Free Republic

Remember the enemedia's depiction of this jihadist as a "moderate"? I warned readers immediately about the cleric in charge of a nuclear arsenal. Hasan Rowhani is a disciple of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the vicious tyrant of Tehran. He was a senior national security advisor to Khomeini during the brutal war with Iraq that left a million people dead. He served as a top national security advisor to the regime in the 1990s, as well. Iran under Rowhani is a slaughterhouse. And where is the enemedia on this story -- the media that told us what a wonderful moderate he...

Egypt: Morsi supporters open fire at Port Said church Morsi supporters have been attacking Christians, blaming them for the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government. "Masked gunmen open fire at Port Said church," from MENA, July 9: Masked gunmen opened fire at Mar Mina Church in Port Said's al-Manakh early Tuesday and managed to get away, according to state-run news agency MENA. No casualties were reported. Army and police squads arrived at the scene of the attack and efforts are being undertaken to identify the perpetrators. This is the third such attack in 24 hours. Yesterday, unknown attackers assaulted Port...

Egypt’s newly appointed interim prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi is to offer ministerial posts to members of the Muslim Brotherhood and to the hardline Islamist Nour Party, state media said on Tuesday. “There is no objection at all to including members of those two parties in the government,” a presidential spokesman said. The announcement followed el-Beblawi’s appointment as prime minister in a transitional government, as the authorities sought to steer the country to new parliamentary and presidential elections. Adli Mansour, acting head of state since massive demonstrations ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi out of office last week, also appointed former UN...

Here is what Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution had to say about Egypt's coup in a New York Times op-ed: "Now supporters of the Brotherhood will ask, with good reason, whether democracy still has anything to offer them." As much as I loathe the Muslim Brotherhood and the whole Islamist enterprise, it is difficult to imagine any other response among Islamists than this: Our votes don't count. They were voted into office; many Egyptians and the army didn't like the results, so the vote was overthrown. With some important differences -- and not all of them to the credit...

Newsmax Hundreds in Chicago Rally Against Egyptian Coup Monday, July 8, 2013 01:05 PM By: Melanie Batley A video has emerged of hundreds of demonstrators who took to the streets of Chicago Sunday outside the Egyptian Consulate to protest the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president. Morsi was jailed on July 3 when the military seized power and installed an interim government. His election last year followed the Arab Spring of 2011 that ended the longtime authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Under pressure from at home and perhaps especially abroad, the new interim government in Egypt announced a timetable for new elections, which will take place after replacing the current constitution that the Muslim Brotherhood pushed through after winning office in the last elections a year ago. The sequence envisions elections by February, after a four-month process of either replacing or significantly amending the constitution and holding a referendum for approval: Egypt’s interim leadership laid out a fast-track timetable to elect a new president and parliament by early next year, in a move that could ease Western concerns about the future...

In my weekend column in Egypt, I mentioned this: Are they suddenly Swedish-style social democrats? Human Rights Watch reports that almost 100 women were subjected to violent sexual assault over four days in Tahrir Square, which suggests not. As in the Congolese civil war, where both sides agreed that pygmies made excellent appetizers, in the Egyptian political stand-off, the young men of both pro- and anti-Morsi forces agree on little else except that the chicks are fair game. This ugly aspect has gone strikingly under-reported in America for over two years, ever since CBS chose to downplay the rape of...

Allahu Akbar. The holy pious Muslim Brotherhood left their empty whiskey and vodka bottles littered on the ground after the bloody protests this weekend. Via Egyptocracy: Earlier, @IslamElGawish saw vodka bottles, now, army shows whiskey bottles in the pious pro #Morsi sit-in. pic.twitter.com/o0bFHmaRkp #Egypt — Egyptocracy (@Egyptocracy) July 8, 2013

CARLISLE — With unrest in Egypt, U.S. military officials looking for insight might test the ties they formed with the Egyptian defense minister, Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, when he was a student at the Army War College. “In this little historical Pennsylvania town, the most important school in the world operates under the radar,” said retired Col. Stephen Gerras, a professor of behavioral science at the Carlisle Barracks. Al-Sisi was Gerras’ student. In 2006, he watched the Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks, 21-10, in the Super Bowl in Gerras’ home. Gerras remembers him as a warm man, quiet and devout....

Mahmoud Badr "owns" the Egyptian street. The 28-year-old activist in sneakers, jeans and a worn-out polo shirt invented the magic formula that drew millions of Egyptians out to demand the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. Now he is determined to ensure all their demands are met. On the day the army stepped in to remove Mursi last week, Badr and his two twenty-something co-founders of the "Tamarud - Rebel!" movement got a phone call from a general staff colonel, inviting them to meet the armed forces commander-in-chief. Speaking to Reuters in a bare suburban high-rise apartment lent to his...

A lot of my dear American friends sill ask me what on earth really happened in egypt, for their benefit, and anyone else on earth genuinely trying to make heads or tails of us "crazy Egyptians" ; here's exactly what happened in egypt over the past 12 months, but expressed in 'American" terms... There are no exaggerations or lies, these events all took place: On June 30th 2012, democratically elected Barack Obama wins the election with 51.7%, takes the oath, and is sworn in as president of the United States. First five months of his term go relatively smoothly, where...

About a year ago, Wael Elfeqy waited in a long line to cast his ballot for Egypt's first democratically elected president. His candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won the election but was removed from office and jailed last week when the military seized power. "We were so proud," said Elfeqy, a physical therapist from southwest suburban Justice who travels frequently to Egypt, where he was born. "We were so proud of our democracy, and these guys stole it from us." While thousands rallied in the streets of Egypt both for and against Morsi's ouster, Elfeqy was among hundreds of pro-Morsi demonstrators who...

There is no telling how many more revolutions it will have in the coming months, or years. On Wednesday, Egypt had its second revolution in as many years. And there is no telling how many more revolutions it will have in the coming months, or years. This is the case not only in Egypt, but throughout the Islamic world. The American foreign policy establishment’s rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of the members of...

The military's overthrow of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood's fall from power in Egypt have sent Islamist parties around the region scrambling to preserve gains made in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of the Arab Spring uprisings. The stunning reversal has instilled caution among some Islamists against pushing their agenda too hard, but it has also strengthened hard-liners long opposed to democracy....

ISTANBUL — Unlike its key Arab allies, Turkey has condemned the overthrow of the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Analysts warn that the fall of Morsi has dealt a major blow to Turkey's ambition of extending its influence across the Middle East. Turkey's prime minister on Friday condemned the military intervention that toppled Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi as an enemy of democracy, and criticized the West for failing to brand the ouster a coup. Referring to his country's history of coups, Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that such military uprisings come at a heavy price. "Coups are evil. Coups target people,...

CAIRO (CNN) —The Egyptian military opened fire on supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, early Monday, killing more than 30 people. The health ministry put the number of fatalities at 34, and said 200 others were wounded. CNN counted at least eight bullet-riddled bodies and up to 40 wounded at the chaotic emergency facility in the Egyptian capital, down the street from the site of the shooting. The upper bodies of the victims appeared to be peppered with shotgun pellets and bullet wounds. Doctors tended to the victims, performing surgeries in many cases before shipping...

Pro- and anti-Morsi factions staged competing rallies in Cairo, with those who supported last week's military intervention attacking US President Barack Obama for his alleged support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday criticized the Egyptian military’s toppling of the nation’s Islamist president, calling the move improper in its first official reaction. “We do not consider proper the intervention by military forces in politics to replace a democratically elected administration,” said ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi, according to the official news agency IRNA. Egypt’s military ousted Mohammed Morsi Wednesday after four days of mass protests against him. …

There are always two stories in America. There is the one that comes from Obama’s mouth and then there is the truth. The truth of the matter is that this administration was “all in” on a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt. You can’t trust a word they say now that Morsi has been overthrown. Although I have little doubt that Obama would gladly throw Morsi, or anyone else, under the bus for his own benefit, we should not be so sure that this administration is done with The Muslim Brotherhood. There are reports coming from a very respected journalist in the...

The democracy fetish would be worth having if it were about promoting real democracy. Instead, as illustrated by media coverage of the military coup that ousted Egypt’s popularly elected Muslim Brotherhood president, we’re still confusing democratic legitimacy with legitimate democracy. The latter is real — a culture of liberty that safeguards minority rights. Attaining it is a worthy aspiration, but one that requires years of patient, disciplined, and often unpopular work. The former is an illusion — the pretense that if a Muslim country holds popular elections and elects totalitarian Islamists, voila, it has a “democracy,” and progressives the world...