On 30 June, an Egyptian writer who once supported Mohamed Morsi voiced what was foremost in most Egyptians' minds as they marched in millions across the country. “Enough is enough. It has been decided for Mr Morsi. Now, we are waiting for him to understand,” he pleaded with all the emotion he could muster. One TV anchor, obviously moved by the wave of public discontent that swept president Morsi out of power 3 July, declared on air: ‘“The nightmare is over.” He even apologised, a second time, for casting his vote for Morsi, having first done so only five months after Morsi's election. Such sentiments are no longer considered partisan in Egypt. A surprising number of those who voted for Morsi began to harbour misgivings about his inept rule long before the bell began to toll for the regime he tried to install. The truth is that Morsi and his coterie of ministers never found either the interest or the urgency to devise a way out of Egypt's current socioeconomic malaise. Instead, after only a few weeks in office, Morsi lunged at Egypt's institutions, discredited their officials and painted respected officials as “unpatriotic”. His tirades targeted the police, the intelligence services and the army, a long hated institution by the Muslim Brotherhood, however respected by the majority of Egyptians, not to say admired. On 8 July 2012, only eight days after he took office, President Morsi challenged a Supreme Constitutional Court decision to dissolve parliament and ordered it to reconvene. On 6 October, when all Egyptians remember Anwar Al-Sadat and his role in restoring Egypt's pride in the 1973 war, as well as his role in signing a historic peace treaty with Israel, Morsi decided to invite along Tarek Al-Zomor, one of Sadat's assassins. Al-Zomor, in an interview three days after this event, said that no tribute should be paid to Sadat as he (by signing the peace agreement) betrayed the victory and broke the united Arab and Islamic front. Three months into his mandate, democratically elected Morsi made sure that faces changed on the Supreme Constitutional Court. Since any diktat to the judges from the executive or anyone else was illegal, he simply issued a constitutional decree on 22 November barring the courts from challenging his decisions, thereby giving himself powers that any other democratic country would consider repugnant. During these machinations, meanwhile, the economic indicators sped southward, creating a gloomy backdrop to his tug-of-war, literally, with the rest of Egyptian society. Egyptians were becoming poorer, tourism tumbled, inflation soared, the currency devaluated, foreign reserves dropped and unemployment rose alarmingly. Any leader devoted to his nation would have chosen a different path, given the circumstances. But none of these things mattered to the Brotherhood, Morsi's real puppeteers. The Muslim Brotherhood fought their hardest, not to gain the confidence of voters, but to arrogate for themselves the state prerogatives they needed to reshape Egyptian society in their own image.
PRESIDENT OF ALL EGYPTIANS? OF ALL MUSLIMS? OR THE BROTHERHOOD'S PRESIDENT? So, what could possibly explain the near-total blindness with which Morsi's team went about its business while in power and the general alienation of Egyptians? Ideology has a lot to do with it. During a Syria rally held in May 2013, Sheikh Mohamed Hassan, a well-known Salafi cleric, openly asked President Morsi to ban the “filthy Shia” from Egypt. Not a squeak of moral outrage escaped the mouth of Egypt's democratically elected chief. A few days later, crazed Salafi mobs slaughtered and burned five Egyptian Shias in their homes. Similarly, on his watch the Islamist attacks on Christians and churches escalated dramatically and continue unabated even after Morsi's departure. At another gathering attended by Morsi, Safwat Hegazi, who conveniently denies being a Brotherhood member even though he had spearheaded Morsi's presidential campaign on several occasions and never missed a chance to shower praise on Morsi and the Brotherhood, promised that a liberated Jerusalem would form the capital of the new Islamic Caliphate, not Cairo. Any patriotic Egyptian would take major offence at this notion. But not so the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef, who publicly spewed a few years ago, “To hell with Egypt and all those living in Egypt!” His lifelong dream, and that of the Brotherhood, was and is to turn Egypt into an “emirate” — nothing more. This scheme represents the worst deformation of Islam. Egyptians glimpsed with horror the depth of the assault on Islam when Sobhi Saleh, another Brotherhood figure, decided to change a well-known Muslim prayer, “Lord, have us die Muslims” (which normally means “to finish our lives as faithful servants of God) to, “Lord, have us die Brotherhood.” The latter denotes faith in something created, not the Creator — another major offence to every Muslim. Such a cult mentality goes a long way to explaining why Egyptians could no longer tolerate the elected Morsi. They endured 12 months of blood-curdling extremism and one denunciation after another of everyone not in line with what the Brotherhood wanted for the country. All that has damaged the national psyche and disrupted the country's complicated development. But the Brotherhood wanted to savour as long as they could that unique moment of history when they were able to consolidate power. Brotherhood leaders told General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi a few days before Morsi was deposed, “We are here to rule for 500 years.” And they intended to do it at any cost, just like their proxy, Hamas, in Gaza. One man, one vote, one time has always been the plan. To that end, the Brotherhood struck at the very heart of political legitimacy and democracy, which they used simply as tools in Egypt and anywhere else their cult had followers. DOG DAYS BEFORE 30 JUNE: A month before Morsi's fall, on 11 May, Defence Minister General Al-Sisi spoke before a gathering of writers and artists, underlining the need for the opposition to come peacefully to terms with the government. He assured everyone how — in his words — “nobody will overthrow anybody.” “The army will not come down to the street to change the system,” Al-Sisi promised. “If it did, Egypt would go back 40 years.” Standing at the polling station for 15 hours, he told an anxious audience, was better than watching the country destroy itself. He also pointed out that the Egyptian people and army were the best guardians of elections. Al-Sisi's dissociation from any talk about an army intervention accurately reflected his thoughts at the time. He was desperately trying to protect the nascent democracy, and all signs indicated that president Morsi's ouster was not in the works. On 28 June all that changed. It became clear then that military intervention was precisely what would happen if Morsi maintained his wayward course. Two days later, millions of Egyptians, in what seemed to be a far larger crowd than what ousted Mubarak, poured into the streets pleading with their army to end the Brotherhood nightmare. These events prompted Al-Sisi to issue elected Morsi the sternest warning to date: “The polarisation has reached a state that endangers our nascent democratic experience and threatens chaos.” As expected, Morsi would not budge. Unlike Mubarak, who stepped down to avoid bloodshed. Sensing the Brotherhood's profound obstinacy in the face of an outraged population that took to streets, Al-Sisi — armed with massive public momentum behind him — had no choice but to act to save the country from descending into chaos and possible civil war. Morsi was removed, and overnight his “peaceful supporters” took things into their own hands, exacting vengeance with a daily campaign of assassinations and car bombs against government facilities and army checkpoints. The Brotherhood declared a war of terror on Egypt with Mohamed Al-Beltagui, a senior member of the Brotherhood, announcing from the Rabaa sit-in that “actions in Sinai will stop the second President Morsi is reinstated.” The government responded with ongoing operations against terrorist hideouts in Sinai and a crackdown and final assault on the Rabaa sit-in. There is no question that the crackdown came with too much loss of life. But there is not the least mention in pro-Brotherhood media of militants brandishing automatic weapons and firing wildly at local residents and security personnel. Interestingly, many of those captured in Sinai by the Egyptian military and police were condemned terrorists whom Morsi had earlier pardoned. INCOMPETENCE IN THE NAME OF ISLAM: For the vast majority of the Egyptian people the Brotherhood is a band of conspiring incompetents. Their organisation may have temporarily hijacked the revolution, but they could not run a municipality, much less a country. Morsi awaits trial on several charges relating to his involvement in the Brotherhood's long sleeve of shadowy activities, including his strange escape from Wadi Al-Natroun Prison with the help of Hamas, the Brotherhood's military arm. When elected Morsi was still at the helm, Hamas representative Ismail Haniyeh exhorted fellow Muslims to sectarian hatred and violence. He did so unambiguously in at least one speech he delivered at — of all places — Al-Azhar, Islam's oldest sanctuary of peace and moderation. To Islamists, there is nothing out of the ordinary about these tactics. The end always justifies the means, so long as one utters the magic words: Allahu Akbar. Those standing by the Brotherhood's right to a place in politics forget, though, that Al-Qaeda, which is merely a platform that brings together various takfiri cults (that is, militants who pronounce fellow Muslims as “unbelievers”) around the world for common operations is an offspring of none other than the Muslim Brotherhood. Paul Berman, a writer for The New York Times, had it well figured out back in 2003 when he wrote: “The Egyptian factions emerged from an older current, a school of thought from within Egypt's fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the 1950s and 60s. And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, a Brotherhood philosopher named Sayed Qutb — the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al-Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide.” This “philosopher of Islamic terror”, as Berman calls him, was executed in 1966 by then-President Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Qutb's teachings and books on offensive jihad have been instrumental in shaping a whole generation of the Brotherhood's current leaders and their supreme guide. Ayman Al-Zawahri, too, who presently runs Al-Qaeda and joined the Brotherhood at 14, absolutely admired Qutb. Shukri Mustafa, the leader of Al-Takfir wal Hijra, the Islamists group that kidnapped and killed an Egyptian minister in the 70s, was a member of the Brotherhood and a student of Qutb. The Brotherhood's second greatest martyr is Osama Bin Laden, another Qutbist. Bin Laden was a student of Qutb's brother, Mohamed, who fled to Saudi Arabia after Nasser's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. The morning the Americans announced they had just killed Bin Laden in Pakistan, the Brotherhood issued a statement calling him “Sheikh”, as if conferring the title to some learned or elderly gentleman. They characterised his acts as legitimate “resistance against foreign occupations” denying even that Al-Qaeda could be linked to the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps one of the most elaborate explanations of the link between the Brotherhood and all extremist groups was provided by Tharwat Al-Kherbawi, author of Secret of the Temple, and a former member of the Brotherhood: “The ideology of the Muslim Brothers and all other takfiri groups is all the same, the only difference is the method of implementing this ideology and its timing.” He even explains their recruitment process that takes years, as a candidate first needs to be a supporter, then a lover, and then finally a Brother. A paranoid procedure that matches or even exceeds intelligence agency methods for recruiting agents. Al-Kherbawi himself was a supporter and a lover for seven years, and then an active Brother for 18 years. General Al-Sisi responded to the pleading of 22 million Egyptians who signed the “Tamarod” (Rebel) petition demanding the deposition of President Morsi and calling for early elections. He responded to the pleading of millions of Egyptians who took to the streets 30 June joined by all heads of the Coptic Church and Al-Azhar. He acted to protect Egyptians' life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Americans ought to remind themselves of those basic human rights they so gloriously enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” No wonder Egyptians greeted the overthrow of Morsi and his clan as a patriotic act. Inalienable rights can prove inconvenient truths to leaders long used to cherry picking. The writer is a political analyst and CEO of Global Reach and Information Technology and Services Co.
