The Muslim Brotherhood’s Samson Option

[Bombay]

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Samson Option.

In their feverish attempt to grab Egypt now, the Muslim Brotherhood are pushing the millennia old nation to the brink...

Interesting read.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... ption.aspx

[Dusak]

A very well written piece and an interesting overview of the situation.

[Hafiz]

Well sorry Dusak I think its the standard windy Cairo rant which says the Brotherhood is bad and everything should have been fixed in the past 12 months (oops Morsi's only been in power for less, the Parliament has been dismembered, the courts continue to knock anything and everything down, the constitution has only been in place for a few months and the elections are in judicial limbo).

These newly minted brave journalists never seem to have said that much was bad at the time under Mubarak but now think there should be instant answers to serious problems which they (the journalists) have only recently discovered.

The book quoted in the article is used to bolster the journalist's view that the brotherhood is incompetent and driven by dark intentions and intolerance. Its usually a safe bet nowadays that most articles in Al Ahram are either sloppy or biased both. In this case both. Whilst I haven't read the book (and I'm certain the journalist hasn't either) a quick look at extracts of 16 published and journal reviews on the Amazon site shows that the book accepts the necessity/desirability of sharia in the short term. There is nothing in these review extracts to show the book supports anything in the Al Ahram article and in any case the author of the book is a US academic lawyer who would be unlikely to have expertise in these areas.

As the article says the failure by the Government to purge the police and its other organs seems to have been a huge mistake but I refuse to believe that the Brotherhood, who were hunted by these forces for decades, lack the desire to do this.

[Remus]

If you are referring to Decline & Fall .... , this is a previous article he wrote in AlAhram.

[Dusak]

People always produce a different perspective on things that they read, see or hear about. I do not pretend to have a deep interest in another countries politics that being one of the reasons I very rarely comment on them preferring to leave that to people better qualified than I. It was just a personal view that I found it an interesting read and it was nice to see that individual members of the press are voicing a free unshackled view against a controlled one.

[Hafiz]

Dusak my point, put a bit strongly, is that a lot printed in Egypt about the Brotherhood is heavily biased and sometimes untrue.

Opinion is always a good thing, but in this case the journalist tells an untruth in claiming support for his views from a famous US book. There is a lot of this type of opinionated stuff in al Ahram nowadays, not always based on out and out untruths, and one needs to be cautious in reading it.

Remus's reference to 'Decline and Fall' implies the Brotherhood might have committed 'indecencies' in very expensive private Egyptian schools.

When he wasn't writing about these salacious private school things, Waugh did a fine line in (hugely racist) satires on African dictatorships which are now not read by 'nice' people. Like our friend at al Ahram, Waugh never pretended to be other than completely biased and bigoted - but he did know how to write a sentence. Alas I and al Ahram can only marvel.

[Dusak]

I see your point and agree with it. But are not all those in political positions, irrespective of their beliefs, ether victims or wielders of untruths towards themselves or their opponents? I was brought up with the old adage's, never trust a politician or what you read in the papers. The only politician I would feel comfortable in believing in would be Nelson Mandela.

[Remus]

Sorry to bang on about this, but the book he is referencing is Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', from which he took his title for a previous article written in AlAhram a month or so ago.
Waugh also used it for his comic novel - but this has nothing to do with Shukralla's article mentioned above.
I have been reading him during the last 2 years and find him the least 'windy' of the Cairo journalists, a man who combines wit and intelligence and wide reading, with his finger on the Egyptian pulse. He would be amused by this confusion regarding his title for the piece.