A little over a year ago, President Obama called the “Arab Spring” revolutions that began in Egypt a historic opportunity for America “to pursue the world as it should be.”
Obama praised the uprisings that would soon spread to other countries and said the United States should promote “change that advances self-determination and opportunity.”
Earlier this month, when Muslim Brotherhood supporters terrorized the secular media, several Arabic websites—including Arab News, Al Khabar News, Dostor Watany, and Egypt Now—reported that people were being “crucified.” The relevant excerpt follows in translation:
A Sky News Arabic correspondent in Cairo confirmed that protestors belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others. Likewise, Muslim Brotherhood supporters locked the doors of the media production facilities of 6-October [a major media region in Cairo], where they proceeded to attack several popular journalists.
The developments may not be a surprise to critics of the Arab Spring who long expected the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood to revert to its Sharia law-inspired dictatorial ways.
When Morsi, a known Islamist, won the Egyptian election, Obama said the United States would “stand beside” Egypt, despite calls from conservatives for rejecting the election’s outcome.
Obama even went so far as to invite Morsi for an official visit, the first such invitation ever extended by a U.S. president to a Muslim Brotherhood member, although White House officials had met previously with Brotherhood emissaries.
The latest developments should be deeply embarrassing to the Obama Administration.
Raymond Ibrahim, a fellow with the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, said victims can be anyone, including Egyptian Christians.
“It’s anyone who is resisting the new government,” Ibrahim said. “In this particular case, the people attacked and crucified were secular protesters upset because of Morsi’s hostile campaign against the media, especially of Tawfik Okasha, who was constantly exposing him on his station, until Morsi shut him down.”
Ibrahim said extra brutality is reserved for Christians, but the crucifixions are because of Islamic doctrine and are required by the Quran.
Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Clare Lopez issued a warning for Egypt’s Christians and compares the coming treatment of the Christians to the Jews in Germany.
“The Copts must get out of Egypt as soon as possible – for the many millions who will not be able to get out, I expect things will continue to deteriorate – just as they did for Germany’s and Europe’s Jews from the 1930s onward,” Lopez said.
“The warnings were there long before the ghettos and round-ups and one-way train trips to the concentration camps began in the 1940s,” she said.
Far from condemning these acts, Al Azhar, Egypt’s most authoritative Islamic institution, has just issued a fatwa calling for more violence and oppression, saying that “fighting participants in anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations planned for 24 August is a religious obligation.”
It is telling that only a few months ago, and for the first time in Egypt’s modern history, an Egyptian Member of Parliament proposed to institutionalize Sharia’s most draconian punishments—including crucifixion.
In short, under the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, you can expect much worse to come.
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