A Novel Right To Myth-Information Carved Out By Many Egyptian Press "Opinion-Makers"

In Post-Mubarak Egypt, press freedom is translated by many Egyptian press "opinion-makers" as the right to propagate myth-information.  Not only is most of the material very thin on facts and devoid of analysis and logic.  It is a hodgepodge of fantasy, non-supported conclusions, name calling, and anecdotes of suspect origin.  One may call it press chaos instead of press freedom.

It is a tragic phenomenon exhibited by so-called "opinion-makers" within a broad spectrum of political and ideological affiliations.  It is a form of de-education through the Egyptian press.  Examples abound, and events vary, but "the bla bla bla bla" is its main feature.  Here follows are telling examples:

• On the issue of whether El-Sisi intends to become a presidential candidate

Al-Ahram, the government official newspaper, supports that possibility.  No problem.  But one of its editorialists, Hamdy Hassan Abul-Ainain addresses an open letter which warns one of El-Sisi's possible competitors, Field Marshal Ahmed Shafik, not to throw his hat in the ring.  Why?  Here is Abul-Ainain's non-content advice to Shafik, who had received 49.50% of the popular vote for president in 2012 against 50.50% for Morsi:

"You have known Field Marshal El-Sisi for a long time... have determined that he was the most capable to lead this nation... Everyone knows that your decision to compete in the last presidential elections led to Morsi becoming Egypt's President.  We need new faces and a new climate for a free and an enlightened choice."

Here the writer contradicts himself.  He calls for a free and an enlightened choice, yet discourages competition which the essence of free choice.  He reaches several faulty conclusions and makes unsupported assumptions.  How could Shafik's running for the presidential office in June 2012 have aided Morsi's ascendancy to the highest office in Egypt?

• On the issue of shutting down the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of the Mubarak regime:

Muhammad Shuman, another in Al-Ahram calls for the inclusion in the now Egyptian constitution of a strange provision.  Here is his de-educational advocacy:

"That constitutional provision should ban those two groups (named above) from political work for 10 years.  The law should also correct the meaning of leadership in all these groups... It is my conviction that the leadership of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of the Mubarak regime are appendages of the Mubarak regime.  They both have contributed to the corruption of political action whereby elections became a trade in which votes are bought and sold... The main object is to attain social justice and to guarantee the process of transiting to democracy."

It is apparent that the writer ignores the historic fact that the Muslim Brotherhood was banned under the Mubarak regime.  It is startling that this "opinion-maker" confused between the role of a constitution and the role of a subservient law.  The present ban of the Brotherhood under the presidency of Justice Adly Mansour is by a mere law underpinned by political and security considerations.  It does not extend to other groups or parties, especially "the remnants of the Mubarak regime," which, under the lofty principle of transitional justice, are being integrated within the broad spectrum of political inclusiveness.

• On the issue of Saudi Arabia's position on the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda:

In the daily liberal Al-Massri Al-Yom, an editorialist by the name of Abr Nadeen Al-Budair, in her attacks against the Muslim Brotherhood, invents the following imaginary conclusions: (a) In search for a rebirth, the Brotherhood, once more, finds it in Saudi Arabia; (b) The Saudi regime is responsible for the creation of the military wing of the Brotherhood -Al Qaeda; and (c) the Brotherhood has sabotaged Saudi education and public information through making these institutions outlets for the Brotherhood.

The writer's ignorance is patently manifest.  In her hallucinatory efforts to get the Saudi government to combat the Brotherhood, she is ignorant of, or chooses to ignore, the following facts: (i) It was the Founder of Saudi Arabia, the late King Abdel-Aziz Al-Saud, who denied the Brotherhood an institutional base in his country; (ii) Saudi Arabia, during the reign of King Fahd, forced Bin Laden to flee the Kingdom; and (iii) Saudi Arabia is leading the Gulf's financial surge to help the post-Morsi government overcome Egypt's present economic distress.

• On the issue of the split in Egypt between the Islamists and the Secularists

Imad Gad asserts in the newspaper Al-Tahrir that the removal of Morsi from the Egyptian presidency has "contributed to the increased hate" between the two camps.  Fair enough.  But then he lurches away from that fact to the inventing of statistics, as he says: "Those who belong to the camp of political Islam do not exceed 15% to 20% of the total demographics of Egypt."  The editorialist prepares us for that discovery by saying: "The split within Egyptian society has reached a degree indicative of the existence of two peoples in Egypt whereby it is ascertainable that the split is sharp and divisive.  It has reached the point where it could be said that today there are two Egypts in one country."

The sad fact about Egypt and nearly all other Arab countries is that qualified social science research does not exist.  The great source on Arab statistics on Arab development, published by the UN Family of Organizations was based on representative samples.  I know of no census in Egypt which includes questions of party or religious affiliations.  In fact there is no official census regarding the percentage of the Coptic community as regards the total population of Egypt.  Mr. Imad Gad has clearly used his fertile imagination in two ways:

(i) the percentage of the membership of the Brotherhood within the total population of Egypt.  The Brotherhood does not provide figures on anything, especially on membership and budget; and (ii) the conflict within Egypt is one of identity (secular v. Islamic), not of two Egypts, inhabiting the same territory.  That opinion-maker should know that even in the case of a civil war, which is not the case of present-day Egypt, the warring factions cling tenaciously to the fact that they all belong to the same country.

• On the issue of calling Dr. El-Baradei, a traitor

Several commentators have been waging a savage campaign of name-calling against that Nobel Prize Laureate, who was Director-General of the UN-related International Atomic Energy Agency.  His attackers have called for his dismissal from the Egyptian Bar; one of those anti-El-Baradei campaigners, a law professor, even went to the ridiculous length of suing him.  For what?  For "injuring the national trust!!"

After the removal of Morsi from the presidency on July 3, 2013, Dr. El-Baradei assumed the post of Vice-President in charge of International Relations.  He was one of the pillars in Morsi's removal from power.  But he watched in horror, together with 35 million other Egyptians, the systemic brotherhoodization of Egypt.  Yet he felt compelled to resign his high office as he believed that the forceful removal of the Brotherhood's six-week sit-ins on August 14, resulting in a thousand or more fatalities, was a mistake.

But calling him a traitor by the present secularists commentators is just as bad as the name-calling by the Islamists of their secularist adversaries as "apostates," and "enemies of God."  Criminalizing "the other opinion" is a slippery slope toward fascism.

• On the issue of Nasser and starving scientists and maintaining illiteracy

Dr. Thabet Eid, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood affirms in one full page of the Brotherhood's daily "Freedom and Justice" that Nasser (Egypt's President from 1954 to 1970) committed the above-mentioned public sins.  That voice of the Muslim Brotherhood condemns the Nasser program of "free education for all" as a plot causing the decline of public education.  He accuses all those military presidents who ruled the most populous country in the Arab world of deliberately giving more importance to the number of students so educated than to the quality of their education.

That commentator ignores the historic fact that access to the freedom of education at no cost and at all levels was inaugurated by the great iconic philosopher and educator, Dr. Taha Hussein.  Though blind, that philosopher and reformer was invited by the popular Wafd government of Nahas Pasha in 1951 to be the Minister of Education.  His seminal book in Arabic, entitled "The Future of Education in Egypt" published in the late 1930s, which I have read twice, remains relevant to today's Egypt.

The military governments of Egypt, from 1953 (President Naguib) to 2011 (President Mubarak) maintained that system.  The system was not a casualty of its openness, but of inadequate resources, both financial and teachers training.  The Brotherhood editorialist directs his flashlight on the historic enmity between the Brotherhood and secular governments.  As he does that, he unwittingly also shines a light on how biased commentators deceive their public through the propagation of falsehoods.

Conclusion: The Egyptian press freedom of today is practised mostly as press chaos:

Myth-information by many Egyptian press commentators has become a daily fare in the new Egypt.  There exists a code of press ethics in Egypt, but it sadly lacks enforcement.  Invented statistics, false accusations, and mean name-calling, non-substantiated assumptions are real hurdles in the path of Egypt towards its present goal of democratization.

The Right to Information Day was celebrated last month (September 23-28) by no less than 40 countries.  That right is predicated upon several criteria.  These include the right to whistle-blowing, but not the assumed right of leaking of State secrets.  Nowhere in these criteria do I find the right to propagate invented facts.  This is a black art.  It belongs to the world of Halloween (to pretend to be what you really are not).  Its only casualty is truth in reporting.  Honesty in public information is the basis of an enlightened public opinion -one of the main pillars of democracy.

All freedoms are regulated in order to avoid abuse. It is a rare coin on one side of which is written "Freedom"; on the other "Responsibilities."

Raining on Egypt's Parade

It poured on Egypt's parade of October 6 from two cloud outbursts: One internal, that of the Muslim Brotherhood; the other external, the U.S. withholding "some" military aid to Egypt.  In the deepest psyche of Egypt, October 6, since 1973, is celebrated as "The Crossing Over Day."  Under President Sadat, the armed forces crossed the Suez Canal to liberate Sinai from Israeli occupation.  It was a 17-day war intended to undo the humiliation of the massive defeat of the 6-day war of June 1967.

A careful study of the October war (called also the Yom Kippur War by the Israelis, and the Ramadan War by most of the Arabs) reveals interesting insights into Egypt's mind.  These trends are non-changeable: the sanctity, to the average Egyptian, of Egyptian soil; the centrality of respect of the Egyptian armed forces; the ability of Egypt to disengage from regional attachment to the concept of "One Arab Nation" if the land of the Nile becomes its victim; and the role of transformative leadership in marshalling those trends.

The backdrop of October 6 is the failure of Arab Baathist ideology, espoused by the Nasser regime from 1952 to 1967.  That is the corrupt ideology of Egyptian intervention in the affairs of other Arab States.  Its primary purpose was elevating Nasserism to the level of Egyptian hegemony.  Cairo's interventionism proved too costly, caused Egyptian economic and social decline, and contributed to the suffocation of an earlier Egyptian democracy at the altar of what?  The altar of nothing.

The Sadat leadership, without disavowing Nasserism, undid that losing streak.  It used the limited war of October 6 to liberate Sinai; it reminded Egypt of its solid roots in cosmopolitan Egyptianism; it freed the economy from the shackles of the negativism of the Khartoum Summit of 1967 towards peace in the Middle East; it normalized relations with the great Arab East based on the Gulf States; and it signaled to the west that friendship with the US does not mean acceptance of a Washington dictat.

For all of these historic achievements, representing a historic bivoting from ideology to practicality, Sadat was assassinated on October 6, 1981 by the Islamists.  As he stood at the review stand on that fateful day to concretize the meaning of "The Crossing Over Day," he was gunned down as his terrorist assassins yelled at him "You are a dog."

There is an Arab proverb that says "Tonight Reminds of Last Night."  Its western equivalent is: "The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same."  

The similarity between October 6, 1981 and October 6, 2013, is unmistakable.  The Islamists of 2013, following the ouster of Morsi of the Brotherhood are on a rampage.  Their target is Egyptian secularism and inclusiveness.

On Egypt's parade, the Muslim Brotherhood rained RPGs, and other instruments of stealth killing.  From Sinai to Suez; from Cairo to Alexandria; from southern Egypt to the Delta.  They also exposed their adherents to assured destruction, called by them "martyrdom."  They used October 6 as a day of saluting, not Egypt's armed forces, but their incarcerated ousted President.  To them, Egypt's armed forces, under the flag of Egypt, have become a hated militia.

To where will that rebellion lead?  Not to the reinstatement of Morsi who shall be tried before the Egyptian judiciary next month.  Not to the harassment of all those who do not adhere to their pan-Islamist ideology.  Not to the maniacal restrictions imposed on foreign tourists, whether in dress or in food and drink.  Not to the concept of a society which looks upon non-Muslims as infidels.

On Egypt's parade, also rained the withholding by the US of certain sectors of the US aid to Egypt.  A puzzling interruption of observing the customary practices between allies.  That suspension does not constitute "a recalibration of Egyptian-US relationship."  Let us call acts such as these by their proper names.  This is a most unfortunate reversal.  This action promises to be neither "modest nor temporary."

It shall not lead to an enhancement of the democratization of the Egyptian system.  Democracy is not exportable, and sovereignty is not for sale.  I reckon that at no time would that act of intervention in Egypt's internal affairs will bear but a poisonous fruit for the Cairo-Washington amity.  Its thrust might be weakening of the structure of peace in the new Middle East.

Yet, after all it might accelerate the pace of Egyptian self-reliance.  In the early 1980's, I interviewed Frank Wisner, the then US Ambassador to Egypt.  I asked him "What does he think of the American aid to Egypt?"  His response was, "Egypt does not need aid.  It needs trade."  Well said, Mr. Ambassador.  The Egyptian masses are with you.  They are wary of a relationship which fluctuates between hot and cold.  Hot for Mubarak's dictatorship; cold for Egypt's parade moving, in spite of the Muslim Brotherhood toward a democracy born from its authentic streetocracy.

For the Muslim Brothers, No Profit From Equating Between Themselves and the Prophets

The Quran in Chapter 21, verses 68, 69 and 70 relates the suffering of Abraham until saved, by the grace of God, from burning by fire.  These verses depict the power of the Almighty over those of his creatures who have flung Abraham into a raging fire.  Their purpose was to get rid of his persistent calls for the worship of God as one, to replace idolatry.  The text reads as follows: "They said, 'Burn him and protect your gods, if ye do anything at all.  We said, "O Fire! Be thou cool and a means of safety for Abraham.  Then they sought a stratagem against him: but We made them the ones that lost the most."

How does this fit in with the campaign being waged today by Egypt's transitional government against the leadership of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood?  Plenty.  From behind its prison bars, the Brotherhood's leadership is still allowed to publish and vent its grievances against the Second Egyptian Revolution of July 3.  Calling that massive popular uprising against the Morsi Islamist regime "a coup," that leadership finds in the Quran what it fancies as parallels between the Prophets of old and themselves.

The lives of the Prophets are related throughout the Quran to prove God's power over those who wished in vain to defeat monotheism, for which Islam strongly stands.  In their collectivity, these verses provide a message of eternal hope to all those who suffer injustice.  It is the pre-destined victory of good over evil.

Now here is an irony: The Muslim Brotherhood, through its extensive reliance in its public campaign against the removal of Morsi as President, and the measures that followed in its wake against its leadership, is evoking the story of David and Goliath.  Its extensive use of the Quran does not stop there.  Through one of its imprisoned leaders, Dr. Silah El-Din Sultan, a professor of Sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood fancies its imprisoned leaders as the new Prophets.  That professor expounds on this theme in the Brotherhood's newspaper: "Freedom and Justice."

Ibrahim (or Abraham) in the Quran is one such Prophet.  Joseph (in the Quran: "Yusuf") is another, with the twist that Joseph, from a prisoner of Pharaoh, to Joseph becoming a Prime Minister of Egypt, ushering into it his entire family.  In this connection, the Brotherhood quotes heavily from Chapter 12 entitled "Yusuf" with emphasis on the verse describing the historic triumph of Joseph, especially as that Prophet welcomes his whole family into Egypt by the Quranic phrase: "Enter ye Egypt, all in safety, if it pleases God." (verse 99).

What follows that verse is on point as regards the Brotherhood's expectation of their release from prison and resumption of power once more.  Using Joseph as a parallel for their return to the governance of Egypt, their articles in "Freedom and Justice" quote the Quranic verse no. 100, as Joseph says: "God hath made it come true!  He was indeed good to me when he took me out of prison."

The sad part of that scenario is that the Brotherhood manifests a desperate attempt to use the Quran as an instrument of their aspirations for a political come back.  Ignoring the repeated injunctions in the Quran regarding the necessity, under Islamic jurisprudence, of the removal of injustice by all available means, as the Egyptian masses did to the Morsi's exclusivistic Islamist rule, the Brotherhood now appeals to the Quran as a predictor of their return to the halls of power.

Judging these utterances on their merit, how can an analyst escape the following conclusions: (a) the Brotherhood's conviction that they have a divine mission, not at all different from "the divine right of kings;" (b) their record of one year of Islamization under Morsi has nothing in it to justify their impossible quest; (c) they see their road to power, tortuous as it might be, can only be paved by Islamic holy texts; (d) their appeal to their supporters is so narrowly tailored to the ethos of an Islamic State, indeed a Caliphate, with Egypt as a mere launching pad; and (e) the severe lessons of their populist ouster from power, in spite of their limited self-blame, have not yet sunk in.

This is a hopeless quest, a quest which is solely focused on regaining power through the Brotherhood's own interpretation of Islam.  From their prison cells, the Brotherhood is, in effect, telling secular Egypt: "We shall be back to pursue our manifest destiny: An Islamic Emirate in Egypt."  

It is not going to happen.  Reasons: The Brotherhood is frozen in time.  To them, nothing has changed for the past 1434 years when Islam became a community, not a State, through the Hijrah (flight) of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca, to evade persecution, to Medina. 

So, Brothers, dream on!!  Islam has declared that Muhammad is the last Prophet.  Your mission is foreclosed.  No profit for you from equating between yourselves and the Prophets.  Sorry!  You are late by nearly 15 centuries.  GET REAL!!

By an Egyptian Court Order, the Muslim Brotherhood "BUND" is Disbanded: WHY?

In German, the Bund is a collective, a cabal that is secretive, exclusive and/or ideological.  Within the meaning of that term, the Muslim Brotherhood has been, since its creation in 1928, a veritable Bund.  After huffing and puffing, the Brotherhood has, for the third time blown its house down..  The Brotherhood's house, though based geographically in Egypt, has never been an Egyptian house.  It has been a seat for a complex mix of pan-islamism cum force.

Now disbanded by an Egyptian court order, issued on September 23, the Muslim Brotherhood had reached the summit of ensconcing its agent, now deposed President Morsi, at the Presidential palace for one very long and painful year.  Then came its downfall through a judicial ban, thus epitomizing the saying: "from riches to rags."  The reasons for that ban lie within their ideology, within their actions, and within their insistence on "my way or the highway."

The Brotherhood ideology can be seen in their symbol: Two raised swords held aloft criss-crossed, with the holy Quran on top, and the ominous belligerent and provocative term "Be Ready" (Aaeddou) between the handles of the two swords.  So what is wrong with that Brotherhood symbol?  Many things: (1) The Quran, the primary source of Islamic law and practice, advocates peace and tolerance, not combat, except to counter aggression; (2) The term "Muslim" means the submission by the individual to the will of God, not to the pronouncements of the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide; and (3) "Be Ready,"  in Islamic Law, and in the general context of the 6400 verses of the Quran, connotes readiness for coexistence, interaction, and acceptance of the other through Islam's universalistic concept of DIVERSITY.  In the Quran, diversity is asserted in many verses including: "If God has so willed, He would have made you a single people, but HIS plan is to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues."  (Chapter 5, verse 48).

The counter-thesis of diversity is exclusiveness.  The Brotherhood's exclusivity is a doomed ideology, especially in the 21st Century.  It collides head on with faith, logic and changing circumstances.

As to Brotherhood's actions which prove their rejection of diversity, the expose must perforce consist of a factual review of why those repetitive bans were imposed by the State over a period of 66 years within an 85 year period of Brotherhood existence.  That expose, based on facts, demonstrates the constant tension between pan-Islamism and Egyptian nationalism with the latter coming invariably and instinctively on top.

The Muslim Brotherhood had shown itself very capable of mass organization at the village level.  Their relentless process of Islamization is a cottage industry which took advantage of the natural tendency of the Egyptian people, regardless of faith, to be religious.  As a kingdom until 1953 and as an authoritarian dictatorship until the fall of Mubarak in 2011, the Egyptian masses have endured repression of their freedom of speech.  Politics which were expressed in opposition to the Ruler were to be avoided.  But religious freedom was largely immune from such restrictions.  Thus religious freedom became the only safe vehicle for freedom of speech.

The Brotherhood found in that open door its access to the organization of its adherents.  And because Islam is both a faith and a way of life, the Brotherhood's bus could accommodate a broad spectrum of Islamic religious views.  With demographic expansion came also a division of interpreting the Brotherhood mission: Is it Islamic advocacy combined with charity alone, or is it also advocacy combined with political action?  Their mission definition was never decided upon, giving rise to "the secret wing," and the diversion to the back alleys of enforcement.  The two swords became a symbol in action.  Advocacy combined with charity acted largely as a smoke screen for the objective of exclusive political power, with Egypt acting as a launching pad.

The ban of September 23, 2013 of the Brotherhood and all its formations and the seizure of all their assets was the direct result of a series of actions directed against a historically secular Egypt.  It was the third of a series of such bans.

The first ban came about in 1947.  It resulted form a confrontation between the monarchical system in Egypt and the Brotherhood under the leadership of its founder, Hassan Al-Banna.  At that time, the Brotherhood, insulted by a case against one of its members, was caught red-handed in the assassination of Judge Ahmed Pasha Al-Khazendar who was assigned that case.  This act of violence, especially against the judiciary, prompted Prime Minister Al-Naqrashi to declare the Brotherhood an illegal organization.

In a tit-for-tat reaction by the Brotherhood, which fancied itself as ruling the Egyptian street, the "Secret Wing" of the Brotherhood assassinated that Prime Minister in 1947.  Not since 1910 has Egypt lost a prime minister to political assassination.  That was when Prime Minister Boutros Ghali, a Copt, was fatally ambushed.

Reacting to Al-Naqrashi's assassination, and with the feud between the Brotherhood and the Royal Palace reaching its fiery zenith, government agents killed Al-Banna in 1949.  That took place even after Al-Banna had distanced himself from the murder of Al-Naqrashi by saying: "Those who killed the Prime Minister were neither Brothers nor Muslims."  By now, the battle for the soul of Egypt between the Islamists and the secularists was in full swing.

Yet secular Egypt was more forgiving than the Brotherhood.  That latter saw its face on the two sides of the Egyptian coin: on one side was Islam, and on the other was Islam as the ladder to power.  In the same year of 1949, the Brotherhood, under a new Guide, Mamoun Al-Hodheiby, using the Egyptian Constitution of 1923, applied to the Supreme Administration Court for lifting of the ban.  The Egyptian judiciary, being one of the main pillars of modern Egypt, decreed the lifting of that ban in accordance with the constitutional right to peaceful assembly.

Again the Brotherhood, eager to interject itself in to Egyptian politics, caused some of its members to penetrate the proud Officers Corp of the cohesive national army.  Its opening to that critical penetration was the abhorrence by the clandestinely-formed "Free Officers" of corruption in the Royal Palace.  The "Free Officers" attributed the military defeat in Palestine in 1948-1949 to that corruption.  Nasser, being the prime mover of that group, looked benignly upon the brotherhoodization of segments of the Free Officers ranks.  He needed their fervor and their popular base.  Here was a short-lived honeymoon between secularism and Islamism.

That honeymoon was doomed to ultimate failure. While Nasser recruited clandestinely officers on the basis of loyalty to Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood officers, believing on exclusivity, had a different criterion for that strategic recruitment.  Their standard was the degree of fidelity only to Islam -an early microcosm of the battle for Egypt's identity from 2011 to 2013, with the year 2012-2013 being the Morsi year.

Following the dethroning by the Naguib/Nasser coup of both King Farouk in 1952, and of his son, King Ahmed Fouad II in 1953, Egypt was declared a republic.  Its Revolutionary Command Council, desiring to get rid of a parliamentary democracy based on a multi-party system, dissolved all political parties, including the popular and secular mass party of the Wafd which was led by both Muslim and Christian stalwarts.  But the Muslim Brotherhood, describing itself as a society (Jamaa), not a political party, was spared dissolution.

That historic exception of the Brotherhood from dissolution did not fully accord with the Brotherhood agenda.  For there was "the national project" of Nasser standing in the way of the "Islamic project" of the Brotherhood.  Between the two projects, there could be no compromise.  The stalemate forced the Revolutionary Command Council to issue on January 1, 1954, a ban on the Brotherhood.  That second ban amounted to a new year gift from the armed forces to historically secular Egypt.

Ten months later, namely in October 1954, the Brotherhood again sought its weapon of choice - political assassination.  In that month, members of that BUND attempted to assassinate Nasser as he stood in a public square in Alexandria to address the nation.  The plot failed and massive arrests and prosecution of the Brothers followed.

It took the Brotherhood 20 years from 1954 to 1974 to recover, especially under the Sadat regime which in September 1970 followed that of Nasser.  Under its third Guide, Omar Al-Telemsany, the Brotherhood, again in 1974 tried to have the Egyptian judiciary lift that second ban.  But the case collapsed due to a provision in the Nasserite Constitution of 1964 which immunized decisions of the Revolutionary Command Council from the Courts jurisdiction.  Due to that legal defect in the Brotherhood's case which had languished before the Supreme Administrative Court from 1974 till 1991, the case for lifting the ban was thrown out.

Then came the Arab Spring, resulting in the form of the Egyptian Revolution of January 25, 2011 which resulted in the fall of the Mubarak regime on February 11, 2011.  That revolution was purely secular.  It raised in Tahrir Square both the crescent and the cross reminding the world of Egypt's secularism, inclusiveness, and openness to the 21st century.  The Brotherhood came late to that uprising.  But because of its history of mass appeal to Muslims, its grass-roots organization, and its promises to be a part of the Egyptian whole, its candidate for President Morsi won.

That victory proved to be Pyrrhic -a victory gained at a great cost.  It caused the Brotherhood to fall in the trap of "Egypt was subsidiary to Islamization."  It revealed the bond between the Brotherhood and the terror elements of Hamas; it aggressed against both Al-Azhar and the Coptic church; it called the disruption of both urban and rural Egypt, through sit-ins, a "a peaceful exercise of the right to assembly; it declared the areas of those sit-ins "Islamic emirates;" it attacked the army and the police by various types of weapons from rocks to RPGs; it caused havoc in the two provinces of Sinai which became, since 1906, an integral part of Egypt; it described the Second Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 and its resultant dismissal of the Islamist regime of Morsi as a coup; and it rebuffed all invitations to becoming a part of the transitional government of Hazem Al-Beblawi which it regards as devoid of legitimacy.

The Brotherhood's third ban, declared by the Court of Urgent Matters on September 23, is all inclusive of its organizations and assets.  The ruling by that fast track Court amounts to a preliminary injunction which shall undoubtedly be confirmed by a higher court, the Supreme Administrative Court -the very court which had repeatedly resurrected the Brotherhood from its two previous bans.

The Egyptian proverb says: "The third hit is the most enduring."  So it shall be with the BUND whose returned to an underground existence shall be of no avail to its attempt to subvert secular Egypt.

The reign of the Brotherhood collapsed primarily because that Bund has proved that it does not comprehend diversity within the context of Egyptian nationalism.  And when the European Union asks Cairo to explain why the Brotherhood was banned, it is incumbent upon Egypt, in defense of its sovereignty, not to respond.

It seems futile to guide the Muslim Brotherhood to two pages of history for educational purposes.  One page provides a contemporary lesson in diversity even in the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Though Iran has only 9000 citizens of the Jewish faith, its present Parliament includes an Iranian adherent of that faith.

The other page is from the history of modern Egypt under one of my heroes, namely Muhammad Ali, its viceroy under the Ottoman Empire.  The Empire collapsed for many reasons including the ignorant advice by Muslim scholars to the Sultan not to introduce European expertise for training including that of the armed forces.  Muhammad Ali, a true practitioner of diversity, launched modern Egypt in 1805 supported by French technology.  Within a mere 30 years, the Egyptian armies under the great General Ibrahim Pasha, his son, were at the gates of Istanbul, ready to bring the entire Empire under the poised rulership of Muhamad Ali.  Europe saved the Sultan, and the family of Muhammed Ali got under its hereditary crown until the Nasser coup in 1952.