Monday, June 27, 2011

In Egypt, stealthy campaign underway for big Islamist wins in parliamentary elections later this year

And the beat goes on. The Muslim Brotherhood continues to gain strength alongside several other Salafi groups. I foresee a coalition of the most radical groups taking control of Egypt after the September elections. The Salafis and Brotherhood are the most organized and well financed political entities in Egypt. While well meaning, the freedom and democracy groups are unorganized and inexperienced politically. Additionally, their idea of democracy still includes whatever form of government to be subject to Sharia law, similarly to the way Iran operates, and the rest of the "secular" Islamic world is moving.

As bad as Mubarick and company were, at least they were rational enough to play ball with the West and not make Jihadi waves. The new boys in town are another story and are driven by the Islamic need to dominate the world.


FROM JEWISHWORLDREVIEW.COM:


Jewish World Review June 27, 2011 / 25 Sivan, 5771

In Egypt, stealthy campaign underway for big Islamist wins in parliamentary elections later this year

By Hannah Allam

Strategy of how the West's worst fears will materialize

cAIRO— (MCT) Baheyya Ali, 65, nudged her way through a crowd that had gathered one recent evening to watch men with bushy beards heave cooking-gas canisters off a truck in a densely packed, trash-strewn Cairo neighborhood.

Her eyes widened when she learned that the men, Islamists from Egypt's conservative Salafi movement, were selling the cans for less than a dollar each, a deep discount from the usual price. She cursed the middlemen at state distribution centers who jack up the prices fivefold, and complained that the inflated price of cooking gas and other goods means she can't afford her medicines.

"Where's the revolution?" Ali muttered. "Where's the youth revolution?"

"Here it is," one of the Salafis told her gently, gesturing to the truckload of cheap fuel. She joined her neighbors in praising the men for easing their burden.

That scene from the hardscrabble Talbiya district is playing out in dozens, probably hundreds, of other teeming Egyptian neighborhoods where conservative Islamists are in charge of "popular committees," the ad hoc groups that have formed to guard citizens' interests in the bumpy transition since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Islamist leaders say the work is simply charity, a formalization of their long-standing service projects.

But moderate and liberal political rivals consider the Salfis' charity to be part of a stealthy campaign for big Islamist wins in parliamentary elections later this year, and the Islamists themselves acknowledge inspiration from the electoral successes of other regional Islamist factions with charity wings: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, for example.

"We live among the people," boasted Ashraf Naguib, a database programmer who's part of the Talbiya committee. "The liberals and secularists just talk on TV and in the media, in their air-conditioning. They don't feel the people," he added, echoing the Islamist complaint that their "Westernized," moderate political opponents spend more time on Facebook than in the streets.

An Islamist-dominated Egyptian government is a nightmare scenario for the U.S., which plied Mubarak with billions of dollars to keep regional stability and uphold the peace treaty with Israel.

Article continues HERE.