"They broke into six police stations in Minya and stole all the weapons," the governor said, describing the events of last August. "They burned 14 churches completely. And they burned four prosecution offices and courts, and they attacked the Mallawi Museum and stole all the antiquities. This was an American plot to turn Egypt into a new Syria, or a new Libya, or a new Iraq. This is the democratic America?"In the comments, Sharifa Zuhur addresses the author:
Through my translator, I asked the governor to clarify who was responsible for the burned churches.
"It was Obama," he said. "And all of the American politicians who have divided all of the world. They are the only people who supported the Muslim Brotherhood, because they knew that the Muslim Brotherhood would destroy all of Egypt." ...
"Truly their [the Muslim Brotherhood's] numbers weren't more than 2 percent of the population. But they were assisted by gangs and criminals, by those who live in the desert. The Muslim Brotherhood gave them money, and they also had money from Qatar—which is funded through America—and they tried to ruin Egypt."
To the author: if you do NOT understand what has been going on in Egypt, and do NOT fully understand the perspective of your interviewee, then for heaven's sakes, don't superimpose your incoherent understanding of the events of last August in Menya, on its governor. You wrote: "It's difficult to understand exactly what happened in Minya last August, but the violence probably reflected frustration more than hatred." Sir, a policeman was lynched and tortured, a physician refused to treat him, a Christian man was tortured, then buried, and then dug up to be dragged around the town again - churches were burned and all of this did reflect 'frustration,' but murderous hatred.Now here's Tera Dahl at Breitbart:
The governors' references to Obama and the United States apparently baffled you, but most Egyptians reading the Western press currently believe that the U.S. govt., and many NGOs and Washington think tanks, as well as the NYT, WaPo, etc. had decided that the Muslim Brotherhood, as "moderate Islamists" were deserving of the West's support and the correct inheritors' of the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian (Ennahda is an MB movmt), Yemen (Islah is an MB movement), Syria (Morsi was a host of a jihad forum on Syria and people feared he would involve Egypt's military there. The West's obvious lobbying to support the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood in the name of 'democracy' is interpreted as dismay that carefully crafted programs going back for many years would undo this "plan." Whether you agree or not, respect your subject sufficiently so as to inform. Most of the death sentences were issued in abstentia & you even misunderstood his joke - "the comedy break" was Morsi.
Having spent an extensive amount of time in Egypt since the removal of President Morsi last June, I can say with confidence that “anti-American sentiment” is currently at a dangerously high level, but not for the reasons many in the press cite. The animosity stems from America’s policies of not backing the Egyptian people and their war on terrorism. ...UPDATE
There is a clear campaign in the Western media and in many Western think-tanks and policy organizations to turn the Egyptian military into the enemy and the terrorist organization of the Muslim Brotherhood into the innocent, democracy-loving victims. This narrative is deceitful and needs to be countered. The Egyptian military is America’s ally and has been since 1973, and the Muslim Brotherhood is America’s enemy. The Egyptian military is fighting against terrorism; America fights against terrorism. America and Egypt are fighting the same enemy with the same ideology that killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, thousands of Americans in Iraq, and is still killing our troops in Afghanistan today ...
Michael J. Totten has another perspective:
American politicians didn’t support the Muslim Brotherhood so much as they were duped by the Muslim Brotherhood and their apologists into believing the organization is moderate.Read the whole thing at the link.
Okay, yes, the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate compared with Al Qaeda, but so what? That hardly tells us anything useful. Benito Mussolini was moderate compared with Adolf Hitler. The Ku Klux Klan is moderate compared with the Spanish Inquisition. Fidel Castro is moderate compared with Pol Pot. Vladimir Putin is moderate compared with Ivan the Terrible. Colombia’s FARC is moderate compared with Peru’s Shining Path. But none of those individuals or organizations are moderate in any real sense of the word. The word “moderate” in American English generally refers to conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, not the likes of Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin. And not—not really—to the Muslim Brotherhood either.
President Obama and his advisors truly believed that if they reached out a hand to the Brothers that Islamist hostility to the United States would diminish, at least among the relative “moderates.” They believed the same thing about Russia and Vladimir Putin and to this day think the same about the Islamic Republic regime in Iran. They’re missing that hostility toward the West is based primarily on a rejection of Western ideas and culture. The Mr. Nice Guy routine that plays well in Berlin, Paris, and Ottawa fails utterly in Moscow and Cairo. It might work in Tehran when the Islamic Republic regime is no more, and it will work wonders in Havana when the Castro regime is out of power, but the only time it works with ideological hostiles is when a greater enemy that threatens us all must be confronted. (Recall the American alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.)
Americans suckered by the Muslim Brotherhood should have known better. ...
