Free Republic

Egypt's new Sharia-based constitution has been approved in a second round of voting, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party said. The country's opposition leveled accusations of fraud, saying it will appeal the referendum results. The new charter was approved by 64 percent of Egyptian voters in a “resounding victory,” state news agency al-Ahram reported on Sunday. The preliminary tallies were calculated from reports by polling station officials. Egypt's election committee will confirm the final results on Monday. Egypt's main opposition party the National Salvation Front (NSF) announced Sunday it will appeal the results of the referendum. NSF members alleged there were...

A campaign of intimidation by Islamists left most Christians in this southern Egyptian province too afraid to participate in last week’s referendum on an Islamist-drafted constitution they deeply oppose, residents say. The disenfranchisement is hiking Christians’ worries over their future under empowered Muslim conservatives. Around a week before the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched through the provincial capital, Assiut, chanting that Egypt will be “Islamic, Islamic, despite the Christians.” At their head rode several bearded men on horseback with swords in scabbards on their hips, evoking images of early Muslims conquering Christian Egypt in the 7th Century. … The activists...

Muslim Brotherhood claims to be in lead with 56 percent of “yes” votesRights groups call for repeat of votes as counting “took place in darkness”120,000 army troops deployed to help the police protect polling stationsEgyptians voted narrowly in favor of a controversial new constitution yesterday amid accusations of widespread ballot box violations. … Representatives of the seven (rights) groups charged that there was insufficient supervision by judges in Saturday’s vote in 10 of Egypt’s 27 provinces and independent monitors were prevented from witnessing vote counts. The representatives told a news conference that they had reports of individuals falsely identifying...

As voting on Egypt’s constitution begins, an Associated Press story this morning by Aya Batrawy and Sarah El Deeb typifies how the U.S. press is only nibbling around the edges of its content. The headline reads “EGYPTIANS VOTE ON ISLAMIST-BACKED CONSTITUTION.” In the story’s content, the pair found an 23 year-old Egyptian engineer who told them, in their words, that “he felt the proposed constitution needed more, not less, Islamic content,” and expressed a belief that “All laws have to be in line with Shariah.” Nice misdirection there. As Andrew McCarthy, “arguably the most important prosecutor in the War on...

Eight people have been killed and hundreds wounded, but the latest bloody chapter in Egypt’s unhappy recent history is about to draw to a close: this Sunday a referendum will be held on the proposed new constitution, and that, presumably, will be the end of that. And what it will most likely herald is the end of the brief era of any meaningful voting in Egypt, and of any hope on the part of women and Egyptian Christians for equality of rights before the law.Underlining the claim that to oppose their rule is to oppose Islam itself, the Muslim Brotherhood...