that share the Nile have long argued over the use of its waters, repeatedly raising fears that the disputes could eventually boil over into war. Egypt, struggling with a shortage of cash and bitter internal political divisions following a 2011 revolution, called on Ethiopia to stop work after engineers began diverting the course of the Blue Nile late last month.

In Addis Ababa, a government spokesman called that request a “non-starter” and dismissed threats from Cairo of “sabotage” and “destabilization”, saying attempts by Egypt under its previous military rulers to undermine Ethiopian leaders had failed.

The possible downstream effects of the $4.7-billion Grand Renaissance Dam, some 40 km (25 miles) from Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, have been disputed and full details are unclear.

While letting water through such dams – of which Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia already have several – may not reduce its flow greatly, the filling of the reservoir behind any new dam means cutting the river’s flow for a time. Evaporation from reservoirs can also permanently reduce water flowing downstream.

Now 21 percent complete, the new dam on the Blue Nile will eventually have capacity of 6,000 megawatts and is central to Ethiopia’s plans to become Africa’s leading exporter of power.

Sudan, which borders Egypt and Ethiopia and also gets much of its water from the Nile, said it supported the project.

“The Grand Renaissance Dam brings many benefits and blessings for us,” Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman told reporters in Khartoum.

He gave no details, but Sudanese officials have said the dam will enable Ethiopia to export power to Sudan, a country with frequent outages and one of its closest allies in Africa. – Reuters

Good fences

One of the less heralded, but more successful, projects that have been undertaken recently in Israel is the security fence on the country’s southern border. In October, only 54 illegal African refugees entered Israel—one of the lowest numbers in many years, and a far cry from the 1,000 to 2,000 and more that entered the country each month over the past few years.

Last October, for example, 2,100 illegals were estimated to have entered Israel. Only a few were caught as they crossed the then-wide open border. Since then, the security fence on the border with Sinai has rapidly been built, and currently some 80% of the border is protected. In areas where construction is going on, the IDF has sharply increased patrols. At this point, the vast majority of illegals are caught before they enter Israel, and are immediately taken into custody for deportation to their homelands. Word that Israel’s gates are closing tight has apparently seeped back to Sudan, Eritrea, and other African countries, and now there are far fewer attempts to cross the border.

In addition to the increased protection, the Interior Ministry, led by Eli Yishai, has conducted a strong campaign to deport illegals, or at least persuade them to go home voluntarily. Using a mixture of carrots and sticks, with payments to illegals who leave for good and months-long detention at camps in the Negev, the illegal alien population has been slowly but surely dwindling. Yishai has been quoted as saying that if the current pace of enforcement is kept up, Israel could be free of illegal African aliens within just a few years. However, that could take some time—as the Population Registry estimates that there are still over 10,000 illegal Africans in the country.

Besides holding back the tide of illegals, the security fence has helped limit smuggling of drugs and other illegal items by Bedouin. In August, a terror cell killed 16 Egyptian soldiers as they attempted to blow up a portion of the security fence and enter Israel. IDF forces destroyed a jeep that managed to get through, on its way to carry out a terror attack at a border area community. – Israel National News

Why I am so sad

by Ilana Mercer

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come.

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any U.S. provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who “came, saw and conquered.”

To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed) private-property owner.

By extension, you have no universal right to “free speech” on another man’s land. More so than to America’s diplomats – Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to insert himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season and by so doing make Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy bellicosity look good to a war-weary people that can ill-afford it.

Now is not a good time, Bibi. Israel is a wedge issue in the coming election. If Israelis love Americans as Americans love Israel, they need to understand that, “The Titan is Tired”:

“We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own – be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because another 9/11 has come and gone. The polls indicate that Americans want to move on; have moved on. Perhaps Americans have realized that it behooves our “overlords who art in D.C.” to keep them stuck in grief. By stunning us like cattle to the slaughter, the statists have been able to perpetrate in our name crimes way worse than 9/11.

I AM SO SAD because my sweet, kind friend, Thomas Szasz, has passed away. Tributes merely touch on professor Szasz’ unmatched genius and attendant achievements (professor of psychiatry emeritus, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y., and author of the seminal work, “The Myth of Mental Illness”).

I attempted to word what Thomas Szasz did over decades, in the advance praise he requested for one of his many magisterial masterpieces, “Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry”:

“Bit by barbarous and bizarre bit, Thomas Szasz dismantles psychiatry’s rickety scaffolding, exposing over two centuries of physical torture and tortured logic. Professor Szasz takes the necessary analytical and empirical solvents to this state-empowered fraternity of sorceresses. He also supplies the only salve for the psychiatric violence he correctly dubs ‘psychiatric slavery’: abolition: Now, ‘Let the sunshine in.’”

“This will be hard to beat,” Tom quipped. (“Tom” was how he’d sign off.)

Allow me, then, to speak but briefly to the tender friendship professor Szasz and I developed over the years. Briefly, for the breezy ease with which my countrymen share their feelings with strangers is alien to me. Abreacting à la Oprah in public bespeaks a shallowness that was foreign to Tom too. Whenever we communicated, it was in succinct, intense and precise language. We spoke a similar language. Dare I say that it was our shared ancestry as European Jews that accounted for these cultural commonalities?

For example, we came together – yet stood apart from libertarian mainstream – on the all-time moral litmus test: the state-sanctioned, slow execution of Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo.

Even eerier was the way we both drew on the allegoric power of William Faulkner to capture the late Ms. Schiavo’s plight, before knowing one another. “A Rose for Emily” was Tom’s source of inspiration, in June of 2006; mine was “As She Lay Dying,” in March of 2005.

“Kindred souls” was Tom’s reaction.

Late in 2009, we decided to meet near Huntington Beach, where, Dr. Szasz, nearing 90, was to address a conference. Alas, he was detained on the East Coast by bad weather, and my husband and I went on to visit in the vicinity. “Maybe I’ll mobilize myself and visit you next summer in Seattle,” he promised.

I last heard from Dr. Szasz on July 27, this year. Characteristically, it was in response to a column I had written, “‘You didn’t build that’: Obama’s political epitaph.” As he would so often do, the great man excerpted his favorite lines. “BRAVO, AGAIN!,” he added in capitals.

I replied:

Thank you, my dear. It seems so futile.
But I like hearing from you.
How have you been?

Tom wrote back laconically but poignantly:

Yes. Disheartening. “Virtue is its own reward.” – I am OK.

Would that everyone rationed speech thus; the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.

Earlier this year – it was in May – I made my way to Manhattan, where it was my distinction to address Victor Niederhoffer’s New York City Junto gathering as featured speaker. I inquired whether Tom would be gallivanting around, as was his wont.

Ever sweet and affectionate, there was a finality to his reply:

Many thanks, dear Ilana. Sadly no. I am OK but progressively weakening and everything is too much of a schlep. I enjoy and agree with all that you send me.
Love (without a first sight), Tom.

“Promise me,” I wrote back, “that this will not be unrequited love.”

“It is NOT,” Tom replied.

How far will Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood go in imposing Islamic law?

In decades of furtive meetings in tea houses, mosques and universities, members of Egypt’s underground Muslim Brotherhood spoke ardently of a country governed by Islamic law. Now that their debates take place in parliament and the presidential palace, they must decide how far to go in bringing it about.

Elections held since the fall of Hosni Mubarak have turned the once-banned Brotherhood and its allies into the dominant political force in the Arab world’s most populous country.

That success has left the Brotherhood facing competing pressures – on the one hand, to satisfy the conservative Islamists who supported them at the polling station, while on the other hand to avoid conflict with secular-minded Egyptians and a potent military establishment that opposes radical change.

For now, the outcome appears to be a compromise, satisfying neither side entirely but avoiding major confrontation, with the aim of giving the Brotherhood the leeway to meet the needs of running a modern state.

“Everything is a subject of compromise and negotiation for the Brotherhood,” said Khalil al-Anani, an expert on Islamist movements based at Durham University in England.

“It realizes that limiting personal freedoms will endanger their political gains,” he said. “At the same time, they will have to satisfy conservative sections of society.”

The Brotherhood’s move into public life frightens secular-minded Egyptians, who fear Islamist curbs could lead to dress codes, kill off music and cinema or force men and women to segregate in public. Christians, a tenth of Egyptians, are particularly worried, despite Mursi’s attempts at outreach.

Businesses fear for the impact on a tourism industry that creates one in eight jobs.

A call put out on Facebook for a march in defense of beer – first produced in Egypt in pharaonic times – captured a mood of defiance among some after the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi won the presidency.

While Mursi has promised to protect freedoms, his campaign was also peppered with promises to implement sharia, the Islamic law code.

“The fear is of destroying the civil state in which citizens are equal… The reassurance message is valueless, because we are seeing what they are doing in reality,” said Refaat el-Saeed, head of Tagammu leftist Party.

Some Egyptians worry that even without direction from the state, zealots emboldened by the Islamists’ ballot box success could seek to impose their will in the street. Those fears appeared to be manifested in the days following Mursi’s election, when a group of three men stabbed a young man to death for going out with his fiancée in the city of Suez.

Ahmed Eid was killed by three young men who have been charged with forming an illegal vigilante group to “fight vice and promote virtue”.

The Brotherhood denies that it is behind such attacks and has accused agents loyal to Mubarak’s old order of trying to tar it with the same brush by sending youths masquerading as Brotherhood members to threaten hair salons.

There are limits to how far the Brotherhood can go in transforming Egyptian society.

Founded in 1928 by urban intellectuals and run by engineers, teachers and doctors, the Brotherhood says it does not want a theocracy – something which in any case the military council has signaled it will not allow to come about.

“I don’t think anyone, even if he has a 40-year term rather than a four-year term, will have the ability to change society, such that the sharia is implemented with all its comprehensive aspects,” said Ahmad Ahmad, an associate professor of religious studies at Harvard University in the United States.

JUDGED ON ECONOMY

The Brotherhood is keenly aware that Egyptians will judge it first and foremost by its ability to resolve their deep economic problems and alleviate poverty. That provides a strong incentive to avoid measures that frighten off tourists or hurt commerce.

Rather than emphasize the ancient proscriptions of Islamic law, Brotherhood members describe sharia as a pragmatic moral code that can be used by a modern society to promote reform.

“Wherever you find benefit for society, then that is God’s law,” said Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barr, a cleric who sits on the Brotherhood’s executive board.

He said Mursi would be applying sharia by ending corruption and cronyism in government, ending police abuses such as torture and eavesdropping, and enforcing traffic laws.

There would be no imposition of dress codes, he said, pointing to the growth in the numbers of Egyptian women voluntarily wearing headscarves as proof that coercion was unnecessary. Tourists need not fear for their beach wear, as resorts would be treated as places with a “special context”.

The Brotherhood has been similarly pragmatic on the imposition of bank interest, which many scholars say is forbidden in Islam but will not be abolished in Egypt.

Even the more hardline Islamist groups, or Salafi movements, that have moved into public life in the last year have started to strike a similarly pragmatic tone.

Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, a Salafi group that took up arms against the state as recently as the 1990s, now speaks of a sharia that brings justice, fights corruption and prevents torture and unlawful detention.

“These are the priorities of the sharia as I see them today,” said Tareq El-Zumor, who spent 30 years in jail for involvement in the killing of former president Anwar Sadat.

ISSUES OF “PRIDE”

Kamal Habib, a former al-Gama’a al-Islamiya member and an expert on Islamist groups, said Salafi views had evolved as they moved into mainstream politics during parliamentary elections that began in November last year.

“When the Salafis were campaigning in the election, they spoke of sharia as an immediate step, but as they came closer to power they modified their position as they found a lot of serious complications in society.”

Still, Islamists are trying to make substantial changes, especially in areas that are seen as a matter of pride for their conservative followers.

In the first few months of the parliament’s work, newly-elected Salafi lawmakers pressed for an end to a woman’s right to seek divorce, to adjust custody laws in favor of men and to toughen the punishment for insulting religion.

All of those proposals were raised independently of any party and none made it into law.

Barr, the Brotherhood cleric, forecast legislation that would eventually ban Muslims from trading or producing alcohol, while permitting its production and sale to non-Muslims.

The role of Islamic law in Egypt’s new constitution has become a defining issue.

“I am afraid of leaving the constitution in the hands of people who think in this way,” said Shahata Mohamed Shahata, a lawyer fiercely opposed to Brotherhood rule who filed a lawsuit demanding the dissolution of the body writing the document.

One proposal would add language making God the source of sovereignty. Another would give Al-Azhar, a religious school founded in Cairo more than 1,000 years ago, an official role as the body that would interpret Islamic law.

“It’s a big step – to put Al-Azhar in the constitution that is supposed to last for generations,” said Anani of Durham University. “What if Al-Azhar’s interpretation is regressive and not in favour of democracy?”

But he forecast more compromise ahead by the Brotherhood: “The Brotherhood will do everything for the sake of power. So they might cross the ideological red lines for political gains.” – Reuters

EU debt relief for North African states?

European governments have opened the door to a radical offer of “debt relief” for Arab north African neighbours such as Egypt, EU and governmental sources told AFP Wednesday.

“Member states will examine possibilities of using debt relief as a signal of change” along the southern Mediterranean rim, conclusions drawn up for European Union leaders to endorse at a March 1-2 summit revealed.

The plan emerged barely 24 hours after eurozone governments backed an unprecedented write-down of Greek sovereign debt held by private investors, one expected to reduce Athens’ debt burden by nearly one third, some 107 billion euros ($141 million).

It is being driven primarily by the French government, diplomats said on the eve of first talks on the proposal among ambassadors from the 27 EU states in Brussels on Thursday morning.

“Expect a vigorous discussion,” said one senior EU official on the possible terms for debt relief that could be awarded in exchange for democratic reforms and preferential trade terms.

The idea is gaining currency one year on from the start of the ‘Arab Spring,’ with “rapid progress” demanded by EU leaders, the summit declaration was to say, on negotiations over Free Trade Agreements between the EU and the countries of its “southern neighbourhood.”

“We need to see who else shows a determination here, who is neutral at this stage and who will put up opposition,” the EU official said.

“No-one’s really talking about numbers yet, the European Commission won’t come up with finished proposals until April,” said another official with a national government.

However, this source said “billions of dollars” could eventually be at stake.

The EU executive has drafted detailed proposals on relations with countries from Morocco to Egypt that EU leaders want to integrate into the world’s biggest barrier-free market for goods and services.

The draft summit declaration, if endorsed, would turn debt relief into an incentive alongside threats to withdraw support for states accused of oppression or grave human rights violations.

The biggest of the ‘Arab Spring’ revolts one year ago, Egypt is struggling with sharply dwindling foreign reserves and transitional authorities are weighing up a much-delayed aid package worth some $3.0 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Credit rating giant Standard & Poor’s raised its risk assessment for Egypt earlier this month, citing political instability as Cairo moves towards the election of a new president, expected in June after ousted ex-leader Hosni Mubarak’s murder and corruption trial wraps up.

Egyptian press reports in recent days have said the EU could lend the country 500 million euros alongside money from Washington.

Thursday’s discussion on who might benefit from what terms on which debts is sensitive, with EU trio Greece, Portugal and Ireland having to repay mainly eurozone partners for their bailouts for years to come.

Fears remain about the long-term prospects of full repayment from Athens.

Hungary can be expected to protest. Only on Wednesday, economy commissioner Olli Rehn asked EU governments to suspend almost 500 million euros in grants due to Budapest next year.

The governments of Hungary, Poland and Romania last week expressed mounting fears that incentives for southern EU neighbours would come at their expense, the EU source also said. – AFP