Editor of Egyptian Government Daily: Al-Qaeda, Iran, Palestinian Extremists...

On May 24, 2009, Egyptian security forces announced that they had arrested seven members of a terror cell [1] which, according to the confession of one of its members, had carried out the February 22, 2009 attack in Khan Al-Khalili. According to the announcement, the cell had ties to Al-Qaeda and to the Gaza salafi group Jaysh Al-Islam. [2]

One of the captured terrorists, a Belgian national, confessed that he was supposed to travel to Belgium, make contact with Al-Qaeda operatives, and accompany them to France in order to prepare attacks there. The cell was also supposed to conduct attacks against oil pipelines and tourist resorts in the Sinai. [3]

Following this incident, the editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Masaa, Khaled Imam, published an article titled "What Next? A Quadruple Axis of Evil," [4] in which he elaborated on the captured cell's connection to Iran, Hizbullah, and extremist elements in the Palestinian resistance. Imam contended that a new quadruple axis of evil had emerged and that its sole aim was to harm Egypt.

A month earlier, in April 2009, following the capture of a Hizbullah cell, [5] Egypt had accused Iran, Qatar, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood of conspiring against it - and now, in his article, Imam included Al-Qaeda in the plot as well.

SNIPPET from the link in post no. 1:

"The capture of the terrorist cell associated with the explosions in a square near the Al-Hussein mosque [in Cairo] last February brought to light two new matters of utmost importance. The first is that this cell was discovered through the Internet..."

NOTE: This is the full title of the article in post no. 1:

Special Dispatch - No. 2370
May 26, 2009 No. 2370

“Editor of Egyptian Government Daily: Al-Qaeda, Iran, Palestinian Extremists – A New Axis of Evil”

The truth is more sad than even the Egyptian’s are willing to tell, because behind all the rhetoric against “extremists” that the government of Egypt is presently concerned with, the fact is that the government controlled media and academia contain as much racist anti-Jewish and politically anti-western rhetoric as does any Wahabi mosque in Saudi Arabia, and thus, with the indirect aid of the Egyptian government itself, many young Egyptians find much with which to align themselves with Hamas, Hizbollah and “radical” Palestinian’s.

The west needs to say to Egypt - you are reaping what you sow, there are no good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable Islamists, they are all bad and if you lift any of them up over actual secular political moderates (who the Egptian government suppresses) your people will gravitate to ANY of the Islamists, not just the ones you approve of.

The Egyptians and the Saudis are trying to walk two parallel lines in the sand, at the same time - domestic official support for fundamentalist Islamist intellectuals and clerics and opposition to the young “radicals” educated at the feet of those Islamists and willing to apply the beliefs they have been taught to domestic opposition to the local government. Unfortunately those lines will never meet and the Islamist intellectuals and clerics are winning the battle for the dominance of their line over time.

Wuli said in part, “The Egyptians and the Saudis are trying to walk two parallel lines in the sand, at the same time - domestic official support for fundamentalist Islamist intellectuals and clerics and opposition to the young “radicals” educated at the feet of those Islamists and willing to apply the beliefs they have been taught to domestic opposition to the local government.”

OPINION: I agree Wuli.

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