According to a major survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, adults in Egypt don’t crave Western-style democracy, as pundits have blithely trumpeted throughout coverage of the unrest.
Far from it, the vast majority of them want a larger role for Islam in government. This includes making barbaric punishments, such as stoning adulterers and executing apostates, the law of their country. With the ouster of their secular, pro-American leader, they may get their wish.
Among highlights from the Pew poll:
• 49% of Egyptians say Islam plays only a “small role” in public affairs under President Hosni Mubarak, while 95% prefer the religion play a “large role in politics.”
• 84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith.
• 82% support stoning adulterers.
• 77% think thieves should have their hands cut off.
• 54% support a law segregating women from men in the workplace.
• 54% believe suicide bombings that kill civilians can be justified.
• Nearly half support the terrorist group Hamas.
• 30% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah.
• 20% maintain positive views of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
• 82% of Egyptians dislike the U.S. — the highest unfavorable rating among the 18 Muslim nations Pew surveyed.
This empirical evidence refutes the sympathetic narrative broadcast as a continuous loop in the media over the past fortnight.
Another case of media spinning for Obama, trying to make this not look like a foreign policy disaster in order to protect a weak President.
In its first year, the Obama administration cut funding for democracy and governance programming in Egypt by more than half, from $50 million in 2008 to $20 million in 2009 (Congress later appropriated another $5 million). The level of funding for civil society programs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was cut disproportionately, from $32 million to only $7 million. Though funding levels for 2010 are not yet available, they are expected to show an increase to $14 million, says Stephen McInerny, the director of advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy. He notes that the Bush administration slashed economic aid to Egypt in the 2009 budget but kept the funding for democracy and governance programs constant, while Obama cut funding to those programs in an effort to make the cuts more proportional and under pressure from the American embassy in Cairo.
The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.
[…]The statement was an acknowledgment that any popularly accepted new government will probably include groups that are not considered friendly to U.S. interests, and was a signal that the White House is prepared for that probability after 30 years of reliable relations with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Hamas’s overt intervention in Egypt is an alarming development, although a predictable one. It is worth pointing out that Hamas is not merely colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. That, of course, will not be what you hear from our foreign-policy experts, such as Obama adviser Bruce Riedel, who are busily sculpting their narrative about how the Brotherhood — the font on modern jihadist terror — has renounced violence and is really nothing for us to be very concerned about. But the stubborn fact is that Hamas is the most prominent of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branches, whose operations long predated Hamas and brought Hamas (a/k/a, the Islamic Resistance Movement) into being.
So that’s what’s happening in Egypt… Hamas is moving in to take control, just like Hezbollah controls Lebanon (now). But why now? Why didn’t this happen when George W. Bush was President?
Well, Barack Obama is no George W. Bush.
Let’s review:
Obama insulted our British allies
Obama insulted our Afghan allies
Obama backed Iran’s suppression of pro-democracy protestors
Obama did nothing when Russian tanks rolled through Georgia
Obama did nothing when Hezbollah took over Lebanon
Obama backed the socialist Zeyala in Honduras
Obama met with Chavez, Ortega and Morales and kept silent while they insulted the United States
Obama did nothing while Turkey became increasingly Islamicized
Obama cut funding to democracy and governance programs in Egypt
The circle is now complete. This week Barack Obama truly became what many people believe he was all along, the long lost second term of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
[…]First he criticized the weakened leader of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. Next Obama threatened to emasculate Mubarak’s standing with the Egyptian military by reducing US financial aid if Mubarak didn’t allow the protests and revolution in the streets to continue.
Obama followed up by tacitly signaling that he supports the violent Islamic protests which are backed by the Shariah-compliant extremists of the Moslem Brotherhood, which is the only real opposition party in Egypt to the thirty-year dictator Mubarak. After that, like Carter, Obama showed constant indecision and weakness, which is having the result of undermining our allies and empowering the forces of insanity and evil on the ground in Egypt and other destabilized countries in the region like Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan.
Just like Carter, Obama got us to this point by undermining our only ally in the area, Israel, and empowering all of her regional enemies for the first two years of his presidency. That undermining has led us directly to these out of control events.
At this moment, of the four nations that border Israel, two of them, Syria and Lebanon, are client states of Iran waging constant war and the other two which both have brokered peace are facing internal turmoil, Jordan is facing Islamic protests in her streets and the relatively stable tourist destination Egypt, is exploding in revolution.
The way Obama is handling the Egyptian crisis there can only be one outcome. The Moslem brotherhood will seize total control of the nation and turn the Arab world’s most populace country into a totalitarian Islamic theocracy just like Iran. Egypt’s fall will be a strategic disaster for the US because Egypt borders Israel and controls the vital Suez Canal which connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The Suez is one of the most vital water-ways in the entire world because it is the shipping lane that allows Middle East oil to get to the consumer countries in Europe.
If Egypt falls to this kind of governance total war will quickly come to the Middle East with catastrophic strategic and economic consequences for the whole world.
Strength doesn’t cause wars – weakness causes wars. When you are strong, aggressors know that aggression will cause them plenty. Obama, and his constant apologizing and appeasing and siding with terrorists and dictators, is what REALLY causes wars.
Here’s the video of Nancy Pelosi’s remarks. (H/T Washington Times)
Transcript:
“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.”
She doesn’t want to know where the millions of dollars to fund the mosque came from… she wants to investigate the finances of people who disagree with the mosque. Presumably, this would mean that she wants to investigate the finances of the families of 9/11 victims to see who is funding their opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.
Here’s the response from Debra Burlingame and Tim Sumners, the co-founders of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. (H/T Weekly Standard)
For the last four months, 9/11 families, first responders, survivors and concerned citizens have been asking where developers are getting funding for a $100-million dollar mosque and Islamic center planned for Ground Zero. The imam who is heading the project has refused to identify the source of the $5 million cash that was used to purchase the building, and told an Arab newspaper that he will get funding for the project from Arab and Muslim countries. Given the imam’s statements, that America was “an accessory to the crime” on 9/11, that “Osama Bin Laden was made in the U.S.A.” as well as his repeated refusal to condemn Hamas, we believe he has an obligation to come clean to the public on his financial sources. Our concern has been amplified by news that the imam’s worldwide “Shariah Index Project” is being funded by the Malaysian government, and that he is a principal figure in the Perdana Global Peace Project, the number one funder of the Gaza Flotilla, a violent attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Today we learn that instead of taking our concerns seriously, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that the opponents of the Ground Zero mosque should be investigated. This comment is clearly intended to intimidate those of us who are speaking out to preserve the sanctity of Ground Zero, where more than 20,000 human remains have been recovered, 1,845 in the last five years. We can assure Ms. Pelosi that whatever funds we have spent to get our message out, they pale in comparison to the price we have personally paid since that day, and continue to pay as a result of the mosque project. The vast majority of the American people support us. They lived through September 11 with us, and they know, as we do, that this not a “local issue.” What happened on 9/11 affected all Americans.
WINTERY KNIGHT 