Something Is Not Quite Right About Egypt!

Due to the fact that I have been in transit from Egypt to Ireland since 5pm yesterday I have had an enforced separation for the most of 17 hours from television and internet; ergo an enforced separation from the happenings in Egypt. Those hours have given me time to think from a distance.

Over the last couple of weeks the number of people reading my blog and keeping up with my postings on Facebook has grown quite a bit – mostly friends, guests at Mara House and a few who have found me through my twitterings. I have been surprised and sometimes amazed at questions or comments made by some of my readers.

I realised just now that most of my posts have been emotional responses to comments or articles I have read myself. Therefore I have not been giving my readers a proper account of what has been happening in Egypt – most of my readers are not on Twitter and are at the mercy of the international media coverage on Egypt.

I’m just a regular ordinary, middle aged Irish woman who happens to have lived for the last 10 years in Egypt. I spent most of the 2011 Revolution in Cairo, quite a bit of it in Tahrir and if you are interested you can read those blog posts under the category “Days of Rage” here. I am an expert on nothing but I will claim to be a very logical and rather discerning thinker.

I tend to think circularly rather than linearly. I also subconsiously and automatically notice patterns and pattern disturbances. I hate hypocracy and lies – the harm they do frustrates and angers me. I hate to see people used or abused. I am very conscious of the shortness of our years and find it abhorrent that people take time and life away from others so easily and, a lot of the time, without thinking. I am very conscious that THE MOST powerful and manipulative tool is language itself – the spoken and written word.

I apologise to my readers and friends for not filling in the picture properly for you. I am not going to go into a detailed explanation here about what has brought Egypt to where it is today – according to the media – the brink of Civil War. But I will try to get down to that over the next day or two. Having promised that – I want to bring your attention to what is not right about Egypt – please spread this around if you agree with my questionings and analysis.

Please remember that what follows here is my own personal viewpoint and opinion, seen through my own inbuilt and accumulated perspectives, beliefs and life experiences. The reason we all see the same events and interpret them differently is because we all come from different cultures, experiences and indoctrinations.

In my opinion the 2011 Egyptian Revolution was to some degree orchestrated by some different factions from within and from outside Egypt for their own ends. It was to a large degree a bit of an unexpected accident. Protesters took to the streets in Tahrir Square, Port Said and Alexandria mostly. There was little happened throught the rest of Egypt unlike what is happening this week in Egypt. After 18 days President Mubarak stepped down and handed control to SCAF – Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

What followed from that was a result of nobody among the young revolutionaries having a follow up plan. However, there was a force organised and waiting, (if not involved prior to this), in the wings. That force was the Muslim Brotherhood. Apart from the MB nobody else really knew what they were doing. This was unchartered waters and every action was simply a re-action to an action taken or speech made by somebody else. More or less as soon as the SCAF took over they came under sustained fire on social media and reporting media led and fuelled by the young revolutionaries who did not have any plan of their own and, drunk with having toppled Mubark, were now intent on doing battle with SCAF. That revolutionary stuff was heady, exciting, romantic and intoxicatibg.

To cut a long story short – into the breach stepped the Muslim Brotherhood, who sounded quite plausible to many. One of the first things they did to allay the fears of the people was to PROMISE they would not put up a candidate for the Presidency. That was to be the first in a long list of broken promises (all I will document when I can).

So, June 2012 Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt taking 51.73% of the votes in a run off second round where 43% of the people voted.  I have already written in What the 30th June is about many of the reasons why the Egyptian people now want Morsi to resign.

Finally I am coming to the point of my statement – “something is not quite right about Egypt”  Here are my points that lead me to saying this

• Nobody can deny the Egyptian economy is in total ruins
• Nobody can deny that Egypt is in a worst state now than when Morsi took over a year ago.
• Nobody can deny that the IMF would not close the loan deal with Egypt because they were not presented with any kind of viable long term plan or vision to restore the Economy.
• Nobody can deny the country is only still afloat because of loans from countries like Qatar which favour those countries, not Egypt.
• Even Morsi himself admits that his attempt to take complete control and put himself above the law was a bad mistake and he later had to recind that decree
• Nobody can deny the Muslim Brotherhood pushed through a bad constitution overnight and a small turnout of the electorate voted it into law.  Morsi admits there are at least 7 articles that need to be changed.
• Nobody can deny his attempt to turn the country to radical Islam
• Nobody can deny he has attempted to put Muslim Brotherhood members into all the important positions of power.
• Nobody can deny that not one of those people are qualified for their positions.
• Nobody can deny that Morsi has not made one single concession to the Opposition demands
• Nobody can deny that Morsi excluded everyone except Muslim Brotherhood members or those sympathetic to them, from government positions of note.
• Nobody can deny that the turnout of people in the streets against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood ALL OVER EGYPT is the biggest in the history of Egypt – far surpassing that of the 2011 days of revolution
• The only reason Morsi or the Brotherhood can give for keeping him in power is that he was elected to the position – there is not one single achievement he can claim after a year in power.
• On his swearing into office in Tahrir Square on 30th June he said he took his legitimacy from the streets – well, now the streets are taking back that legitimacy.
• One by one 95% of his advisors and aids have resigned since about 3 months after he came to power.  Why do you think that is?  It is because he steadfastly refuses to take advice from anyone except the Muslim Brotherhood Leaders.

I really didn’t mean to list all those – they just poured out……they are still not the “something” I am saying is wrong about Egypt.

WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT EGYPT IS THE INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD AND THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA’S REFUSAL TO UNDERSTAND, REPORT OR TAKE THE SIDE OF THE MILLIONS OF EGYPTIANS TAKING TO THE STREETS DAILY in the face of all the above points.

Isn’t it really odd that the only point any of them are making strongly is the point that he was elected President – Morsi’s only argument?   I find that very odd.

But there is something even worse; there is something even more odd than that.

Since 9/11 the world has been subtly coached into Islamophobia and the War on Terrorism, to the extent that the word “Islamist” is now usually only used when coupled with the words “radicalism” or “terrorist”.  But aren’t the Islamist terrorists only a small part of the billions of people belonging to the religion of Islam?

So, isn’t it now really odd that about 33 million ISLAMISTS are taking to the streets of Egypt to try to rid themselves of a group of RADICAL ISLAMISTS whose sole intention is to bring Sharia Rule of Law, poisoned by their own particular brand of domination, to the entire world?

Isn’t it really odd they are getting no support from all the nations of the world actively involved in the WAR on TERRORISM?

The Egyptian People WANT the Egyptian ARMY to temporarily take control of the country and guide it to democracy.  Yet, the entire world is warning the Egyptian army not to do that,  because perhaps no other country in the entire world has an Army as well respected as the Egyptians respect their Army.  SCAF does not want to rule Egypt.  The insistence that they do is only born and contained in the minds of those who would have those aspirations themselves were they in that position.

Have you ever seen anywhere else in the world millions of citizens asking their Army to take control?  Only in Egypt, because Egypt is different.  Second time around the SCAF;  the people of Egypt; all those currently active in opposing Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are more informed and better experience and will not repeat the mistakes of 2011 – 2012.  The world should have more faith in the Egyptian people.

Inside Egypt there is a group of young revolutionaries who have not been heard of since they advised the people to vote for Morsi.  They are now actively battling against the rest of the Egyptian People against the only Army that can protect the people from the terrorists engaging nightly in killing sprees across Egypt – isn’t that really odd?  Isn’t there something wrong there?

So, there you have it – there is something wrong when a nation stands united against a small group of extremists, they want their Army to protect them; to take control and the world goes against – and denies them their right to self-determination, self-governance and true democracy – they are voting with their feet and their blood.

Another long-winded one!