A Witness Unto Death:

Bodies of Christian Martyrs Returned to Egypt

Barnabas Fund

Last week the bodies of the 20 Egyptian Christians martyred by Islamic State (IS) in Libya in 2015 were returned to Egypt. This is a very poignant reminder of IS’s activities, their systematic killing and their brutality. A total of 21 people were beheaded by IS including one Ghanaian. According to a video of the incident posted by IS, the martyred wore orange jumpsuits and were brutally murdered at a beach location in Sirte, an IS stronghold at the time. Their bodies were recovered when the area was recaptured from IS in October last year and eventually forensically identified by doctors.

These 20 were among the many displaced Egyptians who risked their lives trying to find work in an increasingly lawless and chaotic Libya, in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall in 2011. Many hundreds of Christian families have since fled their homes in North Sinai in Egypt, fearing for their lives after IS issued death threats against all Christians in the region early in 2017.


 
Many Christians will have been moved by Foxe’s Book of Martyrs account of martyrdoms such as Tyndale, who was strangled and burnt at the stake, in obedience to Christ during the Reformation. It is difficult to imagine their suffering and faithfulness “unto death” (Revelation 2:10) in the Western church today, where Christians still enjoy relatively unrestricted freedom of belief and worship. The notion of “sacrifice” as part of Christian life has become abstract and perhaps more connected with giving up time, money, resources or personal comforts in Christian service.

Egyptian Christians often call martyrdom a “second baptism”.

Letter From America (To All Of Us)

Dear Christians in America . . . 

Get Off Your Couch of Languid Ease

Matt Walsh
TheBlaze

You don’t expect these sorts of stories to get a lot of attention, but that doesn’t make it any less outrageous when they’re ignored.

A few days ago, 29 Christians were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Egypt.  This follows the Palm Sunday attacks on Coptic churches that killed almost 40 people, which were themselves just another in a never ending string of brutal assaults on Egyptian Christians, and all Christians throughout North Africa and the Middle East, by Islamists. But the most recent incident was particularly notable for two reasons:

First, the timing. It came just days after the Manchester bombing, and it killed more people, yet it received considerably less than 1/100th of the coverage. There isn’t any acceptable explanation for why the continued eradication of Christians can rarely seem to break into the headlines, yet any terror attack in a European city will be the only thing we talk about for days. I understand why attacks against Americans will obviously receive more attention in America, but why should attacks on the French or the English spark more of our ire than the systematic martyrdom of our Christian brothers and sisters a little further to the east?

There really is no answer to that question that isn’t horrible.

Soft-Rebellion in China

Learned Lessons From Israelite Midwives

We have blogged before about the evil's of China's One Child Policy.  The unintended consequences of this perversity are legion, with many downstream unforeseen consequences.  But now, it seems as if millions of parents in China just thumbed their noses at the authorities.

China's 'missing' girls: The millions hiding from the one child policy
By Debra Killalea
NZ Herald

Researchers may have found millions of women and girls who were believed to be missing across China.  It was estimated that between 30 and 60 million girls were "missing" in the world's most populous country, with many believing they were either killed before or after birth simply because of their gender.  But new research suggests 25 million girls do actually exist after all and didn't appear on government records because they simply weren't registered.  The findings raise the possibility that the country's serious gender imbalance is not as severe as previously believed.

Of course these numbers are not "hard".  They are estimates, and to that extent, speculative.  But assuming there has been an underground resistance to the One Child Policy, it seems as if Chinese citizens have linked themselves to a very noble tradition indeed.

Letter from Israel (About Persecution of Christians in Egypt)

Violence Against Egypt’s Christians Escalates

Breitbart Jerusalem

(AFP) – Violence against Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian minority, one of the largest and oldest groups of Christians in the Middle East, has escalated at an alarming rate in the last several weeks, with little official response.

Since late May, Christians in Egypt have been the victims of at least a dozen sectarian attacks, and activists and politicians say the government has done little to stop it, despite Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s early overtures to the Coptic community and their staunch support of him.  “It is escalating in a very short time,” said Mina Thabet, programme director for minorities and vulnerable groups with the Egyptian Commission of Rights and Freedoms.

Among the assaults was one in late May on an elderly Coptic woman in Minya, who was stripped, beaten and paraded naked because of a rumour that her son was having a relationship with a Muslim woman. Seven homes in the town were set ablaze.  Victims said the police response was late and insufficient.

Sectarian tensions heated up even more on June 30, three years to the day after the beginning of the protests that led to the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, when a Coptic priest was gunned down in Al Arish, North Sinai in an attack claimed by the IS group. The group accused the priest of “waging a war against Islam”.  As gruesome as that attack was, the majority of the incidents have not taken place in the IS stronghold in northern Sinai, but in the Governorate of Minya, which is nestled along the Nile river about 250 kilometres south of Cairo.

Christian capital

Minya has the highest concentration of Christians in Egypt, with some estimates as high as 50 percent of the population there.

Egypt Back to the Future

Moving the Deck Chairs

The Muslim Brotherhood proved to all who were paying attention that it saw democracy as a tool to achieve totalitarian control of Egypt.  It had no compunction about overriding minority groups once it gained majority control.  The Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated that it is ideologically committed to just one, open election. 

Once it was handed the reins of government, the rights of opposition and minority parties were to be forever curtailed and reduced, leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in a position of command and control. The Muslim Brotherhood has the same kind of commitment as Hitler and the Nazi's to democracy in Germany in 1933--a useful way to gain power, as a stepping to dictatorial control.

Islam as a religion requires some variant of "command and control" government.

The West and Islam

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

We published recently on the small matter of gang rape in Egypt, here.  The occasion was evidence of a "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude on the part of the literary set in the UK.  This gets mighty close to a re-run of "Stalin is a good-guy" and "Soviet Communism is a breathtaking advance in human civilization" we saw in the previous century amongst the intellectual and literary sets in both the UK and the US. 

Never, ever let the facts get in the way of a good story--that is the blindness of the Left.  So ridden with (false) ideology they are wilfully self-blinded to what is patently obvious before their face.  Mark Steyn added his clear voice to the purblind lunacy of many on the Left on this matter.

Letter From America (About Egypt)

The Princess and the Brotherhood

For nine decades, Egypt has fled modernity.

By  Mark Steyn

July 5, 2013 7:00 PM

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE           

www.nationalreview.com     

 

After midday prayers on Wednesday, just about the time the army were heading over to the presidential palace to evict Mohammed Morsi, the last king of Egypt was laying to rest his aunt, Princess Fawzia, who died in Alexandria on Tuesday at the grand old age of 91. She was born in 1921, a few months before the imperial civil servants of London and Paris invented the modern Middle East and the British protectorate of Egypt was upgraded to a kingdom, and seven years before Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood.

A long life reminds us of how short history is: Princess Fawzia outlived the Egyptian monarchy, and the Nasserist fascism and pan-Arabism that succeeded it, and the doomed “United Arab Republic” of Egypt and Syria, and the fetid third-of-a-century “stability” of the Mubarak kleptocracy. And she came within 24 hours of outliving the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief, disastrous grip on power. In the days before her death, it was reported that 14 million people took to the streets of Egypt’s cities to protest against Morsi (and Obama and his ambassador Anne Paterson). If so, that’s more than the population of the entire country in the year Princess Fawzia was born. The Mubarak era alone saw the citizenry double from 40 million to 80 million, a majority of which live on less than two dollars a day. The old pharaoh was toppled by his own baby boom, most of whom went for Morsi. The new pharaoh was toppled by his own stupidity. The Muslim Brotherhood waited 85 years for their moment and then blew it in nothing flat.

Becoming Blonde

The Swedenising of Egypt

The Guardian has reviewed a brouhaha that has erupted over some non-PC remarks by novelist, Joyce Carol Oates.  Apparently that particular curmudgeon had the temerity to suggest that there was a causal connection between Islam and violence against women.  Many, apparently, were outraged at the very idea.

Here are the remarks of Oates, as reported in the Guardian:

Author Joyce Carol Oates has sparked a social media ruckus with a series of tweets linking rape culture to Islam, drawing a stream of responses from other writers and users of the site.  Oates is not the first high-profile writer to stumble into the political arena, but her choice of timing, topic and media were particularly incendiary.  Oates's 140-word political tweet-bombs began by remarking: "Something dispiriting about 'Brotherhood' political parties – wonder what it is."  And drove on with "Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic – Egypt – natural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?"

This was a bridge too far for her fellow travellers.   One writer tweeted:

Writer Edward Champion (@drmabuse) replied "80 sexual assaults in one day, @joycecaroloates? Try 720 in one day in the US…"

. . . which amounts to a rather strange kind of moral equivalence.

History Repeating Itself

An Altar to the Lord in the Land of Egypt

Judah was going into captivity.  He would be threshed like wheat by Babylon.  He would experience divine punishment for gross contumacy and rebellion against his covenanted Lord.  But the prophet Isaiah, inspired by God Himself, looks forward beyond the captivity to predict with equal certainty the fall and destruction of Babylon in its turn. Then eventually, Babylon would turn to the Lord and worship Him. 

The prophet holds up Babylon's gods to mockery and ridicule. 

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops;
Their idols are on beasts and livestock;
These things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts.
They stoop; they bow down together;
They cannot save the burden,
But themselves go into captivity.
Isaiah 46: 1-2

Thus a perpetuating pattern is displayed.

The Devil You Know . . .

How's That "Arab Spring" Working Out

We have published several pieces over the months on the "Arab Spring".  This new season was hailed in the West as the first signs of a burgeoning, grass roots move towards liberal, Western-style democracies.  "Look, they are becoming like us," gushed Secretary of  State, Hillary Clinton and her naive boss, President Obama.  The media chorused their agreement with the sentiment and basked in new found hopes. 

The brouhaha only served to demonstrate how profoundly ignorant the Commentariat is of history and of what actually constitutes nationhood.  Nations cannot rise higher or be anything other than what lies in the hearts and minds of its people.  If the people are dependant and of a slavish mentality, they will accept and even welcome authoritarian government.  If the people are predominantly self-indulgent libertines they will insist upon governments feeding and paying for their lusts and sensual indulgence. 

Forms and structures of government do not make a people. On the contrary, unless the government reflects the dominant world-views of the people, it will fall.  So, the big question that Hillary Clinton and her colleagues, along with the chattering classes, never asked was what was the state of the hearts and minds of the people engaging in the "Arab Spring".  They simply naively and grandly assumed that those folk over there are just like us--self-indulgent libertines.

The options in Egypt are fewer and fewer.  The prospects of a military usurpation must be increasing by the day. 

Egypt’s Islamist President Declares State of Emergency as Violence Intensifies: ‘A Complete State of Collapse’

Jan. 27, 2013 4:00pm  

Erica Ritz

The Blaze

CAIRO (TheBlaze/AP) — Shortly after the second anniversary of the revolution that brought Mohammed Morsi to power, the Islamist Egyptian president has declared a 30-day state of emergency in the three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a wave of political violence that has left more than 50 people dead in three days.

Angry and almost screaming, Mohammed Morsi vowed in a televised address that he would not hesitate to take even more action to stem the latest eruption of violence across much of the country.

Secular Achievements

A Better Place in Which to Live

Here is a howler from David Farrar of Kiwiblog--betraying his ignorance of recent history.  He writes:

Countries that don’t separate religion and state almost always are worse places to live  than those countries which do.

So those countries which made a great virtue out of being a-religious such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, the entire Eastern European bloc, and Pol Pot's Cambodia (which modelled its ideology upon the doctrines of leading French Communists) were great places to live.  How anyone could suggest that anyone struggling to survive in the Killing Fields was living in one of the better places in the world beggars belief.  And in the present, those nations which still make a virtue out of secularism such as North Korea, Communist China, Myanmar, and Castro's Cuba remain great places to live?  Try telling that to the thousands in North Korea's concentration camps.  

Whatever planet Mr Farrar lives on, clearly it is not the third rock from the sun. 

To be fair, Mr Farrar was endeavouring to persuade us that the recently adopted Egyptian constitution was a bad deal.  In this we agree.

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.

Long Live the Revolution

 Egyptian Progress

The hot air expended by President Obama's to express thanks and congratulations to President Morsi of Egypt for his stirling work at achieving a cease fire in Gaza had barely dissipated when the same said Egyptian president awarded himself dictatorial powers.  Nice one, Mohammed.

There are two ways the West will respond to this inevitable lurch toward totalitarianism in Egypt.  The first will be to "Mubarakise" Morsi.  The West has had common cause with tyrants and authoritarian dictators in the Middle East for well nigh a hundred years.  It has "overlooked" one or two lapses of niceties in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt so long as these dictators helped advance the global aspirations of Western ideological zealots in their vain attempt to lead the world to salvation.  Consequently, we expect Western nations to agree that President Morsi is a helpful and constructive leader who can be an ally in bringing peace and stability to the Middle East.

The second response will be to see betrayal in Morsi's abrupt termination of Egypt's move towards democracy.

Disappointment

The One Indispensable Nation

The Commentariat is reported to be deeply disappointed by the Arab Spring.  Those poor Arab people have misunderstood our good intentions and our help in throwing out the bad guys.  But since this is just a misunderstanding, we will work harder at clarifying our intentions and good motives.  We will win them over in the end. 

But the Arab Spring has come and gone.  We are now in a fierce hot summer storm of riots protesting against the West in general and the US in particular all across the Muslim world. 

Firstly, let's just note the naive foolishness of the "useful idiots" in the West who actually believed that the Arab Spring would produce Muslims who would think like Western secular post-Christian human rights idealists.  This from the Reuters wire:

Back to Winter

Dud Egyptian Liberals

Francis Fukuyama is sceptical of the much touted Arab Spring.  Looking at Egypt he concludes that nothing much will change as a result of the election.  Fukuyama's "Last Man" apparently has not yet been found in Egypt.  The joyous annunciations of emerging Western secular democracies throughout the Arab world appear to be a bit premature.  A bit hyperbolic. A bit naive.

Here is Fukuyama's survey of the candidates and parties currently heading the pack in Egypt.

Anti-Christian National Cleansing

In Egypt, Christians endure their ‘Kristallnacht’

Charles Jacobs
Republished from Big Peace

Recently Jews in synagogues around the world heard an ancient prophesy about a time of tribulation for the Christians. In the haftarah, the Prophet Obadiah hears G-d warning the Edomites (traditionally a Jewish term for the people who eventually made up the Christian world): “Behold on that day… Your mighty ones to the South will be broken… every man will be cut off by the slaughter…”

How eerily reflective of the moment: Within just the last couple of weeks, the Washington-based Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a “Genocide Warning” for Christians and other religious minorities across the Middle East, and launched a petition urging President Barack Obama to speak up.

The “Arab Spring” seems to be rapidly springing shut on Middle East Christians, most clearly in Egypt

Freedom Blooms in Egypt

Ain't Democracy Wonderful

The Commentariat went into paroxysms of joy when Egypt revolted against Hosni Mubarak.  At last, the people were speaking out.  Elections would be held that would turn Egypt into a modern democracy and where the "will of the people" would produce a "Western style" democracy, where Egypt looked and acted like the Auckland City Council.  The ignorance and naivety of our chattering classes left us laughing and breathless.

It has become clear what we expected all along.  Parties which are consistently and seriously Islamic hold the clear majority.  Eventually, a democratically elected government (if allowed to form and exist by Egypt's military) will take authoritarian control of that country.  Here is a briefing on what is emerging at the grass roots of Egypt's polity:

That's Not What We Meant At All

Egypt Rolled Up in a Western Ball

The chattering classes and the commentariate in the West got all excited over "people power" in Egypt. Strutting about like modern Bonapartes they pontificated on how the folk "over there" were just like "us". All along they wanted the same things: justice, freedom, human rights and a big caring government to wipe your nose and tuck you up in bed each night. They pulsated and ululated. This was it. The new world order was coming. Universal peace was breaking out as they spoke.

Now the reality. This from the Assyrian News Agency. (It is being picked up by other outlets, including National Review Online)

Assyrian International News Agency
Nearly 4000 Muslims Attack Christian Homes in Egypt, Torch Church
Posted GMT 3-5-2011 4:20:16

(AINA) -- A mob of nearly four thousand Muslims has attacked Coptic homes this evening in the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, and torched the Church of St. Mina and St. George. There are conflicting reports about the whereabouts of the Church pastor Father Yosha and three deacons who were at church; some say they died in the fire and some say they are being held captive by the Muslims inside the church.

Witnesses report the mob prevented the fire brigade from entering the village. The army, which has been stationed for the last two days in the village of Bromil, 7 kilometers from Soul, initially refused to go into Soul, according to the officer in charge. When the army finally sent three tanks to the village, Muslim elders sent them away, saying that everything was "in order now."

A curfew has been imposed on the 12,000 Christians in the village.

This incident was triggered by a relationship between 40-year-old Copt Ashraf Iskander and a Muslim woman. Yesterday a "reconciliation" meeting was arranged between the relevant Coptic and Muslim families and together with the Muslim elders it was decided that Ashraf Iskander would have to leave the village because Muslims torched his house.

The father of the Muslim woman was killed by his cousin because he did not kill his daughter to preserve the family's honor, which led the woman's brother to avenge the death of his father by killing the cousin. The village Muslims blamed the Christians.

The Muslim mob attacked the church, exploding 5-6 gas cylinders inside the church, pulled down the cross and the domes and burnt everything inside. Activist Ramy Kamel of Katibatibia Coptic advocacy called US-based Coptic Hope Sat TV and sent an SOS on behalf of the Copts in Soul village, as they are presently being attacked by the mob. He also said that no one is able to contact the priest and the deacons inside the burning church and there is no answer from their mobile phones.

Coptic activist Wagih Yacoub reported the mob has broken into Coptic homes and has called on Copts to leave the village. "Terrorized Copts have fled and some hid in homes of Muslim neighbors," he added.

Witnesses said the mob chanted "Allahu Akbar" and vowed to conduct their morning prayers on the church plot after razing it.  (Hat Tip: NZ Conservative)

This does not appear to be an isolated incident.   Nina Shea writing in National Review Online adds: 

I also received a message from a Coptic friend that this week members of the Muslim Brotherhood, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” stormed a Christian school on Thabit Street in downtown Asyut and attempted to take it over. Egyptian security forces, including an army unit, intervened and routed out the Brotherhood members. The school had been built by Presbyterian missionaries in the early 1900s, and is now directed by Presbyterian Pastor Naji. Christian leaders from this southern area expressed a deepening sense of insecurity as the Muslim Brotherhood emerges from the underground.

This incident follows separate brutal attacks by armed forces using heavy machine-gun fire against two monasteries, ostensibly for zoning problems, on February 23. Compass Direct, an American-based Christian news agency, reported that one monk and six church workers were shot and wounded when the Egyptian Army attacked the Coptic Orthodox Anba Bishoy Monastery in Wadi Al-Natroun, 110 kilometers north of Cairo, in order to destroy a wall monks had built to defend their property from raiders. On the same day, it reported that, in a similar incident, the army also attacked the Anba Makarious Al Sakandarie Monastery in Al Fayoum, 130 kilometers southwest of Cairo. Under an Egyptian law carried over from Ottoman times, state permission is required to build or repair church property and such permits are rarely issued.

There are growing concerns that Egypt’s 10 million or so Coptic Christians are being targeted under the cloak of political chaos during these uncertain times. A friend reports that the local Egyptian police have abandoned their posts in the provinces and thus many churches no longer have armed guards protecting them as they did following the al-Qaeda-inspired church bombing of New Year’s Day in Alexandria.

Egypt’s army is one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.
— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

T.S. Eliot captured so brilliantly the banality of Western civilization in its unbelief.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.'
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

The West presumes to tell us all. It has squeezed the universe into a ball and rolled it to the overwhelming question, whether it is "peace in our time" or "justice for all".   It projects its own false image upon humanity, only to find--in great perplexity--that the reality is far different.  The commentariate is left stuttering, "That is not what we meant at all."  

Napoleon's Modern Descendant

Human Rights Now!

The Obama administration is being hammered by the right wing for the wrong reasons. The right wing remains wedded to the idolatrous notion of American exceptionalism, which elevates a nation-state to the status of a demi-god.

Senator McCain, long an advocate of US military adventures abroad, has been excoriating President Obama for not instituting a "no-fly" zone in Libya. The reason why the US must do this? Gaddafi is acting like a tyrant, killing his own citizens. The US as the world's saviour and avatar of a free, just, secular humanity must do something. Anyone who thinks otherwise is, well, non-patriotic. They do not idolise the US enough.

But this folly is not just the preserve of the right. The left wing also has been calling for US military intervention. Senator John Kerry, one of the most liberal, even radical Progressives, has been urging the President to reconsider and remember the duty and obligation of the United States to establish, protect, and preserve human rights around the globe. This is what we mean by the US being elevated to the position of a demi-god. Meanwhile, He Who sits in the heavens laughs. His glory will not be served by American idolatry.

Full marks to President Obama for circumspection. Not that he has much choice. His Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates has publicly acknowledged that the US military is overcommitted now. It cannot afford to get involved in another conflict. At last the bloody beast has appeared to reach its limitations. For this we are very thankful.

Fortunately there are other voices, on both right and left which have a far less jingoistic cast. They are far more studied, measured, and realistic. One such voice is Bernard Lewis, recently interviewed by David Horowitz. Lewis is arguably the doyen of Western scholars with a profound knowledge of political Islam. His message: don't try to engineer Western style democracies in the Middle East. All that will do is facilitate Islamic fundamentalist power and control. This by Candace de Russy, at Breitbart:

In an extensive conversation with ex-leftist, now prolific conservative writer and consummate activist David Horowitz, the renowned Islamic scholar Lewis, 94, recently expounded on the root cause of the region-wide eruption of protests, and urged the West not to press for a fast and fitful rush by Arab countries toward Western-style elections.

Bernard Lewis

“The Arab masses,” he says, “are not ready for free and fair elections.”
At the heart of the upheaval, according to Lewis – perhaps best known for his history of the Ottoman Empire – is the Arab peoples’ pervasive sense of injustice suffered at the hands of “the sort of authoritarian, even dictatorial regimes, that rule most of the countries in the modern Islamic Middle East.” These regimes “are a modern creation,” whereas “the pre-modern regimes were much more open, much more tolerant.”
He predicts that hastily held, Western-style elections would bring about “a dangerous aggravation” of the abysmally poor peoples’ anger and resentment, which radical Islamic organizations would be well positioned to exploit. In particular, the Muslim Brotherhood “is a very dangerous, radical Islamic movement. If they obtain power, the consequences would be disastrous for [in the case he cites] Egypt.”

As an alternative to such elections, Lewis advocates that the West back the gradual development of local, self-governing institutions, in accord with the Islamic tradition of “consultation,” for which there is a strong tradition in the region. Citing historical events and political literature in the Islamic period, he observes that this pre-modern system was entirely opposed to authoritarian or absolutist rule. Indeed, the sultans had to consult with many groups whose authority sprang from within and not from the state.

Pre-modern or contemporary, women are one group that has not figured in the self-governing formula. Lewis, forceful on this point, quotes a late 19^th century Turkish observer:

We fell behind the West because of the way we treat our women … [Thus] we deprive ourselves of the talents and services of half the population … we submit the early education of the other half to ignorant and downtrodden mothers …[further,] a child who grows up in a traditional Muslim household is accustomed to authoritarian, autocratic rule from the start. I think the position of women is of crucial importance.

In sum, mindlessly pushing for an immediate, Western-style general election is “a dangerous fallacy which can only lead to disaster.” Better to “let them do it their way by consultative groups.”

In the case of Eqypt, the airing of Lewis’s views is especially timely. The country’s military rulers, paving the way for elections to be held in just four-to-six months, have proposed a slew of constitutional changes that are being disputed by various factions.

Is “instant democracy” a viable policy in the Mideast? Odds are, no.

We note in a final thought that the French dictator, believing that his destiny was to free mankind to enjoy "liberty, equality, and fraternity", sought to "liberate" the Middle East. He failed, retreating with desperate measures that involved murdering 800 of his own wounded soldiers that would slow his retreat. Such things happen when you make an idol of human rights. Napoleon's modern heir would do well to be warned.