Note: this topic is from 05/30/2006. Thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks. Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal:Also this month, in Cairo, pro-democracy activists such as 39-year-old Ahmed Salah of the Egyptian Movement for Change and dozens of his colleagues were beaten, arrested and detained -- ostensibly for congregating publicly in groups larger than five. The emergency law through which Mr. Mubarak has ruled for 25 years was extended again. The judiciary -- the only semi-uncorrupted branch of government -- is under political assault. And Ayman Nour, the imprisoned liberal politician who ran second to Mr. Mubarak in last September's rigged presidential election, lost his final appeal against a five-year prison sentence on forgery charges. Maybe there is no connection between the first and second set of events. Maybe Mr. Mubarak did not need tacit American acquiescence to embark on his latest campaign of repression. Maybe there are plausible reasons for the administration to go soft on the regime for now. But speak to opposition figures here and the sense of American betrayal is palpable.
I’ve under the assumption that Mubarak was like Gadaffi in Lybia — that he brought stability to the Middle East.
Christians could survive under Mubarak’s leadership. And I bet that women were also better off.
Large Islamic populations are always unstable, always prone to wanton violence and tyranny, especially against women, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and anyone outside each narrow Islamic murder-sect.