Free Republic

Nabil Fahmy, the former Egyptian foreign minister and a previous ambassador to the US, said that relations between Cairo and Washington remain strained because of the US’s insistence of allowing Islamists to participate in the political process. In an Egyptian television interview on Sunday evening, Fahmy said that “the Americans have not appropriately learned the lesson of dealing with terrorism” and that they “contacted us constantly in order to integrate streams of political Islam into the political process,” the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported. He added, however, that Egypt “pursued the will of the people” and did not give in...

Egypt's newly elected upper house of parliament picked an Islamist as its speaker on Tuesday, consolidating control by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party over the two legislative chambers. The election of pharmacology professor Ahmed Fahmy as speaker of the Shura Council came during the chamber's inaugural session. Saad el-Katatni, like Fahmy a member of the Freedom and Justice Party, was elected speaker of the more powerful lower house, or People's Assembly, on Jan. 23. The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's oldest and most powerful Islamic organization. Its Freedom and Justice Party members hold just under half of all seats...