Sunday Morning Roundup

Israel: After Iron Dome, Magic Wand.

In the wake of the great success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system, which was able to intercept many of the rockets fired from Gaza at populated areas during Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel is now pushing ahead with the development of Magic Wand, which is supposed to be able to intercept short-range and medium-range rockets.

According to a report in the Boston Globe on Saturday, Israel will test the system in the Negev in the coming days. ...

Egyptian protesters torch Muslim Brotherhood offices.

As enraged demonstrators torched Muslim Brotherhood offices in several Egyptian cities, a defiant Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi defended his recent decree granting himself sweeping powers before a crowd of supporters outside the presidential palace in Cairo Friday.

"Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for," said Morsi. "I have always been, and still am, and will always be, God willing, with the pulse of the people, what the people want, with clear legitimacy" he said from a podium before thousands of supporters. ...

CSP: Andrew Bostom, Diana West and Stephen Coughlin discuss Islamic influence in US policy with Frank Gaffney. Video is 1h34m, at the link.

Bill Federer: Pilgrims faced Muslim terror too.

How to build a political social network. The key ideas:

User-generated opinions
Single units of opinion
User verification
Surfacing and sorting
Open, demographically indexed data

Read the article at the link.

"This book is the source of all evil, and the real catastrophe."

Nonie Darwish at American Thinker:

Could this be the real Arab Spring? This is huge! The Muslim world does not have to blame Pastor Terry Jones anymore for burning the Quran or non-Muslims for desecrating it. They are now in shock over seeing a YouTube post of an Egyptian young man doing the unthinkable on camera: tearing up the Quran and putting it in the trash. ...

If your Arabic is rusty, go to the post for a translation of what he's saying. Hint: It isn't "Allahu akbar."

Islamist Advance

Militant, radical Islam continues to make inroads around the world.

Nigeria: Raids on Christian villages.

Armed gangs attacked Christian villages in northern Nigeria on Saturday, sparking a day of violence in which 37 people died, the military says.

Dozens of men launched attacks on the villages near the city of Jos in the early hours of Saturday.

A military task force deployed and got the situation under control after hours of heavy fighting, officials said.

Muslim herdsmen were blamed for the raids, but their community leaders denied any wrongdoing. ...

Uh-huh.

Obama invites Morsi to US.

President Barack Obama has invited Egypt's newly elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, to visit the United States in September, an Egyptian official said on Sunday, reflecting the new ties Washington is cultivating with the region's Islamists. ...

Sudan constitution to be 100 percent Islamic.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Saturday Sudan's next constitution would be "100 percent Islamic" to set an example for neighboring countries, some of which have seen religious parties gain power after popular uprisings. ...

"And we tell non-Muslims, nothing will preserve your rights except for Islamic sharia because it is just," he said.

London police arrest terror suspect.

London police have arrested a female suspected terrorist, the seventh in a sting operation carried out last week.

The 22-year-old woman was taken into custody on Saturday morning on suspicion of committing, preparing or instigating terrorism.

Five men and another woman ages 18 to 30 were picked up in London last Thursday on similar charges, according to CNN. None of the nationalities or ethnic identities of the suspects were released. ...

I'm not going to speculate (and I don't really care) about the "nationalities or ethnic identities" of the suspects, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make an educated guess about their religious ideology. This is not a belief system that promotes tolerance, open-mindedness, and acceptance of others. It's a fundamentalist, totalitarian cult that seeks to dominate the world by force and threats of violence.

Sexual Assault in Egypt

Maya at Feministing:

Another horrifying sexual assault against a woman journalist in Egypt is spotlighting the epidemic of harassment in the country–as well as the risks lady reporters regularly face across the globe. The attack against Natasha Smith, a British student journalist working on a documentary about women’s rights, during the post-election celebrations this past weekend closely echoes the attacks on Lara Logan and Mona Eltahawy last year. ...

Natasha Smith:

But in a split second, everything changed. Men had been groping me for a while, but suddenly, something shifted. I found myself being dragged from my male friend, groped all over, with increasing force and aggression. I screamed. I could see what was happening and I saw that I was powerless to stop it. I couldn’t believe I had got into this situation.

My friend did everything he could to hold onto me. But hundreds of men were dragging me away, kicking and screaming. I was pushed onto a small platform as the crowd surged, where I was hunched over, determined to protect my camera. But it was no use. My camera was snatched from my grasp. My rucksack was torn from my back – it was so crowded that I didn’t even feel it. The mob stumbled off the platform – I twisted my ankle.

Men began to rip off my clothes. I was stripped naked. Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals.

Hundreds of men pulled my limbs apart and threw me around. They were scratching and clenching my breasts and forcing their fingers inside me in every possible way. So many men. All I could see was leering faces, more and more faces sneering and jeering as I was tossed around like fresh meat among starving lions. ...

Muslim Women News:

Sawfat Hegazy, the pro-Muslim Brotherhood preacher who gave the sermon at Friday’s gathering in Tahrir Square, physically and verbally attacked two photographers covering the day’s events.

One photographer is a French freelancer, the other is a staff photographer for Egypt Independent.

The altercation took place on the side of the stage near Mohamed Mahmoud Street, before the arrival of Morsy, who took the presidential oath and delivered a speech in the square yesterday.

The two women were standing with other photographers and cameramen in the area when they were approached by a man who claimed to be from security, who told them to leave the area. They refused, saying there were many other photographers standing there and they were within a safe distance from the stage. ...

Stop Radical Islam has more.

The Future of Egypt

'My friend is Egyptian, a devout Muslim, a patriot and yet she is preparing a plan B of escape, as so many others here have done, because she fears Egypt is turning into another Iran. ...'

That is MSNBC's Charlene Gubash on the changes she's seeing in Cairo. The analogy to Iran is not idle: she's describing a country that, in living memory, was free and secular. Soon it may be neither.

Gubash continues:

Many felt it was improper to take the oath of office in Tahrir Square rather than before the Constitutional Court. "It's basically very amateurish," said Hisham Kassem, veteran publisher. "He made lots of mistakes to the point you think he's going to be a trial-and-error president... making a promise to hand over Omar Abdul Rahman, the first man to attack the World Trade Center. He will never be released. He is just going to annoy the Americans now," Kassem said.

"[Taking the oath of office in Tahrir] eroded his legitimacy. If he is banking on the street, it's not very savvy, his presidency will collapse in a year if he banks on that," Kassem added.

Thomas Jocelyn at The Standard (via PowerLine) has more:

In a rousing speech in Tahrir Square on Friday, Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, told the crowd that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a follow-on plot against New York City landmarks.

Morsi’s call for Rahman’s return to Egypt was a curveball for all those Western watchers who are looking to brand the new president a moderate. At times, including during his speech on Friday, Morsi does use language that sounds quite conciliatory. But peppered throughout his rhetoric are troubling red flags.

Sheikh Rahman was a longtime ally of Osama bin Laden. The deceased al Qaeda master credited a fatwa authored by Rahman for providing the religious justifications for the September 11 attacks. Rahman has also served as the spiritual guide for Gamaa Islamiya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, both of which are terrorist organizations that have been close allies of al Qaeda for decades.

Morsi’s call for Rahman’s freedom is, therefore, the latest red flag. ...

For more on Morsi's speech, see Al-Jazeera.

The thing I want to emphasize here is that the path to secular liberal democracy is not a one-way street.

Egypt: A Faded, Burdened Country

Michael Totten:

I never believed the uprising and palace coup that overthrew Hosni Mubarak would lead to a liberal democracy in the land of the pharoahs. I doubt Ajami did either. It isn’t what most Egyptians are yearning for, not at this time. And if most Egyptians don’t want it, who could possibly build it? ...

Fouad Ajami has more.