Dazed by the fresh air and daylight in their new environment, the fundamentalists led by the Muslim Brotherhood refused to waste a single moment in their bid to deconstruct and reassemble Egypt in their style of Islam. They formed an un-holy alliance with two irreconcilable groups: armed Salafists and violent Jihadis belonging to a militant spin-off, al-Jihad, of Muslim fundamentalism. The armed wing, the replacement of MB's Secret Apparatus, was used for launching an allegedly holy war against the Land of Unbelievers in Egypt in the 1980s and 90s. Encouraged by several nods from the parent organisation, Jihadis assassinated president Anwar Sadat, hundreds of civilians, police officers and policemen in this period. Tourists were also brutally killed and massacred. The irony is that the foreign victims of the Jihad's brutal killings were citizens of those countries (the US and European ones), which had offered a safe haven to the masterminds behind the killings when they escaped arrest in Egypt. Condemning Egypt and its people for being the Land of Unbelievers, the liberated fundamentalists vowed to spread their own understanding of Muslim Sharia law. All across the history of Islam, controversy over the proper understanding and implementation of Sharia has always been the fist step towards a bloody civil war when fundamentalists seized power. The brutality of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is an example in the modern history of the Muslim world. The MB led the Salafists to preach outdated tenets and religious curiosities, which dangerously associated Islam with Fascism and offended clear-thinking and peaceful Muslims. Unable to come to terms with the new version of Islam, the Egyptians got the impression that they were introduced to monsters that had escaped from the tattered pages of a fairy-tale book. Seeking to strike fear in the heart of the nation, the ‘monsters' revived terms like ‘armed struggle' and ‘holy war' to save Egypt from democracy. They claimed that the concept of people ruling themselves by themselves was part of a cultural invasion by the kafir US and Europe. The fact that many MB and Salafist masterminds behind the cultural and armed attacks on the kafir hold kafir citizenship should bear strong evidence of their hypocrisy and treachery. A shudder ran through society when fundamentalists threatened in fascist style that only their own vision of Islam should be the rule in society, otherwise opponents would pay for their stubbornness. In their maddening bid to achieve their ends, they had to temporarily suspend their allegedly undivided loyalty to Prophet Mohamed and employ the principles propagated by Machiavelli, who, according to their standards, would have been a prophet of unbelievers. They compromised uncompromising Islamic teachings such as those on bribery. They filled poor people's empty stomachs with rice and lentils, using them to crash the gates of the nation's great seats of power: the legislature (the Parliament), the Cabinet, the judiciary, the police establishment and the army. They also seemed to denigrate everything related to moderate Islam as taught by the iconic Al-Azhar (the highest seat of Muslim Sunni teachings in Egypt and the Arab world). They attacked Al-Azhar's leaders, including its Grand Imam and the Mufti of the Republic and tried to remove them from their posts. They also ridiculed the idea that Al-Azhar is the highest religious authority in Egypt. Their MPs concocted bills to relegate Al-Azhar to the second place behind the fundamentalists. Amid such chaotic developments, the nation suddenly woke up to loud cackles in a neighbour's chicken shed. Screaming for help, the owner said that thieves had sneaked in to steal two of his ‘hens'. Telling his story to the crowd that had arrived to help, the panic-stricken neighbour claimed that the thieves were Salafists. They in turn challenged the neighbour's story and told the astonished crowd that the two ‘hens' were actually theirs and they would refuse to leave without getting their property back. The devastated neighbour had to hide his hens in a sacred place to keep them safe until the Salafists' burning appetite abated. The latter defiantly rejected the suggestion of wise people in the crowd that they already owned many well-bred ‘hens', much fatter than the neighbour's. Acting like a selfish boy, who has the strange urge to take his brother's toy regardless of the obvious similarities, the Salafists insisted that the neighbour should hand over his ‘hens' for the sake of peace. They mobilised mass rallies and threatened to torch the sacred hiding place unless they could get hold of the two ‘hens'. (To be continued)
