Posted on 07/04/2013 5:21:08 AM PDT by bert
As the army takes control of Egypt, demonstrators in favour of the ousted president feel isolated and ignored.
Cairo - The fireworks celebrating Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s removal by the military are visible a few kilometres away, where thousands of his supporters are holding a sit-in, a protest they plan to continue until Morsi is reinstated.
Hours after his removal, the mood at the rally, outside a mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City neighbourhood, was sombre and confused.
Supporters of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood wondered how the man who last year became Egypt’s first democratically-elected president could be ousted so ignominiously.
Fear hovered over the rally, too, with many Brotherhood members wondering if Morsi’s removal would portend a wider crackdown on the once-banned group.
The army has encircled the site of the protest, blocking main roads with barbed wire and armoured vehicles; helicopters buzz overhead, often to jeers and curses from below. One man spat at a helicopter, dismissing its pilots as traitors.
Rumours were rife in the early hours of Thursday morning that the army would soon raid the camp and detain the protesters. One man brought up the memory of 1954, when then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser crushed the Brotherhood, jailing thousands of its members.
"What the army did, they have unleashed hell on Egypt," said Mahdi Asfar, an elderly religious scholar at the sit-in. "The Islamists will not be able to stand back, because we are not going back to jail."
Determination waning
Many of these protesters have been on the streets since Friday, when a coalition of pro-Morsi political groups organised a rally under the banner "legitimacy is a red line." The mood on Friday was defiant, with large crowds convinced that Morsi could survive nationwide anti-government protests that were scheduled for Sunday.
As the week wore on, and the scope of the protests became clear, the mood grew increasingly tense. Security checks increased; protesters warned of impending raids by "thugs."
Even on Wednesday, just hours before the army’s deadline for Morsi to resolve the political crisis, there was still a sense of determination in the camp.
Leading members of the Brotherhood and their allies held a fiery press conference in which they demanded that the military back down. "We are the constitution, we are freedom, we are legitimacy, we are the revolution," said Essam el-Erian, the vice chairman of the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party.
Determination had morphed into exhaustion by early Thursday morning.
Those who were still awake seemed taken aback by the day’s events, and blamed the overthrow on members of former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
"The problems that people could see, like the fuel crisis, stopped a day or two ago. The stock market rose on the 30th of June by 5 percent. How is everything solved moments before he leaves? I believe it is due to Mubarak and the deep state," said Sharif Ahmed, a businessman.
One speaker railed against a group of prominent political figures, dubbing them thugs. Most of his targets were predictable - Hamdeen Sabbahi, for example, an opposition leader who recently has tried to align himself with the army.
He also singled out Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand mufti of Al-Azhar University, the highest seat of Sunni learning in Egypt. Tayeb threw his support behind the coup, sitting in the audience while Defence Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced Morsi’s ouster and then adding brief remarks of his own.
With most of the media’s attention on the jubilant scenes in Tahrir Square and the presidential palace, many people at the sit-in said they felt ignored.
Journalists arrested
Their isolation was compounded by the shutdown of the Brotherhood’s television channel, Misr 25, and several other religious channels; Brotherhood officials said journalists working for their channel were arrested. “They don’t want people to see what is happening here,” Ahmed said.
Morsi himself is under house arrest, according to top Brotherhood officials, and has no access to the media; he resorted to YouTube to release a brief message after his ouster was announced.
More than a dozen other members of the movement have been arrested as well, according to security officials, a speedy move that to many here highlighted the government’s longstanding hostility towards the Brotherhood and other Islamist movements.
“Morsi’s people have been arrested already. The top people of Mubarak, they’re still out there, more than a year later,” said Ismail Abdel Aziz, a doctor. “The security forces have been sleeping for all this time. And now suddenly they wake up?”
For a thousand years Egypt was a more or less pluralistic secular society. It is the baleful influence of Bedouin petrodollars that has caused this atavistic eruption of barbarism. The Wahhabists didn’t pour money into hospitals or water treatment or housing, they infiltrated the religious centers and insinuated their regressive toxin into the fabric of Egyptian life, with dreadful results.
This is exactly why we have "secular" iron-fisted dictators like The Shaw, Kadoffy, Mubaric, and @$$head. They might be murdering bastards, but they keep those 3M (maniacal murdering moslem) bastards repressed and suppressed...or better yet...shot.
Let the round-up begin....YEEEEEE...HAAAAW!
Oh, so sad. I’m deeply touched. NOT!
Waaah...I feel...nothing!
May democracy truly rule with the new government!
...stop the killing of women, children and Christians!
And here I was hoping the headline was...
Supporters dispondent at pro-obama rally.
A gay couple?
I hope it works out a little better than that. But the middle east does not understand liberty and freedom. Sort of like most of our elected federal gummit doesn’t understand liberty and freedom.
Maybe so but only his base will believe him... and that is only about 22%.
The similarities between what happened in Egypt and what happened in American are staggering.
Tanked economy, soaring unemployment, soaring debt, oppression of Christians, personal freedoms attacked, MASSIVE corruption...I could go on but I think the point is made.
The only difference is the good people of America rolled over like sheep. I'm not suggesting that we should have a military coup but we should have had massive demonstrations.
There IS a coup in America and it's on track and almost complete.
“Supporters of Morsi(Obama) and his Muslim Brotherhood wondered how the man who last year became Egypt’s(USA’s) democratically-elected president could be ousted so ignominiously.”
A lot of us in the USA are asking the same thing about our democratically elected leader. Shame he has already sacked most of the real leaders in our military and replaced them with his cronies.
my tag
asking = wishing
Yea...cry me a river.
Lots of these people were cheering as the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist Islamic henchmen literally CRUCIFIED Coptic Christians in the street.
I have no sorrow for them loosing their “leader,” or their “moment.”
I hope the new regime allows the Egyptian military to hunt them, down and eradicate them.
SHARIA LAW MUST BE ERADICATED FROM TEH EARTH
http://www.jeffhead.com/eradicate.htm
No, I'm good with that. It's been unspoken US policy for a long long time.And they were right.
The only thing better would be US air-delivered eradication of the rioting mobs of screaming fundamentalists as they form up in the streets. Just light em up...literally.
I wonder what it takes to become a Grand Mufti??
I would like that title...I think?
Cuttnhorse, the Grand Mufti of the ranch.
Muftis are Muslim religious scholars who issue influential legal opinions (fatwas) interpreting Sharia (Islamic law).[1] The Ottoman Empire began the practice of giving official recognition and status to a single mufti, above all others, as the Grand Mufti
The difference is that we are a civil society. But more and more people are at or past the tipping point. I smell a change in the air. We’ll see.
Amazing if they oust this fundamentalist POS Morsi and it looks like they will. For the last 20-30 years the Fundamentalists have been winning and taking over secular oriented Muslim counties. So lets hope the tide is turning against the Jihadists whether they be stealth Jihadists (like Morsi) or warring Jihadists
One option to that....the ones ousted are free to join the revolution if it comes to that. Just sayin'.....
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