Egypt's Islamists And The Military Clash In Standoff

Things are heating up in Egypt, and not in a good way.

After the ruling military junta disqualified their candidates in the coming presidential election, the leaders of Egypt's Islamist dominated parliament demanded that the current junta picked cabinet step down in favor of a cabinet appointed by the parliament.

Things heated up with street protests after Friday's sermons at th emosques to the point where one of th e4protesters was killed outside of Egypt's Ministry of Defense. Others were injured as supporters of the army clashed in street fights with the Islamists.

In response,Parliament Speaker Saad el-Katatni of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party announced that parliament was suspending sessions for a week to protest the ruling military junta's failure to dismiss the present cabinet and allow the Islamists to pick a new one of their choosing.

"It is my responsibility as speaker of the People's Assembly (parliament) to safeguard the chamber's dignity and that of its members. There must be a solution to this crisis," el-Katatni told lawmakers before he adjourned parliament until May 6.

There's a subtext to this that bears looking at. The Islamists and salafist al-Nour party, who are the majority in parliament maneuvered things so that they dominated the 100 member committee charge with writing Egypt's new constitution.

In response, the military junta had a court disqualify the committee and enter 'negotiations' about appointing a new committee more to the junta's liking.

In response, the Islamists rejected the military's economic program, which included badly needed loans from places like the IMF. This could lead to an early decision by the junta to let the Isalmists form a temporary civilian government until elections in June.

Another interesting sidelight is the salafist Al-Nour Party, the second largest in parliament behind the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom And Justice Party.

While al-Nour is allied with Freedom and Justice, the alliance is not without its friction. Al-Nour could be classified as being to the right of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially when it comes to Islam and sharia. Many of them are worried about being absorbed into the Brotherhood, especially since their leader Hazem Abu Ismail was disqualified from running for president by the junta and have now endorsed former Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh for the presidency rather than the Brotherhhood's official candidate, Mohammed Mursi.

It remains to be seen whether Fotouh will get enough votes to split the Islamist/Salafist vote and allow the election of former Arab League head Amr Moussa, a presidential candidate more to the ruling junta's liking.

Egypt Disqualifies 3 Leading Presidential Candidates

Just weeks before Egypt's presidential election, the ruling military junta appears to have struck back at the Islamists.

Egypt's presidential election commission just removed 10 candidates from the ballot...and they include ex-intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Khairat Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, a popular Salifist candidate backed by the al-Nour Party.

If this stands, it makes the presidential election a shoo-in for Amr Moussa, the ex-secretary general of the Arab League known for his anti-Western and anti-Israel views.

What happened here is pretty obvious. The generals would like to avoid open conflict with the Islamists, but they have no intention of giving up their prerogatives and their tax free financial empire. So they cut a deal with Amr Moussa. Dumping Suleiman was just a sacrifice to give this an appearance of fairness and legality.

Shater and Ismail both had a small handle enabling the commission to force them out. In Shater's case, it was the trumped up charges of money laundering and 'terrorism' by the Mubarak regime that put him in prison for awhile. In Ismail's case, it was that his mother somehow obtained dual American-Egyptian citizenship.

It remains to see whether this is going to stand. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party had a second candidate ready in the wings, Mohamed Morsi. And the Salifis have Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. But a change at this point obviously hurts both candidates, the Islamists and Salafis are livid and it remains to be seen whether the military junta is going to be able to pull this switcheroo off.

Muslim Brotherhood Islamists Flex Muscles In Egypt, Warns Military

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhhood and their salafist allies have warned the military junta against trying to stall the Islamist revolution by not removing the current interim government in favor of an Islamist one of the Brotherhood and the salafist's choosing.

The Brotherhood's official political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has been agitating for the interim civilian government appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to be removed immediately since the parliamentary election, which saw the FJP and the even more radical Salafist Al-Nour party win a huge majority

In its statement, the Brotherhood accused the cureent government of being guilty of:

.. the "biggest failure", listing unrest, judicial interference, stalling reforms, fuel shortages and dwindling foreign reserves.

"When we called for the resignation of the government, its head refused, and this was unfortunately supported by the military council," the group said.

"Keeping this government as we approach presidential elections... which raises suspicions over the fairness of these elections, as well as the general decline of affairs, are things we cannot remain silent or patient over," it added.

"If anyone intends to recreate the former corrupt regime with new faces, the people are willing to move in order to revive their revolution and protect their ship from sinking at the hands of people with no sense of responsibility," it said.

What they're essentially doing is warning the generals not to get in the way of what they see as an inevitable takeover of Egypt, subtly reminding them of their strength within the Egyptian military's rank and file and telling them that now is the time to make a deal if they want to remain in the good graces of the coming Islamist regime.

Khomeini did pretty much the same thing to the generals in Iran's military in 1979.

Egypt Erupts In Massive Anti-Government Protests

For the past three days (remember these things always start after Friday prayers when the mullahs and imams whip up the faithful)protesters and Egyptian security forces have been fighting what amounts to a street war in Cairo and elsewhere that has killed at least 10 people.

The police and the army responded to barrages of rocks and molotov cocktails with extreme force, shooting teargas, real bullets and rubber bullets, beating protesters severely with metal batons and dragging them away to waiting police vans.

This comes as Egypt had its second round of post-Mubarak elections. Like the first round, held in the relatively sophisticated cities of Cairo and Alexandria, the vote in the second round appears to have been decisively won by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the even more radical Salafi al-Nour Party.

The Brotherhood claims they got around 40% of the votes, while the Salifists are claiming 35%, an even larger slice than they got before. This round of elections took place in nine provinces, in Islamiyya, Suez and Giza, mainly in the outskirts of the big cities.

The protests are being directed against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and its head Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the de facto transitional rulers of the country. And as I pointed out previously, the ongoing protests are the result of some pretty clever tactics by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The army was formerly seen as heroes by the Egyptian masses because they had pointedly refused to fire on protesters in places like Tahrir Square during the riots against ex-President Mubarak. They're not anymore, because the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have been a major force in gradually fomenting discontent against the army's rule once it became obvious that the army was not quite ready to completely cave in to Islamist rule.

Now, the army is seen as oppressors and the chief obstacle to 'democracy' and it's the Brotherhood and the Salafists who are seen as the heroes, and are gathering in the votes.

There's no question in my mind but that Egypt is going the way of Iran. In fact, back months ago when the usual suspects were babbling away about the wonders of the Arab Spring, I predicted it.

The Egyptian military will be faced with the choice of either standing aside and going along with the Islamists in order to try and preserve their perks or making war on their own people.

This is exactly the same choice the Iranian military was forced to make with Khomeini, an dthey made the devil's bargain to stay out of the way and let him and his followers take over.

In later years, historians will be looking at President Obama's encouragement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists in the same way way they now see Jimmy Carter's encouragement of the same thing in Iran.

As horrible as the above picture looks, just wait until the Brotherhood and the Salafists are running Egypt.

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