Poisonous Green Shoots

The Egyptian Spring Unveiled

Constitutions of nation states serve as the highest, or entrenched law of the land.  The constitution cannot be discarded or changed by an act of Parliament or Congress.  Rather, the legislative and executive and judicial branches of government are bound by the precepts and governing arrangements laid out in a constitution.

In order to function effectively as a limit to state power and a protector of the civil rights of subjects, the governing powers and the law courts need to submit themselves to the constitution.  The ultimate defender and enforcer of sanctions upon those who violate a constitution is "we the people".  It is for this reason that the recently adopted Egyptian constitution will be an abject failure.  In the plebiscite held to adopt the constitution, 60 percent approved it, but only 30 percent voted which implies that the brand new Egyptian constitution enjoys not more than 18 percent national support.

The Egyptian constitution, then, is an irrelevance.
  The whole exercise has been a charade to enforce the grip of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood upon the nation.  Richard Spencer, writing in The Telegraph from Cairo, explains why it has been a charade:

Among the many charges levelled against the constitution by both human rights groups, secular and liberal activists, and the Coptic Christian minority, is that its defence of basic freedoms is heavily curtailed when it comes to religion and politics. Specifically, it will forbid any law that would permit anything deemed insulting either of people or of religion, the Prophet Mohammed or the other figures considered by Islam to be God's messengers. Such a clause could clearly have a chilling effect on free thinking and speech.

How chilling? Well, here is a case in point:

When Alber Saber's mother called police to protect him from a mob baying for his blood, something odd happened: they arrested him. They then threw him in prison, encouraged his cellmates to attack him, and finally took him to court where he was jailed for three months. . . .

The mob in his Cairo suburb accused him of atheism and disrespect of the Prophet Mohammed, and demanded he be killed; a neighbour had alleged he had posted to his Facebook page the now notorious Islam-mocking video that triggered protests across the world in September. His mother, Kariman Ghali, cries frequently as she describes visiting him in prison the day after the mob surrounded their apartment block."He had blood all over his T-shirt," said Mrs Ghali, who claims her son was put in a wing reserved for dangerous inmates. "The policeman told the prisoners, 'This guy insulted the Prophet, I want to see what you can do with him.' Someone stabbed him with a razor." He was then taken to another cell where the inmates were urged to see if they could outdo the first set.

This, dear readers, is what the naive Western Commentariat hailed as the Arab Spring--the dawning of a new era of freedom and prosperity for the Middle East. Our leaders, our media and our public intellectuals are simpletons.  There is no other word for it.  What has led them to such foolishness?  Two things.  Firstly, almost to a man they have agreed that religion is an irrelevance to public life and the civic square.  Secondly, they believe it to be axiomatic that democracy is a form of government which always serves to redeem people from oppression.

Anyone with a scintilla of understanding of humanity and how human beings actually behave knows that these two precepts are false.  Even a child would have known that the "Arab Spring" was really the passing of absolutist tyranny from one set of hands to another.  The only ones gulled into thinking otherwise were the stupid people that govern us and their cheerleaders.

The former regime's torture chambers have now been re-opened and by all accounts are doing a roaring trade.

A chilling report recently published in the Egyptian newspaper, al-Masry al-Youm, reveals that the torture chambers once utilized by the Hosni Mubarak regime to tamp down protesters are being put to the same if not greater use by the country’s new, self-proclaimed dictator, Mohammed Morsi.

Despite the Obama administration and worldwide media’s insistence that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood leader was a watershed moment for democracy in the Middle East, it would seem those hopes are on a rapid downward trajectory as reports of savage beatings and brutality against Egyptian protesters, abound.

This disturbing revelation came to light just days ago when an al-Masry al-Youm reporter, with the help of a Brotherhood-owned and operated television station, was given an exclusive tour of the torture chambers. While one might think the decision to grant a journalist access to such a chilling look into the way the Muslim Brotherhood treats its critics as counter-intuitive, it makes perfect sense. After all, what could possibly ever serve as better warning for those even thinking of resisting Morsi’s push for a totalitarian regime based on sharia law than to know what will happen to them if they do?

Al-Monitor reports that the central torture chamber is located near the Ittihadiya Palace, just opposite the gates facing the Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz Mosque. The street is reportedly “secured with a cordon and iron barriers, where the Central Security Forces (CSF) barr any and all access without the authorization of the Brotherhood.  During the three-hour visit, the al-Masry reporter explained that “protesters suspected of working against the Muslim Brotherhood are tortured and beaten with the knowledge of the police before being handed over for formal detention.”

Al-Monitor provides an English translation of the al-Masry reporter’s account:

We entered the chamber with a great difficulty, after a fellow journalist from the Misr 25 TV channel facilitated. The channel is owned by the Brotherhood. There are brigades and police officers in military uniforms, as well as others in civilian clothes from al-Nozha police station, who oversee the beatings, whippings and torture. Fifteen others from the group, distinguished by their strong bodies, are supervised by three bearded and well-dressed men who decide who will be in the chamber and who may leave, even if the person is a member of the Brotherhood.
The torture process starts once a demonstrator who opposes President Mohammed Morsi is arrested in the clashes or is suspected after the clashes end, and the CSF separate Morsi’s supporters from his opponents. Then, the group members trade off punching, kicking and beating him with a stick on the face and all over his body. They tear off his clothes and take him to the nearest secondary torture chamber, from which CSF personnel, members of the Interior Ministry and the State Security Investigations Services (SSIS) are absent.

While perhaps not shocking to those who have long known of the Brotherhood’s penchant for violence and history as the parent of all major Islamic extremist groups (including al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, et al), the accounts are heartrending nonetheless. The torture was conducted right before the al-Masry reporter’s eyes in the hopes that he would share the information with fellow Egyptians as a warning. . . .

Will the Egyptian army once again intervene?  Maybe.  But if so, it will be one thuggish organization taking over from another.

The ultimate cause of Egyptian absolutist tyranny is Allah, the idol god of Islam, feared and revered by almost all Egyptians.  Allah is like Baal of old--the god of absolute state power.  Those who believe genuinely and seriously are committed to institutionalising Allah's absolute rule in everything.  His servants have license to oppress and force compliance at every turn.  The peace of Islam is the peace of enforced subjugation.

Allah's ultimate temple is the state, but as the account above shows--the mob tyrannising opponents and those who disagree also serves Allah's purpose. 

It remains true that the greatest enemy of Islamic peoples is Islam itself.  The greatest bloodshed of Islamic peoples will continue to be at the hands of other Muslims.  It is for this reason that, for our part, we must continue to pray the Lord Jesus that He would have mercy upon Islamic peoples and deliver them from the darkness and tyranny under which they labour.  In their dark, savage oppression may they see the light of His rising.