And then Egypt! Mubarak resigns - Egypt made its Revolution

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

and just think - within that Muslim "democratic" mob, 97 percent of married Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 had undergone forced female genital mutilation.

FGM is not a part of sharia law

who ever said it was?  but it is part of forcing a messed up religious practice on someone else, regardless if it is Muslims doing it or messed up Christians....the point was they have no problem forcing their religion on others

[Хahar 🤔]

and just think - within that Muslim "democratic" mob, 97 percent of married Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 had undergone forced female genital mutilation.

FGM is not a part of sharia law

who ever said it was?  but it is part of forcing a messed up religious practice on someone else, regardless if it is Muslims doing it or messed up Christians....the point was they have no problem forcing their religion on others

The point is that the practice is not religious in nature.

[Lief 🗽]

....the point was they have no problem forcing their religion on others

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

....the point was they have no problem forcing their religion on others

since I do not, and never have, forced my religion on others, please cite example

[2952-0-0]

There's a strong, strictly utilitarian reason for the new government to be on good terms with Israel.

No doubt many Mubarak-era cronies have fled, and there are reports the Mubaraks themselves are preparing to flee. Egypt needs to build a strong relationship with Israel so that they can request the Israelis to dispatch Mossad to do what they did to Eichmann. I'm sure even the vast majority of the Muslim Brotherhood will like this.

Just an idea.

[opebo]

....the point was they have no problem forcing their religion on others

since I do not, and never have, forced my religion on others, please cite example

In fairness, while I do agree that jmfcst's political positions do constitute 'forcing his religion on others', his proposals pale in comparison to the level of intervention preferred by the Muslim majority in Egypt.

[opebo]

'Legitimacy'?  Legitimacy comes from mowing down those who oppose you - as Mao said, more or less -  'power grows from the barrel of the gun'.  As we've seen, failing to have the b**ls to pull your triggers sure enough means you don't have any power.

You're confusing legitimacy with power; there's an important difference.

Not really.  Only in your dreams (and, admittedly, the dreams of a lot of other powerless people).

[Gustaf]

one picture:  Preview of Secular Egyptian Democracy

You do realize that in the context of government secular means religiously neutral, right? Kind of like how 80-85% of the US has a Christian population, but the government itself doesn't (or at least isn't supposed to) advocate the Christian religion? Religious people can support a secular government too, you know.

Excellent point.  But since the vast majority of Egyptians want sharia law, I think your point is rather, shall we say, "pointless", when applied to Egypt.

The poll for that is 60%, right? But that's for the whole country if I'm not mistaken - the demographic makeup of the protesters undeniably includes greater numbers of the young and the educated who would be less prone to supporting traditional ways of thinking. I would imagine that the support for it might be less in those groups, though I couldn't say for certain. So really unless you have the data on the protesters themselves you're just guessing. I am concerned about to what degree Islam will influence the formation of the new government, but I'm not about to make blanket accusations about people just because they happen to pray a lot.


Also, just for everyone to peruse, there's a new poll that was conducted in Cairo and Alexandria on a lot of the issues of concern.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/html/pdf/pollock-Egyptpoll.pdf

Items of note:
1. There is plurality support for having good relations with the US. (36% for vs 28% against)
2. There is plurality support for maintaining the peace treaty with Israel. (37% against annulling it vs 27% for annulling it)
3. Only 15% would say they approved of the Muslim Brotherhood, vs 52% disapproval with 37% strongly dissaproving.
4. On priorities of how the nation is perceived by others, implementation of Sharia law only came to 12%. (NOTE - this is only about priorities, it doesn't speak to actual level of support) The other alternatives were the country being a power that would be "respected and feared" (26%), praised as the first real Middle Eastern democracy (22%), and being open and developed enough to support tourism (17%).

Cairo and Alexandria are likely to be much, much more liberal than the countryside though.

That's the part a lot of people seem to be missing here. The uprising has largely been urban in nature and is probably appealing from a Western perspective in many ways. But in a democracy that group isn't going to be calling the shots. I definitely hope democracy will work in Egypt but I wouldn't bet money on it. We're still to see a functioning Arab democracy and if anything is going to be it, Tunisia looks more likely.

[Middle-aged Europe]

At this point I'm primarily concerned that the military won't be willing to give up power so easily. Egypt's currently led by a man who has been Hosni Mubarak's defense minister for the last 20 years and according to documents released by WikiLeaks, Egyptian military officers like to refer to Tantawi as "Mubarak's poodle". The political influence of any opposition group is still close to zero. This wasn't a revolution, it was a military coup.

[John Dibble]

Cairo and Alexandria are likely to be much, much more liberal than the countryside though.

That's the part a lot of people seem to be missing here. The uprising has largely been urban in nature and is probably appealing from a Western perspective in many ways. But in a democracy that group isn't going to be calling the shots. I definitely hope democracy will work in Egypt but I wouldn't bet money on it. We're still to see a functioning Arab democracy and if anything is going to be it, Tunisia looks more likely.

Certainly a good point. The most important things I think though will have to do with what reforms are actually implemented in the initial stages of this transition. That will significantly influence anything that comes afterward. The protesters seem to have the loudest voice, so let's hope the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Cairo and Alexandria are likely to be much, much more liberal than the countryside though.

Parts of them, maybe. But the extent to which the protests have been those of the urban and educated has been grossly exaggerated by the mainstream Western media. Not that that's unusual, of course.

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Well, yeah. But the big threat isn't the structure of society in Egypt so much as the fact that the regime is still in power, even though the man at the top is gone. I wonder whether things might end up looking like Algeria now or Poland in the 1930s.

[phk]

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

" But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now."

[Gustaf]

Cairo and Alexandria are likely to be much, much more liberal than the countryside though.

Parts of them, maybe. But the extent to which the protests have been those of the urban and educated has been grossly exaggerated by the mainstream Western media. Not that that's unusual, of course.

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Well, yeah. But the big threat isn't the structure of society in Egypt so much as the fact that the regime is still in power, even though the man at the top is gone. I wonder whether things might end up looking like Algeria now or Poland in the 1930s.

Most of the reporting I've seen has said that it's been people from all walks of life and so on, actually. My impression is still that since this has happened in the cities it's likely to be at the very least featuring an overrepresentation of the urban and educated. That is, after all, rather typical of this sort of uprisings.

[Lief 🗽]

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

" But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now."

No, the revolt in Egypt disproves Bush's (and the Neocon's) ridiculous, violent and imperialist argument that the only way to spread political freedom to the Arabs is to bomb them and occupy their countries.

[opebo]

No, the revolt in Egypt disproves Bush's (and the Neocon's) ridiculous, violent and imperialist argument that the only way to spread political freedom to the Arabs is to bomb them and occupy their countries.

It also reminds us that 'political freedom' should not be our goal for foreign peoples anyway.

[Stranger in a strange land]

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

" But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now."

No, the revolt in Egypt disproves Bush's (and the Neocon's) ridiculous, violent and imperialist argument that the only way to spread political freedom to the Arabs is to bomb them and occupy their countries.

The idea that anyone in the Egyptian opposition movement was inspired by Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East, or that the Egyptian revolt is the dividend of said policy, is comical.

[Silent Hunter]

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

" But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now."

No, the revolt in Egypt disproves Bush's (and the Neocon's) ridiculous, violent and imperialist argument that the only way to spread political freedom to the Arabs is to bomb them and occupy their countries.

The idea that anyone in the Egyptian opposition movement was inspired by Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East, or that the Egyptian revolt is the dividend of said policy, is comical.

No, but it may have been an indirect factor in a limited way; by increasing resentment against a pro-US dictator.

[Sam Spade]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/15/60minutes/main20032070.shtml?tag=exclsv

[Beet]

As soon as I saw the story, I came onto Atlas. As soon as I saw it was Sam Spade and he'd posted nothing but a link, I knew what it was, even though I was hoping it wasn't. I think this is definitely a blow to the image of the protesters.

[Frodo]

The Egyptian military hopes to hold elections in as little as six months from now -does anyone think that will provide enough time for secular democratic forces within Egypt to become organized enough to challenge the Muslim Brotherhood on a more equal footing in a nationwide election?  I would assume that the military would see it in their best interest to have a freely elected government that is not dominated by Islamists:

Egyptian Army Says It Hopes For Elections In 6 Months

By REUTERS
Published: February 15, 2011
Filed at 6:08 p.m. ET

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's military has outlined a timetable to hand power to an elected government, insisting it does not want political power in a country where it propped up an authoritarian state for six decades.

The army, praised for overseeing a mostly peaceful revolution, is running into a storm of wage and subsidy demands overtaking pressure for democracy and piling more burdens on an already teetering economy.

Pro-democracy marches have subsided but thousands of workers in banks, textile and food factories, oil facilities and government offices went on strike this week, emboldened by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

"The Higher Military Council expressed its hope to hand over power within six months to a civilian authority and a president elected in a peaceful and free manner that expresses the views of the people," an armed forces statement said on Tuesday.

"The council affirmed that it does not seek power, that the current situation was imposed on the armed forces and that they have the confidence of the people."

The Islamist Brotherhood, which did not play a leading role in the revolution but has been Egypt's best-organized opposition group for many years, said it wanted the military to carry out further steps immediately.

[Verily]

"Best organized" is laughable. The Muslim Brotherhood's political wing is a joke; if it weren't, Mubarak might have actually wanted to shut them down. They were just the noisiest opposition. There is a reason, after all, why the revolution didn't happen sooner--and why the Muslim Brotherhood wasn't leading the revolution when it came.

[Хahar 🤔]

Calm down, jmf.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16islam.html

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Calm down, jmf.

i am calm.  i was simply stating what her rights would be under sharia law, which is not calm.

[Middle-aged Europe]

"Best organized" is laughable. The Muslim Brotherhood's political wing is a joke; if it weren't, Mubarak might have actually wanted to shut them down. They were just the noisiest opposition. There is a reason, after all, why the revolution didn't happen sooner--and why the Muslim Brotherhood wasn't leading the revolution when it came.

I agree. I mean representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood said that they wouldn't be willing to hold any talks with government as long as Mubarak is still president, while other representatives of the movement were in fact meeting with Omar Suleiman at the same time. They were also very indifferent on whether to participate in the anti-government protests. I wouldn't be surprised if the MB offically splits into several competing factions very soon. Mubarak was the only thing that managed to hold the Brotherhood together so far.