Thanks to a popular website renowned for its sexism and bigotry, this joke of an article has been making its rounds on the internet:
Egypt presidential candidate seeks Constitution based on Sharia Law
Egypt’s Constitution should be based on the Koran and Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement Mohamed Morsi said.
“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.
Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.
“Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood Islamist group has been banned in Egypt for decades before being legalized following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in last year’s popular uprising, and has since emerged as a powerful political force.
The first round of Egypt’s presidential election is scheduled for May 23-24. The presidential campaign starts on April 30 and finishes at midnight on May 21.
The president will be elected for a four-year term.
Apparently fear-mongering over the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is ramping up again like it did at the height of the protests and what’s even more apparent is that the West knows little to nothing about Islam, Shari’a law, or the Muslim Brotherhood. Are they a fantastic political organization? No. Are they al Qaeda? No, and to be clear, which faction of the Muslim Brotherhood are we talking about?
Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party campaigned on Shari’a law being incorporated into Egyptian law but it’s unclear what that necessarily means as of yet because Egypt and its various political parties are still trying to figure out what the country is going to look like post-Mubarak. And then there’s this:
“The final version (of the program) will be broadly acceptable to everyone because the atmosphere has changed, circumstances have changed and the Brotherhood themselves have changed,” Essam al-Erian told Reuters in an interview.
There’s too much currently up in the air and the FJP is one of the most pro-capitalist and pro-foreign investment parties Egypt has seen in awhile. Shouldn’t the United States and the West be ecstatic over that? We hear “Islamist” and start panicking because this anti-Islam sentiment has been hammered into us and hammered into us again for good measure since 9/11 and beyond.
We don’t judge the Muslim Brotherhood or the FJP on the tenets of their policies or politics but by the fact that they’re somehow incorporated with Islam and we know that’s bad. We’re told Islam is everything antithetical to “Western values” and it must be vehemently opposed.
The headlines over the duration of the Egyptian presidential election have featured startling fragments of reality which included words like “Islamist” and “Muslim” to define a single candidate with the content of the articles featuring little to no information on actual policy proposals or campaign platforms. Could anyone derive any substantive information on the Egyptian candidates from the pathetic excuse for journalism we’ve been fed from the Western media? Maybe a miserable handful of articles have let go of some information but all of it has been ingrained with anti-Islamic rhetoric.
I feel pretty grossed out that I’m here even having to defend the FJP but it’s necessary when the West goes on one of its anti-Islam, fear-mongering sprees which only seek to spread disinformation. This needs to stop. This is not substantive criticism of the FJP, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Mohamed Morsi. This type of rhetoric is Islamophobic.
“I have nothing to fear, I only fear God, I am here among you.”
—Egyptian President Elect Mohammed Morsi • Opening his jacket to reveal he was not wearing a bulletproof vest while taking a symbolic oath of office in Tahrir Square in front of throngs of cheering suppoters. A bold move by the first Islamist president-elect, who was defying orders from military generals who were to hold Morsi’s official swearing-in ceremony in front of a high court on Saturday. source (via • follow)
Egypt's New President (Rebloggable by Request)
anonymous asked: should we be worried that the new egyptian president is supported by the muslim brotherhood
Why? Because it has the word “Muslim” in their title?
Egypt’s President-elect, Mohamed Morsi, spent quite a bit of his life in California. He is a graduate of USC and CSU-Northridge. Half of his kids are U.S. citizens who were born in California. He’s, from what we are told, the democratically-elected President of Egypt. If we’re going to call for the democratic process, we must respect the democratic process.
The Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda are two very different entities with very different purposes. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist group, but not a violent one. They call for peaceful, democratic elections in all Islamic countries, which is not what al-Qaeda fights for.
My first lady doesn’t wear a tiara | Transitions
transitions.foreignpolicy.comSince the presidential elections in Egypt a few weeks ago, the new first lady’s choice of headdress has been a constant topic of debate. Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, the wife of president-elect Mohamed Morsi, wears a long, conservative hijab that covers her head and torso. This has opened the door to endless commentary. Some have taken this as inspiration to discuss what her official function should be. Others relentlessly mock her dress (seen as conservative and low-class). Still others indulge in purely islamophobic ruminations about whether a hijabi woman is fit to represent Egypt at international affairs.
That most Egyptian women wear hijab doesn’t seem to factor into those comments. The mockery flared again last week, as charming photos of Mexico’s new young presidential couple, Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife, telenovela star Angélica Rivera, were juxtaposed with those of Egypt’s new first family — and not in favor of the latter.
The most egregious comparison I have seen was sent to me in an email. It included an image titled “From This, to That. No Comment,” and which juxtaposed a rather lousy photograph of Naglaa Ali with one of the late Queen Farida, first wife of Egypt’s last ruling monarch, King Farouk.
This week, Egyptians are marking the 60th anniversary of the military coup on July 23, 1952, that deposed King Farouk. Nostalgia for Royalist Egypt appears to be at a peak. But this longing for an Egypt governed by a foreign dynasty that acted as puppet rulers for the British colonial occupiers is puzzling — especially coming from people who never lived under the Egyptian kingdom.
In the royal era, social polarization reached unprecedented levels: History books refer to the “half-percenters,” the 0.5 percent of the population who were said to control 99.5 percent of the wealth. Farouk was a glutton whose appetite was surpassed only by his appetite for women. So this isn’t just nostalgia — it’s an uninformed rejection of the present.
This rejection, targeting not the political ideas of the new president (with which I personally vehemently disagree) but his wife’s choice of headgear, fails to conceal both islamophobic and classicist discourses. That Naglaa Ali wears the veil may not be as much a problem as is the “style” in she wears it — a style that, let’s say, would not be seen in the upper-middle classes in Egypt.
To her credit, Ms. Ali appears well aware of the challenges regarding her public role. If she creates a large public presence, she will be readily compared to Suzanne Mubarak; if she doesn’t, that will be blamed on her and her husband’s religious beliefs.
A few weeks into her new function, however, she has made herself conspicuous by her absence from President Morsi’s local and international public appearances. Morsi traveled to Saudi Arabia for an umra (a minor pilgrimage) and a meeting with King Abdullah, but she was not in the photographs.
This may not mean much. After all, Mubarak did most of his foreign travel without his wife. She had her own schedule, both domestically and internationally. In effect, then, if the main concern of Ms. Ali’s detractors is Egypt’s image abroad, her behavior so far should allayed their anxieties. Ms. Ali’s own preferences will keep her away from the public eye.
But the fact remains that Ms. Ali’s persona represents Egyptian women more than did her half-Welsh predecessor, Suzanne Mubarak, or the latter’s half-English predecessor, Jehan El-Sadat, and assuredly more than the tiara-wearing former Queen. If you want to judge her, judge her based on her performance in this new assignment — not on her sartorial choices. Pseudo-liberals should know better.
