Readers of this blog were not surprised when Mohamed Morsi was toppled from power. The rest of the country woke up shocked. I’ve been reporting that Egypt has been on a serious down hill slide for some time. Hitting the bottom just came faster than most thought.
What happened?
My position in these blogs has always been to be as objective as possible. No slanting for any political position, no adjusting for some religious viewpoint, no prophecy craziness, just the hard facts. And if you are a religious right winger, the word “hard” will seem severe but I hope you will see it as appropriate.
The issue in Egypt was that the average salary is $2.00 a day. People stand in line to get food and gasoline. Morsi did nothing about these fundamental issues that sent millions to the the streets with 20 million signing petitions for his ouster. Egypt was on its way to bankruptcy.
To get the big picture, you must remember Mori was elected by the Moslem Brotherhood whose agenda was to create a Muslim state. Their objectives were the imposition of Shari’a law on everyone regardless of their background. Morsi was too busy with these religious goals to recognize the $2.00 dilemma on the street corner. The public recognized that he and the Brotherhood were creating a dictatorship. Morsi forgot that his slight edge at the polls signaled a hugh secular population that wasn’t buying the Brotherhood Party line. That error proved fatal. The vast majority did not want Egypt to turn into Iran.
This one year trial of democracy proves a vital point. Whether Christian, Buddhism, Muslim, or whatever, the imposition and domination of one religious position on a state produces the worst form of government possible. Just look at Iran today. Remember the Medieval period when the Roman Catholic Church dominated Europe and produced the Inquisition? America began as a rebellion against exactly what Mori had in mind. The people of Egypt saw it coming and threw the Brotherhood and Morsi out the back door. Egyptian women didn’t want the Iranian police force arresting them for not wearing veils and dresses to their ankles (which the Iranians enforce right now). The creation of theocracies ends up with despotism of the worst sort.
To put the army’s role in perspective, imagine what it would be like if the Amish suddenly took over America and demanded everyone ride in horse drawn carts while all men wore beards and woman dressed in 1880’s length dresses? Would you sit still if the police invaded your home to make sure of your compliance? While this example sounds abrupt, it reveals the blunders of where the Morsi government was going.
Was it a coup? Of course, it was. But the military recognized the Brotherhood would whip up religious emotion and fanaticism if they didn’t act swiftly and muzzle the Brotherhood’s TV stations. The problem with all religious extremist is they run off of raw emotion, but have no long range view of the future or are able to appreciate the varying perspectives of other groups. We have seen terrorists killing innocent people across the entire Middle East because they think only in the limited terms of their own group. The Egyptian military has saved the country from what the Brotherhood would have done.
Is the violence over? No. The fighting will undoubtedly intensify. Probably the once banned Brotherhood will go underground again with terrorist acts to follow. But for the moment their intentions and have been revealed and cancelled.
Dr. Robert L. Wise 