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Morsi gives Egypt governorships to Islamist allies
(BBC News) – Adel al-Khayat is a member of the political wing of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which claimed responsibility for the 1997 Luxor massacre in which around 60 tourists were killed. The group subsequently renounced violence.
An office of the Brotherhood’s political party in Al-Daqahliyah, north of Cairo, has reportedly been set on fire in protest against the appointments.
Mohammed Morsi was sworn into office as Egypt’s first democratically elected president almost a year ago. He was the chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt’s Morsi Calls for No-Fly Zone over Syria: A step toward regional Sunni-Shiite War?
(Juan Cole) – Morsi’s step was intended to repair relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he stems but which had been unhappy with his overtures to Iran and lack of firm position on Syria. (The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a separate branch, has been most upset at him).
It also plays to the movement of Sunni and Wahhabi clerics to call for jihad against the Syrian regime, especially now that Shiite Iran and the Shiite Hizbullah have become so central to the fighting against the mostly Sunni rebels. Egyptian Sunni clerics have downplayed the dangers of al-Qaeda-linked groups coming to the fore in northern Syria, seeing them as much less dangerous than Hizbullah.
In 2013, we are seeing the kind of anti-Shiite fatwas and calls for holy war by Sunni authorities that were typical of the 1500s, when Iran first turned Shiite under the Safavids and militarily challenged the Ottoman and other Sunni powers.
The sectarian polarization cannot be confined to Syria. The call by Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, based in Doha, for Sunnis to go fight Hizbullah in Syria has been blamed by Iraqi Shiites for the uptick in attacks on their community by Sunni guerrillas in Iraq.
Morsi’s speech is also intended to deflect attention from his domestic woes. He is under severe pressure from the Egyptian youth movement, the left, and the secular right. The youth movement has launched a “Rebellion” movement, a petition drive to gather 15 million signatures for Morsi to call early presidential elections, which will culminate in nationwide demonstrations against the president on June 30.
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- We ARE “At War” – my observations after a week in the Middle East by Arthur Gilroy
