One of the few remaining benefits of living in Egypt these days is the ridiculous amount of entertainment that our Islamist rulers provide. In a scene that’s beyond parody, a number of Islamists held a massive conference to support Syria, which in their world means “Let’s kill those Shi’a Infidels”. In the first ever display of state-sponsored-Jihad-promotion in Egypt’s modern history, a number of Islamists, alongside our great ruler Mohamed Ibn Morsi the first, called upon the Nation’s Muslims to support Syria and, if possible, go fight Jihad there, because, after two years of inaction, they suddenly realised that there was a conflict there and on one side there was some non-Sunni Muslims fighting some Sunni Muslims. Gasp and horror.
In case you didn’t know, that’s completely unacceptable of course. Non-Sunni Muslims have no business being alive to begin with, or at least that’s what the speeches of the day implied. Sectarian rhetoric got spewed for two hours on live television, proving that Morsi doesn’t only have a “Christian problem”, but a “down with anything other than Sunni Muslims” problem, which should console our Christian brothers in so far that it’s not only them he dislikes. Today’s article should then bemoan the first Egyptian democratically elected openly sectarian president. If only it was that simple…
Did you know that when Morsi went to beg Russia for money and wheat, he openly declared that his position is in complete alignment with the Russian position, which is pro-Assad, just because they promised him they might think of lending him money or wheat? Did you know that this conference took place, not two days after the Obama administration’s announcement that they will fund and arm Syrian rebels? Did you know that this conference got held exactly two weeks before the 30 June demonstrations, at a time when the Muslim Brotherhood is desperate for any Islamist support to cling to power? Did you know that in Morsi’s 6th of October speech last year, he managed to fill the 80,000 seats of the Cairo stadium with his supporters, but in this speech he opted for the covered dome, which only holds 16,000 seats? Also, did you know that opposing the ruler in Egypt is against religion and God, but opposing the ruler in Syria is holy Jihad?
How can one not love this mess?
Oh, how I wish that what took place in that conference was simply Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood showcasing their true sectarian selves, because the alternative is so utterly pathetic: That the MB is so desperate to hold on to power in the face of sweeping national anger, that they had to pander to Jihadist elements in such a disgusting way. The Jihadist elements naturally returned the pandering in kind, with Sheikh Mohamed Abdel Maksoud openly stating that 30 June will be a great day for Islam to stand against the “infidels” behind the “Rebellion” movement. Meanhwile, Sheikh Mohamed Hassan informed the average-electricity-and-fuel- deprived Egyptian citizens about the great benefits of Jihad in Syria: 1) There are the brownie points you get with God for killing other people, 2) There are the spoils of Jihad for the taking in the bountiful lands of Syria, like looting, pillaging and hot Syrian women, and 3) If you die, you get to die fighting in a Jihad for Islam, which immediately puts you on Heaven’s VIP list. Dear Sunni Muslim Egyptian citizens, what more could you possibly ask for? It’s a win-win situation.
During his speech, Morsi took the opportunity to define Egypt’s foreign policy priorities: The Nile, Syria, and stopping the “Jewification” of Jerusalem. Please note the absence of word “Israel” or “Zionism” there. Please also note the nature of Egypt’s new enemies: Christian Africans, Non-Sunni Muslims and Arabs. This speech will go down in history as the speech laying the foundation of the Sunni-Zionist alliance against Iran, and also being the realisation of Israeli PM Netanyahu’s wildest fantasy: Egypt and Jihadists versus Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, with Israel not being a part of the equation. As one Israeli opinion writer puts it, Israel should stay out of this and “let them (Arabs) kill themselves quietly”.
Needless to say, this will never work: The Egyptian army is too lazy to get involved in such a war, and the Salafis are not biting, with the Al-Nour Party issuing a scathing critique against the speech and initiative, calling it a distraction put forth by a fledgling regime so desperate to change the conversation from national issues to foreign policy. But what the Al-Nour Party didn’t say was that this regime is so pathetic that it did this by encouraging its citizens to go fight in foreign lands against another government and people for a sectarian cause without an official declaration of war, training or armed forces support. In the eyes of the Muslim Brotherhood, this speech was supposed to be Morsi’s “Nasser moment”, creating a foreign policy conflict that supersedes any internal squabbles, but Morsi is at best a Wannabe Nasser, and this will not work, because the average Egyptian is so overwhelmed with his daily struggle for survival that the notion of Egypt being involved in any conflict outside of the country is simply outrageous.
Had Morsi truly wanted to help Syrians, he would have issued some initiatives that would help the estimated one million Syrian refugees in Egypt so as not to suffer daily humiliation. He could have issued a directive that equalised the degrees of educated Syrian with that of Egypt’s to allow Syrian doctors and engineers a chance to work in their vocations. He could have given them all work permits, thus giving the Syrian refugees a method to exist, work and survive in Egypt legally. He could have banned the practice of selling Syrian women as wives to Egyptian males that happens in Salafi mosques. Instead, in a grandiose move, he shut down their embassy, which is the only place that provided Syrian refugees access to crucial consular services, and helped them get to their next destination if they wanted out of Egypt. Dear Syrian refugees, you can start thanking us any minute now.
I am willing to wager that when historians document this phase in Egyptian history, they will call it “the LSD period”, because we are watching the hallucinations of the Islamists and their leaders being broadcasted on our national televisions, creating a binary primordial world where Islam is threatened, all of their enemies are infidels bent on destroying the religion and where they are the faith’s sole defenders and champions. It’s beyond sad. Had a US channel created a TV show depicting Islamist rule and simply copied and pasted the actions and speeches of the Morsi government, its writers and producers would’ve been called Islamophobic and out of touch with reality. Unfortunately this is reality, and it must change. 30 June cannot come fast enough.
