At milestones, feelings of distrust mingle with optimism, and developments that seem highly contradictory in form but are in fact compatible in substance become apparent. In such instances, it is important that people and institutions work in close harmony, coherence and have a clear vision.
As the saying goes, perhaps there is a silver lining. Egypt has come to recognise those who are with it and those against, and now we have a very clear political and media roadmap that reveals true brothers and friends as well as enemy and villains. It has also discovered who can take charge at critical moments and who will flee and abandon ship for selfish reasons.
Egypt suffered greatly over the past two months, reaching a zenith on 14 August; namely, the chapter before the end of the Muslim Brotherhood saga which had dreamt of conquering Egypt for 80 years. But when it reached power at a farcical moment that will never be repeated, it could not restrain itself and imagined it was capable of consuming 90 million people who have a historic and civil heritage stretching back thousands of years.
Once the Muslim Brotherhood realised it would never achieve its goals, it threw caution to the wind and continued to be obstinate in the belief it had special powers that would enable it to punish the entire population and all institutions. It thought it could create parallel institutions and take up arms against everyone, with the aid of a transnational global organisation and some governments under its control, along with a large number of mercenaries and terrorists of various nationalities.
Despite the powerful blow against the Muslim Brotherhood as a result of unprecedented solidarity among the sweeping majority of Egyptians, government and key institutions, as well as rare harmony between popular action and institutional action as we saw on 30 June and since, the Brotherhood is still living in the past and has delusions of conquering Egypt once again with NATO-backed Turkish spears, accompanied by negative publicity in some Arab media that have forever etched their name in the dustbin of history.
It is very clear that the Muslim Brotherhood and its global organisation can only see its own hallucinations and turns a blind eye to the revolution of a free people writing their destiny with confidence and competence. The outcome is that the Brotherhood has lost both sight and foresight, perhaps for at least another 100 years, which is explains its horrific indulgence in terrorism and all its destructive dimensions and hateful mechanisms.
It is flagrant terrorism that Egyptians will never forget and history will never forgive, despite efforts by frauds, hired hands, liars and hypocrites to alter or blur the facts. This became crystal clear during the six-week armed sit-in at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda squares, and peaked in the three days that followed dispersing the protest in a very professional manner by the Egyptian police. Also, through Muslim Brotherhood terrorism as they marched on the streets to terrorise Egyptians, banditry, despicable attacks on churches including the burning of 62 churches in several cities and villages. They even marked the property of Copts in villages and towns in Upper Egypt to target them in attacks.
They also burned Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in an attempt to destroy evidence of the criminal armed sit-in there, and launched armed attacks on 32 police stations, killing officers and soldiers. They even desecrated their corpses in front of terrified crowds as they chanted “Islamic, Islamic.” This happened at Kerdasa police station, one of the most horrific terrorist attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood and its alleged supporters.
They also torched public buildings such as governorate headquarters in Giza, the Ministry of Finance, and the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University. They also pillaged and burned down the headquarters of major corporations and took refuge in various mosques, and stockpiled automatic weapons in them. They also threatened to assassinate some public and media figures. Meanwhile, Sinai is suffering from mobilised terrorists and mercenaries in confrontations with the army and police, as well as terrorising the local population.
This dirty war of terror against Egypt and its people has destroyed the legend of a moderate Muslim Brotherhood and confirmed that the group is the source of religious terrorism in Egypt and the entire region. Also, that the majority of these groups and branch political parties, cloaked in religious or jihadist slogans or whichever other name or figures, are nothing more than subsidiaries of the mother group.
It is a dirty war of terror by all measures, but it is not void of brazen paradoxes. There are sheikhs who had in the past incessantly issued edicts about what is allowed and forbidden, but were not moved by the burning, killing, torture, desecration and banditry — although in genuine Islamic jurisprudence there is an entire chapter on banditry, stemming bloodshed, punishment of wrongdoers on Earth and in Heaven.
There are countries that in the past incessantly talked about human rights, protecting minorities, the right to peaceful protest and the people’s right for change, but ended up supporting a terrorist faction in confronting an entire nation. It is as if they were never told about burning of churches, armed sit-ins, killing people in cold blood; or maybe they were informed, but deliberately turned a blind eye.
This is the greatest paradox of all: How can a group exercising abominable terrorism with such audacity gain the sympathy of the US and the West? There is no explanation other than there is an organic bond between these countries of colonial imperialist history and the Muslim Brotherhood. A bond based on a specific role for the Brotherhood within the framework of a global vision for the future of the region that serves Israel and the West.
In return, the Muslim Brotherhood and its subsidiaries would be left to rule Egypt and a few other Arab countries. With that, forming a larger vessel for political Islam groups that would become domesticated to serve the West and its key interests — with the help of a direct role for Turkey, which was promised a leading role similar to the one during the Ottoman Empire.
Accordingly, a new Arab world would be formed under the auspices of the US and Europe, which reminds us of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the Arab world among colonial powers at the beginning of the 20th century.
But what these players forgot is that Egypt, with its cultural and civil heritage, and despite all the current economic hardships, will never be colonised again. It will fight wars, irrespective of how dirty, and win with the help of Almighty God and genuine cooperation with its Arab brothers who are loyal to tolerant Islam and true Arabism.
