Islamic fanaticism and Egypt

John Wonder has sent me an important article from El País of Spain. We normally associate Islamic extremism with Afghanistan of with the Wahabites of eastern Arabia. The article argues that it really developed in the slums of Cairo seventy years ago, when.Hassan al Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood. The surgeon Ayman al Zawahri, the right hand of bin Laden, is a pupil of his. To fight it, Nasser created the secular Pan Arabism, but he was assassinated, without the West's shedding a tear. He was killed for his defeat in the 1967 war by Israel, supported by the US. It was this defeat which radicalized al Zawahri, who was born in comfortable circumstances, and many like him who sought an explanation for Egypt's humiliation (somewhat like Spain after its defeat by the US in 1898). Mubarak has jailed some 16,000 fundamentalists and thus avoided a civil war.

My comment: The Muslim Brotherhood has now spread all across North Africa. endangering the established regimes, including that of Qaddafi, who now has joined the West in the fight against terrorists! In Algeria especially, these fundamentalists have committed senseless and ruthless bloodshed on a vast scale. If this is pure Islam, we must save the world from it. In the past, US liberals have fought dictatorships, especially in Latin America. Now, especially in Muslim countries, from Morocco to Turkey and Pakistant, we are supporting military regimes as a lesser evil than terrorism. Democracy has taken a back seat.

Ronald Hilton - 10/26/01